The Comet: I explained this in a previous thread before, but I thought I should say it again here. Just as I don't know about some of the methods you use to make games, you don't understand a lot of our methods. I have made more games in my lifetime than I could even begin to count. Easily over 100, probably over 300. How, you ask? As I mentioned once before, our generation had a means of prototyping games very quickly and easily. Actually making a prototype and playing with it is a lot easier, faster, and a lot less work that sitting in front of a computer writing game design documents. You don't bother spending all that time writing until you have arrived at something worth writing. Hobbyist industry game designers used a “tool box” to quickly make any game they were imagining to actually play with it before wasting any other time on it. A “tool box” was generally poker chips, flash cards, and maps and pieces from other games. I usually used the map from Supremacy for Earth, because it has very generalized borders. The Axis & Allies map was better if you wanted more regions to work with. With this “tool box” we could throw whole games together in a few hours, and then actually play with them to see how it was working... or not working. For example Territories is, in reality, all the best things to emerge from dozens of different “poker chip prototypes. After having tried at least 100 different “poker chip prototype” strategy games for years, I finally arrived at the original Territories. This was 25 years ago I am talking about here. This was a big advantage that we had on you. We could go through what you call “iterations” at lightning speed compared to you, just playing with poker chips and cards on an Axis & Allies map. After you do this for just a few years, you become very fast at throwing up any game idea to play with and actually use before you ever decide that it is worth writing. You can actually play a turn or two of 5 different versions of something in one day. I think that is a part of what is being missed here. We have ways of making these things exist, literally, before we ever decide to start working on them. I almost certainly have more experience designing games than you do, Comet, it's a lot harder for you to take a game as far as we can in a few hours.

Really, all this insisting that I know nothing at all, have no talent at this at all, nothing at all to offer, is just further demonstrating the complete lack of respect you have always had for the hobbyist game industry. That's been true since the earliest days of your industry, I know because I was there experiencing it right from the beginning, and still hasn't changed today. As for my methods since I retired 10 years ago, I had tried it the “normal ways” you are all suggesting for 20 years and never got anywhere. I already know that doesn't work. It's not me, it's you. If you think I have no relevant talent pr experience to offer people who are making games, then you are just making my point for me again. You don't know what you are talking about. I've been doing this since before your industry even existed. I assume you think the people making Deadlock are qualified, I really could advance that game 20 years in 20 months. And of us could, not just me. It's so empty, primitive, and broken in a million ways even though there is almost nothing there. I like it, I'm not knocking it, they are heading in a very good direction. But they are just starting on a decades long journey they will never complete because in the modern gaming world games don't last 30 years. I only use it as an example because you someone said I have no relevant skills, talent, or knowledge at this... and yet I am literally 40 years ahead of Deadlock.

JBAdams. I am happy to hear that you tried Armageddon Chess and I would love to hear more about what you think of it. As far as I know, you are the only people who have played it. I wrote that very quickly, when you guys suggested I make some kind of prototype, and never set it up or played with it. It is a “poker chip prototype” so, as I said in it's rulebook, tracking things will be a little confusing. That is always the case in all poker chip prototypes when you have no icons printed on the markers to distinguish them. In a published version that gets resolved with custom markers that make it all easy to deal with. So I get what you mean by “tediuous bookkeeping”, but that gets largely resolved by icons on the markers that make it less confusing. Was it more than that, or just the confusion of unmarked chips? What did you think was “tedious” about the combat? I'd love to hear any opinions you have on it, especially what you thought about the number of actions available in a fight. I left it intentionally high because I thought it was better to err on the side of more action, but I really think in the end it will be a set 3 actions in a fight regardless of what pieces were involved in the initial battle. I'm sure Armageddon Chess needs a lot of work to become truly fun, and it really is what I was able to cobble together that could be used this way under the restrictions of “make a game you can just e-mail to somebody”.

I don't think the Pirate Dawn document is disorganized, it's organized like many board game manuals... the first part of it. People in your industry wanted me to add a lot of stuff too it at one point, and the last 1/3rd of it is a pretty confused mess because of that. My fault, but parts of it like all of section U, are pretty messy. Where the game actually is should be in pretty good shape, I think you are talking about the end of it that does get a little confusing. It is definitely readable, and would have been ahead of its time in 1997 when I was originally wanting to make it. I'll also mention that if anyone is interested in seeing my version of a fleet of space ships, look at the 1X MSC and 1X Fleet files that come with the Pirate Dawn download.

The SFB Staff are essentially assistant designers, you have no equivalent too them in your industry. It has generally consisted of doctors, engineers from places like NASA's JPL, lawyers, military officers, even a real-life Colonel from US Space Command. It is nothing like any group of gamers that you would imagine. It was a very unique thing, and a very serious group of people. I did help to design the game when I was on the staff, JB, that's what we do. There are many rules still in the game today that came with me, including the fact that leak damage on Andromedan ships first hit's hull before going to the DAC, which had resolved a very big issue back when we were re-designing the Andromedans. I represented the Romulans during my time on the staff. It really is not anything like any modern group of gamers. The SFB Staff are truly assistant designers, and they are a very serious group of people. It really is a singularly unique thing.

I didn't design Sinistar: Unleashed, I made the levels for it during the last 3 months. I was more of the “rescue designer” than the designer. I made all 30 levels, across 4 levels of difficulty, through editing the text data files and testing on local builds, in about 2.5 months. That first draft was what they shipped.

On my Gamasutra blog there is a post about IKNFL. It's not like I have no reason to not want to reveal all of the details of Rube that would allow anyone to make games my way. Not getting credit for what I do has been a running theme in my life, it's not like you haven't done that too me before. Every sports game your industry has ever made is partly based on my work. I never got any credit for that. Still, today, all player ratings in all sports games are how I made them in the 1995. They've just been making “next year's league file” from my IKNFL files for Front Page Sports Football since the dawn of time. Someone mentioned me wanting to leave my mark on your industry, but I did that almost from day 1. Player ratings in your sports games work the way they do because that's how I made it work, instead of the random numbers that had existed up until then. IKNFL was also the very first ever player created mod that was incorporated into the game. In the 1998 version they just included it on the disk so people didn't have to go find it themselves, since the game really wasn't worth playing without it, and I'm pretty sure that was the first time in your history that ever happened. But I can't even use that as part of a resume, because as always I never got any credit for it so it is perceived as a “lie”. Madden immediately copied it, and everyone else copies Madden... but it was actually me. So it's not like that hasn't already happened before. Player ratings in sports games was one thing, but I'm not going to watch the same thing happen again with my whole way of making games. That will get introduced in one of my games, or it will die with me and the world will lose it.

People seem to be taking Rube as being my point here. I assumed Rube would make a difference, so I have been focusing on Rube, but I am really just trying to find a way to make games. It's all I know, and I know it very well. I've been doing it for 40 years. I wrote the blog to show an example of my games, and my story, that is an example of what I do. I normally avoid going into this, but I was born with a very serious medical condition. I have had to spend my life inside, and hiding from the sun. The sun is lethal too me. Because of this, and my obsession with games, I have literally spent my entire life playing games. Beginning from about the time I was 12-years-old I started playing games pretty much all day long, every day, and have never stopped since then. I don't have anything else to do. It is unlikely that there is anyone else on the planet who has spent as much time playing games as I have, because I don't have anything else to do. If you have a normal life, it's not possible that you have spent as much time playing games as I have. I am literally trapped into a life of playing games. It has literally been my entire life, it really has, and unless someone else out there is in a similar situation there probably isn't anyone who has spent as much time playing games as I have. I am not normal. I am both obsessed with games and simulation design, and then forced into a situation where I have nothing to do except play or make games. I'm not bragging, I'd much rather have a normal life, but this really is who I am.

FYI, your rapid prototyping isn't a huge advantage over the video game industry because we commonly do the same thing. Not a similar digital equivalent, but literally exactly the process you have described.

Where a quick poker chip or hand - drawn card prototype is incapable of capturing the essence of an intended digital product, we then go to digital equivalents where we use pre-written engines and untextured shapes to assemble a prototype, often in less than an hour, or sometimes up to a day or so if something more novel or complex needs to be built.  Along with the items you listed, my own "tool box" also includes some A2 laminated sheets with various hex and square grids, as well as a plain laminated sheet, and some dry erase markers for quickly creating customised maps, polyhedral dice sets, a small tape measure, and a couple of different coloured decks of playing cards.

You keep dismissing the industry as years behind, but don't seem to realise that we have adopted many of your exact methods, or adapted methods to our needs where appropriate.

Your response on Armageddon Chess feedback is pleasantly level-headed, I'll get my thoughts structured, ask for feedback from the other players, and send it to you privately.

JB.  Please do, I would love to hear what people who played it think of Armageddon Chess.  Part of the marker problem, because there are probably too many of them even if they had icons, could be alleviated by using laminated cards with record tracks (boxes to mark) on the card.  Then the game could come with a grease pencil to mark the cards, which erases with a cloth or paper towel.  Then a few categories of markers could be eliminated, with things like hit points recorded on the cards.  As for combat being tedious, I am thinking maybe you were only using two dice?  I looked and I didn't mention using more than two dice.  What was intended is that you would have 4 pairs of dice so that you can roll up to four attacks at once.  Rolling the attacks one at a time would be tedious.  But let me know what you didn't like about it, the opinions of the earliest playtesters are always among the most valuable because anything the first people to play a game think is likely what most people will think.

Oberon.  As I had said, I don't know some of the methods you use to make games just as you don't know some of our ways.  From your description you do have a similar method of quickly messing with ideas, I had always assumed you would need to make little prototypes with programmer art to do that.  It sounds like you do exactly the same thing, don't waste time writing (or coding) until you know that you have something.

When I say you are decades behind where we are I am referring to the fact that we have been doing this since the late 1940's and you have been doing it since the early 1980's.  It is also a response, maybe a little over-the-top, to 30 years of being talked down too as if I am some kid who wants to make games but has no experience doing it.  In the earliest days of the computer game industry it was always "board games are not relevant too what we do, we are doing a completely different thing."  In the early days it was all a completely new thing, but they still had no interest in anyone from the board game industry even at the time we were the established game industry and you were just getting started.  There has always been a reason why we don't matter, the reason keeps changing but it is always there.  Our games were far more sophisticated than people today realize, especially Avalon Hill and ADB games.

It's not just me.  Almost nobody in your industry has ever even heard of Steve Cole.  He's the Jimi Hendrix of game designers, he should be a legend too you.  He invented the process by which you make games.  He introduced so many things that are staples in your games.  Energy Allocation, Mass-Based Proportional Movement, the Impulse Chart that is the next generation beyond the phased-turns that you know.  You make very few games that don't include at least a little bit of Steve Cole, and some of your most legendary games were just outright plagiarizing him.  Master of Orion is a Steve Cole game.  These days, he has been so influential that you regularly make games either based on his work, or re-creating his work, without even knowing it.  Faster Than Light is Steve Cole, Deadlock is Steve Cole.  He is almost certainly the most important game designer in your own history, and most of you have never even heard of him before.  It's not a situation that is limited too me.

And if you want to see this knowledge from us, not me, but us... we can talk about space ships for a while.  My specific little Star Fleet Universe branch of the old hobbyist game industry really has that subject down to a science.  You guy's know a lot of things we never knew, but we also know a lot of things you still don't know.  Especially when it comes to the SFB Staff and space ship games.  I am not nearly as big of a jerk as I appear too be, I am just fighting against an ingrained prejudice computer game industry people have always had against us.  Also, a misunderstanding of what our games were like.  For example SFB is, by far, the largest and most complex game ever made.  No computer game comes close, and none likely ever will.  Nobody even tries to make games as massive as our "Big Three" era did.  But the perception is "board games are simple and small compared to computer games" when, in reality, the opposite was true.  No RTS has come close to rivaling Advanced Squad Leader, either.  Not because we were better or smarter than you, but because it was a different era.  Our games were bigger, and lived on to be developed for decades.  SFB isn't a thing of the past, for example.  Still today, 40 years later, ADB still releases a new product for SFB about once every other month.  They are still going, it still isn't finished yet.  40 years and still counting!

Why would you expect to be able to compete with that?  Do you plan on spending 40 years making a computer game any time soon?  The most complex table-top games were much, much more than today's generation imagines they were.  As a result, we have this whole space ship thing down pretty well.  Maybe I should be talking about space ships instead of Rube...

16 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

He introduced so many things that are staples in your games.  Energy Allocation, Mass-Based Proportional Movement, the Impulse Chart that is the next generation beyond the phased-turns that you know. You make very few games that don't include at least a little bit of Steve Cole, and some of your most legendary games were just outright plagiarizing him.

What is basically based on the first few weeks of a physics major. Simple integration, and Newtonian physics in a simple form. Lots of the games today do significantly more complex things. It's not plagiarizing, it's just implementing a simple principle in a way superior form.

On 8/8/2017 at 4:42 AM, mikeman said:

So I went on my way, worked on my indie game, now have a job at EA DICE

Mike, we need to have a talk about where my weapon attachments went in Battlefield 1

I was not going to seriously reply to this thread, but having followed it and witnessed the malice against Hodgman (who most certainty knows what he is talking about), as well as gained a ridiculous amount of notifications, I've decided to give my two cents.  First of, you need to stop boasting about yourself -- especially since you DO NOT have the skills or experience to back up your claims.  You claim that you are a 'Devry graduate.'  As someone else noted before, that means absolutely nothing.  As a tech lead who hires people on a daily basis, I most certainly would not hire you for any position.  Your attitude sucks, your communication skills are poor, and you have absolutely no work (or work ethic) to show.  There is no way in hell I would ever let you around a client or potential publisher.  Moreover, I've been following your work since the "Pirate Dawn" days.  No one wants to read 500 pages worth of nonsense.  I coauthored a programming language (Ny; coauthored by Migi0027 -- another GameDev member) and we were not only able to present a working demo (of both the runtime and the compiler), but were able to author the outlining specification in 27 pages of spell checked, coherent work.  500 pages means nothing if there is no content backing it and you have to guess if document was written in the English language.  I will end my rant here as Hodgman has already hit the nail on the head.  The only advice I can give you is to shape up or get out.

And as a side note, I would stop blaming the "industry," and I would especially stop pissing upon GameDev members.  You would be surprised by not only what we know and what we have done, but where we work.  Not everyone here is a "hobbyist."

** Drops Mic **

Bytetroll, you're not paying attention. He's not a Devry gradutate, he just *hates* Devry graduates. They're taking all his jerbs.

Master of Orion was pure plagiarism of the Star Fleet Universe, I am one of a very few people in this world who knows most of the details of exactly how that happened. But you don't need to know that story to know that Master of Orion was simply plagiarizing Steve Cole. It's blatantly obvious, and only barely concealed. All of the technologies, for example, are straight out of the Star Fleet Universe. There is no question about this, anyone who knows the SFU can tell you this. And it is not “way better”, MOO is like Candyland compared to the original and it is VERY BADLY done. A joke, really, compare to what it was stealing from. It's terrible compared to the original... and yet still a great game. That's how good SVC's games are, even a complete disaster like MOO turns out to be a classic. That's how much you can take away from one of his games and still leave your generation awestruck. He is then most influential game designer of all time and literally your founding father of game design. As I said, these days you make very few games that don't included at least a little bit of Steve Cole.

I don't “hate” Devry graduates, I point out the fact that you consider a 20-year old qualified but not someone who has been designing games since before your industry even existed. You people are so indescribably arrogant that you actually defend that ridiculous notion. That speaks for itself, to sane and rational people. And I have not spent 10 years posting here. I posted here for about a week 10 years ago, nothing in between, and a few times over the last year. I have, however, spent over 20 years working on the Pirate Dawn Universe. The PDU is a “Big Three” like game universe the likes of which the computer game industry has never seen. It was all valid game design work, not programming.

When I say “you don't hire pure game designers” I am immediately told that you do, and I am wrong. But then, as you can see in this thread, as soon as I say “OK, then, here I am. And here's a 500 page preview of the life's work of pure game designer” you say you immediately start telling me that is useless, I've been wasting my time, and I must become a programmer. Just like you just did here. Make up your minds, do you hire pure game designers or not. If you do, then my life's work is valid and there is a 500 page glimpse of it here. Make up your minds. I say you don't allow pure game designers into your industry, several posts here seem to agree with that. If what I posted on my blog is nothing, and until I become a programmer I am worthless, you don't hire pure game designers. Why are you telling me that I must become a programmer now? In the past you've always insisted that wasn't necessary, and that you do hire pure game designers. Make up your minds!!!

The closest thing the modern game industry has to a group of “founding fathers” is Steve Cole and the SFB Staff. We literally invented the process by which you make games today. I'm not just a game designer who has been designing games longer than your industry existed, I am also from the group of people that really can be considered to be your founding fathers. That 500 page preview of the PDU is an example of the work of one of your own founding fathers. But you know so little of your own history that you don't know this. This is how you treat one of your own founding fathers. And then you completely discount 20 years of work and tell me until I am a programmer I don't count, and at the same time insist that you do hire pure game designers. I don't have to be a programmer. Make up your minds, which is it?