Category: Behind the Scenes (Page 1 of 3)

I’ve tried to keep a very laissez faire attitude towards the comments thread on this blog.  It was a stance I took when I proposed GAMR – I felt that the best way to show off the idiocy that was eating at the anti-consumer movement known as GamerGate was to let their comments speak for themselves.

Along the way, though, the comments on this blog took a turn, from being a place where people with divergent opinions could healthily disagree to one where attacks were getting uncomfortably personal.

Today I started deleting comments that have, in my opinion, crossed the line.  This has centered on one inflammatory person, and some posts from people who responded to this person in kind and who, in all honesty, should know better.  One of those posts was, in fact my own.  Know that, definitely in the short term, my tolerance for that kind of bullshit is going to drop to about zero.  And to the nameless, faceless person who caused all this to happen by launching bombs at people from the safety of anonymity, I invite you to go start your own blog if you want to keep posting in the manner you are now, because the stuff you were posting most recently isn’t going to pass muster here anymore.

I still welcome those who have divergent opinions, and I still have several pro-GamerGate voices who post on here who I feel do contribute to the conversation in a way where the tone can still be civil, constructive and interesting.  I’ve in fact invited one such person to do a front page post (we’ll see if he accepts my offer.  I don’t want Zen of Design to become an echo chamber, but I also don’t want the comments thread to be a poo throwing exercise either.

During my time off, I have been devoting a fair amount of my time and energy to rescuing my old blog content – a couple of years ago, I had an incident with my hosting that resulted in me needing to start over with a clean state, which put about 8 years of content in limbo.  I’ve spent the last few weeks in my spare time rescuing that content from purgatory.  Of particular note:

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I’ve updated it, so it has working links, and now has a section that talks about watching your social media footprint.  Here’s a link.

I’ve also readded all of the presentations that I’ve made over the years (well, mostly. I think a couple have been lost to bad thumb drives and whatnot).  Here’s a link to that.

I’ve changed the theme to be more readable than the previous, particularly in the reply chains.  I’m still looking for potentially better layouts, particularly for comment threads.  If you have feedback, or better ideas on WordPress templates (keep in mind, I am disinclined to do more than hit the ‘install’ button on one), then the comment thread here is where to give feedback.  Once I find something that I (and or whoever comments) likes, I’ll then replace whatever key art is in the template.

Also, I’ve been importing my old blog posts from my old blog into this one.  I am now up to late 2007, otherwise known as ‘the last round of console wars have entered full flame’.  Also, it was right before the first round of post-WoW MMOs came out, so you can still taste the optimism.

It seems like there’s a lot more to go, but my blogging really slowed down in around 2010 or so, so I’m pretty sure I’m through the worst of it.

Since I finally have time to do so between gigs, I’ll be going through my old blog archives and trying to import stuff that is still relevant and/or interesting to my new blog over the course of the next few days.  Interested parties will discover that, for example, I’m certainly not going to be confused with a Social Justice Warrior.  (In fact, the biggest thing keeping me from making my dream game is the fact that Apple Cert doesn’t allow NC-17 stuff =)

Also, I’ve started up an Ask.fm site, which you can access here.  You can ask me any question you like here, and I’ll respond to them.  The best ones will likely become zen posts in the long run.

Today was my last day at BioWare: Austin.  It was a distinct pleasure to work at one of the finest game studios in the world for 8 years of my life.  In particular, shipping Star Wars: the Old Republic has been the highlight of my career.  It’s hard to leave, and I’m leaving some incredible talent behind, but for me, it’s the right thing to do.

Oh, and I’m pretty happy about all this. Continue reading