The Nine of Spades

If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man.
You win some, lose some, it's all the same to me.
The pleasure is to play, it makes no difference what you say,
I don't share your greed, the only card I need is,
The nine of spades!
The nine of spades!

Okay, so it doesn't have quite the same punch as the Motorhead version, and there's no question I'm no Rob Pardo, but in the November 2008 issue of Game Developer Magazine (the one with Age of Booty on the cover) I was listed as the (villainous?) Nine of Spades in the 'Top Deck'... which makes me the game development equivalent of this dude.

(Note that in the photo he is either winking at the photographer (probably hitting on her) or he is missing an eye... either of which indicates probable promotion to 10 or even Jack of Spades in the near future, I'd say. Watch out Tim Sweeney!)

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that they listed me among the 'Trailblazers' - and even more interesting that they did so with reference to the fire propagation system in Far Cry 2 (which while awesome, was not really the system we were most trying to innovate with). Technically, I suppose I kind of designed it (or worked with the team that designed it), but honestly I'm not even sure if it was my idea, and in any case, the one who really blazed the trail, virtually and now metaphorically, was JF Levesque. For the record, the anecdote they relate in the magazine is fictitious (as far as I know), and although there are several real anecdotes (one of them is from JF in the linked article) relating to out of control wildfires none of them ever killed the Jackal by accident.

More curious though, was why they didn't list me among the 'Progressives'. That's more or less how I perceive myself... I'm not the big idea guy here, I'm just doing what folks who made great games before me said I should do. In any case, this is the not first time I have seen the term 'Progressive' pop-up in the classification of developers. The first time I saw it was a couple years ago when Steve Gaynor over at Fullbright wrote this really interesting article about what he called the 'progressive school of game design'. If you're interested in this stuff, you should read it.

Comments

[Matt]

"The hallmark of progressive design is the unspoken presence of any number of alternative approaches."

Exactly. If I want to experience the same events in the same way every time, I can watch a movie.

In a video game, I want to dictate how things happen according to the designer's set of rules, not by simply triggering his script.

I can't play linear, invisiwall shooters anymore because what Far Cry 2 has done to me. There are no further wow moments that scripted, triggered events can evoke anymore. They're done.

[The Rt. Hon. Sean Milliken]

Hey Clint. Long time. How's it going?

For your perusal, a great Lemmy anecdote involving Hawkwind, speed, and Canada:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7A5TIj6Bqg

[Ben Abraham]

Awww, you're still my Saddam Hussein, Clint (The Ace). Three weeks on and I'm still loving FC2. I can see myself picking this game up every month for the next year.

[Steve]

Ah, kind of embarrassing to see how baldly earnest and super-analytical I was being hardly two years ago. But I'm glad you find the label of progressive game design to be useful.