Definition of Insanity So the conventional wisdom is that doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. I get annoyed with this. It is a little trite. First thing I learnt, under the tutelage of this hard assed bastard of a sensei when I was 12 years old was that to be good at Goju-Kai you had to do the same thing over, and over, and over, and when your limbs are going to fall off and your knuckles are bleeding and you have sores on your feet, keep doing it. This is what makes you better than someone who just wants to look like they can do it. This sensei was German. Helmut was his name. He had done some work as a laborer on my dads farm. He was one of the guys who saved me from being ripped in half by a loose 6ft tall sheet of corrugated iron in a massive wind storm when I was just stunned staring at it building up speed dancing in the air and then flying at me. It takes balls translated into decisive action to leap INTO very real danger to drag a dumb kid out of the way of likely death. Almost everyone else was hiding behind a tractor. So I thought he was alright. Helmut had learnt Goju-Kai from some Japanese guys, in actual Japan I think. This was not one of the cute pretty martial arts back then in the 80s. It was an integrated mind body soul to fuck up the other guy thing. The kicks and punches were not flashy. Its all about twisting the hips and twist the wrist at the right moment. Timing, persistence, patience. Later seeing epic leaping into the air roundhouse kicks of friends in high school doing Tae Kwon Do - yes it was theatrically impressive, but they didnt have the gravitas, their sensei was a business man first and you didn't get the sense of fear and awe when they just stood in front of you without doing anything that you did with Helmut. I think it was sort of the Japanese Krav Maga in the era of the emergence of Operatic martial arts. Half the training sessions with Helmut were sitting on your heels and practicing focusing your mind. When you finally got around to doing Kata - patterns - its when you noticed the difference the meditation played. You learnt more. Not faster, you didnt become stronger or with better reach or have a super prescient ability to block. You just saw more patterns within the patterns. You had more options, more levers, and you could see it in real time. Practicing the patterns meant your mind was free from the basic mechanics, as this was muscle memory now, to focus on the more abstract patterns. Litanies
An interesting commonality between the major contemplative religious traditions (which have far more in common than they do with the mainstream majority of their own religion IMO) is the use of prayer beads. In the western monastic tradition this is used for Litanies. If your a Warhammer 40k fan, you will know all about Litanies as the chants and repetitive prayers of the Space Marine warrior monks before they go into battle and to give them spiritual strength in battle. Probably the most famous western Litany form prayer is the Rosary. Like all things taken originally from the monastic culture, it was originally very simple - intentionally. And then successive generations of super pious I'm more pious than you give me promote me types then made it complicated. I never liked the Rosary, and it wasn't until I prayed Litanies like they were intended that I realised they are just like a bridge between meditation and Kata - patterns. They free the mind to see the bigger patterns. The dumber, the simpler the better. Of course if you have experience of any other contemplative religious practice (sorry kids this does not include American evangelical religion. I think this is where my I really dont like America thing started, because a lot of America is actually awesome - but then Ho Chi Minh also liked America and wanted to be friends too. Anyway, its just ignorant brutish religion.) - you can recognise this form of prayer. Buddhism is of course into it big time, Judaism has some seriously cool stuff going on in this space, Islam even knows whats what although their equivalent of evangelicalism is busy stamping it out. And yes India. Yes yes yes your important too. Err... yeah... so what? I find myself doing the same thing. Over and over. Professional life, personal life. There is not a distinction. Its not a conscious thing the repetition. I get told you need to change, do something different. And this is true, I really want to do something different. Really. But why am I doing the same things, expecting a different outcome? Spent a long time on this. I don't think why I'm doing it is for the outcome. I'm not trying to punch with more arm strength. I'm trying to elevate above the patterns. See the bigger levers. I don't think I can do that by learning a new way to punch or working out in a gym. Instead, I have to meditate and say my litanies. Elevate my inner self, and then with more options change myself and then my world. The real tangible benefit so far of this hard slog, has been that I have a lot more depth in my novel thing I'm plugging away at. Will it all be worth it if I end up writing a dogs pile that reddit downvotes my initial release to hell? Hmmm.... well I will or at least should be able to point to it and say with complete conviction it will be a unique work that explores the human condition in ways that other contemporary sci fi has not. So in the end, it just might be all about crafting a message. Not just any message, but a package of learning and experience for those coming next to learn from or discard as they see need or value. Ultimately this is the only real lasting value we contribute to life, even our DNA dies off or is so diluted with other DNA to lose nearly all distinctness after a few generations. Thought is our value. Thought that shapes other thought. It will be what lives on, even after the humans are gone. I think subconsciously this is what I have been moving to for quite some time now. Well.... had best get back to writing. 3 more weeks of this time and brain suck of a job to be over. Then I can write. Ah gawd then I have to figure out how to market the damned thing. I have.. ideas.. but this has never been a strong suite. Let us see.
Quick TL;DR - this is not about blowing up spaceships. Its about management theory but in a game about blowing up spaceships. As with all my blog posts it rambles along, with my thoughts and insights told in the form of a story of my life experiences. If your after a quick fix of someone shooting some space ships I recommend you instead look at this:
Now that I've cleared out the ADHD junkies, lets begin:
Attention Economics
I've been an Apple customer almost since Apple existed. I think my total Apple product ownership went: Apple II europlus, Mac 512, Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac IIfx, yes a fucking NEWTON, MacBook, MacMini, iPod Mini, iPhone 3, MacBook Pro, iPhone 4s, iPad, iPhone 5s. Starting at age 10 and I'm now 41yrs old. All purchased new, pretty much on release date. I think this classifies me as at least more than just a casual Apple customer. I have owned probably just over double that amount of Wintel Computers in the same time, and at least as many Nokia phones as iPhones. So also not inexperienced in other technologies. Of my total screen hours in front of a computer not work related, I would say only 1/3 of those hours were with an Apple product - excluding web surfing an iPhone (bastards created a whole category of screen time while in a lift with no one attractive or looking around at a work function and seeing everyone was boring or the effort in pretending to suck up to some random person in authority just not quite make the plus side of a cost benefit analysis against to the opportunity cost of not looking at 4chan screenshots on reddit). Google I love. I will not use any other search engine. I have quit a high paying job in part because IT forced us to use Bing. Open source: getting rid of walls, integration with open standards are beautiful things. Nearly 20 years in IT Architecture. leading the charge in SOA adoption back when that was a scary new thing, getting THE worlds largest finance company to adopt LAMP as a standard despite being presented with potential for dismissal if I insisted - yeah I've also got some chops in Open Source. Android v. iPhone ? My view on this is a little different. Whilst my Mac ownership stats are impressive, never owned an Android, and every single rabid pro-Android user I run into calls me a MacFag, oh and I do adore and love the cult of Mac - but its not in my mind at least about one over the other. It came to me yesterday when thinking about corporate culture and cultural fit. Had been working through what is it about my current (soon to be not current) employer that I found just made it not possible for me to want to make a difference. Ultimately it is about why. This is the driving force, the lever of capturing my attention, commitment, dedication to an abstract thing and then what it does and the products or services it offers.
Why Why Matters Over Apples history, there was a time I lost belief. I lost trust in their why. Why they do things. It coincided of course with Jobs absence from leadership. But my Google love is the same. There is a common thread. And google doesnt have the same cult of personality. I cannot even name a personality driving the things I love about Google. And then I see this pattern in other things.When I first joined Infosys, it was cool. The story was interesting, some guys built a company in India with the total startup capital that I would piss against a wall on a friday night. Defined new ways of doing work.Innovated. They had an immense amount of obstacles - racism in their markets, lack of trust in their ability to deliver, systemic government corruption at home and just emerging from a socialist nearly communist economic system. They preached hard work and meritocracy. In Bangalore I challenged one of the founders of Infosys on this. Me: "As you would know, its easy to say you support meritocracy. Can you give me an example of where you made a hard choice to stand with this principle at significant cost to the company?" He gave a brilliant answer. Standing in front of our group of about 8 people, he pointed out the window to all the buildings. Then told his little story. All the land we have these buildings on, we had applied for it from the local government. Running a large commercial business was even more difficult in India then. We had one government department left to give their approval. The head of that department told us he could approve the land use, but his son would really like to work for us. We told him that his son, like everyone else is very welcome to apply to work for us, but we can only take him if he has the right qualifications and passes the tests and interviews. The land use application was of course then rejected. They felt the whole company was on the line, that they would end up possibly failing as a result of taking this stand. But they stood by it. Knew the stakes, accepted the cost and stuck to their guns. More senior government officials / ministers then looked into of course, and came to the conclusion that this business was of strategic importance to India and got the rejection overruled. But for a time the future of now one of the worlds largest IT companies hung in the balance over meritocracy vs. cronyism. I loved this shit. From the start it was a global company that started in India. This got my inspiration fired like nothing else. Despite being the whitest white boy who loves his steak, yep I'm on board here to make a difference.
Now a change occured in Infosys around the GFC. Compared to the other Indian outsourcing they always had a bit of an edge being forwarded thinking, more than giving you what you ask for giving you what you actually need/want. The company was founded on innovation, and even though the majority of their revenue was cost reduction plays for global companies, they always kept that burning. GFC changed this. Cost focus. I saw a round of redundancies in Australia. Amongst the first in the companies history. Of course it made sense. Their revenue base in the US was contracting massively. Cuts had to be made everywhere. I left. Joined a bank and ran a team in Australia and India. Treated the Indian team exactly like the Australian team, including same job titles and career progression. Prior to me taking leadership, there was very layered and tightly controlled communications within the team. NO communication from the Indian team was permitted to the Australian team without review and approval by the Indian team leader. I don't just hate that shit, I will die/sacrifice my job and financial security to stamp out controlling the free flow of ideas, questions and learning within a team purely because someone wants to build political capital under guise of quality control. I knew exactly what that must feel like to the team members over there, how demoralizing and crippling to their productivity, creativity, and sense of value in their work and as a person. When in Bangalore talking to my Indian team, I was both brutally honest about their jobs "your here because your cheap" but also used the Infosys story and then our own team story, how we were building them into being more than just cheap. Their job was to step up and become the future centre of operations, the knowledge of how this part of the bank runs would become theirs as soon as they are ready. This meant more work, more promotions, more management, even leadership. Yes one day my job will probably be done by one of you. Now before you feel all bad about exploitation of workers from other countries, I don't know about you but I don't have a cleaner, cook, nanny and driver. These young men and women did. Learnt this long ago. A lot of Indians I worked with in Infosys were far wealthier in $USD than I will ever be. So while I was at the Bank, the Infosys thread of this story went schizophrenic. A faction on the board wanted innovation and growth through new services. Management Consulting was seen as a strategic play for this. At the same time the dominant faction wanted more than ever to go down the "more for less" route - work staff harder, for less pay in as dumb and simple work as they could get. Indian white collar burger flippers. Vegetarian burgers of course. The dominant faction then won. All its dreams came true, but only just after they had purchased a global management consulting firm. A new CEO, heavily networked and a dominant cost minimization culture and get rid of anything that sounds dangerously interesting.
The corner started to turn when the CEO's son was appointed to a senior leadership position. So many could not believe that everything the company stood for was so systematically being destroyed. I was told a story of outright rebellion where the son started to criticize some senior people in how a project was being handled and he was abruptly told "we know why we are here, but no one really knows why it is that you are here". This is what kills growth in companies. Competitors take that growth, then invest those profits and then take your core, and your leadership is left going "It doesn't make sense, we were leaders". No. The guys before you were leaders, you just played politics.
I love this story, because it is the stark counterpoint to the hope and inspiration of what I look for. It is a necessity to have an accurate understanding of what hell is when your trying to find heaven. A great many people helped create hell, and many of the decisions leading to it were of necessity or fear of what might be coming. To know where that leads, invaluable - otherwise you will only be asking yourself "yeah but how bad could it be really?" Infosys got better btw. A new CEO is in play, and he is damn cool. I'm not there now, but hearing lots of good stories, and they are firmly back to a focus on innovation while keep the core business profitable and driving cost effectiveness for customers. I think this is fantastic. Internet Spaceship Management Consulting Now as a few people reading may know, I spend about 20-30% of my waking hours plugged into a virtual reality simulator called Eve. Eve is interesting because it is all about human behavior, and more importantly has a razor focus on humans making choices with real economic consequence. In this simulation, people group together. Why? Well for a number of reasons, and rarely for a single one. Mostly they want things to be interesting. In this people fight. Fights are interesting, so a lot of management effort of these people goes into securing fights. Fights also consume resources though, so an economic backbone is needed for people to acquiring the resources to fight more. They also like a sense of identity. The stronger sense of identity, the more powerful a culture evolves and that attracts people, resources, and well... fights. Politics then enters play. Which is where this meandering blog has been going. By necessity, leadership has to be tightly held. There is things such as spies, thieves and people who shoot people that are supposedly friends. All acceptable in this game. People have destroyed years of work through betrayal of trust placed in them. This happens here all the time. Leadership has to be iron clad, locked down, tough and untrusting. The cost of this, can often be hope and inspiration. Next generation leadership can be looked over, good ideas ignored because of these tough but necessary defensive mechanisms. Eve leadership can be hell. Brave Newbies was a fairly recent phenomenon in eve, which I think exploited the arbitrage that exists between older established corporations and the hopes and aspirations of younger pilots. In turn the young pilots flocking to it, failing, then learning created an infectious culture that spread. More experienced pilots became attracted to this culture to break out from their corporate servitude and now something new and significant exists. But the pattern will repeat. We saw it happen with Fweddit - J4LP. They started like Brave Newbies, grew, massive appeal as new and open. Leadership changed a few times, a focus on retaining assets with token giving some "content" or interesting fights to the members. Leadership became opaque, limited in engagement but steadfastly locked on objectives not aligned with the underlying wants and needs. Yes they had polls and votes, but the members had already been voting by not logging in and /gquit - so you mostly only had the ones left that supported your world view. There was not a Steve Jobs, Google giving what they wanted before they knew they wanted it. It was instead a Windows 8 - oh they like that smart phone tablet shit, lets tack some crap on the UI over the top to make it look like we are relevant without changing anything that actually matters. Cathedral and the Bazaar OMFG seriously not this shit? Heh. This is one of the earlier descriptions of the business models of Open Source vs. Closed IP software. Essentially the Cathedral was BOB. All the eliteness and power to the central governance and control, who ruled the universe. Goonswarm was the Bazaar - a whole bunch of new young pilots in rifters trying to find new and interesting ways in the universe. Except now Goonswarm is definitely, at least from the outside the Cathedral and it is united under the singular eternal, unchanging banner of Chairman Mittens. The Bazaar is where innovation happens. Where new comes from. Where the asymmetric combination of needs, skill, and differentiated thought emerge to create new. It cannot happen in the Cathedral because everything in the Cathedral requires review and approval by the clergy and the political cost or reputational risk limits innovation to a very few areas that are either harmless or directly aligned to the few key strategic focuses. So where is the Bazaar? Well I think Phoebe helps. There is now new opportunity for management entities to emerge in deep 0.0. This change is I think quite under appreciated for how big a force for reshaping the corporate landscape in eve it is. Its not only about rebalancing assets, ability to project force and control of space. Fundamentally it effects management styles that can be successful. People are going to have to learn the meaning of the word Keiretsu a lot more. New mechanisms for creating tactical to semi strategic coalitions that are disposeable will emerge. Wormholes and Faction War are the other places driving the bazaar. Speed and ability to recruit balanced by trust remain the big challenges in this space. Womholes are about to get damn interesting. It will be beautiful and deadly. I really want to see what changes in management culture this generates. Holy Providence The greatest dream in New Eden, from a management perspective for me remains CVA and Providence. It is the ultimate Google. Apple. They have a dream. It is under constant threat from pretty much any group that wants some fights and has no regard for the beauty of their dream of a place in space ruled by self imposed law that all are free to operate so long as they do not fight other freely operating pilots. This means about 98% of eve is out to kill them should they have the spare time. On the brink of destruction, and yet turning it around over YEARS of activity to regain what was lost and build upon it - this is just epic. Sheer act of strategic will. Management beauty, unlike rarely seen anywhere, even the real world. A necessity of their Not Red Don't Shoot is of course holding a grudge. I often when discussing in militia chat about people who have AWOXED (shoot a friendly for fun or some bad mood or because they think they are awesome) have described myself as "holding a grudge like CVA". We do not forgive, do not forget. Except CVA can claim this before Anonymous, that's how long they have been bitter space monks for. The grudge aspect is very important. It was how the Roman Empire was built in its early years. If you declared war with us, fought with us, if you dared lay a hand on a Roman senator, well you have eternal war that will only cease with your destruction and enslavement. No amount of gold, bribery or politics would save them. The first few nation states that killed an unarmed senator would laugh about it at the time, but later states that had heard of Romans and the complete extermination of states that killed a senator would wade into the decision to hurt one with a little more gravity and thought. My small little corp is of course KOS to CVA, despite being founded to be loyal to them no matter what... a long story... but I admire that despite multiple attempts to reset standings they are all still nope or ignore me. Gotta admire that holding steadfast to ideals. Future Eve Leadership Disaggregation will increase due to combination of Phoebe and an uptick in living in Wormholes fulltime. More mid sized (rather than small) corps will be a sign of health for the eve playerbase. Purpose, or why for corps will still be lacking. The rules of the sandbox I still think need some shifting to promote why over more baser tactical interests. Culture at present remains the dominant long term stickiness for corp membership, followed by relationships, and only after that gudfites. Short term - why people join a corp is pretty much the reverse order. I'm still chewing around in my head what could give more meaning to longer term strategies for corps, but I do think it is appropriate for CCP to address this. Many corporations in eve have been around longer than companies listed on major stock exchanges and have as many man hours from appropriately skilled and qualified people put into their running as serious national businesses. More for this would really change the player dynamic and interest levels to add more roundedness to shooting, fighting, trading and socialising than just seeing increases in isk or LP. Again, I want to reiterate admiration for CVAs pursuit of a strategic agenda in spite of lack of an external reward.
At some point Eve has to solve the whole Maslows hierarchy of needs in an integrated manner, catered for in the sandbox. The game does perform better than all competitors around the economic functions which adds strength and weight to others. The community aspect is trumpeted as a strong point in eve, but I have to admit even though WOW was a lighter game you could build strong powerful communities there with more ease than in eve, even though in eve the value of the community was higher. Its different.
This means there is still a significant amount of arbitrage in the game between needs and what is offered. One way or another the market will solve this. At present the only corps / alliances really addressing the actualisation needs of rank and file members is the role play corps. And everyone knows role play is not going too strong in eve.
Gaming will step up. Because they are not just "games" anymore. They are culture, identity, and yes a spirituality. They are why people get up in the morning. As per above diagram which I just drew right now in MS paint - not all gamers want to define themselves or find meaning in their lives from computer games. But the thing is, the number that do is increasing. Using eve as the example, predefining a set of systems or structures for meaning wont be enough. Part of it is people creating their own reasons. But the game will need to evolve mechanisms for that to occur. In the same way Faction War exists. Minmatar and Amarr were actually going hammer and tongs at each other near providence before Faction war was created. It wasn't technically needed. But creating an abstracted framework to support it gave so much life into a once very dead area of space and created so much experiences and decisions for players. The same is needed for long term strategy and identity for corporations - and maybe even players. Maybe there should be a reward structure for playing a character for 10 years and progressing towards a goal everyday. A reward that a character bought off the market cannot achieve in a few hours by spending some isk. Token rewards like a special ship or some implants or more isk doesnt cut it. That's only market value. More. Some real thought needed here. But if done in an interesting way, just like the eve economy, it would be real difference in the market place for gaming.
All quiet on the Matari front. Last 2 weeks has been pretty gentle in the Minmatar, Amarr warfront. That of course has not stopped me losing about 2bn in ships... I just have a talent that way. Yesterday whilst "working" from home I did perform a kill I am very proud of. There was a warning callout on Militia channel basically a "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES THERE IS SNIPERS ON THE GULM-EGMAR GATE!!!!" although I exaggerate a little. I had become very pissed off with the loss of my 300+m isk Navy Harb to a gate camp that I intentionally engaged. I'm used to different timezones rather than US prime during the week, so didnt expect they would batcall everyone within a 2 system radius. Anyways, I killed one t1 frigate. Op success. A matari soul saved.
So sitting in Amarr after, with the Jita scammers plying their trade (they are still Jita scammers even when in Amarr. Hi Bardam), I went fuggit. Lets build me another stratios. 2bn isk later (I also buy implants to suit each ship I fly, go hard or go home) on top of the already 1bn isk in implants, and I was good to go. So back to Arzad. Then the hyper frantic warning about the dreaded sniper battlecruisers. Hmm..... havnt done this before.... but I sort of do something similar to people plexing larges.... wonder if I can take out a battlecruiser sniper in my Stratios. Set destination Egmar. Lets go. Arrive Gulm. No sign of any merciless sniping pirates. Ah must be on the Egmar side, and I would have to jump into their prepared sniping position. Oh well. Isk is there to be spent for the greater good of the advancement of Amarrian faith for the salvation of souls across New Eden. So I guess I had better get to doing some gods work. Jump in to Egmar. 3 Nagas, 1 Oracle. Each 149-179km from the gate. But in different directions. I take my time looking at them, checking ranges and approximate positions in space relative to the gate. I align and cloak as damn fast as possible. No lock. Ok that went a little better than I thought it might. I wait. After about a minute they rotate tactical positions. Oracle Warps back and down, Nagas do some swapping. No one is in a position that another was in. Oh this is interesting. They are being clevarr. 2 can play that game. Now the big stress for me is there is a lot of alpha DPS here in play. 4 Battlecruisers armed with Battleship weapons. My Stratios has some tank, a few minmatar pilots can attest to that, but I have not tested it at this level before. I guess at least they are not close range neuting... So I slow boat to the spot I mentally marked the Oracle as locating when I first arrived in system. Made an educated guess that was his preferred primary location. Slow crawl.... 150km... crawling... crawling..... They all warp off. Options. They leave to go do other things with their lives? They worried the stratios that cloaked was still insystem and had not been heard of since? They find someone else to blow up? Decide they may do this as part of their safety rotations. So I keep slow boating to the same spot. And slow boating.... Naga. Naga. Oracle. Naga. Back on grid. And Oracle is right where I have been slow boating to. I notice the Nagas are nearly 200km from this position. This is good. Oracle aligns, and starts to slow boat towards the gate, very leisurely. Towards me. Mwahahahah. 20km range.. do I uncloak? nah. Stay on target! Red-5 is da man. 12km. Ok easily within scram range of my faction dark blood scram once I can target. Decloak. Deploy Gekkos Lock target. Nice and fast. He is scrammed. Hit him with Blasters. Gekkos go in. Boom.. Scoop Loot. Align. Out. Not even locked by his buddies. Not a word said by anyone in local. http://battlemonk.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=25954533
Travelling back to Arzad, its a lot of jumps. I have a habit of checking out where the action is along the way. Big advantage of being in a brawler fit cloaky is you have a lot of fight options, and dont need to run from much. Evati. There are 2 macho pirates having a slanging match with each other in local. Something penis size and moms, ok im paraphrasing, talking about how each other is weak for not engaging. Now pirates are a part of life in Low Sec, and more so in Faction War zones. To me of course they are a scourge that must be cleansed from the future holy lands of Amarr. No second thoughts about their destruction crosses my mind. I scan around. Can only find a Cormorant on scan. He is at a small. Is he inside or out? Warp to small. Close to gate but not too close. No sign of him outside, scan inside, he is there. Scan again he is not. Hmmm.... Wait. Corm arrives on gate. I start angling towards him. At 6km range Im ready to decloak. Hawk arrives on grid. Its the other pirate. I wait. They scram each other. Ok nows a good time to engage. Decloak. "omg your so lame couldnt fight me on your own" cries the Hawk pilot in local. Scram the cormorant. Deploy light drones. He is torn apart. Boooooom. I think he was too busy shitting himself to respond to the Hawk pilot. Scram the Hawk. He isnt aligned because he has been fighting. Interestingly dual ASB Hawk can last a few seconds against a 1k dps Stratios. But in the end, you cant hold back divine judgement.
Well thats it. A day in the life of edeity. I think there was about 3 or 4 other fights, but nothing memorable. HOLY CRAP EDEITY HOW CAN BE AS ASPERGERLY AN AWESOME EVE PLAYER AS YOU? Its damn simple son. You need faith to power your lasers. Join an Amarrian faction war corp, pray every day, and beat the shit out of anyone in real life that tells you roleplay is for fags. Besides, fags are cool. Also you can watch my horrible video again. Shut up. I liked making it.
"What we do echoes an eternity" - Russell Crowe in some movie
I've been having an urge to write for some time about this. Mostly out of frustration that I'm not moving faster on getting my novel done. But I really like this subject area, so maybe this is part of my creative process. I'm going to write about computer games and meaning of life. This is not a journalistic article, reasoned consideration of multiple perspectives. I'm going to lay out a point of view, that is radically different to the norm. I'm going to preach it at you. Parts of it may sway you to see things a little differently, but make no mistake I have an agenda so in fair warning, be wary of what I say. Now some background context before we begin. Me, I played pong when I was 4 years old. Yep I was there right from the start of computer gaming. By 8 I was teaching myself to program in Applesoft and Atari basic. Even a friends Sinclair. I wrote my first bad game from scratch, not using anyones code at 11 (a text adventure JUST LIKE ZORK...but not as cool), and at 14 had written in Apple Pascal an animated game where you had to move around and dodge some scary looking smiley faces. My best friend at the time Ben thought it was super cool, but I think it was only cool because I wrote something that worked and it was visible - you could see the code turned into pictures that moved when you did something and there was consequence of your choices. Interesting side note, I recently found out that the weird lanky blond haired teenager that lived next door to Ben that I would nod at sometimes when going to visit him was Julian Assange. Small world. It sort of makes sense maybe that I felt I recognised him when he went all big in the media. The remote connection to Julian is irrelevant, but he isn't to this topic, but more on that later. Ben and I parted ways, He was socially gifted, popular. He wanted to skateboard. I wanted to build a laser. I bought books on the physics of lasers, and approached it like learning a computer programming language. A lot of awkward conversations on the phone to wholesale science supply distributors "and what are you saying you need a laser for again?". I wanted to not just be able to follow instructions like it was hobby kit. Wanted to really understand how it works so I could McGuyver it - build it out of stuff I can get my hands on easily. Ben's skateboarding went really well. I built some prototypes. The stopping block was getting a hold of a ruby rod. I had the lights and reflection system worked out, just needed the core bit... Publicly available lasers became available the next year. LED lasers. Sonofabitch. My friend Ray who was all into guns got a laser targeting scope. I was sort of looked at as though all my efforts of learning was a bit of a waste. This is where I became aware of the divide. There are skateboarders and laser builders. Skateboarders had real tangible value. Laser builders people politely smiled at. Instead of seeing the light and buying a skateboard, I turned inwards. Read more. Taught myself this new programming language called C. The advanced concepts of use of pointers in C were fortunately easily built on the knowledge I had gained from Object Pascal, where you have abstraction through pointers to pointers. What is important in object oriented programming is not the code of the data itself, but the relationships between them. Brain starts expanding with new kinds of thinking. I like to quote one of several cards or conversations from ex-girlfriends. "Its me or the computer" ideally I tell people this story when Im near or sitting in front of my computer. The best card was a drawing of the cartoon cat Garfield taking a chainsaw to a computer. Lets just say the gaming went to a level a little beyond a healthy hobby. My favourite game back then as I'm around 18-21 is a game called Spaceward Ho!. Spaceward Ho! was interesting because it was all about resource management and making economic choices that were not simple, but most importantly it was done in a universe populated by both real and computer controlled players. We bought a heap of second hand MacPlus computers on top of my IIfx and SE and all my friends would come over for "Beer and Ho!". We would progressively drink a carton of beer (we were young so it didn't take much) and start our Machiavellian collusion's and alliances of convenience. It also helped that when you moved your fleets in Ho! A whip crack and a cowboy "yeehaw" sound would play. This goes very well with drunk teenagers. Now what was interesting with Spaceward Ho! is it was programmed by some university nerds. They built, while not an AI, a simplistic self learning capability into the game. The "AI" of the computer controlled players got smarter. And nastier. Different AI players would have different personalities. There was one who always wanted to ally with you right before she invaded. Yeah, we learnt their names. We kept the same learning file or AI file over 4 years of weekly drunken donut and pizza eating games that stretched from 5pm to about 2am. It got to a point where despite being seasoned hardened Spaceward Ho vets, we would reduce the number of AI players from the original 20 down to about 4. Nothing evoked fear more taking on one of our now super AIs alone. Largely probably a beer fueled reputation but interesting nevertheless. I got in touch with one of the guys who wrote Spaceward Ho! about 10 years ago. The game never really achieved a lot of commercial success, but I told him some of our stories and he was really excited to hear about it. I don't think he fully appreciated what I tried saying about how damn scary the AIs had become however. I felt really good talking to him though.
Simulation Theory
Yes this had to raise its ugly head. So lets get it out of the way now. No I'm not going to bang on about how we are actually living in a computer simulation ergo computer games are no different to reality. Some sort of science type stuff on this: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847 The short answer, is that it doesnt matter. That does not mean don't think about it, explore it, see if you can go all Matrix and dodge bullets or make a spaceship that go FTL because of it. But for here, now it doesn't matter either way. Bigger things are at stake. So hopefully we are done with this point. I have opinions, views, but they are as close to fact as what mysticism is. It will cheapen what needs to be said to focus on this and get hung up on it. So, the theory that we exist in a computer simulation is an interesting one, and apparently has some scientific validity. 98% probability that we are in a simulation not an original universe based on Moores Law. I'm not a scientist, not going to try be one - even an internet scientist, but I do have some understanding of science including my misuse of the word Theory above and also that if you believe in creationism you really cannot contribute much to the modern world.
Perception Is Reality
Lets draw it back a little to something very human. Perception. I'm currently researching valuation models for networks. No not computer networks (although it could apply to them) but people networks. I'm doing some analysis of powerful people in industry and their influence or value of their networks. To give some additional context, I work in Management Consulting. An industry almost solely focused on perception. I detest the statement "Perception is reality". Perception is valuable yes. If you have nothing else to offer, indeed it makes up your reality. But perception is not reality. Reality is reality. The ability of the average, the mean to perceive value can be disconnected from reality. Following others perceptions
There is an Australian ... singer... called Delta Goodrem. She was(is?) a judge on a reality TV show called "The Voice" where the judges select amateurs to join their stable of talent singers to try win the competition. Delta is simply incapable of making a choice of talent despite being in the industry over a decade without looking at the other judges reaction first. In my world view she isn't a singer. She is popular. What she does is political first and simply cannot ever make a choice that puts technically optimal outcome first. What I mean is she is incapable of discovering talent, only recognising talent after it has been discovered. As the founder of the Facebook group "Shut Up Delta" - which still gets people requesting to join well after each season of The Voice ends, not everyone likes a pretty popular girl. Your welcome to join, oh and there you go, an easy way to DOXX me heh.
An actual talented singer who makes choices based on insight not popular opinion. Both are famous, starring in the same TV Show, and both have had sex with famous people. One however gets called "homewrecking whore" and the other a responsible parent despite being divorced. Yes Delta is a cancer survivor, its hard to go 3 minutes into anything involving her without knowing this. Delta's takeaway from this is to not get photographed with married men, because perception is reality darling. And she successfully did this, stop getting photographed that is. What I detest is not the immorality, its the hypocrisy.
#Gamergate
I think #gamergate is awesome. It is a fault line of these two worlds. Lets call it for what it is, on one side you have a woman who made really really shit games sorry a game about depression. She also fucked around on her live in partner all the while telling him hes crazy, honesty and loyalty are everything she could never do that. Oh and she just happened to be fucking successively up the career chain for her area in computer gaming. The boyfriend finds out, writes a small blog post about what a manipulative bitch she is. Yeah I used the word bitch. And Im a feminist. I can still hate bitches. Some of the most misogynistic sexist women haters I ever met were women. The blog post gains traction, particularly with how it ham fistedly tries to point out how the gaming industry media is being manipulated into writing good reviews, or at least not bad ones about absolute shit games. Its not a gender thing. I have a daughter. She games. Not not some bullshit depression quest or chasing rainbows with fairys. When she broke up with her boyfriend she self installed world of warcraft, stole my credit card, set up an account and is busy raiding. Shes a gamer. She also thinks Anita Saarkesian is bad for women. My daughter has also never had to leave home despite playing online games for 10 years, has a tumblr and twitter and tells boys and men online they are stupid sexist asshole idiots on a daily basis. Did I mention shes a woman? Now whats interesting, is that how it got spun. It turned from clearly a woman who did a really bad personal life thing. I dont give a shit about that. I probably wouldn't date her in the future if I knew that, but in the grand scheme of things who gives a fuck. The points about computer gaming, and how journalists letting who sucked their dicks steer the direction of the industry a little - well thats something that matters. Worthy of serious discussion and investigative journalism. But when you can't code a good game, your reputation, ergo perception is everything if you have decided thats the industry thats going to feed you.So she comes out swinging. Its about hating women. Its so unfair. Im the victim in this online harassment. Media loves this shit. So do trolls.
"Gamer and actor Felicia Day has had her personal details posted online just minutes after making her first public statement about Gamergate – in which she expressed fear about saying anything at all, in case she was targeted as a result." The Guardian I actually found this funny. Felicia Day is the closest thing I have seen to Delta Goodrem in gaming. She saw that the anti-gamers were winning, thought that's because the media all said the gamers were bad she should come out and ATTACK THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ARE YOUR MARKET AND GAVE YOU A CAREER. Yeah we do not forgive. We do not forget. Don't try that bullshit I didn't say anything. Yes you did. Saying you were scared as a woman when no one had ever mentioned you, thought of you, that's making a statement. That said, this sort of protest does not warrant direct action, so IMO doxxing is going too far. Ordering you pizza and uploading footage of it to youtube maybe would have been classier. BTW please dont get me wrong. Im not saying that as a woman you cant make a statement. In fact as a feminist, in my view it is very important you should be empowered to make all the statements you want, and not make statements you dont want. BUT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE OPINIONS TOO. And as you should know in the gaming industry, the real gaming industry, those people have poor social skills, poor hygiene and are not good at expressing themselves. So they can come off a little emotional and over the top. But as a GAMER you would know all this, which is why you would know internet trolls and hyperbolic rants like this one are not threats. YOUR VIEWS ON GAMERGATE HAVE DOOMED YOU AND YOUR OFFSPRING FOR 100 GENERATIONS THE WRATH OF ANONYMOUSE. I guess you should move house again. I mean it was literally said right there along with implied sexist commentary that a non specific threat was made. It was published on the internet. This makes it totally legit and real. Btw. I'm not aware of any actual physical assualts, or yes rapes committed by a Gamergate supporter. But I do know the violence and rapes committed by the types of men you want them to emulate are real. That we should stop being in the words of an NFL player support of them terribly women by the internet haters (NFL player lecturing fucking me on how to treat women, omfg i laughed so hard) who called gamer gaters "limp wristed" (oh so posting opinions on specific women who sell out, or literally suck cock for professional networking reasons is bad but making blanket homophobia ok). Oh and hes a gamer too apparently. So he has a legit opinion. I suspect he is a gamer in the way that I had a black friend once so I can make a comment... but who knows maybe an NFL player spend 40 hours a week flying spaceships, building spreadsheet models and setting up web sites for his computer game. Maybe. I FUCKING DOUBT IT. So anyway. #gamergate. Now what gamergate does it creates the fault line between Delta Goodrems and Seals. People who are swayed by popularists, and in fact want to be part of popularism. And then the hard fucking core profesionals like Seal who are just badass, dont get much recognition but when the shit goes down they can lead a party of 20 orcs, Tauren and undead into the dungeon and kick that dragons ass. Yes Felicia, I know you can do that too, but I'm talking metaphorically. Metaphorically you cannot do it because you are one of the "oh, my boyfriend plays computer games, on his playstation, so im like totally a gamer now. Check out my new fake glasses". Whats extra sad about you is that you could be in team seal but choose team Delta. Perception is a very powerful tool, particularly in this networked age. It is also the primary go to tool FOR TALENTLESS HACKS. As a general rule of thumb if someone is popular, they are probably a talentless hack (not always, but to spot the difference requires YOU to not be a talentless hack). Unless they have a fuck you attitude to everyone and everything. In which case they are so awesome that despite being an asshole their awesomeness shines through. The rest of us live in between. But we tend to one way or the other. Economics of specialisation...
This is What We Do
Computer games. Why I have opened this post with all this... other stuff... is because computer games is a word that means many things - things with very different meanings. Megan Fox "Gamer"
By now, with my rambling background stories, you should have enough datum to make an assessment of how I react to claims from Megan Fox's publicity machine that she is a gamer because she played Guitar Hero. So lets dispense with this. This is not a gamer. What an Actual Gamer does:
Just to give a sense of whats going on there, the really big space ships are valued in the $1,000's of USD worth of effort and time to acquire. This is not a lightweight activity for "I game" people. It requires being very serious and managing a very very large amount of complexity ranging from economics, politics, communication and leadership. Failure of any one of these, or more correctly not being as good as your enemy leads to real consequence loss. Success leads to power, wealth, prestige and attracting more enemies - not computer enemies, skilled, devious humans who are networking for your downfall. Its interesting because even though it is virtual, it is real. You are genuinely tested. You get better. Improve. Always have more to learn. What is this doing to a generation? Species split. No not over one generation. But its happening. Its real science. Its not popular, and its very VERY political / social suicide to talk about it, but the species is splitting. But the thing is, the people that refuse to talk about it are themselves broken into 2 camps - 1) stupid, ignorant, naive or short term focused people 2) what I call the Operators. Operators do not necessarily know about species split at a conscious or logical level, but they are instinctively pursuing this agenda. They believe that the wealthy, healthy and hyper social will become the future species. All the other humans will die out or become a sub species. In the future everyone will be a movie star with the brains of Bill Gates, entrepreneurialism of Richard Branson, beauty of a catwalk model and the health of an Olympic Athlete. They are wrong of course. But you need to have actually read a science book to understand why this world view is doomed to evolutionary roadkill. Its already started, but the popular people find it unpopular to talk about so it doesn't make it into popular discussion or facebook. You wont see a Movie about it that isn't a lame independent scifi or where its just the backdrop for the hot sexy buff hero to save the smart sassy emotionally in control and balanced heroine, Its not popular to talk about the real near future extinction of the human race. Especially when evolutionary principles points clearly in this direction.
Now I would say, you wont see a TED Talk on this either, because TED talks jumped it years ago and are now just rambling pseudo science motivational speakers motived by a need to either stick something on their resume, or feel they are giving something back because they have success guilt or its a KPI on their personal performance. But there is a TED talk on this. And the guy giving it isnt popular, or cool. He just knows a lot about this and thinks a lot about it, oh and happens to be smart. So here is his TED Talk
Now what is particularly interesting in the Human species split, is that our ancestors split from their relatives over time. Apparently it was a catalyst of being about 1% of the host population. His comments on Autism is very interesting to me. Autism is now over 1% of the population. Autism has evolutionary advantages for dealing with complex technology and vast amounts of information. So rather than the future species looking like the sophisticated photoshopped interviewee's of GHQ Magazine and Marie Claire, it might look more like 4chan.
