Data obsession and the politics of facts

Can crunch ever be fixed in the games industry?

Improving on the promise of Master of Orion

Master of Orion was one of the most influential game I played in my teens. Fueled by my love for space exploration and adventure, I spent countless hours planning the expansion of my empire, working with and against other factions, coming up with plans and strategies to end up at the top when each game session reached its end.

Unleashing the power of small teams

For many years around the turn of the century, some of us (myself included) used to believe that the best games can only come from big teams. We were tricked into thinking this because it was the status quo. The gatekeepers, who back then largely controlled what gets released to market, only considered specific kinds of games that met certain criteria - a growing list of "back of the box" features that the publishers and their marketers decided the market wants. In addition to implementing those features, game development teams had to push constantly improving hardware to its limits, and they had to feature a large amount of content to justify the $50-$60 price tag. Naturally, those games need big teams to make them. For big AAA games, team size has kept increasing on each subsequent hardware generation.

The tech arms race in AAA - and why I'm abandoning it

When I was 13 years old, my dad finally fulfilled my dream of owning a PC. He brought me a woefully underpowered 10MHz MHz 8088 box, but with an upgraded VGA card and a color monitor. I was too excited to care about the comically mismatched package: I could finally play games in my own house, just like many of my friends and cousins were doing.

Social Games and their opportunity frontier

When I first downloaded Clash of Clans, I deleted the game a short 15 minute session later. Despite the cute graphics and sleek interface, the city building and battle elements seemed too shallow compared to the deeper games I grew up playing. It wasn't until a few months later that I started playing again, with a clearer goal: I needed to unlock the clan castle so I could join the clan my coworkers wouldn't stop talking about. I’m happy I did, because I've being playing for two years and have discovered a fun game that takes many months to expose a surprising amount of depth. But had it not been for the social element, I would never have given that game a second chance.

Later, when I started working for Supercell (the developer of the game), I was further exposed to a fascinating amount of social activity, both inside and outside the game. What stuck the most with me was how a small amount of dead simple game rules encouraged and shaped a wide variety of social organization and behaviors. I spent an entire summer moving somewhat randomly from clan to clan, in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the social dynamics that drive the game. What I found was a varied collection of "societies", many of which had structured their own habits and norms in profoundly distinct ways. I found myself in some "my word is the law", strong leader dictatorship-style clans; in some "we're just here to have fun, no pressure"-style democracies; and a lot of complex political variations in between.

The time problem

What do you do when you no longer have enough continuous time and attention to enjoy the games that you love?

I am currently typing this on an iPhone sitting on my couch, while I'm supposed to be watching this very active baby that has just figured out how to crawl and climb. Typing on this device is pretty cumbersome, but the convenience compared to carrying a laptop around makes it worth it. Especially since every couple of minutes she will start climbing someplace potentially dangerous and I have to go bail her out. As this playing/blog typing activity of ours moves around the house randomly, I need a super accessible, mobile device with me. If I didn't have one, I wouldn't be able to use these little pockets of free time to do this post.

This is a single example of various life events that have happened during the last 10 years or so and have radically changed the structure of my free time. I have to finally accept something I was fearing for quite some time: I no longer have the continuous free time or attention to enjoy my favorite kinds of games.