The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
I’ve been asked what I think about the video game ban in California, which I note for the partisans was sponsored by Yee, a Democrat, and signed by Schwartzenegger, who is what passes for a Republican in California. My short answer is “I’m boycotting Girl Scout cookies.”
Leland Yee, co-author of the bill, was quick to sign up the California Girl Scouts, which he then went on to repeatedly stroll out at media events in order to drum up sympathy for the bill. Continue reading
I keep thinking I’m out of material, but every time I look there’s another horrifying quote somewhere about Katrina. Anyway, for those who aren’t sick to death of ‘em, Scott and I just put new cards up.
As an added bonus, someone sent Scott a picture of K:TG being played. Yep, turns out the game is playable. Not, I suspect, balanced, but apparently fairly hilarious. Continue reading
While I suspect the wildfire pace of the spread of Katrina: the Gathering has slowed and overall we’ve jumped the shark, there was enough enthusiasm about new cards that I decided to throw this thread here in case anyone here has an idea. We’re not going to be adding a lot more cards at this point (we added 40 or so over the weekend, and bandwidth is now killing us), so new additions will be reserved for really bone-headed quotes or really compelling images that capture the zeitgeist of what’s going on.
That being said, if you got card ideas, especially images and quotes but also names and pics, post ‘em here and maybe the good ones will join the ranks of lame Internet joke linkage. Feel free to post anonymously if you fear your reputation being destroyed by being attached to such shenanigans.
As a sidenote, Blogpulse says that we’re number 1! Truly, everyone needs more taste.
Last weekend, the New Orleans Saints football team won a gripping and uplifting victory, kicking a field goal with 3 seconds on the clock. It was a bitterly fought contest, and while the overall platitudes about the resiliency of the human spirit became somewhat tedious before long, the Saints played harder than anyone expected them to given the turmoil in their lives, for the most part dominating a Carolina team many had picked to reach the superbowl.
The Saints inspiring victory earned them the cover of Sports Illustrated. Some call th15em ‘America’s new team’. Many called the victory ‘uplifting’, ‘invigorating’, and ‘a ray of sunshine for hundreds of thousands of displaced Cajuns’. Continue reading
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments’ response to Hurricane Katrina.
The New York Democrat’s bid to establish the panel — which would have also made recommendations on how to improve the government’s disaster response apparatus — failed to win the two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles. Clinton got only 44 votes, all from Democrats and independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Fifty-four Republicans all voted no….In a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll taken Sept. 8-11, 70 percent of those surveyed supported an independent panel to investigate the government’s response to Katrina.
I apologize for not being more active lately. To be honest, thinking about game design while the utter disgrace that is the federal, state and local response to Katrina has really been impossible to do. I’ve got 3 half-written posts on the subject, but I didn’t want this to turn into all-spew, all-the-time. I found a way to combine game design and Katrina ranting. You can see the overly nerdy results here. In doing so, I realized that you could pretty much sum up my opinions just by calling attention to the inane, idiotic or heartless quotes made by those who purport to be in control. Thank god Magic cards have room for flavor text.
At this point, nothing makes me angrier than people attempting to claim that the federal government did nothing wrong, and they did everything they could according to their plans and regulations. If that was the design, the design was so incompetent that even more people should be fired. Screwing up under pressure is one thing. Screwing up that monumentally when you have four years to plan for the next catastrophe is quite another. Continue reading
Really. I’m just plain sick of seeing people who stole food, pampers, strained beets and bottled water described as ‘looting’. The ‘zero tolerance’ for looting makes me even more ill to my stomach – yet another proclamation by a government official that’s not actually in the trenches trying to survive.
Hint: all branches of government forgot to drop provisions off at the Superdome before calling the evacuation there. Hint 2: apparently, FEMA didn’t KNOW anyone was at the convention center until 2 days later, so no food was dropped there. If you didn’t loot food and water, you were probably going to die. Continue reading
18 year old kid borrows a schoolbus to ferry 100 people from New Orleans to the Astrodome.
In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.
Ye gods.
Sorry for the lack of updates this week. I’d blame the heavy workload I’m experiencing right now but, truth be told, the events on the Gulf Coasts seem to make any musing I could possibly put forth about game design to seem small and trite. I’ve recieved letters from people in the past thanking me for games that have resulted in meeting their soulmates and from cancer patients who have thanked me for allowing them to feel like fully functional human beings inside of a virtual space. But in the wake of the courage shown by the emergency personnel fighting this disaster, I feel like the maker of insignificant baubles and trinkets. I’ve given money to the Red Cross, and I’d urge anyone else so inclined to give what they can. Continue reading
I haven’t posted about politics in a while. I realized that everything I was saying was being said better and more thoroughly researched somewhere else. I also realized that half my game design audience may disagree with me. So I made a call after the elections – if it’s not about games, zip it.
The recent orgasm of Creationism-related news has forced me to pull my soapbox out from under the bed and tap on the microphone. Creationism is a topic that never fails to get under my skin. It is, ultimately, a plea to ignore science and logic, and an argument for us to move our children to the back of the science and tech bus. Continue reading
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