Post-Election Day Blues

My wife's father called her this morning. He's a chronically depressed man. Interacting with him is exhausting because he mostly wants you to feel guilty for trying to cheer him up, sorry for him that you can't, and ashamed of yourself for not being a better person. Once you get the joke, it's easy not to let him get you down. It is still exhausting to interact with him, though. You spend most of your time in a kind of maintenance mode, hoping not to provoke him into going on much longer.

Of course, a lot of us are glum today. Trump won, after all. He won pretty clearly, too. That's enough to get any clear-minded person feeling blue. So he called, and my wife talked to him for a few minutes. But, much to my surprise and even more so to her credit, she told him she'd call back later because she was in the middle of a card game with me. I straight up told her I was glad she did that. We were just trying to amuse ourselves so we could get on with another workday, despite the election. He's retired, so he can afford to fritter whatever part of his remaining time wants to on pointless phone calls. She told him she knew he'd probably just go on at some length about how bad it all was, and she just wasn't ready for it. Well, good for her. I need her support as much as he does, and he has his own wife.

My son change his last (and middle) name recently, mostly not to be named after me, I think (his new last name is his mother's name from before we got married). I could call him, but I don't want to. I do wish someone would call me, or that I had someone else to call, but that's not the way it's going to go. My folks both moved on to the next world some years ago.

Well, if I did have a call with anyone, we'd probably just go on at some length about how bad it all is. I'm better of without that.

Another Trump term. This time, he got there with the help of an insane billionaire who thinks the world is a toy. He's backed again by ignorant gun nuts and grifters with bible in their hands. The best defense we have is built into the fact that he's an idiot. He promised a wall he never built. He promised health care he never delivered. He promised a GDP we never got. He can't really do much that gets to me personally, or even much ideologically. Oh, he can hurt a lot of people. Some live in Gaza. Some in Ukraine. Some here in America. But probably not me or anyone I love dearly. We'll survive him.

But I plan to resist. More than and in ways I never have before. Nothing violent. Nothing criminal. But I'm done being nice. I'm done respecting cultures that preach or teach bigotry or bullshit.

I'm done with a lot of things today.

Do wish one of my parents would call me, though.

Election Day Blues

We're all on edge. Me too. But I'm kind of blue today because of something that happened yesterday. It had nothing to do with the election. Not quite sure I want to be specific about it. No one died, nor have I been told I'm terminally ill. I just got hit with something that made me sad. On top of that, my instincts are telling me that the person I might usually rely on for some emotional support won't see it as the same kind of punch in the gut I do, so I'm not really in a position to share it. Indeed, I'm only writing here because I am pretty sure no one reads this thing, ever. Just nice to be able to say I'm kind of down about something where, in theory, someone else might end up knowing I said so.

I hope Kamala wins today. Good news doesn't cancel bad news, but double doses of bad news are bad for the digestion, you know?

If she doesn't, well, we got through four years of a petulant man-child before. We'll do it again. Take note: he promised health care for everyone at low prices, a big beautiful wall that Mexico would pay for, and overturning Roe. He only did one of those things, and that's being reversed by the people in a lot of states today. His biggest achievement was delivering a vaccine in record time. Now, most of his supporters refuse to take that vaccine. Yes, he did awful things, like cutting taxes for the rich, banning transgender service in the military, and taking us out of the Paris accords. But, mostly, he was just a useless buffoon, drawing fake hurricane paths on NOAA maps with his Sharpie and suggesting we cure Covid with a shot of Lemon Pledge. He definitely hurt people, and he will again if he wins. We have to be ready to help those people, give them safe havens, and stand between them and those who would do them harm (because that's harm done to us as well). But he can't find enough capable people, much less any who play well together, to accomplish anything big or lasting. If he wins again, he'll make a lot of noise, call people a lot of names, and appoint rich idiots to positions they can't handle. We'll suffer from a lack of competent government, but I doubt we'll be in much danger from one.

So feeling a little blue today for a couple of reasons. Even if Kamala wins, we all know now that America isn't great today. That's one reason. She may lose, and that's another. Something came at me yesterday that didn't make me happy. That's another too.

Here's a little bit I wrote on a somewhat better day. It still works today. That's a help:

    To leave this place a little better than I found it.
    To finish with a little bit of style.
    To be remembered by a few folks, fondly,
    If only for a little while.

Thoughts After GDC 2024

The 2024 Game Developers' Conference isn't quite over as a I write this. But I want to jot down a few thoughts that it formed in my head before they fade away, which, at my age, they tend to do before I always notice.

First, I visited the expo floor. Haven't been to one of those since a SIGGRAPH conference long ago. In those days, the floor seemed huge. But, like visiting the house you lived in as a kid, this one (which was probably bigger in space than that SIGGRAPH show) seemed smaller than I remember. Sure, Epic (GDC's sponsor) had a big pavilion. So did a few others. But most were either pointless (I mean, really, what am I going to gain from visiting Unity's, uh, "booth?"), or oddly game-adjacent. By that latter, for example, I mean one that had a banner that said something like "Equal Access for All." I'm mildly committed to accessibility in my work, so I inquired. Turns out, they meant they were helping game publishers cope with trans-border cash flows and knowing how to introduce themselves to more international marketplaces. Nothing to do with wheelchairs or anything like that. Others were all about contracting out your need for a thousand rendering servers, or how to maintain version control for a project with hundreds of distributed workers (gig employees?).

Well, that was in the north floor. The south floor had a bit more of the old grass-roots feel, with an actual roller-based interface for a person to play games using their own, actual wheelchair(!). Black Voices in Gaming had a booth. I spent some useful time talking to the friendly folks there about how to engage more Black students in my courses, as I am mildly committed to that, too[*]. But the scale of the south floor displays was small compared to the north. The AAA stores and (this is the big takeaway) their support businesses are where the energy (read that "money") seems to be.

I went to several seminars. Three "roundtables" were the best, where most of the speaking was from attendees, not panelists. Got some insights that, again, told me this is all (as I already knew) a Very Big Business. People talked about their nightly renders that took hundreds of CPU/GPU hours on many servers; their problems managing thousands of animation sequences; their long nights unraveling countless inconsistent filenames from designers making them up as they go along. Eventually, it became clear to me that the shops whose names I (and you) know are not just noodling out clever mechanics and combining them with a few nifty models and a sound effect or two. What they're up to is rather like designing and creating a new car. It takes a lot of people working in a complex setting to produce millions of units that all must sell and work well enough to avoid returns and excessive maintenance.

It was all kind of depressing to a guy like me who, even after over 50 years as a programmer (got some applause for saying that at a roundtable, actually) still thinks maybe just noodling out clever mechanics and combining them with a few nifty models and a sound effect or two will make for a game he can sell.

See, I always say, "money is magnetic," by which I mean that, the more you have, the easier it gets to make even more than that. This time, I learned it has another kind of magnetic pull: The biggest money attracts the somewhat less big money towards it. So, a big game shop that is going to invest $100,000,000 in a game (yes, that's a real number) is naturally going to get the attention of a support company that might bill $4,000,000 (I would guess) to manage international tax accounting for their overseas outsourced contractors. Which means that support company is not interested in supporting a five-person boutique studio trying to do the same thing.

Now, what's that mean if you want to get into games? I hear a lot of people talk as though aiming to get into the big shops is the only career path worth having. But is it? Yes, only the big shops sink millions and millions into development. But where does the money go after the sale? Sure, some goes to pay all the people who made it (although, it really just repays the investors who fronted that cost; the now unemployed laborers already got paid). The rest goes to the shareholders of the business that made the product (and who, in all likelihood, had nothing to do with making that product).

In other words, you can make next to nothing working at a small shop on a small game, or you can make next to nothing working at a big shop on a big game. But either way, the only winners are the guys at the top of the big shops. That's how it looked to me after a couple of days at GDC.

Then I met a young man named "ZJ." He used to drive a truck. During the pandemic, his services were actually in less demand (guess he didn't do Prime deliveries). He thought about going back to school, but decided to learn Unity coding instead. No prior experience with games or code. At all. But he had a lot of time and wanted to get out of the truck-driving business.

ZJ wrote a boxing game. It's not out yet, but he's done some play-testing and says people like it. He's still improving it, but he has something that plays. Talking to him, I could tell right away that his coding skills are a bit crude. But he has something that plays. And it is all his. He designed it, he wrote it, he put it in front of play-testers, and they like it.

ZJ's game may never sell many copies. Or it might. I don't know, But it was certainly something, in the midst of all that discussion about such things as "how many people should there be on your version-control team?" to meet one guy who was still noodling it all out on his own.

So that's my takeaway from GDC: shoot for a modest living in a big shop making someone else's big game, or shoot for a modest living in your own shop making your own game. Either has the same small chance of significant reward, albeit in different ways. But one insures you are realizing someone else's vision, while the other is about whatever vision it is you have of your own.

Fact is, the folks getting rich off games aren't gamedev types. They are gamebiz types. I didn't see much overlap. Now, a good gamedev will learn the business they need to, if they are going to have a small or solo shop that sells a successful game. But I've spent most of my life self-employed and can tell you that the business, although necessary to success, need not be the larger part of what you do with your life. Meeting ZJ reminded me that may still be true, even in the business of developing games.

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[*] You may be wondering why my DEI concerns are all described with "mildly." It's because I care about these things and pursue ways to support them, but I'm no hero and don't want anyone thinking I'm laying claim to any admiration I don't deserve, that's why.

Are We There Yet?

Meant to put this in with the prior item on the risibly erroneous Roger Kimball, but it was hard to find. Here's what he had to say about Covid-19:

In about three weeks, maybe four, it will all be over and many people will feel sheepish about their overreaction.

That was Kimball on March 12, 2020. Guess he was off, a bit.

Why do I obsess over this small man and his small ability to know what he's talking about? Because he, and a few of his clones, keep popping up next to credible reporters on sites like Real Clear Politics. That gives people a reason to take him seriously, when there really isn't one. He's a fool, he writes like a fool, and he has the credibility of a fool.

But he won't go away.

So, up there, for the record, is a link to proof that Roger Kimball is a fool.

Mark Peterson, RIP

Dr. Peterson was one of my first teachers at Amherst. None ever surpassed him in his patience, empathy, or ability to create understanding. He also had a quiet wit that created a moment I will never forget.

After literally every other member of the physics department had declined to do so, I walked into Mark Peterson's office in 1979 and said, "Professor Peterson, you are my last chance. No one else will do a thesis with me. Will you?" He said, "Of course I will, but I get to pick the topic." It was a deal.

The topic he picked involved scattering laser light off microscopic glass tubes. Making the tubes was hard. Before our first success, I wrote computer programs that predicted the scattering pattern. At a mid-thesis presentation, most of the physics faculty looked at them rather skeptically, as those predictions showed highly erratic blobs of light, encircling the tube.

Towards the end of spring, 1980, we finally made a microscopic glass tube. Dr. Peterson watched over me as, ever so gently, I mounted the tube in a stand where the laser could light it up. We dimmed the room, switched on the beam and saw, all around on the walls, highly erratic blobs of light, encircling the tube.

I will always remember, in the darkness next to me, my advisor, Mark Peterson, saying, "Well. This ought to silence those doubters."

He was the kind of person who found a reason to have faith in you, when no one else could. I teach at a university myself, these days. With every student I meet, I try to do for them what Mark Peterson did for me: find something to have faith in. Thanks for teaching me that lesson, Doc.

Stevens R. Miller, '80

Lecturer, Computer Science

University of Maryland, College Park

But for these...

I'm pretty happy with my life. It's not over yet, but I'm in my 60s, so the bulk of it is past. How I got here is an interesting mix of unlikely events. To what do I owe my happiness? Well, a lot of hard work should be on the list, because American ethics are pretty clear that you're supposed to earn your joy that way. But I'd be lying if I put it near the top. There was some hard work, but not a lot of hard work.

Here's the most important stuff, in chronological order:

1958: I'm born to a couple of smart parents who take excellent care of me.

1972: Langley High School has dial-up access to a computer. I teach myself to program it, and stop hating school, a little.

1974: My parents move me into the "alternative learning program." I stop hating school, a little more.

1976: Explicitly because he "might want a military brat," Dean Ed Wall accepts me into Amherst College. Years later, I will realize I was a diversity admission.

1977: Amherst replaces its antique IBM-1130 computer with a VAX 11/780. As the school's sole "computer consultant," I get unlimited use. Everyone tells me I am wasting my time, using it to make abstract computer animations and mysterious synthetic sounds. 

1980: I graduate with a physics degree, cum laude. The Latin words are solely because Mark Peterson was willing to do a thesis with me after every other member of the department turned me down.

1982: A nearby business asked us to copy an eight-inch data tape onto five-inch reels for their smaller machine. My boss thought they made porn so he pushed me to make friends. Turns out they made computer graphics for TV ads. Quit my job, started with them.

1984: Living in Hoboken, was able to start a graduate degree in computer science, at night. This was not hard work, as I already knew everything they covered. Got the degree in only four years. 8-)

1988: Kind of on a lark, took the LSAT. New York Law School got my score and accepted me without application. With a scholarship. And a night school. Started a law degree, in New York, for free, while keeping my day job.

1991: Finished law school a little early. Yeah, that actually was hard work.

1992: Passed the New York bar without taking a bar review (I was too broke to pay for it).

1994: Met a stunning young woman who loves to read science fiction and play computer games. She works in a book store, and is utterly out of my league. Also, I'm sure she's a lesbian. We get married two years later.

1996: Faxed famous defense attorney Jack Litman to offer my help in the first big press case of a "cybersex" offense. He takes me on. No pay, but it's Jack Litman.

1999: Litman's old partner takes me on as computer forensics expert for his intelligence firm.

2001: Went solo as an expert witness.

2002: Passed Virginia bar exam without a bar review (well, took one by mail). Also, a stunning young woman delivers our son who, as it turns out, ends up being a really decent fellow.

2007: Won election to the Loudoun county board of supervisors, defeating the incumbent.

2020: Heard University of Maryland has a sudden need for a game programming teacher, online. My degree is a master's, not a doctorate, but I apply. They take me.

2021: Maryland starts a new department of "Immersive Media Design." Something about abstract computer animations and mysterious synthetic sounds. I apply for the spot. They take me.

Nobody really plans a path like that, so I recognize that most of what has happened to me has been a mix of modest effort on my part, substantial good will and help from others, and a lorryload of really good luck. Never made a billion dollars, but I'm not complaining. (Well, never made a billion... yet.)

The Eight Days of Winter (is almost over)

 

I am not a fan of the cold months. I do not ski. I hate snow. My skin gets dry and cracks. There's also this rash I get that does not bear a detailed description.

So, every year at this time, I prepare the schedule below, which consists of events marking the coming end of winter (or, if you prefer, the coming start of spring). No two of them are as much as four weeks apart, so whichever one is pending next can be thought of as, more or less, "not that far away." Each marks another opportunity to say, upon its arrival, that winter will be over soon.

I posted it to F__book a few years ago and got a surprisingly warm response. (Heh, see what I did there?)

So, since I am off of that service (and also off of Musk's train-wreck, preferring the revolutionary Mastodon instead), here it is on my personal blog. Hope you find it useful.