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It's not that I am “worried someone will steal my idea”, or care about money. Rube is how I make games. It's my style, the thing that makes my games so uniquely different than everyone elses. Since it is very unlikely I will ever actually get to make one of my computer games, I'm certainly not going to reveal exactly what my style of making games is and then watch people start making games in what really is my unique style of doing it. That's what Rube is, in a way, just my unique way of making games that results in unique games

So you are worried someone will steal your idea.

>>What do I have to do to finally be seen as at least the equal of someone with almost no experience, and even less knowledge?

Build a portfolio, apply for jobs and go to interviews, like all the rest of the people do.

Btw, I again remind you that, when you were talking about your sports mod and how good you are at designing those kind of games, I offered you my services as a programmer in order to make a prototype together(I was interested in making a sports game myself back then). Sure, we weren't going to make an AAA sports game, but we would have an awesome(if your word was true) playable prototype that we both could showcase. You declined, because your grand designs can only be made with multi-million teams and anything else is beneath you. So I went on my way, worked on my indie game, now have a job at EA DICE. Not as a designer, as a programmer, but I work with designers every day, making the tools they use to make AAA multi-million games. See, you *could* have a connection there today, but you don't accept anything less than people bowing down to you and handing you 100 million.

So there's that too.

4 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

Kylo: I had thought my point would be obvious when I said that. My point was that I am a lot closer to that than any 20-something recent graduate of the Devry School of Game Design. Rube doesn't qualify me as a game designer in your eyes, 40 years of experience doesn't either, but you'll hire a 22-year-old in a heartbeat. It's just plain insulting. Do you hear me saying I that expect Rube to make me wealthy? Or trying to start my own company? I just want to make games. I would think that 40 years of experience would be enough all by itself, but no. I was certain Rube would be enough... but no. If I was 22 and went to the Devry School of Game Design, then it wouldn't be a problem? What do I have to do to finally be seen as at least the equal of someone with almost no experience, and even less knowledge? Your industry is like the twilight zone from my perspective. It really is.

I said I was done, but since you're addressing me directly, I'll do you the courtesy of responding.

"Rube doesn't qualify me as a game designer in your eyes". Correct. Because it's not a game, it's a long series of vague blog posts. There may be other things you've made which qualify you as a game designer, but I've not seen them.

"40 years of experience doesn't either" Experience of what? And for what? 40 years of board game design experience, if you have it, is useful, but it wouldn't qualify you to come to my company and tell us what game to start making. That's not how the process works. It might qualify you to come in at mid-level providing you were able to show some capability with digital design tools, and a willingness to engage with our existing processes.

"you'll hire a 22-year-old in a heartbeat". If they have relevant skills for the role we need, sure. They, too, would not be coming in to the company telling us what game to make. They'd probably be given a copy of the Unreal Engine and asked to start blocking out greybox levels for whatever game we're already working on, or asked to tweak vehicle handling parameters, or told to design some low-level kill-10-rat style quests.

"I just want to make games." So make them. Unity. Unreal. GameMaker. Stencyl. Godot. There are tons of cheap or free tools out there and you can get started today.

"What do I have to do to finally be seen as at least the equal of someone with almost no experience, and even less knowledge?" You have to do the same that anyone else would have to do - make something to prove your capabilities. Nobody hires on the basis of blog posts or repeated insistence. The burden of proof is on you. You also have to learn to communicate better and to be more of a team player. Nobody hires someone who comes to them and says, "your industry is full of idiots who don't understand that I am the top person in this field". Who'd want to work with someone that sounds so arrogant? If you truly are at the top of your field, you wouldn't need to state it; it would be obvious from your work.

On 8/5/2017 at 9:31 AM, Kavik Kang said:

Maybe I should sign up, sleep through all of the “classes” so as not to be corrupted by any of their bad elementary school-level of advice, and then try again!

This will just cause you to fail the class, which you will blame on the teachers, school, and classmates instead of your behavior.  Don't bother.

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The only explanation of this that I can think of is that you don't know enough about game design to recognize that Rube is literally the “Holy Grail” of simulation design.

You share so little of the actual fundamentals of your ideas that it's impossible for us to evaluate them.  You share so much tangential ramblings as to bury what little you have shared.  Of course nobody can sanely evaluate that the ideas of Rube is anything worth their time.  At best they might try to extrapolate from the metaramblings about and around the ideas of Rube.

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the blog I put up is over 500 pages! Amazing, isn't it?

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

Between this and your attitude, you're a poor communicator here, either by choice, skill, or both.  You manage to gain a little attention with it, but largely the negative kind - little proper interest.  I'm baffled by your supposed board game bonafides - isn't this the antithesis of a good rule set?  Short and concise where possible makes things easier to pick up and quicker to play.  Complexity must earn it's keep in fun or interest, or be cut.

On the pen and paper side - sure, my library has thousands of pages of GURPS books alone - covering lore, worldbuilding, settings, mechanics, etcetera.  But these are meticulously organized, divided into books, cross referenced, and edited down to their essential contents, organized into compelling themes, indexed, summarized.  None of them ramble on about the affronts of the publishing industry against them, unless we somehow count the secret service raid on Steve Jackson Games way back when over the GURPS Cyberpunk series - ironically topical to the contents of the book.  And GURPS Lite is enough to get you started, at 32 pages.  For an entire game.  The other thousands of pages in my library?  Optional extra fluff to keep things going once you've already started.  By stark contrast, in the decade since you've started posting here, you've started to... more consistently use paragraphs.  Which, don't get me wrong, I appreciate, but isn't quite enough.

It's frustrating to see you squandering your potential like this.  Here we are, getting to make games, enjoying the creative process, seeing our creations come to fruition.  There you are, blinded by ideas that shine more brilliant than the sun in your eyes, struggling to execute on them or get others to, trapped by your own nature, your own behavior, unable to see the way forward, only able to see your ideas, labeling large chunks of your life a "waste" a decade later:

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Don't waste your entire life like I did on, when it comes to simulation design anyway, this completely incompetent group of people.

You're clearly frustrated too.  That sucks.  Nearly everything has already been said by those better than I at communicating the way forward, however.  No sense generating another 500 pages retreading where we've been.

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So, this really is for real, then? My entire life was wasted because none of you actually know what you are talking about?

Close - none of us actually know what you are talking about (and even if we did, it'd be no guarantee of our interest.)  Learn to communicate your ideas to mere mortals, build your ideas using mere mortal means, pivot to something that will use your ideas in different mere mortal ways, or accept that your ideas are in fact a waste.  Fool's gold blinding you from action and building things.  Take some goddamn responsibility for your own life and what you can do with it instead of blaming some strangers on the internet for their lack of having done things with it for you.  If your entire life is wasted, that is because of you.

If you pivot - maybe fiction.  Nanowrimo?  You clearly like to write.  You have imagination, and love metaphor to the point of it being a problem in design and technical discussions.  You love language charged with your own meanings and vocabulary - again, problematic, when the rest of us being on a completely different wavelength where your terms already had very different definitions at times.  Science fantasy can get away with not making technical sense to the reader, although plot and narrative structure will be important things to learn.  You may end up screaming bloody murder when an editor gets their hands on your work.  Learn to accept this when they are perhaps "ruining" your work.

If you don't pivot or abandon your ideas, you must learn to communicate on design and technical topics better.  The most genius and experienced among us will go entirely to waste if they cannot communicate.  And are they truly genius if they cannot learn this?  And even a fool can be a valuable member of a team if they can communicate.

My apologies for not taking the time to make this shorter.  And good luck.  I mean it.

On 5.8.2017 at 8:27 PM, Kavik Kang said:

No, I am not going to give Rube away and watch you all make games based on my work while I am still not making games.

Well then, start making games. There is nothing stopping you besides yourself. Sure, you will have to learn to code and create art, or find people willing to work with you, but as a programmer who spent years learning to create art, and having seen you spend years trying to sell your expierience to others trying to ... achieve some vague goal of "breaking into the industry"... really, in all honesty, in the time you spent writing all those pages of text seemingly just teasing people (haven't read everything honestly), you would have picked up enough programming and art skills to start working on your game, or whatever you want to achieve, and most probably already churned out a prototype.

You want people to believe in your hyperbole? Ever heard the term "show, don't tell"? Applies here too. Create a prototype. Let me see your simulation skills in action. You can hide the technical details, or only use as much of your model as you can afford to get "decompiled" and re-engineered by others... but you have to put out an example that shows people how valuable whatever you are speaking about is.

And no, you don't need millions of $ or a large team for that. If you have the time to write 500 pages of Textwalls, you can create a rather substantial prototype that should be enough to show your concepts/models worth. Hell, in the years you spent here on GD.net occasionally ranting about this, you might have already created a rather substantial Indie game, even as a one man show.

Hodgman. I do know what you've been doing. I've been playing and studying your games since the day your industry began. I've been here all along. Deadlock is a perfect example, it's at least 30 years behind us. It's primitive, a first baby step in the direction of where we already are. Everything you've said applies perfectly the other way around, though. You don't know our work. You don't know the things that we know, that are based on a much longer history of making much more detailed and accurate games than your industry ever has. I am keeping very little “secret”. I've explained most of it already, you just don't have a frame of reference to understand it. You are stuck thinking in terms of “phases”, so you can't see the significance of what is sitting right in front of you. Exactly as you said too me, you aren't qualified to tell us what we do and don't know. You couldn't have it more backwards. Which group has been doing this for 70 years, and which has been doing it for 30? You really do have everything you said exactly backwards, everything you said applies perfectly if you just turn it around. And, I posted over 500 pages specifically because you people have always said “show us something. I did. Over 500 pages worth. Nobody has even bothered to read it, and now you act as though it doesn't exist. I just spent a year putting together a 500 page presentation to show you, what more do you want? I'm not giving away my unique style and then spending the rest of my life watching you people make games my way while still insisting that I am a talentless fool. I'm just not going to end my life watching everyone else do things my way while I am still ignored. I have shown more than enough on my blog that any competent person should be able too see that I know what I am doing. People in your industry just don't know a game designer when they see one, not even when that game designer has been doing this for longer than your industry has even existed. I don't see how you can describe me spending a year, non-stop, to create a 500 page presentation as being “lazy and not willing to show you anything”. Armageddon Chess is even a PLAYABLE GAME made under the production restrictions of “make a game you can send someone as an e-mail”. What more do you want?

Kylo: I am not a programmer. If I could make a game with the Unreal engine myself I would have done that a long time ago. As for everything else you said, you are just proving my point. You aren't capable of recognizing a game designer when you see one. And confirming that you actually consider some 22-year-old as qualified, but not a member of the SFB Staff (literal one of your “founding fathers”), is simply admitting to your incompetence.

All of this criticism that I won't show you anything is nothing new, and is the reason I created my blog here. That's why I did the blog, to do exactly this. Nobody will read it. I did this, it's there right now including a complete playable game. What you are asking for is there right now. You wanted to see something, I gave you 500 pages... you won't read it and yet still demand I show you something? I don't even know what to say.

I guess I'll just sit in a corner and wait to die. I don't have anything else to do. I was born to do one thing, obsessively. I wasted my entire life on it not realizing just how clueless and incompetent the one industry I would need to be hired by is. I won't be alive for more than another 10 years or so, and would just like for my entire life to not have been a complete waste. To just make one of my games. But that isn't going to happen, because your industry is too incompetent to recognize a natural born savant simulation designer when you see one. You think a 20-year-old is qualified and someone who has been designing games since before your industry even existed is not. What more needs to be said? That really says it all by itself. It's just incompetence, and you are even willing to defend that ridiculous notion, which is mind-blowing. I can't believe you will even look for ways to try and defend it. You truly are a hopeless group of the most arrogant people that the world has ever known.

I'll just go sit in a corner and wait to die. There is nothing else in this world for me to do. I only do one thing, and the people who control that one thing are too arrogant for me to ever get to do it. You should probably stop trying to make games with space ships in them, you severely embarrass yourselves every time you do. I can't believe you actually defend the notion of a 20-year-old being qualified while someone with 40 years of experience, and former member of the SFB Staff is not. That is just admitting your incompetence, and yes, I know you don't realize that. But it is.

2 minutes ago, Kavik Kang said:

I gave you 500 pages

How about 5 that clearly illustrate your point? Maybe with Illustrations instead of just text, even?

I understand that you are frustrated that people just can't seem to grasp the genius of your idea, but if nobody gets it, maybe the problem doesn't lie with the other people. In the end, the world has not been waiting on your awesome ideas, unless you show them how awesome they are. Seems at least here in the forum, you haven't achieved that.

I think many have told you this before, but here I go again: while ageism might be rampant in this industry, this certainly is not a problem with ageism. I don't know what you expierienced in this industry outside of what I have seen here on GD.net, but if you have been trying to get people interested in your product and your skills the same way you did on this page, your age is the least of your problem. Hell, I cannot even say if your actual skill or product is... they might be as ingenius as you make them out to be. And that is the big problem right there... bad communication.

You might have flashy elevator pitches... but they sound extremly out there and hard to believe.

You lack any kind of proof that can be presented to management or anyone without the time to read a full PhD work.

And it seems even the "full work" you intended to use to sell your product is not going enough into the nitty gritty detail on WHY your work should live up to the elevator pitch that even the few people bothering to read all the text come out puzzled by it at the end, not interested.

You are overselling yourself and underdelivering, all the while being way to afraid of plagiarism when you should be rather afraid that your claims sound hyperbolic without proof, proof that would mean you have to let goof some of the secrets you claim to hold.

Just because the fortune teller tells you he knows exactly what your future holds, you will not believe him without any proof, right?

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I wasted my entire life on it not realizing just how clueless and incompetent the one industry I would need to be hired by is.

Why do you do this?

You seem to think "the industry" is somehow "us" (wat?) and that "you" are special because you aren't part of "us".... Or some shit. The industry isn't this elite private club that snoots at the uninitiated.

Kid, the reason you aren't getting hired by "the industry" is because you have no useful skills. You have

1. no programming experience
2. no game design experience
3. trouble communicating ideas in the English language (do you even read what you type? Every paragraph can be summarised into a single sentence with no loss of information).
4. a stuck up attitude about how you are better than everyone else

If you had any value at all, you would easily find a job in "the industry".

6 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

Armageddon Chess is even a PLAYABLE GAME made under the production restrictions of “make a game you can send someone as an e-mail”.

Ok, so I didn't really want to engage with this, as I feel it's likely to be a waste of time... My prediction is that you're just going to dismiss the following as us not having the frame of reference to understand your brilliance or something, but here goes... I played Armageddon Chess.

I was curious when you published something that actually looked like a playable game, so I arranged to take it to our local gaming store, and a group of 7 of us made up 3 sets and gave it a few tries. All are avid tabletop and board game players. Four like video games as well, three almost never touch them. Two have actually tried SFB, although admittedly one wasn't a fan and only ever tried one introductory game. 

It's actually playable, and the rules weren't too badly described, although as we were making our sets before play and piecing it together as we go it was a bit cumbersome to figure out. 

Not one of us enjoyed it. You took the elegance of chess and added tedious combat rules and book keeping, and the we justc didn't find it fun.

You shared a massive "design document" for Pirate Dawn" 10 years ago, and several people here actually tried to read it, but it was an unstructured and disorganosed typo-riddled mess; unfortunately you wouldn't accept that that was your problem, declaring that 'our industry just don't understand proper detailed design documents'.

You actually have one video game design credit for Sinistar Unleashed. It wasn't received very well, and the reviews I can find almost universally claim that it was aesthetically beautiful but that the gameplay was terrible.

Apparently you worked on a football mod that was popular, but noone remembers it, and in all my searching all I can find about it other than an old discussion here where you claim it was great (noone else remembered it then either) is two dead links

You keep talking about being in the SFB staff, but according to your own earlier posts you didn't actually design the game, you were just an avid core player with a deep understanding of the rules who was asked to contribute to the strategy manual. That doesn't have no value, but nor is it particularly compelling design experience. 

Your writing is verbose, poorly structured, and seems to talk around a point you never actually make. It's filled with boasting about your design and old table top games and scorn for 'the industry' but startlingly devoid of actual meaning, although you claim that's because we just couldn't possibly have a frame of reference to understand it. 

So no, you simply haven't actually done anything to demonstrate your supposedly amazing skills.

Oh, and I'm happy to give more detailed feedback if you'd like to improve Armageddon Chess by the way, but I seem to recall you insisting that iterative design is a primitive crutch our industry uses because we don't have the skills to design the correct numbers and formulas up front.