118. Why I Stopped Writing

My last paper for Gamasutra/Game Developer was in 2018. Here I explain why I stopped writing. And, why I still can't write about some things.

Old timers in the industry know me primarily from the many monetisation, game design, and industry ethics papers I wrote for Gamasutra which later had a name change to Game Developer. I started there in 2012 after they contacted me based on the quality of my previous papers and asked me to write exclusively for them. Prior to that I had been publishing my papers on the Games for Change website.

Very old timers might remember my work from 2001 to 2005 for UnknownPlayer. At UP I had 400,000 daily readers and was the USA’s 4th most read independent gaming journalist. UP was hacked and double deleted after I published a paper exposing that a “journalist” at one of our sister news sites was actually a paid employee of Ubisoft. That person had exclusive access to Shadowbane during its alpha and posted very positive information about the project that was often untrue. After I exposed this deception I was the target of a PR campaign by Ubisoft. In later years I would play Shadowbane and really enjoyed it. I also developed a relationship with the developers who claimed they had no idea what Ubisoft (their publisher) was up to. I believe them.

I wrote under my gamer tag of “Sarcerok” at UP because I got many very detailed death threats while writing under my real name after the 9/11 attack. It took 10 years for that to die down enough that I felt comfortable again using my real name. This reset my internet footprint as Google and such didn’t know I was the same person.

I bring this up to point out that I’m a veteran journalist and I’m well aware that the job can get very political. I’m also aware that if you are an investigative journalist, the job can be quite dangerous, especially if your are investigating things that might be illegal and/or involve a lot of money. You likely would never consider harming another person over money, but many people would. If that additional hazard is too much for you, you just write what you are told and don’t ask questions.

The trick is to learn how to be controversial enough to be an interesting read, but not so controversial that it becomes economically practical for someone to cancel or delete you. I’m going to call that imaginary line The Line because I’m going to come back to that. There are degrees to The Line. Lower degrees get you blacklisted, higher degrees get you Merit Cancelled, and if you are really annoying or perhaps just in the wrong place at the wrong time observing the wrong thing, then people might be willing to spend millions of dollars to deal with you. These scenarios make for great Hollywood dramas, but not so great if they happen to you or your family.

My Experience at Gamasutra

I really enjoyed my work at Gamasutra. I feel like I did a lot of good for the industry, and regulators were able to find me through my papers and contact me for help in 2013 in their effort to protect children in online gaming. Clearly I was writing about subjects that were already quite controversial from the perspective of the interactive media industry. They were increasingly using what is now called Dark Patterns to exploit gamers of all ages and I was explaining these methods in detail.

So even in 2013 I was well aware I had at least one foot across The Line. When I returned from the 2013 ICPEN regulatory summit where I testified against gaming industry behavior I soon discovered that I had been blacklisted from talking at GDC. I had been double confirmed to have a presentation and a round table at the 2014 GDC. Both were cancelled at the last moment without explanation. I also received threatening calls from GDC executives which I alerted my PR department at Wargaming about. The situation was tense.

Gamasutra’s support of my work remained solid during this period. When new contributors would click to find out more about how to submit articles, my papers were used by Gamasutra as the recommended standard for writing submissions.

That changed at the end of 2017. I published a paper celebrating Olympic hero Florence Griffith-Joyner. She is still the world’s fastest woman almost 40 years after her record was set in 1988 when she was one of my athletes. Some unusual observations I made during that time would become valuable later on as we started to discover what the hormone Oxytocin does for us. I credited Oxytocin with her almost impossibly fast times and explained how we could use this same chemical in game development.

This paper was 100% censored by Game Developer. It was the first time I had ever been censored there. Visitors to the site would not see it at all unless they followed a link provided by me. I asked the editor the obvious question: “Was this about race?” While not telling me why the paper was blocked, he did offer that he could not be racist because he was half Korean. Ironically, the only studio to ever tell me that under no circumstances would a non-[their race] person be allowed to step foot in their studio was XLGames in South Korea. They were willing to kill Take 2’s Civilization Online project over this issue. I’m a big fan of Korean culture. Just not this particular part of their culture.

According to AI, Korean discrimination against ethnically African people is a serious cultural issue.

Things went downhill from there. A year later when I wrote The Physiology of Gaming, a key milestone paper, it was subjected to transformational edits. But what was most interesting was the pattern of edits. It was previously a very research heavy paper with strong and damning clinical/medical references. The strongest and most damaging information for the producers of “Dark Pattern” games was removed. The overall effect was to transform a research analysis paper into what appeared to be an opinion piece. An opinion piece could easily be dismissed.

To me this signalled that some major industry entity had determined that I had crossed The Line and was now a problem. They incentivised Game Developer to begin muting my work, which I assume came in the form of advertiser pressure. I have no way of knowing if there was a racial component.

Soon after this event I parted ways with Gamasutra. I’m told that traffic to Gamasutra dropped ~80% during this period. Gamasutra was no longer edgy and had become conformist. The name was changed in 2021 to Game Developer to make it even more conformist. My papers were systematically purged from Game Developer in 2023, prompting me to rescue my work (with the help of the community) and move it to Substack. They began to mysteriously appear again on Game Developer in 2025, but with all comments removed.

It’s probably safer not to speculate as to why that happened, but perhaps it had something to do with the Digital Fairness Act which was being introduced at the same time. Many of my 2013 papers were source material for the DFA.

After Gamasutra

By 2019 I was wading into web3 economic design development full force. I was well aware that there were shady or even dangerous elements in the crypto space but I was also of the belief that web3 game development would be dead on arrival without my intervention. As blockchain was the “strong authentication system” I had predicted in my 2009 Third Tier of Game Development north star paper, I feel that this is a required prerequisite technology for the creation of The Metaverse.

Companies that attempt to develop The Metaverse without completing (or even being aware of) the prerequisite technologies are doomed to fail. Like “Meta”. A number of Meta’s competitors have secretly met with me to ask for help with their own Metaverse development, having identified me as the foremost academic in the space of Metaverse ideation.

But web3 development also introduced another huge layer of complexity to my work and life.

web3 and Fiduciary Responsibility

As a globally well known regulatory and ethics expert I make it my responsibility to be on top of all the related laws in effect or in the pipeline world-wide. I also write about these things a lot on this substack. I make it a point to tell every potential employer before they hire me that I can be trusted/expected to act legally and ethically at all times. Of course this means that I will advise against and decline any work that does not meet these conditions.

In the web3 space there is a LOT of activity that might be illegal in “real space”, usually because it appears to trigger the Howey Test. If so then it is considered a securities transaction which has very strict rules for how it can be performed. Game development studios as a rule do not conform to these standards and thus try to avoid SEC attention. As the SEC is gearing up to project the Howey Test and thus their authority into the crypto space, they are lining up and have actually begun investigations into various crypto exchanges and game development studios.

They won’t waste their time initially with the little fish. They will go after the big fish first. As the top economist in the space, those big fish tend to seek my services. I’m well aware of the hazards in the space, especially as it is still not well defined legally. I make this clear to any potential employer and again tell them that they can expect me to act legally and ethically at all times and advise them to do the same.

Now if one of these studios appears to cross the line into illegal activity, the SEC may target them. This is exactly what happened and it was of course anticipated by me. One of my previous web3 studio employers got targeted by the SEC. I documented everything while there for my protection and the protection of my employer. I’m a loyal employee and would of course sacrifice myself to protect my employer as long as they were working with me to stay legal. This is perhaps one of my most valuable characteristics as a game economist.

While I am absolutely not at liberty to discuss the situation beyond generalities, something in that chain broke down and in that moment I knew that an SEC investigation was likely going to entangle me. As my regular readers know, I suffered through childhood physical and sexual abuse. I never really was a child after age 7 so I’m a bit of a fringe case, but under the law I was a child that whole time. On a number of occasions I found a knife to my throat from my father who was a criminally convicted and institutionalize violent sociopath. I bring this up now because that week when things broke down was the most stressful week of my life. Despite being a life long athlete, I went into cardiac arrhythmias from the stress and lack of sleep. My petite Thai partner had to help me walk 200m to get emergency medical help as I was too weak to stand.

The SEC investigation was delayed just a few weeks ago by the Trump administration, so this threat will hang over me for at least 4 more years. Crypto companies were the largest political donors to both major American political parties in the last cycle so this was widely expected to happen regardless of who was elected.

Without commenting on the situation or whether I think anything illegal happened, if a company I work at is accused of an economic crime and I am the economist representing the company, my being called as a witness is almost certain. Of course I will willingly testify to the best of my ability. I honestly don’t know the full details of what prompted the investigation. It could have been any number of things. I don’t feel threatened by the SEC at all. I like regulators. I don’t know what my employer did, if anything.

But if they did do something, and I might happen to be the only person who could provide useful testimony about that thing, then this company might feel that they could save hundreds of millions of dollars and avoid jail if I didn’t testify. I have provided two of my attorneys with information that I feel the SEC might want to ask me about, to be released in the off chance that I have an accident in the meantime.

This could be an overabundance of caution on my part, but just a few months ago this same company handed a bunch of money to my employer and sent a legal document asking them to “volunteer” all of my work product to them so that they could “verify the strength of the investment”. I don’t want my work product falling into the hands of that company, as I fear it could be used in a way that would further entangle me. After 5 years this level of interest they have in my affairs is inappropriate. I’ve left them alone but they are not leaving me alone.

Uncomfortable Talking About Blockchain Game Development

After 6 intense years my knowledge of blockchain game design/economies is quite advanced and it’s a shame that I don’t feel comfortable talking about it. The information could be quite valuable to the industry. Without that information I think it is unlikely much success will be possible in the space.

By delaying the SEC investigations for 4 more years, that puts me in 4 more years of limbo in the web3 space. I’m doing my best to get gigs outside of web3 during this time, and I am grateful for any opportunities presented to me as I try to do right for my family. I have done nothing illegal or unethical, have not been personally targeted in any legal action my entire life, and as the top expert in the space I feel compelled to share my knowledge. It’s just that I’m under such a high degree of threat that I’m honestly just afraid to talk about web3 now.

During this period I would strongly advise against anyone wading into web3 game development. The hazards, which again I am reluctant to talk about, are numerous and serious. I’m a very pro blockchain developer, and I continue to be so. But the work environment hazards are so extreme and pervasive, especially for anyone with Fiduciary Responsibility, that it’s just not worth risking your career or health.

If I can deploy a consumer friendly web3 game during this time, then a standard for how to use blockchain in gaming can be established and the space will become much safer for investment. This would also generate data which could help demonstrate the efficacy of Category 5 and 6 monetisation models using blockchain and oxytocin reward loops.

I’ve also begun talking about my 10 years of dating game research here on the substack, which I think is critical for developing advanced social system Metaverse prerequisite designs. I will continue to write about the things I think are important for healing and advancing the interactive media industry, while largely not discussing web3 or my work in web3.

I ask for your understanding, and am happy to answer critical questions which aren’t designed to get me in trouble. If you are a regulator and would like to talk to me, feel free. Some topics might require a strong subpoena. Not for myself, but because a significant cohort of lawyers will descend upon me. Just note that I put myself and my family at risk by helping you people and you have a poor track record of protecting us.