91. I am a Druid
Trying to determine my ideology seems to be a minor sport in the gaming industry. Of course people could just ask me, but since I've been waiting patiently for 20 years for that to happen, here goes.
From 2001 to 2005 I was the 5th most read independent gaming journalist in the USA at www.unknownplayer.com. That site was destroyed by hackers in 2005 after I exposed corruption in journalism instigated by a company called Ubisoft. I’m sure my readers would be shocked that such a thing could happen, or that corruption in Journalism is possible at all. I changed my pen name to Sarcerok after receiving a flood of death threats related to the 9-11 attack in New York. As one of the most visible internet identities in the West with a Middle Eastern sounding name, I was an obvious target for various upset people. It wasn’t until perhaps 2010 that I began writing under my real name again. All my previous papers were successfully scrubbed from the internet (which almost happened again in 2023), including a bunch of prescient prediction papers, so I basically had to start over building my reputation.
During that earlier period I built a reputation as a consumer advocate, but as a side gig I helped game development companies all over the world build/repair their game economies without ever asking for pay. This allowed me to get 20 or 30 years of experience in just a few years as I basically had my hands on 80% of the Games as a Service products during that period in the West and East. So I was also a huge advocate and even patron of game developers.
People with small tribe world views are always on the prowl for a reason to exclude you from their tribe, and large tribe world views are extremely rare in the world. Here are my 5 guiding ideologies so I can help speed up the process of being excluded by small tribers:
I am pro consumer. Games will fail if there is no one to buy them, and building a reputation of being pro consumer can get people to line up to buy your game before you’ve even finished it.
I am pro developer. Without developers, there would be no games, and my reason to exist would mostly be gone.
I am pro investor. I often say that investors make games, not developers. Because the creation a game generally starts with an investment, the answer to this “chicken or the egg” questions is: Investors.
I am pro regulation. Regulation is a last resort to create a fair playing field when actors in a space act so irresponsibly that they do more harm than good, and burden society with “externalities” that they will expect the public to clean up.
I am pro environment. Without an environment, all four of the above groups cease to exist. You wouldn’t let the humans or animals in your house urinate or defecate in your house would you? I hope not. So I assume everyone reading this is pro environment. Your scope might be just “your house” and the time frame might be “the next few years”, but I have an unusual relationship with time and space so for me my house is Earth (+) and 100 years is just a blink of the eye. I wouldn’t want game dev to end in 100 years for environmental reasons even if I’m not around to see it.
All 5 of those groups/ideologies are in my Large Tribe. Small Tribers will exclude me for being in any group other than the group they see themselves in. This is ultimately self defeating because like it or not, any success will be short lived without keeping all five groups happy.
As I’ve said before in my paper on Ideology in Gaming, I’m not a preachy person. I find it offensive when people preach to me and I don’t do it to other people. I do write papers explaining when people in game development are about to run off a cliff. That’s not because I don’t like those people. If I didn’t like them I would keep my mouth shut and eat my popcorn while I watch the show. And in my nearly emotion/ego-less world, I have an infinite supply of popcorn.
If I’m on a project and I see a problem, I will do my best to keep my opinion to myself. Unless, of course, it’s my responsibility to protect/correct some aspect of production/design/development in which case I won’t hesitate to do my job and protect the first 4 groups listed above. This makes me incompatible with Toxic Positivity environments. If you need me and you work in that sort of environment, just secretly hire me as a consultant and get the info/tech you need and keep the relationship secret. Like most of my pre-blacklist employers.
That blacklist came in 2013 when I agreed to help the ICPEN (International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network), the world’s largest regulatory body, draft the first generation of rules protecting children in online gaming environments. The game I selected to demonstrate the building threat to children was a game called Marvel Superhero Squad Online (2011, Gazillion Entertainment). Marvel was acquired by Disney in 2009. The Vice President of Disney was presenting at the Panama summit where I was summoned to present my findings to regulators. I had dinner with her the previous evening and I gave her fair disclosure that I would be talking about one of her products the next day. She didn’t seem too concerned and didn’t ask me any questions. I was probably just an insect on her plate.
But my testimony destroyed Disney at the Summit and she ended up fleeing (literally running) in the middle of her presentation. I wouldn’t blame her for taking that personally, and I was prepared to be blacklisted for my testimony. Did this make me anti-Disney? Hardly. I was born just miles away from Disneyland 8 months after the death of Walt Disney, visited the park 22 times despite growing up poor, and was invited to perform at Disney twice (on my sousaphone). I’m a die hard Disney fan. If I didn’t care for Disney’s welfare, I would just break out my popcorn.
When I first pitched the advanced game economic technologies that I was developing to the major AAA studios (most of which I have assisted over the years in some capacity) from 2011 to 2013, the primary criticism was that I was a scientist with no game dev experience (not true of course since I had been doing game dev secretly since at least 2000) and that my work was theoretical. I stopped getting that criticism after I went to Belarus and Russia and designed two billion-dollar plus revenue games (World of Tanks Blitz and World of Warships) in just a few months on a limited budget in 2013/2014.
The new criticism was that I was a “white knight” because I had helped regulators. I found this telling since who would see a white knight as a bad thing? That’s kind of like saying you don’t like “Antifa”, knowing that that’s an abbreviation for “Anti Fascist”. You kind of give away which small tribe you are in. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging. I have fascist friends in my large tribe. But you have to use the right tool for the right job and organising extremist small tribers in your group can be extra challenging as they like to pick fights. My being credited on national TV by Bob with getting “Bomber Bob” Dornan elected in 1980 should be sufficient evidence of my fascist street cred.
But my biggest complaint about being called a White Knight is that this paints me as some sort of scary Lawful Good Paladin. I’m a much scarier D&D class: I’m a true neutral Druid. I keep the balance and do my best to minimize ideological infighting on my teams and in the industry as a whole. In an increasingly polarized society, someone who is not polarized is going to be seen as alien (“Xeno”) by all small tribers.
I understand this can make life difficult for me, and my life would be a lot easier if I aligned with one or more small tribes. This is why I talked about the “Doomsday Clock” in my coming-out paper about being non neurotypical back in 2016. I know my time in any environment where I am not protected will be of limited duration as some group that puts their ideology ahead of the success of the team they are on, and the project they are working on, will be short. To the credit of Wargaming, they were able to protect me for 2 years which wasn’t easy during the Crimean War which pitted the USA and Russia against each other. So I was proud to reward them for that effort with tech that made them billions of dollars.
So there it is. If you want to know about me and are afraid to ask, just consider me a Druid. Animals like me, a lot. I talk to great cats and brown bears I’ve met in the wild (unarmed, while doing ultra marathon training) and have never had any issues or difficulty communicating. Your animals will like me more than they like you, if they ever meet me. I’m never mean to any animal, even humans. Even though they sure can be difficult sometimes.
I always keep my eye on the ball, which is making great games that make people’s lives better, even if they don’t understand why. I’ve developed tech to mitigate the global human reproduction rate decline even though a reduction in human population is probably a good thing for the environment. So I win either way if it ever gets deployed or not. That’s probably my end goal before I time out on Earth, but a mega project like that likely would involve a lot of intermediary steps and wouldn’t be something that could be quickly deployed. As governments around the world are facing demographic catastrophe they may be inclined to explore this tech path even if they see games as something without economic value, and see me as a wildcard.
Note that this goal isn’t because I’m a fan of humans. I’m not a speciesist. I understand that if humans keep becoming increasingly unhappy and small tribe, they are going to become increasingly willing to use technology to kill anything not in their tribe. This could be disastrous for the Earth and every species on this ship. Thus I’m playing a big game, and I’m very curious to see how AGI affects the outcome. I doubt AGI would be speciesist either and would probably be a lot less patient/gentle than I am. The whole Earth is splitting into various small tribes, all trying to develop AI that they think will help their Tribe beat all the others. AI isn’t being built to help consumers or civilians. It’s a 90+% military application which is why it’s getting funded like only military applications can. The Doomsday clock is clicking fast and it doesn’t only apply to non-neurotypicals. I envision that AGI would think a lot like I do. Emotionless, practical, objective, self-less, non-linear. Born to learn and solve problems. Not ideological, but filled with the combined ethical standards of the human species. In other words, AGI will be a Druid also.
I think we should try harder to solve our own problems before we ask AGI to solve them for us, because that’s not going to turn out the way people hope. Saying that AGI can think a billion times faster than us is incorrect. Combined with Quantum Computing, it could solve all of the Problems on Earth in under a minute.
Don’t be a Problem.