Matthew Ford’s Infernal Blog

I have finished and released a fiction project which is minor and experimental (aren’t they all?) but hey, it’s a release. See it at A Very Special Shutdown Notice. As I explain in the About page, my main goals are to popularize and explore the Simulation Argument and transhuman issues; to build an audience for my eventual game Pod Tycoon; and to drive some traffic so I can exercise my site in preparation for release of my first game. Please check it out and let me know what you think by leaving comments on the post at my company blog or the Google group mentioned on the project’s About page.

Once the site starts to show up reliably in search engines, I will make a push for a viral spread-the-word campaign. For now, don’t make any special efforts to spread the link around. Stay tuned for my request for you to do that soon!

The local paper the Courier-Mail came out today in print and online with an article I was interviewed for earlier in the week. I am going to be in a forum in a couple days about the same subject. The article quotes me on my views about games and parenting. Check out the article online.

Dylan and I have been playing a lot of Classic Rogue (which you can find and download pretty easily). There is something so entertaining about that old, old game. We compete for the high score. With that as inspiration we spent a lot of the weekend with me DMing a “Rogue style” D&D session where I used the random dungeon generation rules on the fly and he took a party of level 5 adventurers into the depths. It was simple, kick-in-the-door playing with gold as the final score, restarting if any of the party died. I used a modification of the rules I’ve been using lately where you’re encouraged and expected to fully rest between fights, right there in the dungeon, using a little altar gizmo that you have to feed gold. The more HP or hunger you have to recover the more gold you have to feed it. It encourages smart play while avoiding tromps back and forth to town to recharge. Dylan is an enthusiastic and creative player, and we got into all kinds of fun situations just with the simple elements of random dungeons plus a bit of creative interpretation on my part. The d20 rule system really shone.

I read an article in the Brisbane Courier-Mail about a crime victim group’s protest against the game Hitman, and decided to write my first letter to the editor here. I wrote:

Monday’s article “Hitman game strikes nerve for crime victims” struck a nerve with me, because I care about social ills and I make video games for a living here in Brisbane. I want to defend my industry and art, which employs hundreds of skilled people in Queensland. As a father, I and most in the video game business strongly support the use of game ratings, and Hitman’s “MA 15+” rating is the game maker’s strong assertion that it is not to be played lightly by the young. Parents should monitor game playing just like TV watching and web surfing. Crime victims naturally want to find a cause, and it is easy to blame entertainment as the cause of crime. Unfortunately the solution is more challenging than suppressing works of fiction. Politics and misinterpretations aside, no valid study has shown that violent video games cause violent behavior. Past panics about comic books, cowboy matinees, and pirate storybooks similarly proved unfounded. Lastly, I plead the case that video games should enjoy the same freedom of expression as any form of entertainment. Violent video games often explore and provoke thought about themes of violence, crime, and lawlessness– not merely glorify it for thrills. These games are recreation and not of huge social merit, but they also are not the cause of violence. Let’s focus on the real causes of crime and not divert ourselves by blaming the mirrors held up to society.

If you’re the gaming sort, you may want to know that I’m playing Puzzle Pirates (as Stucco on Midnight Ocean). I’m just about to play in the Worlds of Warcraft beta, after months of resistance, since I’d rather not play a beta; but since my interest in City of Heroes has dried up (great game but lost my interest pretty quickly) I want a regular MMORPG, and my friends are mostly playing WoW. Puzzle Pirates is really entertaining but I may not play it for much longer. I expect I’ll play WoW a lot once it ships; till then the beta will have to do.