Erin Hoffman

“Darkest Amber” nominated for Hugo by John Klima

erin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:36:30 +0000

Hi all -- updating via phone from SFO and about to hop on a plane, but this is time sensitive so I'm squeezing in a post.

I got an alert yesterday that John Klima at Electric Velocipede has been kind enough to nominate "Darkest Amber" for the Hugo award for best short story. The least I can do is spread the word -- EV had a lot of great fiction this year and it's an honor to make the cut in that mag. If you are eligible to nominate for the Hugo's, I'd love if you'd take a look at the story.

http://blog.electricvelocipede.com/2010/03/2010-hugo-nominations.html

More next week, when recent to-be-described madness has settled down...

Catching up (in lieu of better titles)

erin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:39:10 +0000

Despite all blogular evidence to the contrary, I am merely buried, not dead -- and nearly emerged. Since last we met, there was Thanksgiving (driving to San Diego), Christmas (see "Thanksgiving"), my father's 70th birthday (flying to San Diego), three Escapist articles, a month-long still-in-action sinus infection ("chronic sinusitis") with accompanying horse-pill-sized antibiotics, a game careening toward launch, and assorted press wrangling -- I did mention that I was appointed to the Board of Directors of the IGDA in November, right? Maybe not. Pop my name into google "news" and you'll find a bit of what's been eating my brain the last couple of weeks. And -- I'm two thirds of the way through the novel, pushing toward a March deadline.

You read (well, a lot of you did) the ever-inflammatory "Why Your Game Idea Sucks" -- joining it in controversy is "Riot Grrrls Wanted", which I will have more to say about later -- much more, once I shake off this blog rust, but for now will just say it's very peculiar how threatened boy gamers are when you say women should be making more games. A bit before that, the slightly less controversial "Ditching the V-Word", discussing why the word 'virtual' is dead and should be stomped on until it stops moving. Today, the (I think) entirely non-controversial but hopefully equally (or more) interesting "When the Stars Align", a piece on the development of the completely fascinating 1986 multi-platform Starflight -- Greg's first game. One of the many reasons I took this job was the opportunity to learn from, I now feel confident in saying, one of the most unique and excellent game designers alive today, and in studying his work (in order to understand his design aesthetic better so as to be better at my job as well as learn) I discovered how shockingly underappreciated and under-remembered Starflight is. So this is my attempt to share a small piece of what I'm fortunate to have access to.

In fiction: the good folk at Electric Velocipede were kind enough to select "Darkest Amber" for this issue's web fiction, so take a gander while you can. This story was the product of a writing challenge from jsridler and justinhowe, and is cyberpunk set in a world I hope to do quite a bit more writing in in the future. It has a talking baseball bat and Greek philosophy -- what have you got to lose?

In poetry: I am told that "Oneness" will be appearing in the latest Not One of Us special collection, called Hidden. It is yay.

...I think those are all the updates. At least the topline, anyway. I do not promise to bring no IGDA/Rockstar troublemaking over here, all things considered, though I expect the flurry to remain mostly on Gamasutra. And this is assuming I don't think better of my rather aggressive current opinion.

Hope that you all are doing well!

An attempt at a quick post: user-generated content and game developers

erin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:28:55 +0000

I frequently have game-related things I want to post about here (and writing-related things, and science fiction-related things, and...), but rarely feel like I have the time to post thoughtfully, so this is an experiment in writing something off the top of my head just as it occurs to me.

The concept of "user-generated content" has been a buzz-word for a good long while, and it can be perceived perhaps as just that, or maybe it's something more significant, our inevitable yet exciting slide toward Hamlet on the Holodeck (and the "holodeck" is something that comes up often in any online world discussion)... because of the convenience of the business buzz term (UGC), we're now beginning to accept in a major way that as we make advances into online space, one of the deepest drives that we have as people is to create, to shape that space for ourselves and not "merely" inhabit it.

But no one's managed to create a truly workable, accessible UCG-friendly area yet. Second Life isn't it. Metaplace isn't it (sorry Raph). Thus far, properties that have made UGC their core mission have not been successful.

Maybe it's technological limitations, the idea whose time is still not come. Maybe it's what Will Wright says about The Sims and Spore -- that people don't really want to create, they want the illusion of creating -- the illusion of the creative act in the same way Guitar Hero is the illusion and not the reality of musicality.

But I think there's something else to it, and I also don't mean to diminish the deep difficulty in creating a user-modifiable space with accessible tools -- if it were easy, someone would have done it. The secret sauce balance between UGC and sticky gameplay -- the core broad inspiration that hooks a player and makes them feel compelled to create in this space -- hasn't yet been found, though perhaps The Sims has come closest.

Again, though -- something else to it. I suspect that game developers are uniquely inhibited in creating user-friendly user-generated-content... generators. We're so used to forcing a system to do what we want no matter the barrier that it becomes very difficult to squeeze our brains into the experience of, perhaps, the one thing we can't envision -- a person who doesn't have that immediate burning desire to bend a completely unreasonable tool to their will. And so we wind up creating only slightly less unreasonable tools rather than tools that are actually inviting and intuitive.

This is actually something that I love about designing games for kids. Kids will not give you a single inch. If you do something stupid, you don't get away with it -- they don't stick around to see if you fix yourself. They tell you that you're being stupid and they walk away. This applies in fundamental game design, in UI design, in art and in concept -- in every dimension. It is a phenomenally educational experience for a designer, to make something for a kid you don't know, who has no reason to cut you any slack.

And it's also why we can learn from the web, why we need to reach out to marketing-minded folk and usability experts, because product marketing has learned an awful lot about how to track user behavior and dropoff rates, and what stems the tide. It has been abundantly clear for some time now that the future of online games is not in trapping a consumer through flashy advertising into traveling to a store and buying an expensive box -- it's in online lowest-barrier access. And that means we don't have them shackled into stubbornly enjoying our product the way we do if they've already purchased a retail box -- we have thirty seconds to five minutes (in the excessively patient) to differentiate ourselves significantly enough from our competition to keep them clicking. They need a reason in the first gut-check five seconds. Our hooks need to be better. Our content needs to be better. We need to stop thinking we can be sadistic and get away with it, that we can make the game entry process some sort of esoteric and bizarre hazing rather than a welcoming overture that compels and inspires.

So that's your fast post. Have a great weekend, all!

“Why Your Game Idea Sucks”, an interview, and other publishing updates

erin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:36:41 +0000

Hallo again all -- I am still behind on comment replies to the Mac Attack!, but am on a plane again tomorrow so wanted to post this quickly.

"Why Your Game Idea Sucks", a short-order article I wrote for the Escapist a couple of weeks ago, popped up in my google alerts yesterday. By the time I got to it, it already had about 25 comments, and now it's up to 87 or so. Comments range from "brilliant" and "the most truthful thing ever written about game development" to "how dare you" and "a pointless article", so I suppose YMMV.

Comparison inevitably arises between something like this and Josh Olsen's highly contentious "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script", and ensuing Harlan Ellison shenanigans, which I suppose is fair. Olsen's piece went up coincidentally the same day I got the green light from the Escapist, which made me groan. But thankfully a lot of people are reading the intended humor in the title and finding that it's less acerbic and hopefully a bit more helpful than Olsen's was for many a "butthurt nerd". In all seriousness, I had some anxiety with the piece, because I do think it's a valid criticism that releasing something negative into the world doesn't reap a good result -- but the proof is in the pudding here that people really don't listen when you tell them some things nicely.

But that's enough about that. I have also gotten wind that "Darkest Amber" will be running in the next issue of Electric Velocipede, debuting at World Fantasy, which is conveniently near home this year. It is a cyberpunk smashfest and those of you strange enough to be familiar with the Black9 world may recognize some homages.

But that's not all! Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play, containing my super-long "Sideways into Truth: Kierkegaard, Philistines, and Denying Death Through Video Games" as well as a coveted intro written by Henry Jenkins will be hitting shelves digital and otherwise this coming February.

You should also check out "Of Shifting Skin and Certainty" by justinhowe in the most recent Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the very excellent "Between Two Treasons" by Michael DeLuca, aka boonofdoom, a continuation of his terrific centaur stories.

Finally, charlesatan was kind enough to request and then write up a very thoughtful interview with me on his Bibliophile Stalker blog. It is going into my profile as a general whowhat?! link. :)

Life, addictive game mechanics, and the truth hiding in Bejeweled

erin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:25:42 +0000

One of the occupational hazards of being a game designer is an obligation to play up-and-coming games, both to stay ahead of where the market is moving and to dig for signs of the One True Game Design, aka universal mechanics that move people. Lately there's been a lot of buzz around Bejeweled Blitz, so I dug in for a sample today.

Blitz takes the familiar Bejeweled mechanic, itself going back along the Columns lineage in games, and makes you play it fast. They bolt on a bunch of social features -- leaderboards and achievements -- making it massively multiplayer in a lightweight but fun way. No surprise it's sweeping through facebook, and a good time to be doing so.

Games like this, based on such simple and compelling mechanics, are on the one hand at the heart of game design and on the other inevitably raise the concept of "addicting" game mechanics. Because, man, that mechanic is addictive.

"Addictive" is a word we use in game development perhaps too lightly, though I would argue that there is no game designer who doesn't treat that term with a huge dollop of trepidation. Executives love to hear the phrase "addictive gameplay". Game designers, speaking for myself and those I know (whom I'm sure will correct me if they disagree), find the concept intriguing but simultaneously dangerous, even if we believe deep down that games don't -- even can't -- hurt people. And no one, from executives to game designers to behavioral psychologists, can give you an absolutely clear and quantifiable test for what "addictive" means when applied purely to a behavior or action. (As opposed to, say, a chemical. Chemical addiction is an equine of differing saturation.)

From a design analysis standpoint, Bejeweled's addicting elements are simple but profound:
1. The game is simple to understand; two clicks and you're in.
2. The game presents a clear problem with a clear solution (make rows of 3+ jewels).
3. The results of action frequently create cascading consequences.
3a. These cascading consequences have an element of randomness / unpredictability / intermittent reward.

There are further sub-elements, such as the vivid feedback (attractive effects and sound), persistent environment (it hits on this "let me poke this thing and see what happens" basic human drive) -- but those are the topline elements.

The simplicity of the game reduces the consequence of failure and the speed of re-entry. The clarity of the problem and solution fires our cognitive circuits without requiring the engagement of messier things like grey area judgment, ethics, social repercussion, or any of the myriad other complex elements we have to deal with in the reality of our daily lives. The reward system and its cascading consequences ensure that we achieve a variable but deeply satisfying result from our simple, clear action.

So I get why it's addictive. I play it, I feel the cognitive engine revv up, the little five year old in the back of my brain goes "Ooooh." I understand that I want to keep playing, and when this reaction fires in me my ethical brain also kicks in and goes, "hmm, what are other people experiencing when they play this, and what responsibility ensues?"

Then I had a little epiphany, one of those simple ones that feels very important. I realized that what pulls me away from playing Bejeweled continuously is that I actually want to perform the complex behavior I'm supposed to be performing instead (in this case, moving onto another task at work).

Addiction is not about what you DO, but what you DON'T DO because of the replacement of the addictive behavior.

The reason why what defines addiction for one person may not define addiction for another person, even given quantified equal stretches of time action or consumption, is because addiction is not about the action, but about the individual person.

This is why merely resisting addiction of any kind is not enough. This is why -- although some activities are more broadly compelling than others -- virtually any activity can become an addiction. What addictive behavior does is reveal underlying anxiety (and often depression, which itself is nebulous) and lack of desire to perform the things we're "supposed to" be doing.

One of the questions that I've asked before has to do with that "supposed to". It is a deeply existential and social question: to what extent are we obligated as individual human beings to fulfill the expectations of our peers, when they run counter to our individual desires? Is the 7-11 gamer more happy in his successful guildleader existence than in his blue-collar job, and if so, is it wrong, and who is allowed to make that judgment for him?

These are deep human questions that are difficult to answer. But the game, as always, is a mirror. It does not create in us behaviors that we would never have otherwise; it reflects back to us what is lurking beneath the grind of our everyday existence.

The solution is not to break the mirror, but to resist the urge to look away from what it shows us.

Truly compassionate addiction counselors understand this: that resolving an addictive behavior (which cannot be done, by the way, until the person who has the behavior acknowledges it and decides that THEY want to change their behavior) is more than causing the behavior itself to cease. It means addressing the lack of meaning in a person's life that leads them to pursue a simpler activity that may make them temporarily happy but not happy in the grand scheme of their life. (And the critical definition there is that only the individual in question can seek and define their state of relative happiness. It cannot be determined for them, not by family or anyone else. I've known people who think of themselves as depressed when really their only major source of unhappiness is that their families don't like or accept what makes them happy.)

Some of this has a personal note, I should acknowledge. I've had a couple of moments wherein I thought I was addicted to one game or another. In one case, I stayed home sick from school to play a game all day. Lame, I know. (I was otherwise a pretty good student; the notion of skipping class was a big deal.) It had nothing to do with the game itself, but the fact that I was sixteen and (as I perceived it) my life sucked, and the game presented me with power and simple solutions to simple problems that were a relief from the complex crappy things that existed in my reality. From here, thoroughly not addicted, I can look back on that time in my life and say, you know, things sucked, and I completely understand why I would have rather played that game than deal with reality. When I stopped playing it, it wasn't because the game changed, but because my circumstances did, and I no longer felt the need to disengage from meat life. And to this day the game evokes feelings of comfort, not danger, when I play it.

The reason why we, as game consumers and game creators, need to understand this, is because for many the solution is to break the mirror rather than understanding it. The latter is certainly more difficult. But we need to understand ourselves and our drives in as deep and thoughtful a way as possible not merely for our own individual benefit, but to solve the greatest problems that existence presents: the questions of why we live, and how we live. We need to understand what makes us human, and part of that is recognizing the value in the tools and art that we create to reflect ourselves back to us in the quest for that understanding. And what is so fascinating about these pieces o f art is their universality -- that you don't need to consciously think about any of this to feel why Bejeweled pulls you. Our human nature is there whether we acknowledge it or not, and the rabbit hole runs deep and dark. There is a greater cause beyond mirror-breaking, more good that we can do through understanding and compassion, in fields where those who do play games more often than they should most often have to deal with professionals who have no understanding of what those games mean, or their genuine value, even to the addicted, after addiction.

There is no hardcore

erin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:19:28 +0000

Loving this statement from lead producer Dustin Browder on how they're polishing Starcraft II for accessibility.

“For us, there really isn’t a sharp division between casual and hardcore (players),” Browder said. “A casual could become a hardcore, if only we let them. I know so many grandmothers that play World of Warcraft – what the heck is that about? They’ve never played any other PC game in their lives but they have better raid gear than I do, by far. There’s a reason for that: The game gave them a fairly safe environment (with) pretty, nice graphics, and good, solid gameplay. So if we can provide a game that is just as good, people will find it and play it.”

The whole interview is here.

This is part of what makes Blizzard so good at what they do: a fundamental understanding that there is no "casual" and "hardcore", there are just games that have retarded difficulty ramps, and ones that have effective hooks into well-balanced ramps. The players that some developers have a tendency to dismiss as "casual" are in actuality more discerning about how they spend their time -- they'll do hardcore investment, but you have to give them a damn good reason.

MMOs and user metrics are giving us a new way to look at "casual" and "hardcore" because we're seeing that "casual" players spend just as much time and often more money playing their "casual" games. What this means is that a "casual" player will spend serious "hardcore" time and money when given a sufficient -- and often social -- context for doing so. Putting up with obnoxious mechanics that casual players will shun should not be considered accolade-worthy, and efforts like Blizzard's to relentlessly increase engagement and accessibility are showing us what happens when you design with full thoughtfulness.

More concepts I wish we could get rid of I am reminded of in Damion Schubert's interesting recent blog post responding to a video "rant" I haven't yet watched. More thoughts on this later, but my trinity of terms to get rid of at the moment is: "casual", "virtual", and "fun".

Chew on that, if you so desire...

What EXACTLY do you want from the IGDA?

erin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:16:37 +0000

Surfacing for a bit to talk about the IGDA, in as coherent a manner as I can -- mainly because I told Darius I would write this post, so now I'm stuck for it. And because I think this kind of thinking is the responsibility of IGDA members. I don't usually like doing this -- I have a laundry list of IGDA initiatives I'd rather be spending more time on -- but if I can contribute to the ongoing organizational navel-gazing in a positive way, I'll give it a try. Those of you who have no idea what the IGDA is, please drive through.

I've been an IGDA member since 2003. I started as a student and quite literally after four months of student membership I had a job in the industry. Do I owe it to the IGDA? Not really, I don't think so. But it certainly helped.

Since then I've been involved with an assortment of IGDA initiatives. I'm a member of the writing, women-in-games, online games, education, and newly-minted quality of life special interest groups -- I lurk in production, casual games, and a few others. I drafted a Code of Ethics for the organization, I volunteer for the mentorship program. I've written about the org's history. When I was in Albany I assisted in small ways with the local chapter. I like to think I give way more to the organization than I take from it.

I did a lot of soul-searching recently, with one thing and another, about my membership. I know a lot of people have been doing the same. I think that I've finally come through it -- and the political dust-ups didn't make it easy -- and this is what I've got. It is, as always and as it should be, a work in progress.

Why I'm an IGDA Member
There have been a lot of highly emotional declarations recently that there is no reason for a developer to join the IGDA. I've even seen some particularly misguided statements on the forums that membership is "detrimental" to a person's reputation. I laughed when I read it -- it exemplified for me the degree to which a small group of people can get so completely out of touch with reality -- and I am genuinely sad that they continue to enable each other in ultimately self-destructive thinking.

I'm not a major person in the industry, but I'm not nobody, either. Like many IGDA members, I live in this weird space between dedicated IGDA core-ship and a broad swathe of the industry that quite literally does not know it exists. There are people I deeply respect on both sides. I have been in business meetings with multimillionaire major industry decision-makers, independent studio CEOs, and students green as spring grass. The statement that the IGDA is "detrimental" to a professional reputation is absurd both because it drastically overstates the public perception of the IGDA -- which is exceptionally vague at best, even among many serious hard-core veterans of the business -- and because the major "crises" that many in the heart of these tempests-in-a-teacup don't even register on the attention meters of even a great many members of the organization, to say nothing of those who aren't really even sure what the IGDA *is*.

So it is from this in-between space that many of my sentiments come. It's from a place of having deep affection and respect for many of the people who do a lot of hard work for the IGDA -- and I'll talk more about this in a bit -- and also a reality of knowing that many of the people that I respect most in my part of the business -- which is a not insignificant cross-section -- have no knowledge of the org whatsoever, nor do they desire it.

At the end of the day, I stay with the organization because, as much of my energy as it takes, it gives more back to me. I do owe it for a lot of supportive treatment when I was new, and that matters to me, too, but ultimately my life is better in the IGDA than it is outside of it.

A common sentiment within the org (and a lot of you reading at this point, if you are still reading, are probably wondering what in the hell I'm even talking about) is that IGDA "central" isn't pulling its weight. That the only "good" parts of the org are the chapters and the SIGs, which owe nothing to central. I admit that this was one of my main points of consideration in said recent soul-searching.

The problem with this statement is the assumption that the org can be separated from the chapters or the SIGs. Think about it: who would come to a meeting of the "people who want to talk about games for an hour"? Would you? Would you want to talk to the kind of people who would? The chapters _are_ the IGDA. The same goes for the SIGs. All of the good that comes out of both of them is because of the existence of the central organization creating a context for their existence. The IGDA is a centralizing idea that brings together professionals -- or should -- and creates a venue for the sharing of information, which there are so many commercial pressures against that I don't know where it would happen in an organized fashion outside of it. Some of the best discussions about the business I've ever had have been with IGDA members, and I had them because of that connection. I'm kind of astonished that I even need to state this, but I think that the internal sentiment from the core of those concerned about the IGDA -- and I'm being kind by lumping some of them in with that language -- has been repeating this to themselves for so long that there is a need for restating the obvious.

Are there problems? Sure. Endlessly. In fact, as you'll see, I think some of the problems are sweeping and structural. But the org still does an awful lot just by existing. More than enough for $48/year. That's only slightly more than two months of WoW.

So here's what I want to know: what, exactly, do we, as members, want out of the IGDA?

Be Fucking Specific
One of the things that's bugged me about the discussions about the need for radical change or improvement in the IGDA has been their lack of specificity. Maybe it's a game design trepidation. But when I hear such broad-sweeping statements as "there's no reason to join the IGDA" or "the IGDA should do more about quality of life" or "the IGDA doesn't do anything for members" I have a little design nightmare. This is a publisher saying "I think we need dinosaurs in the game, dinosaurs are popular right now". This is a player saying "you need to nerf Paladins". Pain only ensues.

So, if you're an IGDA member, and you've read this far, and you actually want things to get better, I'm imploring you: please be fucking specific.

These are my specific thoughts. I am probably not right. But I kick them out there for your consumption.

Public Relations
So the IGDA needs a PR director. This person is probably a volunteer. It may come from the management team, but -- and I say this with the caveat that I don't have deep insight into their workload and function -- my exposure to the management company so far has not left me impressed. Witness our web issues. But anyway.

The PR director needs to do a few things:
- Grow a forum moderation team.
- Grow a structure for the selection, promotion, and management of the moderation team.
- Connect with members through vectors like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
- Channel reports upward to the board on member opinion, collected individually and via regular poll.

I realize that the existing ED is making a concerted effort at doing these things, but I think he has bigger fish to fry -- this is a lot of work, and it's important work, but it doesn't require an ED. And, unlike the ED position, I suspect that this person should actually come from within the IGDA, because a good part of the difficulty of this job will be establishing trust with members. Someone from the inside should already sufficiently have it.

Also make no mistake -- PR is not about 'perception', or at least it isn't about perception onl y. It's about communication. Call this person a communications officer if you want -- but someone, preferably someone who understands how to use web 2.0 communication technology -- needs to step into this role and start fighting fires directly instead of just issuing press releases.

We Need Fewer Members
This is a difficult one to frame, but here goes: I think the IGDA needs to have fewer members.

The evidence for this is abundant: the percentage of members who actually vote, the percentage of members who are actually game developers. This project has a fundamental and common but deep problem: it doesn't know who its audience is. We need voting members and non-voting members. The situation where we have an appointed board because we can't get quorum is absolutely egregious. The "campaigning" for board membership is largely a joke because of the perception of this watery voting process.

I also put forth for you the following:
- I cannot just up and join the IEEE, the Author's Guild, SFWA, or any of dozens of other professional organizations, as a professional (voting!) member. Check it out:

Membership in IEEE is open to individuals who by education or experience give evidence of competence in an IEEE designated field of interest.

Evidence! Imagine that! It's not just an honor system clicking of a radio box and bingo, I'm a member.

I put forth this consideration because the functionality of IGDA central -- which is elected by the membership! -- is so stilted and laden with bureaucracy. This comes from size.

Do we benefit from size? Sure. More money equals more fun, right? Or maybe it equals over ten thousand people who don't know much about what they've actually joined, or why.

In the last election, the IGDA had approximately 14,000 members. 2,432 voted. This is ridiculous! And indicative, I think, not of some vague concept of "member apathy", but because the org itself as a voting body does not actually know what it is.

Interestingly, this approximate group of 2,400 people parallels a much more reasonable 40% of the developer-qualifying careers -- meaning artists, programmers, producers, designers -- expressed through the current member demographics. Is that who's actually voting? Probably not. But it does mean that the 2400 number is not far off from what we should actually reasonably expect from the organization. We just need to make sure we're getting the right votes.

If the IGDA's mission is "To advance the careers and enhance the lives of game developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community.", why are we not verifying that the voting members of the organization are actually developers?

What constitutes a "developer" is, perhaps, a more challenging question, but at least we'd be getting to it. But -- and I say this as a former student member o the IGDA, remember -- I think students should not be voting members. Academics should not be voting members. In order to be a voting member of the IGDA, I think you should be an active game developer -- which means having worked on an actual real live video game sometime in the last 5 years.

And I tell you what -- if we actually made this change, I don't think those 9,000 or so other people would actually go away. And I don't think they would be harmed from the removal of their voting privileges. They'd be served by a voting body that actually understood the industry they were interested in studying or developing connections with -- and we'd all have a much easier time getting things done.

I realize this statement is going to be controversial, and I can think of a number of reasons not to do it. But I'll let you all fill those in. I want to put the point out for discussion, and ask the question of how the IGDA can expect to sufficiently fulfill its mission when the possibility currently exists for a mob of non-developers to mass-join the organization and throw a board vote (and in this case, this number is as low as 800 people). Or join and not vote at all, throwing a quorum.

Death and Politics
Following on this, I hate politics. Yes, they're a necessary evil, yes, I know they annoy a lot of people. The problem is we're too damn big as an organization to not be political. But because we're engineers and product-oriented people (for the most part), it's really annoying to think that our elected representatives are spending upwards of 30% of their time either running for their positions or otherwise manipulating member perception. We'd rather they actually be doing things. No real world government yet has managed to solve this problem, so maybe we can't either, but it's something to state it. I realize that this isn't a specific suggestion, but it's something I toss out as support for the above, and an explanation for much of the current member malaise.

Why Don't We Have Will Wright?
This is one of the most problematic questions for me: how can the org provide value to the truly exemplary among us?

Will Wright is not on the member list. Neither is Sid Meier. Are they members? I don't actually know. But I don't think so. We certainly never hear from them.

These guys are my game design heroes, and as a professional, it puts a little question mark in my mind that the IGDA does not seem to present great relevance to them. Do I have an answer for how it should? Not an immediate one. But as a member it is a concern that I have, and I think that a guiding design principle for the organization would be to consider how it could court the best among us, and what it can provide for the highest echelon of 'professional'. If we could figure that out, a lot of other pegs would fall into place.

How much mindshare?
So this is where I own up to my own realities, which I think it's also important for members to do. On a good day the IGDA is getting 5% of my net attention. Sad but true. I work a demanding full-time design job, I consult for another on the side, I work on my own projects, I spend time with my family -- not necessarily in that order. But the IGDA is way behind in that list of priorities, and it always will be.

But there are people in the organization who give one hell of a lot more. Several of them are on the board.

It's entertaining that people wanted to stomp on the face of Mike Capps. It's entertaining that they want to throw out Tim Langdell. Are these bad ideas? Maybe, maybe not. I didn't vote for Tim or Mike, nor would I have, ironically for exactly the reasons they've gotten themselves into hot water in the last eight months or so. But this is theater, folks. There is still so much for the IGDA to actually _do_. There are structural issues to address, budgetary issues to address, core vision issues to address -- even simple things like the documents the organization should have had when it started, to say nothing of over a decade later. I could show you my initiative list -- and the fact that this political crap pulls so much attention from it seriously irks me.

But there is an opportunity right now to redefine the IGDA and channel the energy that has surged into it following the transition to the new executive director (and hello, Joshua, if you're reading this -- I've been extremely remiss in contacting you and will remedy soon, but in the meantime I don't blame you if you think this organization is completely crazy).

And there are good things happening. Darius's blog is doing great work at surfacing many of the internal workings of the org and the board in a way that we all need. The IGDA staff blog has more details on the actual operations and forward movement of the new management team. Glycon be prai sed, I understand that we actually finally almost have a new website. The recent specific objectives of defining parameters for special meetings of the membership will not only work to address current immediate concerns but create a foundation for lasting future policy within the organization. All of this is very, very good. And the good work of the SIGs and chapters continues.

I would like very much if the membership -- and the roving band of free-user non-members -- could remain focused on the real. And the specific.

Photos from Lake Quinault

erin — Mon, 18 May 2009 00:47:51 +0000

I have so much to catch up on it's crazy, but for now, a photo link:

http://tinyurl.com/quinault2009

jsridler and I went hiking around Lake Quinault last weekend. This past week I was up in Seattle for the always fantastic LOGIN Conference (aka the conference formerly known as ION formerly known as OGDC). More on that later if I decide to be a good person and share information. But for now, photos.

The Olympic Peninsula in general is one of my favorite places in the world. There's a reason why they historically have hauled bureaucrats there to show them why the preservation of our natural treasures is so important -- the place does all the talking for them. I'd never been to Quinault before, and talked jsridler into flying up with me on Friday before the conference so we could go hiking for my birthday. My dad grew up in Washington, so I've been there many times, and he in particular pushed us to go check out Quinault, which I was supposed to visit last year for a family reunion, but wound up not being able to go. If you get a chance, take it -- Quinault in particular is a breathtaking combination of old growth forest, rainforest, and still and moving water all compressed in a tight enough space that you can actually hike between all of them in a single day, and on top of it the Lodge offers a nice restaurant (though we didn't eat there since they weren't open for lunch when we were hungry).

Anyway, check it out, and more posts soon.

Design will save the world

erin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:20:57 +0000

Apologies for the successive shotgun posts, but have three ridiculously awesome links, first and last courtesy @pareidoliac:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/08/20/green-living-technologies-green-walls-produce/

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/04/10/spring-greening-voting-extended-until-tuesday/

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/07/23/local-river-plant-aquarium-by-mathieu-lehanneur/

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/introduction.htm

The last two in general further ignite my recent interest in setting up a goldfish tank at home, and sway me firmly into freshwater (I'd been considering a seahorse tank). Will try a little herb garden with it and report on how it goes.

Why I’m in New York City at a ridiculous hour

erin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:33:29 +0000

Hi all. Quick update, since I realized I haven't mentioned this and it's kind of cool.

Flew out to NYC on a redeye about eight hours ago, and am hanging around in the JFK JetBlue terminal taking wifi sustenance until a more reasonable hour to head out into the city. I have meetings tomorrow and Tuesday for a project picked up rather serendipitously last year, and the folks at HumaNature are being nicely tolerant and supportive.

I mentioned awhile ago that I'd won a game design contest put out by the Games for Health initiative. This project is not related to that, but Charles, a guy from Stottler Henke, contacted me on the basis of what I'd designed for that project.

In 2004, Stottler Henke won an SBIR phase 1 grant to prototype a project called LifeSim, aimed at instructing kids -- unless I'm mistaken, specifically in low-income urban areas, though they tested it broadly across socioeconomic statuses -- on nutrition using a video game. So, pretty big coincidence that this was going on and I had no idea when I drew up the GfH design.

Last year, as one of my freelance endeavors, I worked with them to put together a proposal for a phase 2 grant, and by that I mean I spent a lot of time on the phone answering game design questions and they did all the work. They had high expectations for its passing, but -- I think particularly with the election and administration change -- it took quite a bit longer to get approved than initially estimated. But it HAS been approved, and I'm now a game design consultant working with them on LifeSim II.

It's a very cool project, and if I weren't so tired I would be beyond thrilled to be getting it started -- but it is just tremendously exciting to see something like this go from concept to actuality, especially with the wonderfully intimidating team of experts they have working on this, from the Stottler Henke folk to the partners at Columbia University's Teachers' College -- nutritionists and educators. I feel honored to be a part of it.

And I also have the Games for Health initiative to thank for prompting all of this. Turns out that contest is really having tangible results that, if we do our jobs right, will actually impact the problems of childhood obesity in the coming generation. And the NIH for providing the funds for this grant, and showing solid faith that games can make a difference.

And, uh, it's a pet game. Also, I have an iPhone.