[sago]

Oh my!

"Why have I failed? ... The simple answer is that ... I’m too far ahead of my time... I’m a misunderstood genius. ... the world doesn’t yet perceive a need for the ideas I peddle. In 1885, physicists didn’t perceive a need for special relativity, and they would have rejected it out of hand."

Or... you're wrong.

[In the movie "Matrix"] "Neo has been revived and looks down the hall at the agents and sees the reality of the Matrix: that it is numbers. I see the same thing when I look at the real world."

I've been following his work for years, And spoken to people who have been to his 'conference' (and who I suspect will be rather bemused by the way he described them here!). The general consensus was it's horribly self-referential impracticality.

There is a reason he hasn't made anything practical in 35 years. Since the time when his success at 80s game development made him think it was the wrong thing that caused the success. (Hint: it was not his ad-hoc mathematical models, no matter how much post-doc justification he can ladle on them).

I have wondered about him, but sadly this post is rather damning in my eyes.

[brundolf]

There's something intoxicating about the idea of building worlds out of systems, feeling like you've captured infinite permutations of some phenomenon in a simple set of rules. This idea of writing worlds into existence with the flick of a wrist is the thing that first got me into computers. In some sense it's the dream that still keeps me going.

My perspective has been sobered quite a bit over the years - these things are rarely as simple as we might imagine they could be - but it remains heady stuff. I can see how it might give the right kind of person delusions of grandeur.

The egoism on display here is pretty offputting, but I feel kinship with the "dreamer" mentality underneath. This guy had a vision, and he was uncompromising in his pursuit of it, and even if the end result wasn't worth much to anyone else, some part of me has to respect that.

I'm reminded of The Room (movie)'s Tommy Wiseau. Another creative who thought he was a genius and poured his blood, sweat, and tears into his life's passion project, and it turned out to be pretty objectively bad. But it was meaningful to him, and there's something to that. There were no ulterior motives; he wanted to put this piece of himself out into the world. There's a purity of spirit. I think what's missing for these individuals is the self-awareness to know that this thing is mostly just for them, and to be okay with that idea and embrace it. That way lies happiness, I think.

[monopoledance]

> The egoism on display here is pretty offputting

This is not egoism, but indeed straight narcissism. And it matches overstating a "vision". The intoxicating part may be the dream of recognition and importance. I don't think this is a good metric to assign value, at all.

[tomxor]

> My perspective has been sobered quite a bit over the years - these things are rarely as simple as we might imagine they could be - but it remains heady stuff. I can see how it might give the right kind of person delusions of grandeur.

Likewise, although i've settled on a slightly different perspective: that most systems have simple rules (if you go low enough), and that the complexity is in the emergent behavior... it's not that we cannot necessarily capture the former, but that our concept of computer is far too tiny to run those rules in enough depth or breadth. It hasn't lessened the interest for me though. The more I understand the less those childish ideas of "grandeure" make sense, to the point that my instinct is to be suspicious of ideas focused on exploitation rather than exploration, although they can be good seeds for exploration in the form of "what ifs".

[thecupisblue]

>Likewise, although i've settled on a slightly different perspective: that most systems have simple rules (if you go low enough), and that the complexity is in the emergent behavior

I concur with this. The emergent behaviour is usually the only thing we can observe, so we model our systems according to it. The most beautiful (and usually the truest) models lie in the simplicity that causes the behaviour to emerge.

I wouldn't say our computers are too tiny, just that our brains aren't used to thinking in those terms, but we discover it by deep thinking and "deep iteration" in the topic and have to approach it from multiple sides.

Imagine yourself as a kid sitting at a chess-game, playing against Magnus Carlsen. You don't know who the guy is, you were just sitting at the sundae bar when the dude at the next table said "hey", pulled out a chess et and asked "Wanna play?". So you naively say ok, you got some time to kill while waiting for mom to pick you up.

And you start playing. You kinda know the basic rules and what the figures do. So you make a move, he makes a move, you make a move...a minute later, you eat his pawn. Ha! He did not see that coming. Soon, another one. You're killing this guy. 2 moves later, you're left with nothing but the king, running around the board. What the heck even happened?

Our minds are used to the "Eat figures = Win games" outlook, where simple steps lead to simple outcomes. While for Magnus, the figure you ate was a sacrifice that opened up a spot he will move his queen through in 3 moves. He knows the common patterns, permutations, defenses and can see moves ahead.

Our minds aren't used to thinking ahead and seeing what the sideffect of a sideffect does to the result of the sideeffect of the sideffect. Maybe once we were better at it, but we have more interruptions so less time and depth to it (in general).

That is why we can't figure out the simple rules at first - we can't see the trees from the forest.

[runawaybottle]

Is it even self awareness or a lack of editing? Like okay, yours is a game that doesn’t get a lot of traction, but you know what else doesn’t? Board games in general. No one said you have to be entirely selfless, and one’s conviction would appear just as fraudulent if it came in the guise of piety.

Here’s what you could have done: Find five other great board games that everyone else overlooks and explain why they are dope. Put a small blurb about why your game falls in this class, and why you are proud to be in that group.

It checks off all the boxes - misunderstood, ahead of it’s time, probably genius conceptual ideas.

[WA]

The funny thing is that most creators experience this, if they put their work out there: What they think is their greatest piece often isn't really perceived as such and some random thing of theirs might struck a nerve in others. This applies to a lot of things: blog posts, Tweets, videos, music, paintings, and obviously games.

[TRcontrarian]

I've heard that Stephen King considers the Dark Tower series his greatest work[1][2], but almost none of his fans do[3][4]. The intent of a work can be far divorced from the public reception of it.

[1] https://darktower.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_Series [2] https://stephenking.com/darktower/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/02...? [4] https://stephenking.com/xf/index.php?threads/which-king-book...

[dash2]

Reminds me of Archy on Shakespeare [1]:

  here i am ben says bill
  nothing but a lousy playwright
  and with anything like luck
  in the breaks i might have been
  a fairly decent sonnet writer
  i might have been a poet
  if i had kept away from the theatre

  ...

  well says i pete
  bill s plays are highly
  esteemed to this day
  is that so says pete
  poor mutt little he would
  care what poor bill wanted
  was to be a poet

[1] http://ianchadwick.com/blog/three-archy-poems-by-don-marquis...

[tincholio]

Well, the first 4 books are some of his best writing, I think... The final 3 suck terribly, and were a great disappointment (to me, of course, maybe some people actually liked them)

[agentwiggles]

Overall I agree, but I actually quite like the ending of the series. I've read lots of folks online who absolutely hated what ultimately happens to Roland - I thought it was a cool ending which was very much in keeping with the sort of "cosmic cycles" theme of the books. That said, there is a _lot_ of junk in those final three books, and the seventh one in particular drops the ball in several disappointing ways before it ends.

[pram]

This is painfully true. I put my art on Twitter/IG and the most popular things overall are nowhere close to my favorite. I genuinely can’t even comprehend why they are. I’m not sure I could even attempt to “pander” by making more of the same subject matter, because I’m not convinced I’d replicate the correct thing lol

[WA]

Maybe ask people, but not sure if it's the same thing. Or put more stuff out there at random.

[EamonnMR]

Apex Twin (the electronic music producer) put hours and hours of unreleased work[1] out for free a few years ago. One striking thing about the release is the number of true gems in there that outshine published work.

1: https://archive.org/details/AphexTwinAllUser18081971Soundclo...

[breck]

> lack of editing?

Lack of editing I think has it's place.

When you know roughly where to go and want to make money and go to market, build a team and have the team edit each other's work.

When you want to figure something out in a totally new domain, don't waste time on editing just throw shit out there and run.

[brundolf]

(I want to clarify, in case it's unclear, that I am not the OP)

[runawaybottle]

Oh I know, I can’t write for shit, so did something rhetorically lazy.

[bredren]

The Room is not objectively bad.

[DonHopkins]

Hi doggie!

You must admit that the flower shop scene was a tad unrealistic, in that he was able to find a free illegal parking space right out in front of the store in San Francisco, and he didn't even get ticketed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkoXhgtI58

[joosters]

The flower shop staff were looking out for him, after all he is their favourite customer :-)

[tekkk]

I admire you taking a stance for The Room but when a movie is generally lauded as one of the worst movies ever made, you are kind of on the losing side. Maybe there's good parts in there and sure, what is bad depends on the viewer. Yet sometimes you just have to admit that even with all the subjective bias removed something is just bad.

[bredren]

Generally lauded as a bad movie does not make The Room bad art.

Have you seen the film at a sold out crowd at cinema 21 in Portland?

There is a culture of the film and its participating attendees Marvel movies do not match.

You can say it is a bad film or you can say you don’t like that it doesn’t fit with your idea of what makes a movie objectively good. But it is absolutely not bad art.

Bad art is all around us. But it is not The Room.

[redisman]

The Room is like outsider art. Which is a really dumb label if you think about what art is supposed to be

[jfc_taxman]

"The Matrix Was a Trans Allegory, Confirms Lilly Wachowski" https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/08/the-matrix-tran...

[NestedLoopGoBrr]

Sure, but what’s the argument here?

[me_me_me]

No it wasn't. Its whatever you feel like it is.

That's the whole point of art.

[arken]

Guernica is a painting about how great war is.

[me_me_me]

Not really into art so i googled it.

Guernica is a large 1937 oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It is one of his best known works, regarded by many art critics as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history - wikipedia

Anyhow, art is subjective. You can interpret it as you like, because its how it makes you feel. And you can argue for or against a point, but it doesn't really matter. As its almost like arguing what flavor of ice-cream is the best.

[mrtranscendence]

Art is not entirely, 100% subjective, or else there would be nothing to say about it, nothing to discuss. Authorial intent is not the last word but it can be interesting, and it can impact the interpretation we come away with.

[user-the-name]

(That is not the whole point of art)

[megameter]

I believe the most troubling thing about Crawford's path is simply in the inability to develop self-critique of his own philosophy. His thoughts on a subject seem to terminate in the thing of having a mathematical model of a topic, not what we get out of that model. It does not seem to matter if the model is inscrutable when presented within a system, or if the system degenerates into a single strategy. (I have a memory of playing "Balance of the Planet" and after struggling for some time, discovering that the model did not restrict my taxation of dirty energy. Therefore I could gain a nearly infinite budget to clean up the planet on turn 1 with no negative consequences beyond "people falling off roofs while installing solar panels." I'm not even kidding - for some reason roofing accidents are ranked up there with deforestation and carbon release as very important things to model about our impact on the planet.)

Plus, last I heard, he's still stuck on an evo-psychological model of society that is quite out of fashion these days, which doesn't exactly help matters.

Crawford's story is a good warning for anyone who embraces simulation as an "end in itself", rather than a medium, though. This was an idea in vogue with wargaming's golden era and is now carried forward by VR enthusiasts, among others.

[notahacker]

My first thought on reading him talking about equations to estimate numbers of fighters based on a few parameters is that there are entire subfields of academia devoted to debating regularities like this: most of economics, most of modern IR theory, substantial parts of psychology, sociology and politics. And the standard criticism (within the subfield, at least) isn't that there is something inherently wrong with expressing part of the world as a mathematical model, but that the mathematical model chosen is wrongly specified. The world isn't hostile to the concept of simulations, but it does have a horrible tendency to produce data that casts doubt on their accuracy.

[danielscrubs]

I’m always baffled by how little self proclaimed geniuses actually read current research papers.

It’s almost like they protect their pride by not challenging themselves, thereby being able to say they are knowledgeable with a conscience.

[TheAceOfHearts]

Do you have advice on how one can get more into reading interesting research papers in Computer Science and Software Engineering? I've previously tried subscribing to ACM but found that too many of their articles weren't of much interest or relevance to me. I definitely do feel like I've gotten lazy and that I don't challenge myself enough, but it's hard to break out of these patterns so I'd welcome any suggestions or recommendations which could help me grow.

I usually start reaching for research papers when I'm aware of a specific problem and I'm looking for the different approaches that have been taken to try and solve said problems.

Every few months I visit the NIST website and I browse through their catalogue to pick out interesting articles and publications to add to my queue.

[UncleMeat]

Most papers are available on author websites or arxiv. I'd check out the titles of papers in recent software engineering conferences (ICSE is a great starter) and read what you are interested in. For CS more broadly you'll need to start with a field and then find conferences since conferences are broken up by topic.

[danielscrubs]

I like to check the award section of “best thesis paper” of my local university for fun and then at work I have to read research papers in my area but then I just use a search engine to find it.

Start small and don’t take it too seriously! Little by little, just as learning a new language.

[amatic]

His article "Am I a genius" is also interesting: http://www.erasmatazz.com/personal/self/a-genius.html

> the main reason for this is that I’ve made no attempt to sell the idea. I simply wrote it up and put it on my website. I suppose that, were I to jump through the appropriate hoops, I could garner more interest for the idea. But that is beneath my pride; I am a thinker, not a salesman. I refuse to promote myself. I put the idea before the world and the world can take it or leave it. The world mostly leaves it.

I've heard some other people blaming a lack of "sales" for their ideas not spreading. As if you can not sell. Any sort of presentation is sales, if your product or idea is out there, it is selling itself.

Maybe the focusing on sales would, ironically, bring the understanding of what people find impressive in ideas, in games or products, and it might be completely different from what we thought before.

[notahacker]

The most important bit of doing any kind of complex sale is listening to others.

Reading the "most important" idea article that he made no attempt to sell is also illuminating. It's a mildly thought-provoking blog about how many fields have concepts of state and state change, and the concepts are interdependent and blur at the edges, leading to an unsupported conclusion that we think too much about data and inputs and not enough about CPUs. It would probably get a few upvotes and a few confused replies on LessWrong, but there's not really much for the computer scientists and creatives he clearly hopes will take notice to work with. Perhaps they might find a different version or some of his other ideas more valuable

[joshspankit]

Sales is morally bad: this idea that in order to sell, you must manipulate. Eg: “Used car salesmen” (said with disgust)

Money is evil

A bit to the side of the OP, but I feel like these two narratives have been particularly damaging to our planet’s long-term growth. To your point @amatic: If the author had let go of pride and at least explored the idea of effective communication with people as a way to spread ideas (aka sales), he may be far more objective in his self-appraisal and certainly gain perspective on how his ideas can be applied by others.

[partyboat1586]

>Plus, last I heard, he's still stuck on an evo-psychological model of society that is quite out of fashion these days, which doesn't exactly help matters.

>quite out of fashion

Yeah I don't get the impression this guy is into intellectual fads. If anything he's a contrarian and will deliberately take the opposing position to the mainstream.

Evo Psych is out because a bunch of idiots (and self proclaimed non intellectuals) use it to justify and explain everything and anything with stories and no evidence. Meanwhile real research continues but is sidelined due to this bad reputation.

Understandably contrarians see this happening and immediately take the position of Evo psych because it allows them to do a lot of hypothesis generation (their favourite pass-time) and because it flies in direct opposition to current political and academic movements.

[sago]

I agree, and definitely what I was hinting at.

I can understand why he enjoyed building mathematical models. And why reviews of "Balance of the Planet" praised that. But assuming that was the point, I think missed the point.

I think it would be like creating Demons Souls, loving creating the back story, getting lots of praise for it, and deciding that the best thing is an interactive fiction game with nothing but unlimited detail back story. Then wondering some years later why you didn't change the world, no one has gone further than you did, and all games seem shallow compared to your imagination. Fortunately Miyazaki went a different way.

Not a surprise that Will Wright and Sid Meier (who I know is very much a fan of complexity theory) went in a more successful direction.

[mcv]

Yeah, the article comes across as rather arrogant.

And he doesn't really make the case that there's no demand yet for his ideas; his ideas involve simulationist games of some sort, and there's tons of demand for that. It is true that many of these sort of games used to take really ugly shortcuts in the 1980s, but where SimCity just faked traffic, City Skylines simulates every person in the city, including the traffic resulting from that.

If you want to see a game with complex interactions of simulated systems, check out Europa Universalis. It simulates every country in the world, its armies, ideas, economy (tax, production, and trade resulting from production). In combat it simulates how the units of those armies interact. How trade flows around the world is incredibly complex (but also too hard-coded in my opinion; I think it could still be improved).

Seems to me that plenty of games are incredibly successful doing the sort of thing he did. If he does have a misunderstood genius that these games can't touch, he's not making that case in this article. It sounds more like he has a rather overblown sense of the importance of his work, and a lack of appreciation of the work of others.

[balhbloo]

Of course the first HN comment has to be something negative, derisive and lacking in compassion. When there's blood in the water the sharks come, but when people are being vulnerable and exposing themselves (by saying something that's easily ridicul-able) like this, there's no need to be cruel. Not saying you're wrong just like, why not...look for the good, and why not that be the first HN comment. This place...Maybe everyone's just so scared of vulnerability..."innocence cannot exist underground, it needs to be stamped out." -- Prisoner in Bane's prison, Dark Knight Rises. Man it would be great to come here and be surprised. "Hackers" are commonly so intellectually arrogant, it's funny they attack anyone who's doing it in a vulnerable way...sigh sad.

People piling on with their theories about why "Crawford is wrong" -- I think that a lot of the "unappreciated genius" writings of Newton, and Einstein and Galileo (and many others) before they received the recognition they felt they'd earned, had the same tones and meanings. Maybe this guy will "end up" being a "success" or not in future. But to me that's not the important thing here. It's just be kind to someone, how sad it must be for this guy. sad smile emoji

[mcv]

I don't see the vulnerability you speak of. It sounds more like arrogance. Claiming to be a misunderstood genius is not presenting yourself as vulnerable, it's a shield to defend yourself against criticism or the lack of praise, to enable you to continue to see yourself as the genius that nobody else recognises in you.

[_carbyau_]

Why do you need a shield if you are not feeling vulnerable?

He's an older man, seeing his age group die around him and trying to measure his impact on the world.

Reading the title of the article, I'd say he is feeling quite vulnerable.

[thatguy0900]

I don't know, in just the previous blog linked on top "am I a genius?" he says "I am reluctant; I hate having to depend upon anybody else for anything. I don’t want my success or failure to be determined by the idiots who populate this planet." I don't think it does him any good to encourage the bitterness that leads people to post things like that.

[mbrodersen]

OA is being narcissistic not vulnerable. There is a big difference. Instead of proving his theories by developing new games and showing the world how to do it, he gets upset that nobody recognises him as a genius, based on him doing a few somewhat successful games many years ago.

[WA]

Maybe the author of the article missed the simple fact that game designers want to come up with their own rules and mathematical models, because they enjoy the process more than reading 500 pages of explanations from a genius.

We all like to start from scratch, don't we?

[redisman]

Especially in a game context, you usually have to pick a few details from the real world to simulate to make a compelling game. Too many variables and it gets hard for the player to track what's the cause and effect of what is happening.

[Uhhrrr]

> Too many variables and it gets hard for the player to track what's the cause and effect of what is happening.

This is a programming lesson, too.

[tobr]

It reminds me of Ted Nelson, who has worked on a nebulous vision of hypermedia for 60 (!) years. While he’s been incapable of shipping his vision, a nearly indistinguishable version of hypermedia changed the world through the world wide web. For some reason he does not accept that as validation of his vision, but as a poorly designed rip-off.

[webmaven]

> It reminds me of Ted Nelson, who has worked on a nebulous vision of hypermedia for 60 (!) years. While he’s been incapable of shipping his vision, a nearly indistinguishable version of hypermedia changed the world through the world wide web.

Despite his failure to ship, Nelson's vision hasn't been particularly nebulous. Overambitious, somewhat srlf-referential and brittle, perhaps, but fairly clear.

And I definitely don't think the WWW is 'nearly indistinguishable'. A few features that are missing are (off the top of my head): bidirectional links, link referential integrity, versioning, annotations, transclusions with attribution and provenance, etc.

Now, none of that ever shipped. Little of it ever got as far as a PoC as part of Xanadu/Udanax. And it is pretty clear in hindsight that, if implemented, the spam problems created by many of those features could have dwarfed what we (or rather, search engines) have to deal with today (remember blog referer linkspam? That's what bidirectional links with server-enforced referential integrity leads to). Arguably, the WWW wasn't just the simplest thing that could work, but also flourished because TBL didn't attempt to implement many of Nelson's cherished features.

But that the web today falls far short of Nelson's vision, and that as visions go, his was fairly clear (If overly reliant on neologisms like enfilade etc. usually defined in terms of implementation details such as novel datastructures rather than formats or protocols), shouldn't be particularly controversial.

[zwaps]

Comparing oneself with Neo Einstein to start with led me to write a rather scathing reply here. A moment of reflection led me to delete it.

I think I genuinely lack context. I do not know the author, nor any of his games.

I know that in the wider context of the game industry, they are not defining moments - games that people consider milestones.

We also know that today's games feature much more "realistic" and complex systems than the affine or multiplicative equation the author gives us. After all, interdependent agents on different levels produce results that can rarely be described by such simple measures. Getting a well-defined, realistic, complex yet FUN game system from such agent-based approaches is hard, but ultimately the goal of most game designers.

It seems to me that the author may have had some initial insight, and got snubbed in the mid-eighties by other designers or successes. It further seems that he has since then not reevaluated the state of the game industry. Or, perhaps, he lacks the ability to describe his unique insights in terms the reader can understand?

[morelisp]

> I think I genuinely lack context. I do not know the author, nor any of his games. I know that in the wider context of the game industry, they are not defining moments - games that people consider milestones.

You definitely lack context. I think Crawford's artistic program is completely in the wrong, that the Erasmatron is a joke, and that narcissism is largely responsible for leading him down this path.

But Eastern Front and Balance of Power are seminal in wargaming and computer gaming, Siboot remains an oft-studied object, and the idea of the storytron was both reasonable and radical in 1993 even though Crawford ended up on a useless path developing it.

Crawford was a looming figure in the industry in the 80s, exited (rightly, and literally to applause!) to protest the commercial direction the industry was taking in the 90s, but then disappeared up his own ass for way too long. There's the oft-quoted line from Hamming about productive research, of which Crawford is probably among the most intense, and definitely among the most tragic, example:

I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance.

[zwaps]

That seems reasonable to me. Other figures in the game industry retain their relevance and are known to me, a contemporary. Crawford, instead, is not.

His writings are difficult from my perspective. He claims to be a genius in quite a few areas, including AI. However, in each of these areas, history has passed him by. None of his ideas seem substantial or important from today’s perspective.

And this is not, how he claims, only our fault for missing his genius. Instead, this person seems to be what we academics call "not well read".

His musings about AI do not predate the science. What he writes about, his work in the mid to late 70s, was already known in the 50s and 60s, as far as I can tell.

Similar to his insistence that game designers somehow do not know about systems, I think this is in part because he does not read or engage with work that is not his own.

It’s one thing to fail to communicate one’s work. It is another thing to ignore the work of other’s and use this to fuel one’s own impression of the state of the world.

Let me put it differently: To be a successful researcher or, I'd argue, developer, you have to learn to deeply respect the contributions of other people. This includes being honest about them. One needs to see deficiencies, yes, but also allow for the possibility that there are many geniuses that share discoveries - as frustrating as that may be. The second element of this respect is then how you engage with others. If one dismisses the approaches outright, one is not only usually unfair or wrong, one also quickly becomes disliked in any community. Internally, we all develop ideas, and we always like our own ideas. However, the process of science or progress is also fueled by interaction, and interaction requires respect. People with an overt superiority complex will always find it difficult to frame their contributions in a way that is accessible. And, with very eminent exceptions, will not really contribute to human progress.

Case in point, Crawford is obviously a deep thinker with important contributions to game development. I do believe you there!

However, from today's perspective, it is hard to find anything at all that one could consider important. Even if some inventions predate the state of the art at the time, our progress was guided by other people - people that were able to cooperate. From my perspective, his ideas were worked out either by people that predate him (or in parallel), or done better by other researchers in what followed. So while I lack context, and recognize that my opinion does not reflect the truth, the simple fact that Crawford shows close to zero respect for other thinkers ultimately leads to a state of the world where I find almost nothing notable, revolutionary or important in his writing - be it wrong today's or yesterday's perspective. Instead, I find that his website does not lend itself to a very charitable impression of this person. Most of all, because he implicitly insults other researchers that have at least his level of genius, and which I deeply respect.

Instead, I need someone like you telling me that yes, this man is or was important.

[morelisp]

I don't mean to give a charitable impression of him (I also don't have one), but only try to provide context I feel is missing here - a lot of people are reading this as "another indie game developer feels he didn't get his due" (boring) but the reality is "industry founder completely out of touch after 30 years" - which I think has more of a useful lesson for all of us. And that all of us (perhaps especially Crawford) should study modern history more deeply before passing any judgement.

> Other figures in the game industry retain their relevance and are known to me, a contemporary. Crawford, instead, is not.

It's hard for me to think of someone from Crawford's cohort who has remained more well-known than him, to be honest. From Wikipedia's description of the first GDCs:

About twenty-seven designers attended, including Don Daglow, Brenda Laurel, Brian Moriarty, Gordon Walton, Tim Brengle, Cliff Johnson, Dave Menconi, and Carol and Ivan Manley. The second conference, held that same year at a Holiday Inn at Milpitas, attracted about 125 developers. Early conference directors included Brenda Laurel, Tim Brengle, Sara Reeder, Dave Menconi, Jeff Johannigman, Stephen Friedman, Chris Crawford, and Stephanie Barrett. Later directors include John Powers, Nicky Robinson, Anne Westfall, Susan Lee-Merrow, and Ernest W. Adams.

Of those, I can only place Crawford, Moriarty, Westfall, and Adams off the top of my head. A few others I am familiar with their work if I follow through on the links, but can't easily associate the name with the product or company. Moriarty is the only one I would consider to have a current stature near Crawford's.

Keep in mind we're not talking about the usual "game dev ancient history" cohort of early PC developers - Romero, Carmack, Sweeney, et al. - here. This is a full generation earlier and for a set of machines that didn't come to dominate the world. Crawford exited the industry, after a long career, just as this phase was starting.

[zwaps]

I absolutely take your points and share your sense that this is unfortunate both for him and, likely, for the industry as a whole.

I did not want to imply that he or his contributions are in fact unimportant. Rather, the way he approaches communication leads to that feeling among the uninformed such as myself. The unfairness he feels seems to be, in part, a result of his own writing style.

[DyslexicAtheist]

I stopped reading after the first paragraphs because it felt like the author is at best a lazy writer and at worst an intellectual imposter.

I loved The Matrix. It was a great flick. It wasn't art though and somebody using this lame reference today makes me question their expertise on the subject. The Matrix used ideas from Baudrillard & Borges. Both are cornerstones in post-modern literature while the Matrix is just an action flick rehashing the ideas from Plato's cave. The director hoped it would rub off on them so that they can shrowd themselves in philosophical wisdom. Everyone on the set was given a copy of Simulacra by the director to read. (this is often quoted along with Neo's own copy in the film and makes me question who actually read the book and how many of them read it enough times to understand it)

Baudrillard who was asked about what he thought about the film said it was merely another copy of Plato's cave allegory and it made no effort to actually touch the core-ideas of the book.

>> Neo has been revived and looks down the hall at the agents and sees the reality of the Matrix: that it is numbers. ....

When somebody uses The Matrix in a blog post >20 years later I can't help but wonder why they chose it. Something tells me they have a poor understanding of the world. It's like somebody referencing a Mickey Mouse comic to talk about ducks. It means your audience are probably fools (and by extension the author). How can they be taken serious when they don't understand even their own self-chosen references/allegory.

[smogcutter]

I think the silly Matrix analogy is really telling.

Forget about Plato’s cave and Baudrillard for second, The Matrix is about that stuff the way tic tac toe is about drawing circles and x’s.

The Matrix is about ego. It’s about the fantasy that one day soon your unique magical gifts will finally be recognized. To the untrained eye you might appear to be another TPS report filing schmuck, but deep down you’ve always been a hero. Any day now your circumstances are going to change, and then your real life will begin.

This is not a path that generally leads to happiness or creative accomplishment, and I think its traces are pretty plain in TFA.

[smogcutter]

Okay now I’ve got Matrix on the brain. Going to self-indulgently reply to myself instead of just editing my first post bc this is totally off topic and I just want to spitball about The Matrix.

I think a lot of my problems with The Matrix are rooted in how it (mal-)adapts Campbell’s hero’s journey.

Here’s the basic outline of the hero’s journey:

- There’s a mundane (“real”, we’ll come back to that) world and a magical world. A problem in the magical world threatens the mundane world. (Sauron is rising in the east, Grendel is lurking in the forest, etc)

- A hero is identified in the mundane world who has the power to navigate both. (Luke is both a farm boy and a jedi. Neo is a programmer and the chosen one)

- The hero enters the magical world and resolves the problem.

- The hero (usually) returns to the mundane world, bringing power from the magical world. Even if the hero doesn’t return, the mundane world is brought to a new equilibrium. This is the real point of the story: the hero’s journey isn’t about the magical world, it’s about healing the mundane world.

The twist in The Matrix is that the mundane world turns out to be an illusion. But that’s a trick: the “real” world, unplugged from the matrix, is in a story sense magical. It’s a fantastical sci-fi world, just as far down the rabbit hole as the matrix itself.

So the last, most important step in the hero’s journey falls apart. You can’t heal the mundane world if it doesn’t exist. This helps move the focus of the story back to the first stages, the ego-fulfillment part where the hero is identified. Everyone remembers the red pill and “I know kung-fu”; not so much the incoherent sequels.

We’re actually circling back around to Baudrillard here, but I think maybe not in the way the Wachowskis intended.

I think you could also probably read Total Recall as an anti-Matrix. If The Matrix is about the allure of imagining yourself to be innately a hero, Total Recall is about the danger.

[DyslexicAtheist]

thanks for posting the followup. I'm very glad you took the time to write it. it's magical HN exists and such discourse is possible. it's a shame this gem will not get the eyeballs it deserves. I urge you to bookmark it as a reminder to use it on a fresh post one day when the topic comes up and it doesn't get lost.

[prox]

My idea as well. The Matrix has a lot of allegories in it, and you can shoehorn a lot of your own ideas onto it. I would say the Matrix is great starting point to get you interested in philosophy though.

[matwood]

The Matrix is an interesting movie and I bet got a lot of people interested in learning more. The problem as you note is that the author in this case is 70 or so years old and doesn't seem to have moved beyond the reference.

[the_af]

> I loved The Matrix. It was a great flick. It wasn't art though

Why not? What would it need to become "art"? Maybe if it had less action, would that be enough?

[PartiallyTyped]

I do not have a lot to add to the conversation, except some examples from ML, in particular, the Support Vector Machine was conceived much earlier than it was published but Vapnik's work was repeatedly rejected, yet SVMs are one of ML's brightest achievements.

Similarly, the Neural Network was repeatedly dismissed, with Minsky being a prominent example.

Not all ideas amount the same, but perhaps, at least in ML, we need to be open to exploring as many ideas as possible instead of performing grad student descent on the current consensus valley.

[augustl]

> his success at 80s game development made him think it was the wrong thing that caused the success

I love this!

Believing that you have complete insight into why you were successful the first time seems to be a major blocker to continued success.

[bombcar]

It’s often honestly much better to attribute it to luck and hard work (often because it just IS luck) - trying to get lightning to strike twice precludes you doing something new.

[0x008]

I just feel the statement from Peter Thiel’s book where he says a good product is nothing without a good distribution channel is rather fitting here.

[Rapzid]

> There’s a grain of truth in these answers, but I don’t think that they capture the bulk of the truth, because I am dead certain that most other people have the native intelligence to understand the ideas I’ve been peddling.

I'm curious why you quoted around this bit.

[genewitch]

The entire post, out of context, seems, as some people have called it, narcissistic or pretentious. I guess no one wants to hear someone laud themselves as a genius.

As someone who's designed many things 5-10 years before a market is available for those things, i have to constantly bite my tongue any time i have a "novel idea" - since i have no patents or published papers, why would anyone listen to me? Furthermore, the end result of bragging (even in this limited context, here) is that people like me less.

I think the linked text is interesting, although meandering. The author appears to understand that their approach to teaching / sharing their ideas is lacking, and seems to be misguided on why that is. Like the Simpsons image macro: "Could I be out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong."