The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Month: September 2005 (Page 2 of 2)

Katrina: the Gathering

I apologize for not being more active lately. To be honest, thinking about game design while the utter disgrace that is the federal, state and local response to Katrina has really been impossible to do. I’ve got 3 half-written posts on the subject, but I didn’t want this to turn into all-spew, all-the-time. I found a way to combine game design and Katrina ranting. You can see the overly nerdy results here. In doing so, I realized that you could pretty much sum up my opinions just by calling attention to the inane, idiotic or heartless quotes made by those who purport to be in control. Thank god Magic cards have room for flavor text.

At this point, nothing makes me angrier than people attempting to claim that the federal government did nothing wrong, and they did everything they could according to their plans and regulations. If that was the design, the design was so incompetent that even more people should be fired. Screwing up under pressure is one thing. Screwing up that monumentally when you have four years to plan for the next catastrophe is quite another. Continue reading

Can We At Least Agree To Redefine Looting?

Really. I’m just plain sick of seeing people who stole food, pampers, strained beets and bottled water described as ‘looting’. The ‘zero tolerance’ for looting makes me even more ill to my stomach – yet another proclamation by a government official that’s not actually in the trenches trying to survive.

Hint: all branches of government forgot to drop provisions off at the Superdome before calling the evacuation there. Hint 2: apparently, FEMA didn’t KNOW anyone was at the convention center until 2 days later, so no food was dropped there. If you didn’t loot food and water, you were probably going to die. Continue reading

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