Jeff Wofford

Evangelicals in Search of an Enemy

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:17:00 +0000

When George W. Bush became President, evangelical Christians like myself traded stories about his dramatic conversion. He had been an alcoholic but had found Jesus. He had become one of us. We welcomed his Presidency because he would stand for what we stood for. Family values. Marriage between one man and one woman. The curtailment of abortion. He would uphold our moral agenda.

When 9/11 occurred, we knew that God had given America the right man for the job. In an age when "evil" was a dirty word, Bush would have the character and resolve to name evil and confront it.

When Bush initiated the war in Iraq, most of my evangelical friends were for it. The spirit of the day was that it would be un-American not to "support our troops" and our President. After all, Bush understood our situation in history as only a Christian could. Somewhere out there, beyond the borders of America, a vicious evil lurked. All of us Americans—the "good" folk—had to unite together, seek out that evil, and destroy it. Like the ancient Israelites purging the wicked Canaanites from the land, God had appointed our generation to confront fundamentalist Muslims.

Then the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison emerged, shocking us into mute disgust. Not only were the images revolting but they turned our worldview on its head. The evil wasn't "out there" anymore. The good guys, too, carried out the basest forms of evil. The line between "us" and "them" blurred into indistinction.

Later we learned that Bush had flaunted the constitution by authorizing domestic wiretaps. We heard about the CIA's secret prisons and the torture techniques they used there. We learned that Bush himself had authorized the use of torture.

At first, evangelicals were slow to respond. Maybe the "harsh interrogation techniques" Bush had authorized weren't really torture? Maybe Bush had intelligence we didn't have—intelligence that somehow compelled Americans to use torture? There must be a reason that our brother in Christ would authorize the sort of inhumane treatment we watched in the Passion of the Christ.

Three years after the allegations had emerged, the National Evangelical Association released a declaration against torture. The announcement underscored—belatedly—a shift in the way American evangelicals had come to think about their government and the President. We saw this shift again in the 2008 elections where only 54% of churchgoing evangelicals voted for the Republican candidate—down from 61% in 2004.

Throughout the Bush years, most of my evangelical friends remained die-hard Bush supporters. Even after Obama won last November, many of them bemoaned his victory and dreaded his presidency even as they committed to praying for him. Yet others—especially of the younger generations—welcomed Obama with enthusiasm. Some swore never to vote Republican again. The Bush years changed the evangelical mind, but they didn't change all evangelicals equally.

I've been surprised by the diverse reactions from the Christians around me. I'm trying to understand why some have praised Bush through even his most questionable decisions while others consider the Bush Presidency one of the most villainous administrations in American history.

I've decided it all comes down to who you see as the enemy.

Evangelicals have traditionally had a strong sense of "us" and "them." We are the good guys. We have—or try to have—committed marriages. We guard our children against M-rated games and R-rated movies. We put pornography blockers on our computers. We feel uneasy when the lesbian couple moves in next door. We see our homes as bastions, sanctuaries against the evil of "the world." The world is Hollywood, liberals, activists who threaten to woo our kids into lechery, promiscuity, and homosexuality. Although America has declined since the 50s—morally speaking, of course—it still feels like "our" place. But "they" are always knocking at the door, making inroads, threatening to change our country into a sexualized, athiest, amoral wasteland. The enemy is anyone who would take our decent, essentially (if covertly) Christian America away from us.

It's this mindset that supported Bush through thick and thin. Bush could start the first pre-emptive wars in American history, he could sit on his hands while (wicked) New Orleans sank, he could even torture "them." So long as he fought terrorists, gay rights, and abortion, he was one of "us."

Though many evangelicals still carry strains of this mindset in their DNA, the moral blurriness of the Bush Presidency has caused others to think again. The enemy is not so easy to pin down. Evangelicals uphold the sanctity of marriage, yet get divorced as often as non-Christians. Evangelicals distrust Hollywood, yet allow TV and the Internet to babysit our children. National Evangelical Association president Ted Haggard turned out to be a drug user and sometime homosexual. Last month, NEA vice president Richard Cizik—one of the drafters of the declaration against torture—resigned after admitting he supported civil unions. Evangelicals who looked for evil "out there" are increasingly finding it "in here."

So it turns out that the enemy is within. Surprise, surprise. Isn't this what the Bible taught all along? "No one is righteous—no, not one."

The foundational truth of Christianity—how could we have forgotten it?—is that each of us is filled with evil. Paul portrayed this truth vividly: "When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am!"

Who is the enemy? I am.

Paul knew that Jesus didn't come to guard us from Romans or terrorists or the lesbians down the street—he came to cleanse us from the evil within. Evangelicals know it too. But somewhere along the line, in our terror for our children, our lifestyle, and our souls, we let ourselves forget.

As Barack Obama takes on the leadership of the nation next Tuesday, evangelicals gain—as do so many others—a new opportunity to rediscover our identity and mission. As I struggle to do this for myself and my own family, the image that stands out to me most brilliantly is the scene Jesus painted of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14). The Pharisee lived an upright life and even gave his money to the temple. But the parasitic tax collector, the moral scum of Jewish society,

stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

A Theological Reflection on Fallout 3

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:23:00 +0000

With apologies to the Fallout 3 team.
Also, be warned: (Vague) Spoilers Within

I've been wandering the Wastelands for three months now and I've come to a conclusion. There is no God.

Let me tell you what happened today. I was heading south along the river, walled in on the left by decayed office buildings. I remember thinking how beautiful they looked in the falling sunlight.

Suddenly I saw Mutants. They had a captive, and she was bound up, blindfolded, kneeling on one side of their camp. I thought, I've got to get her out of there.

There was no way to avoid a fight. Before I knew it they were on top of me. One of them came at me with a sledgehammer, and I prayed with every blast of my shotgun that he would fall before he reached me.

But then something else happened. Somehow in the chaos somebody threw a grenade. It bounced near my feet, then rolled past me as I leaped aside. I heard it pop behind me, but I didn't have time to look.

After I turned the Mutants' heads into spaghetti I went back for the captive. I found her in pieces. The grenade—she never saw it coming.

That's when I knew. Nobody's looking out for us. Nobody made this world. Nobody's telling this story—it just happens like it happens.

In my heart I've known ever since I stepped out of the Vault and looked out over the polluted carcass of what used to be Washington D.C. There was something lovely about that scene too. A golden light lay over the shoulders of the hills. A rusted water tower reflected the blue sky. A dust devil teased the earth along the path in front of me. Then I walked up between some boulders, and a feral dog nearly ripped my throat out. I had to beat it to death with a police baton—couldn't get the blood off for three days.

Now I've been out here three months and can't see my own skin for the muck and the grime. Still searching for my Dad, I tell myself. But who am I kidding? I'll never find him. If the Mutants haven't got him, the Yao Guai have.

At first I told myself that Fate would guide me. When I looked into the faces of the people around me—the people I knew and loved growing up in the Vault—I saw beauty and mystery and spirit. These faces, these eyes, the light behind these eyes, were not random happenstances of chemistry or science. Someone made these people, directly or indirectly. Someone was telling a story through them and through me. Whoever that Someone was would make it all come out all right. Even if I died, I would die heroically. But I wouldn't die—no one I loved would die. I would prove myself the hero of this story that Someone was telling.

That was then. What a self-righteous, stuck-up little chump I was! And naive, so terribly naive.

Then I met the raiders, watched their brains splatter on the rotting concrete—one by one, day after day. The slavers and their tortured slaves. The rats, the scorpions, the Deathclaws. All the poisoned freaks who haunt this hell hole. They taught me, without words but undeniably: There is no story here. No God. No Designer. This world just happened. It's just happening. It'll just keep on happening, because there's Nobody to put it out of its misery.

A few weeks ago, I met a tough, smart fighter named Sydney in the ruins of the National Archives. She carried a mean SMG and knew more about ammunition than anyone I'd met. We teamed up to find an old, valuable document—"The Declaration of Impediments" or something.

Her dad had left her behind, too. When she was fourteen, he went out and just never came back. "Never even said goodbye," she said. "Do I have to tell you what it's like for a young woman alone in the Wasteland at that age?" Boy, that stuck with me.

Then a few days later I was exploring an old building downtown and came across a skeleton curled up on a cot. Next to the corpse was a recording of Sydney's father that he hoped would somehow reach her. It explained everything. He had gone out to do some business, the deal went bad, bullets were exchanged, he took one in the gut. He had just enough time to tell her that he loved her, that he never meant to leave her, and that he had faith she would make it.

So Sydney grew up hating the father who loved her, fending for herself in a vicious world where the only language anyone understands travels at 896 feet per second.

Now what kind of God would let that happen?

I'm not looking for my father any more. I'm going where he has gone, following in his footsteps, doing what I'm supposed to do to someday catch up with him. But I know he's gone.

This story can have no happy ending, no resolution. This world is too cruel, too grotesque for me to believe it has any Storyteller but Mr. Luck and Mrs. Chance.

I'll keep wandering the Wastelands, because that's what my body and brain tell me to do. But don't talk to me about Fate or God or Destiny or Designer. If he ever existed, he died when the bombs fell.

Or maybe he just walked out. Like Sydney's father. Like my father.

Glahn's Law

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:03:00 +0000

A couple of years ago I took a course in journalism from Kindred Spirit editor Sandi Glahn. On the first day of class she established, to the shock and horror of the students, a rule I'll refer to as Glahn's Law. It's simple.

Glahn's Law: No Be Verbs

In all our writing for class we were allowed two "be" verbs per page. Any more than that and we lost—oh, I don't remember—a finger or something.

At first I thought she was crazy. After all, "be" verbs are everywhere. Passive sentences are written with them. They are employed in stating facts of all kinds. They are arguably the most common verbs in English. Is, are, am, was, were, will be, would be, should be, could be—are all "be" verbs. Not counting that last sentence, this post has already used seven of them. Did they hurt you? No, me neither. So why did Sandi deplore them?

I thought she was crazy, but she was the boss, and there was nothing to lose by taking up her challenge. So I wrote a Word macro to help me count the number of "be" verbs on each page I wrote. As I worked on each assignment I hunted down "be" verbs with a toothpick, like a mother hunts lice.

By the end of the semester the mere sight of a "be" verb would give me the Clockwork Oranges. But on the last day of class Sandi released us from Glahn's Law, authorizing us to use them again. As I emerged blinking into the glare of unconstrained writing freedom, I realized that my time under Glahn's Law had taught me something crucial about how and how not to write.

Here's the fundamental, practical fact: "Be" verbs clog up your writing. They slow it down and make it harder to understand.

Consider the following two sentences.

Why would you say the first when you could say the second? Or this.

Don't you prefer the second sentence? The difference here is a "be" verb versus a strong, active verb.

"Be" verbs talk about the state of something—what it is, its nature, its attributes. Consequently, whenever you use a "be" verb you end up talking in abstractions. Any toddler can watch a boy playing soccer and say, "He runs." It takes an older, more sophisticated mind to say, "He is quick."

Active verbs like "make," "win," and "run" talk about what things do. They talk about what we see rather than what we think. "The boat floats"—there it is, we can see it floating. "The boat is buoyant"—of course this means the same thing but it gets at the meaning through an abstract idea. The active verb is better.

"Be" verbs talk about what things are. Active verbs talk about what things do. Whenever possible you want to talk about what things do. Why is this?

As I labored under the tyranny of Glahn's Law, I began to understand why do is better than are. In our hearts, human beings really think in terms of action. When we were babies, and the foundations of our observing and thinking were formed, all we knew were the facts of what we saw in front of us. We saw father's mustache bend downward, his eyes narrow, his eyebrows pull together, and we knew we were headed for a spanking. We didn't think, "He is frowning." We didn't think, "He is angry." We experienced the action we saw in front of us in a direct and primal way. At a fundamental level, human beings deal in terms of action.

The higher level notions of state, attribute, nature, and existence only come together as we get older. They are a separate and, in some sense, artificial layer over the top of those primal, active observations. And it's this higher-level, abstract way of thinking that we convey when we use "be" verbs.

So what I discovered under Glahn's Law is that it's better to talk about doing than to talk about being. You should prefer a "do" verb to a "be" verb whenever possible, because then your writing will tap into the deepest and truest part of your readers' minds. Make your readers see things happening and they will find the abstractions. Tell them the abstractions, though, and they'll skate over the surface of your writing without really making contact. They're likely to skate right off the page.

I don't obey Glahn's Law anymore, but through it I learned a new law, and this I live by.

Corollary to Glahn's Law: Make every "be" verb pay its keep.

"Be" verbs aren't evil, just unregenerate. Use them, but make sure you know that you're using them and why you're using them. Make them pay their keep.

The Gemstone Game

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:52:00 +0000

One rainy Sunday when the kids had too little to do and I didn't have the energy to chase them around the house, we came up with a game that they enjoyed but allowed me to relax. We call it the Gemstone Game, and it has become one of our favorites.

Number of Players: 1–4, or more if you have a big enough play area
Ages: 4 and up
Time to Play: 5–15 minutes. Really as long as you want.
Materials:

Twenty or so "gemstones." We use little colored glass beads about 1cm in diameter, but marbles would work too.
One smallish throw pillow per player
Hiding Places: sofas, stacked sofa cushions, recliners, upturned tables (nicely padded with pillows and blankets), blankets strung across the room

Object: To place the most gemstones onto your pillow before the gemstone pile is empty.

Setup

Choose a play area, either in a living room or den, or outside in the yard. The area should be reasonably large—we usually play in our living room, which is about 25'x20'—and as clear as possible of hard surfaces and sharp corners.

One player—typically the lazy grownup—is "The Watcher" and sits at one corner of the play area facing outward, away from the play area. Line up each player's throw pillow a few feet behind The Watcher. Put "hiding places" all around the play area. These can be sofas and solid chairs—padded ones that you can't see through. Players will hide behind these hiding places, trying to avoid being seen by The Watcher, so the obstacles need to be reasonably wide and tall. You can string up blankets to make good hiding places. Overturned coffee tables can work well if you pad them with blankets and pillows.

Now, at the far end of the player area, behind one of the hiding places, lay down a pile of 20 or so "gemstones" (marbles or the like).

How to Play

Players start at the pile of gemstones. When The Watcher is ready, he says "Alabama Closed," turns away from the play area and closes his eyes. Now each player picks up one gemstone (only one!) from the pile and attempts to carry it across the play area to place it onto her pillow. You must place the gemstone, not toss it.

At any moment, The Watcher may say, "Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi OPEN!," turn toward the play area and open his eyes. If he sees any players, he calls that player's name. That player loses one gemstone from off of his pillow and has to go back to the pile.

When The Watcher is ready, he says, "Alabama Closed," turns away and closes his eyes again. He continues to alternate between "Mississippi... OPEN" and "Alabama Closed" until the players have moved the pile of gemstones onto the pillows near The Watcher.

Scoring

When the game is over, each player counts the number of gemstones sitting on her pillow. Stones that have rolled off onto the floor don't count! The player with the most gemstones wins!

Notes and Tips

This game can be dangerous! Players run, dive for cover, slide into hiding places, and try to move quickly among obstacles. If there's anything hard or sharp in the area, players can get bumped, scraped, or cut. We only use sofas, soft chairs, and pillows for our games, so we haven't had many injuries. But players can still bump into each other. So be warned: This game is not safe. We're okay with that in our household—we think the chance of a hospital-caliber injury is low—but if you're not, don't play.
It's generally wise for players to agree that they'll always move either clockwise or counterclockwise around the play area. If everyone moves the same direction, it helps avoid head-on collisions.
For older kids, it's fun to make the game get harder as it goes on. The Watcher can warn, "I'm going down to three Mississippis starting next time!" Then say, "Mississippi Mississippi Mississippi OPEN!" before opening your eyes. We eventually go down to two Mississippis, though I say them pretty slowly.
This game is a great workout for the kids. They laugh while they play, and get great exercise moving quickly around the play area, getting up to run, getting down to hide. We have to take breathing breaks every few minutes.
It's also great relaxation for lazy adults. Reclining on a bean bag and turning around every few seconds—anybody can do that. I like this game because it's a great way to spend quality time with my energetic kids without wearing myself out.
You can vary the length of the game by starting with a bigger or smaller pile of stones.
You might think of using bowls rather than throw pillows as destinations for the stones. Don't. It's too tempting to toss gemstones into a bowl. Because throw pillows tend to be domed-shaped, players have to be careful of how they place the stones, else they'll roll off.
If your kids are any good at the game, there's an eerie thrill to be had here. When your eyes are closed you hear all this giggling and movement. But every time you open them the room looks empty. The experience is pleasingly horror-film-like.

Trivia

The game was vaguely inspired by the old Atari arcade game, I, Robot.

How to Get Your Game Idea Made into a Game

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:47:00 +0000

You have a brilliant idea for a video game. It's creative, original, intriguing, and fun. You can picture it vividly—the breathtaking visuals, the jaw-dropping action scenes. You can't wait to play it, and when you tell your friends about it they can't wait to play it either. Your only problem is, you don't own a game development studio. How do you get your game idea made?

Then you meet me. You find out I make games for a living, and before you can stop yourself you're telling me about your idea. Your eyes get as wide as the twin moons over a desert planet, your hands scrub the air, spittle foams on your lip. I understand your game idea, I say it's pretty good. Then you ask me, "What should I do to get a real game development company to make this game?"

How do I know you ask me this? Believe me, I know. I've worked in games for almost fifteen years and this is the number one question I'm asked. But no, that's okay, it doesn't bug me. Ask away—I'm happy to offer some advice.

I'm going to answer your question by asking you two questions. First: Is your idea really a game idea? Second: How are you going to climb the Ladder?

Is Your Idea a Game Idea?

Let's start with the first question. You've got an idea for a "game." My first question is: Is your idea really able to be made into a game?

When a game development team starts building a game, they start with a Game Design Document, or "GDD". Usually this is a literal document but sometimes it's a more informal thing: sketches, whiteboard drawings, memories of fevered conversations. But the best game studios strive to record their design in a written, illustrated document. In order to have even the remotest chance of getting your idea published you need to turn it into a GDD.

A game design is much more than a game idea. It's a detailed specification for how the game should work. What does each button on the controller do? What does the HUD look like and what do each of the pieces do? How does enemy AI work? What pickups can players gather and what do they do? The game design describes every part of the game and tells how all the parts fit together to create a fun game.

This raises another question. What makes a fun game?

There are many possible answers to this question. No one has found a sure-fire formula for fun. Sid Meier says that a game is a series of interesting decisions, and this is a helpful starting point. Players have "fun" when they have to make choices. But not just any choices. Fun choices have to be intriguing, meaningful—interesting. How will your game design produce interesting choices for the player?

This is a hard question. Let me show you two examples that illustrate how hard this is.

The original Half-Life took the gameplay of Quake, then amplified and extended it in many ways. One of the ways they amplified the gameplay was to add a Reload button. Now ten years have gone by since Half-Life was released, and games like Halo have made Reload commonplace. But at the time it was a risky design. In earlier games you never had to reload, so Valve was making weapons harder to use. Players could easily get annoyed—"Why do I have to keep hitting Reload every ten seconds? None of the older games made me do this. Why can't the gun just reload itself?"

Valve took a gamble on reload and the gamble paid off. Players loved Reload even though it made more work for them. Why? Because Reload creates interesting decisions.

When you're fighting enemies and your gun has a little ammo left you don't want to spend the time reloading. If you're sure the area is clear of enemies you will reload. But what about those times when you'd like to reload but you're not sure whether an enemy is about to pop out at you? Then the choice of whether to reload becomes an interesting decision.

Half-Life was more fun as a result of Reload even though Reload made the game harder. Now let's look at another example.

Doom 3's design called for the game to be set in darkness. Many of the rooms had only one light and some were completely black. To counteract this, the game gave the player a flashlight that could be used to light up any environment. Yet the player could not shine his flashlight and wield a weapon at the same time. This created a decision: do you want light or protection?

Many players hated this game feature. It seemed arbitrary and unrealistic. It often put players into impossible situations where they could either see their enemies or fight them but not both. Players would find themselves either staring helplessly at oncoming bad guys or blasting away into blackness.

Half-Life's reload feature and Doom 3's light feature are similar in many ways, but one of them was fun and the other was not. If you can understand exactly why that is, you're one step closer to turning your game idea into a winning game design.

Most game designs also talk about the game's setting, story, and characters. But I want to stress that this part of the game design usually accounts for less than a fourth of the total document. When people tell me their game ideas, usually their idea is 99% setting and story and only 1% gameplay. I have to tell them that they don't have a game idea—they have a story idea. A game design is not a story design. If you want your idea made into a game, you'll have to fill out the details about how the game actually plays—what the player actually does, how he moves his character, how he interacts with the world.

It's hard for most people to think through how a game should actually play. Here's a helpful hint for how to do this. Write a "Five Minutes of Gameplay" document. A lot of studios require this, and it'll help you think through your game.

In this document, you'll describe, in absolute detail, what a player does in your game for about five minutes of play. When I say detail, I mean detail. Don't say, "The player goes North." Say, "The player pushes forward on the left joystick." Don't talk about what the player thinks or decides: just show what he sees and describe what he does with his hands. If you can describe five minutes of your game's gameplay in that kind of detail, you're well on your way to writing a great GDD. In fact, you can put your "Five Minutes of Gameplay" document into your GDD as a kind of overview of the game.

How Will You Climb the Ladder?

You are not the only person in the world with a brilliant game idea. There are hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of gamers all over the globe who have ideas for games. How are you going to make your idea stand out? How will you get it to be one of the few that actually gets made?

You need to be realistic about this challenge. There are perhaps 8,000 people working in the game industry right now. Most of those people have their own game ideas that they want to make. They're not sitting around wishing someone would give them a great idea. They've already got ideas and are just waiting to get the power and status and respect to form a team to get them made. So these people—game developers like me—are your competition.

And if you're not already working for a game company, you're at a disadvantage. A professional game developer has all the connections. He can walk across the hall and talk to a potential financier for his game—someone who knows and trusts him. A professional game developer also has expertise. He knows how games are made. So if you're not already making games for a living, you have 8,000 other game designers ahead of you in the queue.

In fact, even if you're already a professional game developer you have a huge mountain to climb. Very few people in the industry get to run their own game project. Of the few that do, many of those projects are based on movies, TV shows, and other properties, so even the project leader has little creative control.

So there is a tiny, tiny fraction of people who have game ideas and actually get to make them. Yet even then their job isn't easy. They have to sell their game to publishers, explain and re-explain it to their teams, and ultimately convince gamers that their idea deserves the $50 it costs to play it.

There's a huge ladder above you—a huge pile of people you have to compete with, overcome, work with, and convince. How are you going to climb it?

It is possible to climb it. Some people do. I did. In fact there are two different strategies for how to get to the top of the ladder and make your game.

The first strategy is to work your way up. I studied computer science in college. Along with my studies, I also did extra work teaching myself linear algebra, C++, 3D rendering, and game programming. By the time I graduated from college I had written two game demos. I showed them to game development studios and before I even graduated I had landed my dream job working for Origin Systems—at that time, the biggest game developer in the world. I worked as a programmer for a few years, then moved up to lead programmer and ultimately producer and director. I worked for four different companies on a dozen different projects, many of which were canceled. But a few projects shipped and a few did well, so I was able to keep climbing. It took ten years, but I got to design games and lead large projects. If you have the talent, the dedication, and the people skills, you can climb the ladder this way.

One step you can take that will shorten your ladder-climbing journey is to study at a game development education program like the Guildhall. I teach game programming at the Guildhall, so maybe I'm a little biased. But every one of the programmers we've graduated so far has gotten a good job in a real game development company, so obviously we're doing something right.

No matter how you start, getting to the top of the game industry is a hard, long, difficult climb. If you want to make big, sophisticated, AAA titles, it's the only way to go. But if you're willing to make smaller games there's another strategy that is both easier and faster.

The casual game market is growing rapidly and offers lots of opportunity. Casual games are the sort of simple, quick games you play on websites like Armor Games or Shockwave or on your cell phone. They're usually created in Flash or Java and are relatively easy to make. In the last couple of years I've made a dozen or so Flash games, and they're a lot of fun to make and play. Best of all, you can make a game all by yourself or with just a couple of friends. You don't need millions of dollars, a hard-to-find game job, or even a publisher. You just do it!

There's even money in it. If your games get popular enough they can get sponsored by a website. Websites will usually give you either an up-front license fee or a cut of the money that they receive from advertising. You'd have to make a lot of games every year to make a living this way, but it can be done.

Casual games are a tremendous opportunity. The downside is that they're casual. They're not big, grand, gorgeous experiences like BioShock or Fallout 3. If you can be happy just making modest, simple, fun games, you can be happy in the casual game market.

Whether you decide to climb the big ladder to making big games or the small ladder to making small games, you can get your game idea made if you work hard and stick with it. No matter whether you decide to make big games or small games, you have to start with more than just an idea. You have to turn your game ideas into game designs by thinking through the details of how your game actually plays and by discovering how to make it fun. This skill, too, comes with practice.

Best wishes as you start your journey. Drop me a line when you have questions. Let me know about your successes and I'll celebrate with you.

Good luck!

Can a President Be Too Decisive?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:55:00 +0000

I just watched the Saddleback Forum in which Rick Warren asked Barack Obama and John McCain about their beliefs and policies. Both candidates reminded me again how blessed America is in this election to have two such excellent candidates. Over the twenty years that I've followed politics, our elections have consistently featured a pair of self-serving, corporate-funded liars whose noblest ideas involve the personal acquisition of power and wealth. This year we finally have two genuinely good-hearted, intelligent, capable leaders from which to choose. The Saddleback Forum solidified that impression.

McCain seemed to come out stronger in the forum. He generally answered more quickly than Obama did, with little to none of Obama's humming and hawing. He had a rich repertoire of highly compelling anecdotes to draw from. His policies were mostly agreeable to the conservative Christian audience he was addressing.

Most interestingly, his answers were far more decisive. Asking about abortion, Warren asked, "When do human rights begin?" McCain responded instantly: "At the moment of conception." Obama, in contrast, gave a much more cautious answer stressing the difficulties of drawing a hard line. Warren asked whether evil exists and whether we should ignore it, contain it, negotiate with it, or defeat it. McCain never hesitated. "Defeat it." Obama affirmed that evil existed, then gave a considered, careful answer that stressed we should "confront it." If decisiveness is what we want in a President, McCain won the day.

And doubtless many Christians and older voters believe he did. Decisiveness, after all, is a crucial quality for any leader.

And yet many younger voters—including many conservative Christians—will find Obama's careful, sometimes ambiguous answers equally or even more compelling than McCain's decisive, no-nonsense answers. What I want to explain now—in careful but unambiguous terms—is why it is reasonable to be attracted to Obama's careful ambiguity.

In order to make my explanation useful I want to frame it in terms of two ways of thinking: divergent and convergent. Whenever anyone makes any decision, these two kinds of thinking are at work. The difference in the way my generation sees McCain and Obama is, to a large extent, the difference between these two ways of thinking.

Divergent thinking is what enables you to consider a wide variety of answers. It allows you to break down answers into their components parts and rebuild them in new and synthetic ways. Divergent thinking is the voice of uncertainty.

Convergent thinking is what enables you to make clear, practical decisions. It allows you to weed through the haze of ambiguity that clouds any decision to find the one key answer that you believe in. Convergent thinking is the voice of certainty.

For example, you're thinking about where to eat supper. There are thousands of potential answers. You could go to a fancy restaurant. You could go to any of dozens of fast-food joints. You could cook something at home. Grab a microwavable meal at the gas station. Order pizza. Show up at a friend's house unannounced. Those are the "stock" answers. Then you've got the synthetic answers: Pick up food from a fancy restaurant but take it home to eat it. Grab a microwavable meal and take it to a friend's house.

The more skillful you are at divergent thinking, the more options you'll be able to think of. But ultimately you have to narrow down those options, and to do that you have to use convergent thinking.

Both convergent and divergent thinking are "Good Things." It's not as if one is practical and the other is artsy-fartsy: both are necessary for skillful living. The person who makes snap decisions about everything—who is, in other words, highly convergent—will often miss important options that a little contemplation could have uncovered. The person who considers every question deeply and avoids drawing sharp lines will often fail to make any decision and allow opportunities to pass by.

If you think I'm about to say that McCain is a convergent thinker whereas Obama is a divergent thinker, you are converging your thinking too quickly. These men are not as simple as that. Both candidates are smart and experienced enough to have learned a lot about making good decisions. McCain's creativity can be seen in his willingness to oppose his own party on many issues and his choice of Sarah Palin as runningmate. Obama's decisiveness can be seen in his consistent stance on Iraq and his effectiveness in defeating Hilary Clinton. Both convergent and divergent thinking are necessary for good leadership and both men have shown they can do both kinds of thinking.

What I'm actually about to say is this. My generation is very cautious about excessively convergent thinking. There is such a thing as excessively divergent thinking—consider the hippy generation, for instance—but in the last several years we've discovered some of the horrors of excessively convergent thinking, and we are anxious to avoid past mistakes.

Let's consider again Rick Warren's question about evil. Imagine you're a Christian Presidential candidate before a Christian audience and I'm asking you, "Does evil exist? If it does, should we ignore it, negotiate with it, contain it, or defeat it?"

What I hope you'll notice about each candidate's answer is that neither candidate got this question remotely correct. Not from the Christian point of view, they didn't. Both gave answers that were wildly divergent from what Jesus Christ taught about evil. Obama said that we see evil in our city streets and in child abuse. McCain said we see evil in Osama Bin Laden and that he would hunt him down "to the gates of Hell"—a rather interesting answer if we're thinking in Christian terms.

The Christian answer is terribly easy to express: a single thumb pointed at the chest. Who is evil? I am. What do I do about it? Ask Jesus to wash it away.

Well both men admitted they were imperfect and had made mistakes. They both talked about sin. But when asked about evil, they didn't point to their chests. They pointed to the exploiters of the weak and disadvantaged (stock Democratic answer) and around the globe (stock Republican answer).

Both answers are insufficient. Both answers, taken to their extreme, are dangerous and—indeed—evil. And here's what older generations need to understand about my generation. In our time, we have not seen Obama's answer taken to the extreme. Welfare is not killing America. Democratic spending on government aid programs is not filling us with terror. In our time, McCain's answer has been taken to the extreme. Out-of-control wars, out-of-control military spending, out-of-control corporations, and an out-of-control intelligence community are filling my generation with terror.

When McCain says, "Defeat it!" without hesitation, our minds pass over the travails and uncertainties of the Iraq War and we think, "Hold on a minute. Was Iraq really an evil regime in any kind of unique way? Isn't preemptive invasion of a sovereign country evil? Isn't torture evil? Isn't thumbing our nose at the international community evil?"

And now as I ask these things, perhaps you're thinking, "Ah, this is one of those anti-war soft-touch guys." Well, no—you've converged too quickly. I'm not against the war. I'm not exactly for it. I'm confused by it. I'm still processing it. My thoughts remain in a divergent state. And that's just where I think they should remain. Because the situation is too complicated for a firm, decisive, no-questions-asked sort of answer.

If you were raised in the aftermath of Nazism, during the trauma of Stalinism and the long boil of the Cold War, you were raised thinking in terms of them=evil / us=good. This is the kind of thinking that Bush invoked when sending "war criminals" to Guantanomo without trial and when rallying America to invade Iraq. After the fear and anger of 9/11 this kind of thinking seemed good again to many Americans.

But the Patriot Act and Abu Ghraib and Enron and domestic wiretapping and Halliburton and waterboarding and Katrina and the mortgage crisis and a thousand other villainies have brought many Americans to believe what Christians should have proclaimed all along.

Who is the evil one? I am. That's the Christian answer. We are evil—whoever we are—and we are at our most evil when we see ourselves as good.

There is a time for decisiveness, for get-out-of-my face, no-nonsense laying down the law. McCain is a military man, and the military loves decisiveness. In battle you don't have time to explore all your options, to nuance the subtleties of this position or that. Your best choice is often your first choice. There are times in any President's term when he will need to show the kind of decisiveness that McCain consistently demonstrates.

But not every situation is like a battle. Sometimes you do have time to think things through, to mull rich uncertainties. A candidate whose decisions are too bold, too confident, too decisive is a candidate who makes my generation nervous. We've seen too much militarization in too little time, heard too many do-or-die gung ho speeches. Politicians who seem too sure of where the lines fall—who the good guys and the bad guys are and how to take them out—more and more smack of arrogance, or at least crudity of thought.

We live in a complicated age. Technology is making it easier than ever to talk things out, to diverge and converge in large, informal groups. It's a matter of time before I've got Google implanted in my brain, before representative democracy is supplanted by pure democracy and the American people become their own legislature. Unless we've been bombed or de-banked back to the stone age, America will change vastly in the next four years, not to mention eight. We want a candidate who can provide steady leadership amidst the changes ahead. In this respect I believe McCain could be the stronger leader.

But we also want a candidate who embraces complexity, who is slower to proclaim judgment, who is cautious in converging. This is, in some measure, Obama's strength. Perhaps Obama will prove excessively divergent, slow to act in a crisis, too open with enemies, slippery in his opinions. But after the decisiveness of Bush and Cheney, we're willing to take the risk.

Here's the punchline. I voted for McCain last Thursday. As I said before, I think both candidates would make great Presidents, and I agree with McCain on more of the issues. But I can't wait to see Obama as the next President of the United States. How's that for ambiguity and divergent thinking?

What do we know about Satan?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:14:00 +0000

I'm writing a paper on Ezekiel 28 this week for one of my seminary courses. The question is: Who is Ezek 28 talking about?

The chapter directly addresses the "king of Tyre," and says he is a "man" (Hebrew adam, a word most people know). Yet some of the ways in which it describes this "man" suggest he may be more than a man. He was in Eden (v. 13), he was a cherub (14), and he is said to have been "created" (Hebrew bara, vv. 13, 15) where we would expect "born". Consequently, many interpreters of the Bible believe that the "king of Tyre" is really a reference to Satan. So I've been examining the evidence for whether Ezek 28 is really talking about Satan or the literal king of Tyre.

My study got me wondering: What do we actually know about Satan? What does the Bible really tell us about who he/it is and where he/it came from?

I start by looking at Old Testament (OT) references to "Satan." In Hebrew this is the word שטן (satan). Now it's important to know that this is not a proper name like "Samuel" or "Billy." Satan is just an ordinary noun that means "adversary." So for instance in 2 Samuel 19:22, David says to the sons of Zeruiah, "Why should you be an adversary (satan) to me." There's no spiritual idea here—David's just complaining that these men are hassling him. Likewise in 1 Kings 5:4 Solomon describes the peace his kingdom is experiencing by saying, "YHWH my God has given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary (satan) nor misfortune." Life is good. Nobody is fighting against him.

Indeed, if you look through the twenty-three verses in the OT where the word satan appears, only a handful even have a chance of talking about the being that Christians refer to as Satan. 1 Chronicles 21:1 says that "A satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel." Note that satan here is indefinite: it's a satan not The Satan. Nonetheless translators often see this as a reference to The Satan and put it into English as, "Satan stood up against Israel and moved David..."

If this is a reference to Satan, it's the first time the Old Testament names him as Satan and the only place in the historical books where he is identified by name. Doesn't that strike you as rather unlikely? Usually the Bible introduces characters and concepts first before using them in an offhand way later, but Satan hasn't been introduced—not by name—up until this point.

Moreover, in the parallel account to 1 Chronicles 21:1 which appears at 2 Samuel 24:1, there is no mention of Satan. Rather, God himself "incited" David to number Israel. It doesn't say how God incited David to do this. There has been a lot of handwringing over this apparent contradiction between 1 Chron 21:1 and 2 Sam 24:1. Did God incite David to number Israel or did Satan? Or did God use Satan to incite David?

Yet there's a rather simple solution to this conundrum staring us in the face. Remember that the word satan in 1 Chron 21:1 was indefinite: a satan. Well up until this point in the Bible, everywhere that a satan is used the translation is always "an adversary"—usually a military opponent. And that makes perfect sense here. A military adversary came up against David and this motivated him to number Israel—that is, to count his troops. 2 Sam 24:1 reveals that it was God who ordained the arrival of this adversary, and this is a common theme in the Old Testament. So the NET Bible, following this same reasoning, translates 1 Chron 21:1 as "An adversary opposed Israel, inciting David to count how many warriors Israel had." It seems pretty clear to me that this is what the verse means.

If you take out all the references to the word satan in the Old Testament that clearly don't refer to the Devil, you're left with just two passages: Job 1–2 and Zechariah 3:1–2.

Now in Job we have a very clear description of a spiritual being—one who accompanies the "sons of God" as they report before YHWH—who is refered to as the satan. Here we have the definite article, and that makes all the difference. This is The Adversary. Not just any old adversary that a person might encounter in life, but the adversary par excellence. We learn a fair bit about him from these chapters. In this story he has been spending his time "walking back and forth across the earth." We hear his words to God, and they are clearly adversarial. He undermines God's admiration of Job. He proposes to harm Job. He doubts the sincerity of Job's faith. He seems to be against everything. He leaves the impression of a sulky rebel disgusted by God's little picnic of mutual love. But he doesn't just talk—he has power. He brings the Sabeans and Chaldeans to raid Job's household, sends fire down from the sky, brings a blast of wind that flattens a house, and later makes Job terribly sick.

So Job is the first clear reference in Scripture to who Satan is and it gives us some hints about his character and abilities.

In Zechariah 3:1–2 we have another pretty clear but far more cryptic reference to Satan. Here again the word is definite: The Adversary. We see him acting in a courtroom scene as a sort of prosecutor toward Joshua the high priest, and YHWH comes to Joshua's defense. But The Adversary doesn't say or do anything, and we don't learn much about him. Yet this scene reinforces the image we had from Job: The Adversary appearing in the court of God arguing against a human whom God honors and defends.

That's it. Those two passages are the only clear references we have to the Devil as the satan in the OT. That's not a lot to go on.

Here's the first point I want to make. Satan is a title, not a name. You don't go up to the Devil and say, "Hey, Satan, old buddy..." Satan is not his name—not in the OT, at least. You might go up to him and say, "Hey, aren't you the Adversary? I mean like The Adversary." Now he'll know what you're talking about. The word satan is a perfectly ordinary Hebrew word. It usually just means an "adversary." It only means The Adversary in a couple of places. And it never means the proper name Satan. So don't go calling him Mr. Satan when you meet him.

There are several other places in the OT where Christians think they catch glimpses of him, just not under the title satan. In Gen 3 "The Serpent" tempts Eve. Most Christians think this is more than just a talking snake, and I won't disagree.

In Isaiah 14:12–17, the prophet speaks to the king of Babylon, but as in Ezekiel 28, the language sounds a little lofty for a mere human king. "How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn." Many scholars believe this may be a veiled reference to The Adversary. Yet as I read over the passage, I don't see anything to make me think it's speaking of a supernatural being. The passage explicitly addresses the king of Babylon (v. 3), it calls him a "man" (v. 16, Hebrew ish this time) and says he will be buried in a tomb only to be cast out of it (18–20). It looks to me as if the lofty language in vv. 12–14 simply reflects the king's own self-deifying thoughts. It's the king of Babylon who calls himself "The Star of the Morning" and who fantasizes about setting his throne "above the stars of God." This sort of kingly deification (not to mention hubris) is commonplace in ancient cultures. So I think Isa 14 is just talking about the king of Babylon, not The Adversary.

The same reasoning makes me think Ezekiel 28 is also talking about who it says it's talking about: the human king of Tyre. This self-important king thinks of himself as equal with God, as a divine being who lives on Mount Olympus, and the passage reflects his own fantasies. Note that many of the references that make us think this passage refers to a supernatural being—that he lived in Eden, for instance—are also applied to other kings in Ezekiel (see 31:2–9, 16, 18), yet we don't think these other passages sneakily refer to The Adversary. I see no reason to find him here.

So what do we know about Satan from the Old Testament? Not a lot, it seems to me. We have clear references in Job and Zechariah and a pretty clear reference in Gen 3 ("The Serpent"). That's it. The other possible references are profoundly cryptic at best, and I'm highly skeptical they refer to The Adversary at all. Indeed, perhaps it's the lack of information about The Adversary in the OT that makes us want so badly to find him where he isn't.

Now the New Testament sheds a great deal more light on this shadowy character. But I haven't gotten there yet. In the meantime, my study of the Old Testament references to "Satan" lead me to be more cautious about what I think I know about him.

For instance, the name "Lucifer" comes from a Latinized version of Isa 14. But it's highly questionable that Isa 14 is talking about The Adversary, so he was probably never called "Lucifer" until Bible interpreters made this mistake. The Christian belief that Satan was created as a cherub comes from Ezek 28, but I don't think that passage is talking about him either. Even our name for Satan isn't really a name in the OT but simply a description or title.

So what do we know about Satan—what he is or when he was made or even what his name is? As far as the OT is concerned, not much.

A Timely Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:20:00 +0000

At this pivotal time in our nation's history it seems prudent to offer up fervent prayers to our god. Please join with me.

Our Stock Market, which art on Wall Street,
Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy tickers tick,
Thy whims be met,
In Washington as they are in New York.

Give us this day our dividends,
And lead us not into inflation.

Relenteth Thee now from Thy great wrath
As we offer up to Thee our children
And our children's children
That they may sate Thine insatiable hunger

For we know that Thou art a jealous god,
Visiting the debts of the fathers upon the sons
Even to the third or fourth generation.

We entreat Thee therefore:
Accept this our offering,
That the trespasses of the rich may be forgiven.
And deliver us from economic depression,
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory
Forever and ever.
Amen.

A Thousand Splendid Ghettos

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 23:23:00 +0000

The world wants to give you what you want.

Buy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Amazon.com and Amazon will suggest related products. The BFG by Roald Dahl. A Godiva assortment. Edward Scissorhands on DVD. You buy, Amazon learns, Amazon recommends.

Tell Pandora your favorite band and Pandora plays you songs. If you like a song, upvote it. If you hate a song, downvote it. Pandora uses your votes to find other bands it thinks you'll like. It creates a personal radio station that constantly adapts to your unique tastes.

You see a story on reddit.com about Barack Obama's childhood. You upvote the story, and now reddit recommends other stories it thinks you'll like. You start seeing more stories about Barack Obama.

We live in the Recommendation Age. Everywhere we turn, the world finds out what we want and gives us more of it.

This is a good thing. It's good for marketers. What we want, we buy more of. And it's good for us. We see more of what we want and less of what we don't.

But there is a hidden danger in the widespread use of recommendation engines. When all you see is what you want, you don't see very much.

Look again at reddit.com. Reddit is a news aggregator. Anyone can submit a story. Reddit shows the story to other users who say whether it appeals to them. Their votes decide whether reddit shows the story to more users or quietly drops it. It's democracy-as-editor.

But reddit recommends news based on what you've voted for, and herein lies the problem. The more you applaud stories about McCain, the more you see stories about McCain. Eventually you only see stories about McCain. You become a member of the McCain news ghetto.

Look up Audacity of Hope on Amazon—what recommendations do you get? Great Speeches by African Americans by James Daley, then five other books about Barack Obama. The customer who likes Obama will find a lot more reasons to like Obama.

Imagine a world where all your information—news, music, books—comes to you through recommendations. That's a world fine-tuned to leave your prejudices intact. Next time you go to the polls, you think, "All I hear about McCain is wonderful. How can anyone not vote for McCain?" The guy next to you, who lives in the Obama news ghetto, thinks, "All I hear about Obama is wonderful. How can anyone not vote for Obama?" One of you sees the world through rose-tinted glasses, the other blue-tinted. You're living in different worlds.

Of course, self-ghettoization is nothing new. We all tend to surround ourselves with Yes-men. Republicans watch FOX, Democrats watch CNN. Human beings generally avoid challenging ideas. We cling to the familiar. That's nothing new.

What's new about recommendation engines is the degree to which they make self-ghettoization possible. When people got their news through papers, magazines, and TV, they saw a lot of stories they never asked for. They probably ignored much of what they disagreed with, but at least they were exposed to it. Now, when you get all your information through recommendations, you agree with everything you see. What you don't see are new or challenging ideas—even those that might help you. You remain cocooned in blissful ignorance.

It's ironic that recommendation engines—such a populist idea, so democratic and egalitarian—present the greatest threat to free speech we've seen in the last hundred years. It used to be that a loud-mouthed maverick whom nobody wanted to listen to could still find an editor to publish him if his ideas were good enough. But in the Recommendation Age, the only writers who get exposure are the writers who say what we want. Writing and marketing have melded into one.

The people who get their news, books, music, and other information primarily through recommendation engines still represent a fairly small proportion of society. But that proportion is growing each year. Even traditionally monolithic news sources like CNN.com are moving into recommendation-based services. It's hard to imagine that ten years from now a majority of voters and consumers will still get their news through broadcast TV and newspapers.

Our society is already riddled with factions. Open discussion is becoming a lost art. As people come to hear more and more of what they already believe and less and less of what they don't, these divisions will only become deeper. If the election of 2008 looks like this, what will 2012 look like?

It's up to us to get out of our ghettoes. We should keep using recommendation engines, sure. But we should make a habit of seeking out new and unfamiliar news and ideas. Go read a book you wouldn't normally read. Visit sites you wouldn't normally visit. Watch a news program you would normally avoid.

A society where information ceases to flow is a dead society. It doesn't matter whether the information stops because of martial law, bad reporting, or a culture of convenience. If we close our ears to everyone but yes-men, we can enjoy a long period of peaceful agreement. But the longer we avoid controversy, the fatter and sloppier our ideas will become. The longer we hide inside our ghettos, the greater the shock when we discover we're dead wrong.

Love the One You're With

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:09:00 +0000

I was moseying down the aisle at the grocery store the other day when an old friend greeted me with a hearty "Hello! How ya' doing?" The voice came from behind me and I couldn't recognize who it belong to, so I put on my best pleased-to-see-you-too face and spun around.

I had worked up a vivacious "Howdy!" before realizing that the speaker was entirely unknown to me. What's more, he wasn't quite looking in my direction—he was looking at the off-brand frosted flakes along the bottom shelf. And there was something peculiar about the way he cocked his head, the way he hunched his left shoulder. Then I noticed the slab of silver pressed up against his ear.

I wrestled my greeting into a muffled croak just in time to hear him say, "Well yeah, long time no see!" A swirl of tin-foil chatter erupted from the box at his ear. I turned away and resumed my perusal of the porridge section. Then I realized I was still smiling, and stopped.

Call me old-fashioned, call me pre-post-modern, but I can't stand the cell phone. Oh, I've got one and I use it. But it knows its place and it stays put most of the time. I keep it on a short leash. It speaks only when spoken to.

I'm no Luddite. I make software for a living, for crying out loud. I was browsing the web back when NCSA Mosaic was the only way to do it. But I've worked with technology long enough to know it can help or it can hurt. Cell phones help a lot. But they hurt a lot—you and me. The trouble is: it's not always obvious when they're helping and when they're hurting.

Did you know that talking on a cell phone while you're driving is not much better than driving drunk? Who'd'a guessed? The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society estimates that 2,600 deaths a year happen in the US because somebody was yakking and driving. Driving with a cell is illegal in Britain, Japan, Spain, Australia, France, Germany, and about 45 other countries—not to mention California, New York, and a few other places. Sometimes it's obvious when cell phones hurt, even if we don't want to believe it.

But sometimes it's not so obvious. Sometimes the way they hurt is so small and so subtle that in our enthusiasm for gadgets and chatter we overlook the downsides. And when millions of people around the globe spend so much time talking at pieces of metal—a 2007 Disney survey showed that kids spent an average of three hours and 45 minutes per day on their cells—little hurts can open up a big wound.

Here's an example. Have you noticed that in the last ten years cell phones have changed what the word "with" means?

It used to be that if I was in a car with some friends, I was with those friends. If I wanted to talk, I talked to them. There was no other option. Nowadays I get halfway through my best joke before realizing that what my passenger is laughing at is a text he just received from a buddy in Las Vegas. He's not with me. He's in my car, but he's with his buddy.

It used to be that if I was waiting at the doctor's office I was with my fellow patients. I didn't want to be. I wanted to be away from their coughing and blowing. But I was with them. And if they wanted to ask how old my boy was, I told them and asked how old theirs was. If somebody looked like they were going to faint we fetched the nurse. In our small way we were bound together, tethered with the cords of shared misery. Nowadays that lady who might have asked about my goiter instead gossips with her girlfriend. It's my disease that she'll be catching even though she's not quite here.

With used to mean the people you could punch if you had to. And that's a sensible definition, it seems to me. Nowadays with means the people whose gadgets you can make buzz. Your Xbox Live buddies, your Facebook friends, your contact list. You may never have met these people. You can't smell them, you can't kiss them, and their voices sound like a soup can. But by Jove you're connected.

Cell phones help and they hurt. They help when they connect people who can't otherwise connect. They hurt when they get in the way of real-world connections. And they get in the way more often than we realize. We just don't notice because—well, because we're chatting.

There used to be a song people listened to, back when people listened to the same songs as other people.

If you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with

Sometimes the hippies took these words a little too seriously. But today the song gives a helpful reminder that the people around us—I mean actually around us—matter in ways that nobody on the other end of a line or radio wave can matter. Real people need smiles and thank yous and having doors held open for them and handshakes and hugs far more than wireless people need them. The way we're with real people is important in ways that no other definition of with can match.

I say we take back with and make it mean something again—something physical and immediate and germ-laden and real. And I'm ready to do my part.

So here's my commitment to you, dear Reader. If I'm ever in your presence, and there's a competition between me being on my cell phone and me interacting with you, you win. Proximity trumps virtuality. So if I'm talking to you and my phone rings, let it ring. If I'm talking on the phone and you walk up, I say a quick goodbye and hang up. If I'm texting and you're talking, hit me in the ear and I'll stop.

If I can't be with the one I love, I'll love you. Not in a hippy way I hasten to add.

Get Phit

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:16:00 +0000

Phit for the iPhone and iPod Touch is now available from the iTunes store. Get Phit!

iPhone 3D Renderer

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Progress on porting Phit to the iPhone has moved quickly this week.

On Wednesday I set out to port my 3D renderer from Windows to the iPhone. This is a renderer I've maintained for several years and which I use in teaching 3D rendering for games at the Guildhall. (A renderer is a piece of software that displays 3D objects on the screen.)

Porting the renderer proved much easier than I expected. Now I can load and display 3D models—like this one from Unreal Tournament 2004—on the iPhone simulator.

I was surprised that the renderer ported over so well. It was written for the PC. On the PC it supports both Direct3D and OpenGL—I stripped out the Direct3D portion. It is quite a large piece of code, with about 40 files or so and maybe 15,000 lines of code. I've only ever compiled it with Visual Studio, and the gcc compiler used for iPhone is substantially different.

I thought the biggest hurdle would come from the fact that the iPhone framework is written in Objective-C, whereas my renderer is all C++. As it turns out, Objective-C files that have the extension .mm happily coexist in both worlds: they can call C++ object member functions as well as Objective-C object methods. So I wrote one or two Objective-C classes to interact with the iPhone OS and framework. I have my two dozen or so C++ classes that make up the engine. And then I have three or four "adapter" classes in .mm files that help my C++ classes talk to the iPhone OS.

I tried to get an iPhone this week to test the code on. (The iPhone Simulator on the Mac tells you nothing about how your code will actually perform on the iPhone. Presumably the iPhone will run quite a bit slower for complex 3D scenes.) Unfortunately, with the June 9th announcement of the new iPhone, nobody is selling iPhones anymore. So I got an iPod Touch instead. But I'm still having to wait because Apple hasn't gotten us our Developer certificate yet. You need that to make your iPhone/iPod Touch into a development device.

So on the one hand I'm learning the iPhone SDK. On the other hand I'm working on Phit, upgrading it for life on the iPhone.

Specifically, I wanted to improve the way the pieces move in Phit, making them smoother and more natural. The iPhone sets a high standard for user interface "feel", and I want iPhit to meet or exceed that standard.

So I'm creating a new physics system for iPhit. It uses Verlet integration to move and constrain pieces, and features a sophisticated collision detection system so that pieces can "stack" and won't pass through each other. The implementation I have now seems to work very reliably, but is slower than I'd like. Still, it begins to give an idea of iPhit might feel on the iPhone. Feel free to try out the new physics and let me know what you think.

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iPhit Coming Soon to iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:05:00 +0000

Since the release of Phit last year, this simple, addictive puzzle game has become one of the web's most popular past times. Now it's time to spread the word that Phit is coming to the iPhone.

For the past few weeks I've been working with Armor Games to port Phit into a native iPhone application. We're adding multi-touch capability so you can drag more than one piece at a time. We're updating the way pieces move to be more fluid and responsive. And we're providing a whole new set of fresh puzzles—even experienced players will discover new challenges.

We think Phit will be the perfect boredom-basher for iPhone users everywhere. Keep an eye on this space to find out when iPhit will be available in the iPhone App Store.

Agnostiphobia

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:37:00 +0000

Mike Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, talked recently about how they choose which books to publish. He reveals two key criteria: brand equity and competitive advantage. Brand equity asks, "Will people buy this book because they recognize the author?" Competitive advantage asks, "Will people buy this book because it has great writing and ideas?"

Then Hyatt drops a bombshell. At Thomas Nelson, competitive advantage is more important than brand equity. A well-written book with great ideas, he claims, is better than a book with a famous author. He awards well-written/great-idea books "Tier B" status, whereas books merely written by famous people languish in "Tier C." (Books with both great writing and a "platformed" author receive the coveted "Tier A" rating.)

Brains over beauty? That's what Mike claims. Score one for the little guys! Publication—here we come!

And yet—something about Mike's post strikes me as fishy. Maybe it's my own sad experience of smashing up against the door to publication. Maybe it's my inner cynic gritting his teeth at a cruel glimpse of hope. Or maybe it's the fact that out in the real world, publishers don't think like Mike Hyatt thinks.

Consider Thomas Nelson's own bestseller list. (It's not actually a bestseller list. None of the top three titles score better than 4,000 in the Amazon sales rankings. It's a "what we wish were bestsellers" list.)

Who's the author of their number one "bestselling" title? Bill Cosby. Yes, that Bill Cosby.

Number two: Max Lucado, the most prolific writer in Christendom.

Three: David Jeremiah, megapastor. Starting to see a trend?

The trend continues through the top twenty, thirty books. William Bennett. Beth Moore. John Eldredge. Stasi Eldredge. Another Max Lucado. Frank Peretti. Bono. In fact, every author that Nelson spotlights as a "bestseller" is either a TV personality, an already-bestselling author, a radio host, or all of the above. I see Tier A books (celebrity + good writing). I see Tier C books (celebrity + bad writing). Tier B books are conspicuously missing.

Mike Hyatt says good writing trumps celebrity. His company's favorite books are all about celebrity. Where's the disconnect?

In a more recent post, Hyatt lays out some of his reasons for blogging. He says, "When I am writing, I have my employees in mind first." Maybe this statement holds the answer.

Maybe when Hyatt champions good writing, he is prescribing policy, not describing it. Maybe he regrets that his editors and marketers clamber after titles with "platform" while overlooking quiet gems. Maybe he wants to reverse the trend.

But is it really reversible?

Having worked in the video game industry for over a decade, I've seen the inner world of how games get chosen and made. I've seen great ideas passed over because they didn't have a game god to champion them. I've seen millions of dollars poured into losing ideas because the people who pushed them were "stars." In the games industry, celebrity almost always trumps quality.

The principle is universal. In an uncertain world, decision makers gravitate toward what is familiar rather than what is actually good. I got a Mac last week. I love it. Why didn't I get one before? Uncertainty. This morning I was thinking about buying a new file server. I visited the Dell site. Later I thought: "If I love my Mac so much, why don't I think about getting a Mac for my file server?" But I knew the answer: Uncertainty. I know Dells. I've used them for years in a million ways. Sometimes they've betrayed and cheated me, but I know their wiles. They may be worse, but I know how they're worse. I didn't even considering buying a Mac.

Fear of the unknown. Maintaining the status quo. "A fool returns to his folly like a dog returns to its vomit."

Imagine I'm a book editor. I've got two crisp manuscripts in front of me. On my left is a proposal by an unknown author who quilts in his spare time. His book is luscious, profound, riveting, hilarious, life-changing, world-changing. On my right is a proposal by Joel Osteen entitled Polished Turd. Which do I buy?

The answer is not as obvious as you might think. It comes down to a question of numbers. How many early adopters will each book attract? What will the book's infection rate be?

Every product—game, book, toothbrush, anything—has some number of early adopters. These are the people who buy a product as soon as they get wind of it. They're fans. They search for news about the product. They subscribe to the mailing list. There are 1 million people who will buy U2's next album on the day it comes out. (I'm one of them.) They don't care if it consists of 60 minutes of pulsing static: it's U2, they'll take it. These are U2's early adopters.

Those of us who make and sell products love early adopters. Three reasons:

They buy early.
They buy predictably.
They buy crap.

A product or brand that has lots of early adopters is guaranteed lots of early sales. Even if the product stinks and nobody but early adopters buy it, at least you've made that initial wave of sales.

So what's a book editor to do? I look at the initial sales figures for the last Osteen book. That tells me, roughly, how many early adopters he has. ("Roughly" because if the book sold well after the initial wave, the number of fans probably increased, but if it sold poorly then we may have lost some.) I do the math. The J Man (as I teasingly call him—we're old pals by now) will sell at least 2 million copies of Polished Turd. Well, okay, discount 25% because of the title. Call it 1.5 million.

Now I look at Quilter-Boy's masterpiece. If everyone in the world were forced to read it, 90% would love it and world peace would ensue. But we can't use force, unfortunately. So we pay for endcaps in B&N and Borders and slip Amazon a little something to nudge their Recommendations engine. Now millions of people will see the book. It will pass across their optic nerve, if only for a moment. Will they buy it?

I laugh aloud and shake my head, recalling past glories and regrets. Phew! What a question that is! How long you got?

Will the title grab them? Will my cover designer score another Poisonwood Bible? Who can I get to write the blurb? Who can I get to endorse? Who'll write the forward? How handsome is the author? How interesting his bio?

What's the competition? Will this book stand out? What titles are other publishers developing that could get the jump on us?

Is the world "feeling" this book? There's an edge of gloom to this guy's writing—is the mood of the day on the upswing? Maybe we should let it lie for a year or two. The market might be more open then.

So how many early adopters will we get? Unknown. I can ballpark it. But ballparking doesn't feed the kids.

So we ask another question. What's the infection rate? Will the thousand-odd people who read this book in the first few weeks get their friends to read it? How many early adopters will become evangelists? How virulent will their evangelism be?

"Yeah, I read it—it's okay." "There's this book I've been reading that has really got me thinking." "Listen! I just finished this new book—in one night—and you have got to read it. If you don't, we can't be friends anymore."

The infection rate is a number. It answers the question: How many new readers does each new reader make? Zero—the book is a bomb. Nobody who read it recommended it. Zero point Five—the book is okay. One out of every two readers got someone else to read it. One—the book is good. Every reader made another reader.

Two. Five. Ten. Now we're getting into Philosopher's Stone numbers. People can't talk about the book without wiping foam from their lips. Those who haven't read it feel they have to apologize.

This is what I want for Quilter-Boy. He deserves it. But will he get it?

Unknown.

For both books, their sales will be the result of their early adopters and their infection rates. An unknown author's only chance is to write such an incredible book that the infection rate is huge. Even then, infection takes time. Harry Potter's first print run was 500 copies. That was 1997. It took two years—it must have felt an age to Rowling—before the series hit the bestseller lists.

Why would an editor take a chance on so many unknowns? Here's where Mike Hyatt steps in. "We have to find the next generation of talent," he says in a related post. "In fact, we will continue to take risks on those relatively few manuscripts that are exceptionally well-written."

Why? Because the safe road leads to stagnation.

We're learning that hard truth in the games industry, where every other game is a remake of DOOM. The risky, innovative Wii is trouncing the competition. The latest Unreal Tournament (the fifth installment in the series) sold worse than all the others. Even the evergreen Ultima series died around sequel #7. (I helped dress the corpse of #9.) If the youthful games industry is learning it, the book industry must have learned it centuries ago. When it comes to choosing what product to make, risk is a necessary evil.

So I don't believe that Thomas Nelson—or any other publisher—will ever take on risky writers with as much enthusiasm as we'd like. They'll tell themselves that their Tier Cs authors belong in Tier A while tossing Tier Bs out the window. Mike Hyatt imagines a world where Tier Bs get the respect and investment they deserve. It's a dream, but maybe dreaming it can make it more true.

Sculpture Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:09:00 +0000

Our family invented a new game this weekend. It's fun and cheap so we thought we'd share it with you.

We call it "Sculpture Garden." It's good for any number of players. Our 3-year old found it boring, but our 5- and 9-year olds loved it. It would probably work for 4s too, but we don't have one to test with! Oh, and I liked it a lot, which is more than I can say for most children's games.

To play, you need a set of wooden play blocks. If you have kids, you probably already have some. You want a set with interesting shapes (not just cubes) and plenty of pieces. Our set started out as 100 pieces, but we've probably lost a few.

Begin the game by removing all the blocks that don't sit "flat." Our set has triangular blocks and a sort of curved block that don't stack well. We set these aside.

Now pick three blocks and set them down about 9 inches apart. Choose who goes first, then take turns.

On your turn, you pick a block without looking (we kept them in the box, averted our eyes, and reached in). Then place the block on top of one of the three stacks.

If a stack falls over, you lose! If more stacks remain standing, the "surviving" players can keep playing to see who gets first place.

That's all there is to it.

Yes, it's like Jenga. But:

You don't have to buy a Jenga set.
It's faster to set up and put away.
There's more strategy. You can decide which stack to place a block on each turn, and this choice allows you to "rig" other players.
The stacks make interesting, abstract sculptures that look quite fun—until you destroy them.

(The picture shows a game where we were experimenting with a variation. In the variation, you can use any block—even those that don't "stack well." When you place a block, you don't have to put it on top of a stack—you can put it anywhere it fits. We're not sure whether we prefer the variation. We'll let you know.)

Mac Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:34:00 +0000

Every PC user switching to a Mac should see Dan Rodney's list of Mac-related symbols and keys, as well as LifeHacker's superb guide to the Mac for PC immigrants. Particularly helpful tidbits:

In Firefox for Mac, use Control+Tab/Control+Shift+Tab to toggle between tabs. This is similar to the inteface on the PC, except that the Mac Control key and the PC Ctrl key are really not the same.
If you're in an application and you need to toggle over to the Finder, then back again, don't minimize the application. If you minimize it, there's no way to restore it without using the mouse. Instead, use Cmd+H to Hide the app. Then restoring is just a matter of Cmd+Tabbing back to it. (Now how do you hide all apps at once?)

Unsolved Problems in Digital Game Development

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:39:00 +0000

I spoke on the subject of "Unsolved Problems in Digital Game Development" at a recent meeting of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society in Dallas. The talk laid out the current state of game technology, then outlined some problems that remain unsolved. I focused on three problems: Atmospheric Rendering (i.e. fog), Realtime Radiosity (i.e. indirect lighting), and Simulating People (thinking here mainly of the complexity of integrating AI, animation, and physics). I focused on these three because solving them would make such a great difference in the video game experience.

In truth, interesting possible solutions for all three of these problems have appeared in recent years, so they're not entirely unsolved. I showed several videos of these early solutions in action. The group seemed to enjoy the talk, and I enjoyed giving it. A PDF version of the talk, with links to the videos I showed, is now available.

Slip Sliding Away

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:24:00 +0000

I'm still in the honeymoon phase. I just discovered that I could add Phit as a widget in the Mac Dashboard and play it any old time just by touching a button. Now that's good mashup.

Last night I discovered what Apple means when it talks about an "always on" policy, and again it has made me sad for the PC. On the PC, "sleeping" your system involves several seconds of the system semi-shutting down. Waking the system takes several seconds, and then you have to log back in. On my Mac, sleeping takes no time, and waking up takes no time. I close the lid of the laptop, it's asleep; I open the lid, it's awake. Why can't the PC do this?

I'm searching for a good alternative to Office 2007. Mellel and Nisus both look tolerable. We'll see.

It sounds like I'll need to use OpenGL ES as the drawing system for iPhit. Apparently it's the fastest option for games. I'm well familiar with OpenGL (I teach OpenGL at the Guildhall), so this should be a quick point of entry for me. But I'll run some performance tests early on to verify that I can get 30fps (that seems to be iPhone's max frame rate) with as many moving elements as Phit uses.

I also had a game design thought for iPhit. What if the user could tilt the iPhone in order to make all the pieces "fall" toward gravity? Obviously this would need to be something the user could enable or disable quickly—otherwise it would be too easy to screw up your game with an accidental tilt. But assuming it was controllable, it might offer a neat way to quickly shunt all the pieces off to one side of the board, or to reset the level by sliding everything up toward its starting position. Just a thought.

Speech Impediment

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:23:00 +0000

I just played my first round of chess on my new MacBook using only my voice. The Mac has amazing speech input support. I can make chess moves just by calling them out—"Computer, pawn at e2 to e4." And I'm thinking, "Why have I never used speech input on my PC?" So I click the Speech icon in the Control Panel in Windows—I don't think I've ever clicked it before—and, oh yeah, XP does have speech recognition ("if installed," it cautions). I just never thought to use it before. Because the Mac is unfamiliar, it's forcing me to rethink how I use computers, and I'm discovering all sorts of new ideas.

I suppose it's a bit like moving to another country. In the early '90s I went to college in England and suddenly discovered I was a child again. I was startled by street markings. I didn't get certain grown-up jokes. I was delighted by TV shows that seemed fresh and new to me, but which—I would later realize—were actually banal.

PC users must never look at Spotlight in the Mac OS. It allows you to do a sort of Google Search with Suggestions in real time on your system. On the PC I use Google Desktop Search, but Spotlight is faster and even more friendly. And it comes with the OS. I guess Vista has something like that, but who cares?

I installed the iPhone SDK and played with the iPhone Simulator for a bit. Then I tried to get their HelloWorld project working and was astounded that it failed to compile. I have implemented hundreds—nay, thousands of HelloWorlds in my twenty-five years of programming, and I don't recall one ready-made by the SDK developer that instantly spewed out a hundred error messages. No doubt I just have a setting out of whack somewhere. Still, it's a little worrisome.

iPhit: Porting Phit to the iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:04:00 +0000

This week I start a new project. I'm porting Phit to the iPhone. The FedEx man just dropped off my new MacBook—my first foray into Mac. Liam uses them at school, so he initiated me. He showed me the button on the bottom of the Mac that tells the battery life. He helped me figure out which power cord to use. He assured me that the white light on the front of the Mac bodes well rather than ill. Then we formed a GarageBand and recorded our first megahit.

I considered a Mac a few years ago but chickened out at the last minute. No right mouse button? No delete key? Why don't you just cut off my arm?

This time I have no choice. I'm making a game for the iPhone, and the SDK requires a Mac. So here I sit, searching for a Home key that doesn't exist (though Command+Left Arrow does much the same thing). Isn't it a little bit ironic, considering Apple's 1984 commercial, how totalitarian is their approach to user interface?

The Mac interface is so slick, though. A high-energy, full-screen movie greets me on startup. Everything is smooth and colorful. It's a beauty bath. I go back to my PC running Windows XP, and it's like watching an old Land of the Lost rerun. Great special effects, for the time.

My goal is to get Phit ported over soon after the iPhone AppStore opens. Daniel McNeely (of ArmorGames) and I have partnered to make it happen. We think people will absolutely love Phit on the iPhone. What do you think—how does Phit with multi-touch sound to you? You'll be able to drag two pieces at once, yank this one out of the way to get that one past. Sitting on a train. Or driving your car. It will rock.

You haven't played Phit? It's a simple puzzle game I made last year that you can play on the web. Try it—it won't bite. Though people do tell me it's addictive. I had a note from a lady who was quitting smoking and using Phit as a replacement.

Over the next few weeks I'll keep you posted as I delve into the dark, mysterious, vaguely Fascist world of making games on the iPhone. Check back often or you'll totally miss it, and then your friends will ask if you saw the last awesome post and you'll have to admit you didn't and then they'll realize you suck.

One last question. Who thought it was a good idea to sharpen the edges of a laptop?

Book Business

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:18:00 +0000

Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson laid off a tenth of their work force this week. Their president and CEO, Mike Hyatt, has been blogging about the decision. His candor and openness are quite refreshing—not to mention educational for aspiring authors like me. He gives us an glimpse into the tough inner world of book publishing.

The words "tough" and "book" don't belong in the same sentence. It's like putting Shirley Temple into a film about Jack the Ripper. As I read through Mike's posts, I realize that part of my anxiety about getting published comes from this tension. How do we marry the creative and practical sides of writing and selling books?

I might ask the question this way. Are books really about this:

Or are they really about this:

Of course the answer is that they're about both. You can't keep making books unless you make a profit. Yet nobody who chooses a career in publishing chooses it purely for the money—other industries will make you wealthier quicker. As Mike says, "It is partly about the money. Otherwise, we won't stay in business. But that is certainly not what gets us up in the morning."

So we don't want to say that the "good" side of publishing is the creative/intellectual side while the "bad" side of publishing is the practical/financial side. The two sides have to stick together. Divorce is not an option. You can't have one without the other.

Yet, from an emotional standpoint, when I imagine being a published author, it's not the money that gets me excited. It's the readers. It's the bookstores. It's the physical presence of the book itself.

Yesterday morning I spent 45 seconds sniffing C. H. Dodd's The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, which was published in 1932. The yellow pages are browning at the edges like an old daguerreotype. Dodd's commentary is fierce, but it smells sweet—literally, like a summer meadow.

My dad published a few books when I was a kid. I remember him bringing the galleys home—oversize pages with fine, typeset lettering—a sort of prototype for the book. Looking at them was like sneaking a glimpse into a secret world. They would be marked up in blue by a copy editor, who even noted things like indentions and headings and the location of page numbers—things no ordinary reader would ever know someone had fussed over. I hear publishers don't use galleys anymore. They've been cut adrift and left to bob in the wake of digital technology. Pity.

I love books, and I love reading—not just doing it, but imagining it done—the long, united centuries of paper and print and the people who have loved them. When I write a paragraph, I don't think about its market value. I think about its meaning, its function, its structure, its beauty or lack thereof.

But I know that to get published I must sometimes take off my wire-rim spectacles and don safety goggles, or even a helmet, and charge once more into the fray, and let slip the dogs of market analysis and pitch meetings and niggling contract terms. I have to make the beautiful sell.

It's tough straddling the worlds of books and business—one foot on land, the other on sea. You have no choice but to serve both logos and mammon.

Subconjunctival Posterboy

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:52:00 +0000

I am now the number one reference returned by Google for an image search on "subconjunctival hematoma". Go me!

Warning: The link above is not for the squeamish. I'm not kidding.

Writing Off Broadway

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:43:00 +0000

Writing is terrifying. It shouldn't be, but it is. I've got no kind of public, yet I can't stop wondering what people will think. I'm on no kind of stage, yet I've got stage fright. I'm already embarrassed about mistakes I haven't even written yet. Consequently, often when I sit down to write, I end up surfing the web—the modern symptom of writer's block.

I've tried various strategies for tricking myself into actually writing. One of my favorites is to dictate the first draft. I get myself driving on an unhurried freeway. I ask myself a question and pretend to be interested. Then I simply talk out my answer, capturing the results with a digital recorder. When I get home, I transcribe the recording, then edit with a crowbar and hacksaw. I've had pretty good results with this technique, believe it or not. Best of all, it gets me writing and I don't even feel it. It's like putting cough syrup in your kid's ice cream.

Yesterday I discovered another weapon in the war against writer's block. I call it the Planning Document-Draft Document Bait and Switch. PDDDBS, for short.

I found it by accident. I was working on a chapter for a book. I had created a blank document with the proper formatting (Times New Roman, 11 point font, nifty headers and footers) to act as fertile ground for the chapter. I then created—as a diversion from actually writing—a second document. This one was formatted in an "informal" way, with a sans-serif font and colorful headings. I would use it for planning and note taking.

Rather than switching back to the main document, I lingered in the planning phase a little while. I planned and thought and researched and took notes for half an hour. It helped, actually. It helped me understand the chapter I was about to write. In a flush of confidence, I saved the planning document and switched over to the "real" one. As I did so, I felt the footlights on the edge of stage blaze to life.

The cursor kept winking at me, like a vengeful prompter. I heard the deafening silence of the audience. And I crawled away to hide in my planning document.

That's when I discovered it: The PDDDBS Technique.

Underneath all the planning I created a new section called "How To Start?" Then I started.

Suddenly, I realized, I was writing, but I wasn't nervous.

I was all alone.

Nobody was looking.

I wasn't "writing," I was just "trying out ideas."

Best of all, the words appeared in a chummy sans-serif font. Even the style of the page told me I was home, out from under the spotlight.

I wrote a page or two. Then I read it, and it was okay. I copied it over to the real document. There was a smattering of applause from the audience, and it was enough to keep me writing through the end of the chapter.

Translation Sensation

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:07:00 +0000

I have just translated my first Hebrew passage and it has made me absolutely giddy. I'm embarrassed to admit that an academic exercise could fill me with such delight, but there it is. Up until this point, I've parsed individual words and translated single sentences. Today was first time I translated a whole block of the original Hebrew scripture.

The passage is Jonah 1:1–5, which we're studying in my second-semester Hebrew course at Dallas Theological Seminary. Part of what makes the translation such a pleasure is the story itself. Jonah has an amazing, vexing personality. His adventure is engrossing, profound, helpful, and hilarious, all at the same time.

Translating from the Hebrew brings color to each word. I discover that the word we translate "to sleep deeply" (1:5) can simply mean "to snore." I begin to see connections I hadn't noticed before. Jonah is an underachiever. Both God and the ship captain have to tell him to "get up!" People keep throwing things: God throws a wind upon the sea, prompting the sailors to throw their stuff overboard. Later, they'll cast lots, and then of course they'll chuck Jonah.

The star of the show is kind of a lovable nut. What is more comical—and yet disturbingly believable—than a prophet who thinks he can escape from God? What kind of weird mix of faith and rebellion would enable someone to sleep through the perfect storm?

But Jonah is more than a slapstick crank, and much more than a children's book character. The tension that drives him is one that drives me. On the one hand, he wants to serve people and bring them closer to God. On the other hand, he thinks God is too good for those people—and by implication, so is he. It's easy to hold contempt for those you're sent to serve. So when God speaks to Jonah, I try to keep my ears open.

After nine months of studying Hebrew, memorizing 400+ vocab words, learning Qal verbs and Piels and Hiphils and Hophals and myriad Weak verbs, it's a relief to finally apply that knowledge. I feel like a man who has been studying a map so long he can barely focus his eyes, until one day he is dropped off in a foreign city and discovers that he already knows how to get around.

New Game: Coffee Shop

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:08:00 +0000

I've just released a new flash game: Coffee Shop, available at ArmorGames.com. This summer I partnered with Daniel McNeely, who owns and runs ArmorGames.com, to release Phit. We had so much fun we decided to do it again, and Coffee Shop is the result. James Dalby's art and Chris Branscome's music really bring it to life. Enjoy.