Today is the fourth Thursday in November.

Here in the United States, Thanksgiving is traditionally a day for gathering with family and enjoying a large meal together. In our household, one tradition is to go around the dinner table and say what makes us thankful on this holiday. Imagine our table filled with a big turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, and cranberry sauce, as I start…

This year, I am thankful for being able to make a living doing what I enjoy. Professionally, I am thankful for having good clients and interesting projects, and I am thankful that our company has survived in this tough industry longer than any other employer I have ever had. Personally, I am thankful that my family is healthy, that my wife is still supportive of my career despite the hardships and sacrifices, and that my children are both smart, enjoyable, and generally great kids.

While one is being thankful, it is an excellent time to also spare a thought for those less fortunate. As mentioned (and possibly given short shrift) a couple of days ago, the Child’s Play charity is an initiative within our industry to provide toys and games to kids in Children’s Hospitals in the United States and, now, Canada. It is really easy to support: Simply go to the Child’s Play web site, click a controller representing a hospital, and purchase one or more products from the (Amazon) wish list to be shipped directly to the hospital for distribution to the children. As an alternative, simply click on the PayPal link and just donate cash to the effort. It takes less time and thought but will be just as appreciated.

One more big tradition is gathering around the radio to listen to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant“, which is playing right now as I finish this message…

“You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant (‘cepting Alice).”

Awards were announced for some deserving game developers.

The Walk of Game inductees for 2006 have been announced, and the two developers on the list (among games and characters) are Sid Meier and John Carmack. The Walk of Game is located in San Francisco, within Sony’s Metreon, and styled after Hollywood’s walk of fame. Sid and John join the first two (human) inductees, Nolan Bushnell and Shigeru Miyamoto.

It hardly seems necessary to describe the accomplishments of famous developers, nor does it seem fair to reduce their contributions to the game industry to a couple of sentences, but here goes. Sid Meier, now a partner in Firaxis Games, is most famous for his design work on the games Civilization and Pirates, both published by Microprose, of which he was also a founder. John Carmack is most famous for his programming work on the Doom and Quake series, developed by id Software, where he was/is a founding member. (The Walk of Game web site has somewhat longer biographies.)

This seems like a decent time to tell my only Sid Meier story…

It was in Las Vegas in January of 1994, during CES (Consumer Electronics Show). This was back when CES was the biggest conference for video games, before its replacement with the launch of E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in 1995. For context, one needs to know that Spectrum HoloByte, the company for which I worked at the time, had purchased Microprose, Sid Meier’s company (founded with “Wild” Bill Stealey, who had already departed the scene). It is also important to realize that the combined company was still marketed with two separate brands, and we were all anxiously awaiting the overdue announcement of the new name for the combined company.

I was at the conference as the Lead Programmer on Star Trek: The Next Generation, “A Final Unity”, the highest profile game at the booth, or just as a “red shirt” to man the booth; take your pick. Realistically, Sid Meier was at the conference because, well, he’s Sid Meier, though ostensibly he was there to promote his latest title, a non-game program related to music training that is now so obscure, frankly, that I cannot even find a reference. He described it to me at the time and it sounded interesting, though pretty far afield from his successful games. Of course, others confided to me that he was important enough to the new company that he would get to work on the occasional pet project.

Anyway, after our big ST:TNG event at the (then) brand new MGM Grand, all of the combined Spectrum HoloByte/Microprose people at the conference gathered at a local restaurant for a company dinner. I was seated near Sid and several of us were talking. When he found out where I was from, Sid Meier revealed that he was also from Michigan and had attended the University of Michigan. He also mentioned at some point that he was considering what he wanted to do next (a thought process that likely culminated in his co-founding of Firaxis). I suggested that we should get together to form a small division of the company based in Michigan; we could call it MicroSpec. Alas, he chuckled at the joke but missed the serious offer behind it.

I have many other stories about or associated with that trip to Las Vegas, but they will have to wait for a future date. I do not recall ever actually meeting John Carmack (though I may have), but I do have an id Software story for a future entry as well. However, to get back to the theme at hand…

It was also recently announced that Ralph Baer has been honored with the 2004 National Medal of Technology, which is “the highest honor awarded by the President of the United States to America’s leading innovators”, according to the National Medal of Technology web site. Contrary to popular misconception (see first Walk of Game inductees), it was Ralph Baer who invented the first electronic game, the Magnavox Odyssey, which inspired the game Pong (not the other way around).

No, that “2004” above is not a typo. President Bush is clearly a little slow.

Schadenfreude is defined as “pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune.”

Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney, has taken the despicable practice of ambulance chasing to a national level in recent years. For those unfamiliar with his tactics, he seeks cases where young people commit acts of violence and then attempts to pin the blame on video games (rather than the individual who pulled the trigger or those who provided the guns). He preys on the families of victims, grabs as many headlines as possible, and files civil lawsuits against much of the game industry, including developers, publishers, manufacturers, and retailers. Mind you, he has never won any of these cases.

The latest headline case was that of Devin Moore killing three people in an Alabama police station, for which he was (appropriately) convicted and sentenced to death. Alas, he apparently told the arresting officer, “Life’s like a video game. You’ve got to die sometime.” That was certainly more than enough to attract the vultures. Testimony in his trial showed that Moore had a childhood full of mental of physical abuse, but somehow Thompson figures that his playing Grand Theft Auto III was the primary factor in the shooting.

During the resulting civil lawsuit (still in progress), Thompson’s spotlight seeking behavior prompted the attorneys for the defense to introduce a motion to have him removed from the case. In an attempt to avoid that outcome, Thompson attempted to remove himself from the lawsuit first. However, the judge in the case prevented him from withdrawing voluntarily and instead temporarily revoked Thompson’s rights to practice law in Alabama, according to this news item on Gamasutra.

To be very clear, I am saddened by the murders and my heart goes out to the families and friends of the victims. I am no fan of violent video games, either. However, Jerk Thompson and his crusade simply pour salt into the open wounds of the survivors. Video games are improperly scapegoated, while the focus is taken away from the real issues of poverty and child abuse. The only thing that benefits from all of this is one inflated ego, and I, for one, am pleased that the judge took this action.

Rant over.

For more insight into the background, one can read about how Jack Thompson reneged on a charitable donation pledge, and further, how he his now under investigation by the Florida Bar Association after accusing Penny Arcade of blackmail and criminal harassment after they had they unmitigated gall to make a $10000 charitable donation in his name, all of which gave rise to the I HATE Jack Thompson t-shirt.

Meanwhile, Penny Arcade actually makes a real difference with their Child’s Play charity, which accepts donations and provides toys and games for sick children in hospitals around the world. Better still, the charity take nothing for administrative overhead, so 100% of the donations go directly to the hospitals for distribution to the kids. In this season of giving, I encourage everybody to make a donation to Child’s Play. Or, at least, buy a t-shirt.

This Gamecraft blog has now been around for a full year.

As of this posting, Gamecraft is a year old! It hardly seems that it has been that long. Of course, that could be the fact that I am not posting here every single day, or it could simply be that I have been so busy over this period that the time flew right by. My wife will probably contend that it is because I have no sense of time, which I always counter with the observation that this is true for all of the very best game programmers.

Reflecting back over these twelve months, a great deal has been happening here at Digital Gamecraftâ„¢ and SophSoft, Incorporated:

• We completed a new product, Most Popular Solitaire, for Goodsol Development.
• I testified before the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to video game restrictions.
• We finished two significant upgrades to Pretty Good MahJongg, with another in development.
• I attended and reported on Future Play 2005, the first major game conference here in East Lansing.
• We finished a major update to Action Solitaire, and another upgrade is the works.
• I gave formal talks to Spartasoft and to the IGDA – Michigan South chapter.
• We added functionality to the card library for a new version of Pretty Good Solitaire.
• I attended SIC 2005, where Pretty Good Solitaire won a People’s Choice Award.
• We produced several game designs, including those for two titles currently in development.
• I helped launch the ASP Indie Game SIG within the Association of Shareware Professionals.
• We sponsored the Campfire under the Full Harvest Moon event at the Grand Rapids Schmooze.
• I went ice racing again and even led part of a lap before wrecking my car rather spectacularly.

For a partial list of blogged accomplishments over the course of a year, that is not too bad. The next year is shaping up to be even busier, but I am intending to post more often about this craft of game development. I certainly hope that it has been and continues to be a worthwhile read for the hundreds of people who check here regularly. Maybe by this time next year, that will be “thousands”.

Thanks for reading.

The same great content with a new look.

This week, Thomas Warfield‘s blog, A Shareware Life, moved fully to a new blog site, TypePad. Along with the move to a new service, A Shareware Life has a new look and, apparently, a reinvigorated author. I know that he has been planning this for a while, and there have been multiple posts daily since the changeover started.

A Shareware Life is the blog that I check most frequently, and that would be the case even if my company, SophSoft, Incorporated, were not working closely with his, Goodsol Development. I am not just saying that because he made Gamecraft his first new Link of the Day… honestly.

For a blog that I will not be checking often, see Solitaire Trader, which Tom launched earlier this month. That site just makes my head spin. Maybe someday when I have both time and money to spare…

Here is one final look at the conference.

Today, Gamasutra published a feature article on the Future Play 2005 game conference. The article, Event Wrap Up: 2005 Future Play Conference, was written by Scott Brodie, a student game developer here at Michigan State University.

As mentioned in a previous Gamecraft entry, Game Competition Results, Scott is President of Spartasoft, the game development group at Michigan State University, and one of several members working on a game, Ballistic, for the Independent Games Festival. (Since the submission deadline was yesterday, I trust that they got their entry in.)

A federal court issued an injunction against enforcement of the new law.

Last week, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted a request by the Entertainment Software Association and issued a temporary injunction preventing implementation of the Michigan legislation signed into law in September. The law was scheduled to take effect on December 1st, right at the peak season for retail game sales, so this ruling grants retailers a reprieve.

In his ruling, Judge George Caman Steeh found that “it is unlikely that the State can demonstrate a compelling interest in preventing a perceived ‘harm’.” He also wrote that “the Act will likely have a chilling effect on adults’ expression, as well as expression that is fully protected as to minors.” According to the ESA, Judge Steeh stated that brain imaging and social science research presented were unpersuasive and insufficient to sustain the argument that violent video games cause aggressive behavior.

In my (unscholarly) understanding of First Amendment interpretation, a state would have to prove three legal ‘pillars’ to regulate free expression: that it has a compelling interest in restricting expression, that the expression to be regulated leads directly to injurious behavior, and that the law is tailored as narrowly as possible to only prevent the particular expression. As I read quotes from the injunction, it seems that the Judge is indicating that the State of Michigan failed to prove two points and will probably fail the last as well.

I particularly liked this paragraph from the official Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association response: “We remain supportive of the industry’s self-regulatory efforts and our members are committed to partnering with and empowering parents. It is unfortunate that valuable time has been wasted with political opportunism rather than working proactively with the industry to educate consumers. Perhaps with this knowledge and foreshadowing, we will cease squandering resources and focus our collective efforts on working together.”

For those keeping score at home, anti-game legislation in the United States is currently 0-3 (losses in Indianapolis, St. Louis, and the State of Washington) and behind on points in the current match. Unfortunately, following passage of such laws in Illinois and California, as well as here in Michigan, several opportunistic politicians in other states are jumping on the bandwagon, so even more resources are being squandered pointlessly. Having seen the politics on this issue up close, I am sickened by the pretentious posturing by legislators who could not care less which side of the issue they are on, as long as they think that it will gain them votes.

Here is my completely unrelated quote of the day, courtesy of Colin McRae, 1995 World Rally Champion, on his performance in Rally Australia this past weekend: “First stage was a bit slow; I reckon a school bus would have driven through there with more commitment than I did.” Made me laugh.

It was a great day for our local community.

Today, the East Lansing High School Boys Varsity Soccer Team won the Michigan State Soccer Championship (Division 2) by a score of 1-0, with the winning goal scored with 16 minutes remaining in the game. This is the school’s third state soccer championship, and first since 2002.

What makes this victory particularly meaningful to me is that it is the first state championship won by a team with players that I coached several years ago. At the time, it was clear that I had some very special players and I predicted this very outcome. Alas, my older son decided not to play soccer in high school, but I am pleased to see that a few of his former teammates continued and have had success. Next year will be their senior year, so hopefully I will get to post this again in about 12 months.

Congratulations! I am proud of you guys.

I am trying to recover from a rather severe cold.

Over the past week, I have been suffering from a cold. I usually just ride them out, and one of the advantages of working from home is the ability to care for myself and still be able to make progress on important projects, albeit at a slight disadvantage to productivity.

Once or twice a year, though, I get sick enough to actually take medicine to (supposedly) help. Ironically, perhaps, every time I decide that I need to relieve the cold symptoms, the next day or two are just miserable. There is no good, scientific way to determine whether I am resorting to drugs just as the worst part of the illness hits, or if the decongestants are causing me more harm than good. [Insert preferred pharmaceutical industry rant here.]

The one thing that most of my really bad colds seem to have in common is that they tend to correspond with beautiful weather. After a long Michigan winter, the cold will hit hard on the first day with bright sunshine, or, as in this instance, it arrives on the last lovely day before the big cold front is forecast to drop temperatures below freezing.

Sorry, no major revelations about game development or design herein, but one needs to complain every so often to dissipate a foul mood.

I have been programming computer games for more than a quarter century.

After reading the diversity report from the IGDA, which concludes, among other things, that the average tenure in the game industry is only 5.4 years, I started to think back to my very first programming experience all those years ago. I dug out an old posting where I recalled the day that my career started. Forgive me while I reminisce…

On Friday, December 22, 1978, I met up with a friend, Harold Stewart, while visiting my father in East Lansing during Winter break. It had been only half year since I had moved to Houston, but there were changes in town. Harold took me to a new place called New Dimensions in Computing. There he introduced me to a friend of his, Rob Raisch.

The big selling point of the visit was “video games“, so Rob sat me down at an Exidy Sorceror where a game of Wizard’s Castle was in progress. In retrospect, given that I was already an expert in the (then very limited) area of video games, with a growing interest in Dungeons & Dragons, a text-based RPG in BASIC was probably the best possible introduction.

I was hooked by the concept of being able to play whenever I wanted, at a deliberate pace, without having to feed in quarters. The interaction was novel, and I could even play different games on the same machine!

Then it happened…

In the game, I walked “N” into a room with an angry monster. Without a chance to do anything but panic, it attacked, hit, and “You are dead.” Bummer. Rob heard my sigh and told me to hit the [Control] and [C] keys at the same time, and I followed his instructions. I thought I broke something, which I discovered I had.

“Type ‘LET H=100’. Good. Now hit [Enter]. OK. Type ‘CONTINUE’ and hit [Enter].”

I did as instructed and, lo and behold, my character was back to life. Not only back to life, but powerful. That is the way I felt, too. Not only could I play different games on one machine, at my leisure, but I was in control. My character could be immortal; I felt omnipotent.

Anyway, after some discussion, and more than a little coaxing from Rob, I decided to relinquish the current game. (Remember, the idea that one would actually quit a game in progress was new to me, being contrary to the idea of arcade video games.) He wanted to show me something even cooler, but not a game.

In the course of a few minutes, I learned about “NEW” and “RUN”, line numbers, variables, “FOR” loops, and the “GOTO” command. I was able to use earlier knowledge to get out of that early BASIC program everybody writes consisting of an infinite loop of “PRINT” with ones own name.

The seed was planted, and I realized that things were going to change. I returned the next day, met a college student who was trying to figure out why his program to distinguish among prime, abundant, deficient, and perfect numbers was not producing the correct results. Honestly, I just wanted him to finish so I could try this programming thing again.

After the student spent a few minutes explaining the concepts of perfect, abundant, and deficient numbers (primes I already knew), I looked through the program listing on the screen with him and spotted the error. Debugging on my second day, and helping a college student (while still only in 7th grade myself )… I was definitely hooked.

I had no real agenda when I returned to NDIC that Saturday afternoon other than to get my hands on the machine again. After helping to fix the number theory program, we started to make more changes, working together to try to discover patterns in the relationships of abundant numbers to primes, just because we could.

Alas, it took me three and a half years, and the proceeds from my first professional programming job, before I actually got a personal computer of my own, but I spent the intervening years begging and borrowing access whenever and wherever I could. When that failed, I actually wrote game programs, twenty or thirty pages long, in pencil on lined paper, to be typed in when I next got computer access. (I still have a few. )

Now, all these years later, I am still programming computer games. Most importantly, though, I still really enjoy what I do.