I really hate feeding trolls, but I gatta ask- do you know how to speak without using hyperbole?  Like would you describe your breakfast as "the best toasted bread made using techniques the likes of which the breakfast industry can only imagine!  I've been eating breakfast since before you mere mortals knew what breakfast was!  Something something simulation of God!"

So I have a friend who constantly complains that it's too difficult to find a job because they're "overqualified" for every place they applied to.  Sometimes overqualified actually means not-at-all-appropriate-for-this-role and experience has nothing to do with it.  Maybe you really do have a lot of experience in game design, but you need to be able to demonstrate that you're offering something the industry needs.  Gaming companies need to have that supply of young, moldable, a bit naive but with a good work ethic kind of employees to fill junior roles.  I'm not sure what you're even claiming to offer to the industry, since you're able to say so little in so many words.

For the record, even if I knew what a Cybergod was, I don't think I want one.  I certainly can't imaging how one would help me make fun games.

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I don't “hate” Devry graduates, I point out the fact that you consider a 20-year old qualified but not someone who has been designing games since before your industry even existed. 

This thinking pervades every one of your posts and I have to address it specifically. The amount of time you've spent "designing games" is not relevant information without further qualification. Duration of experience does not matter; the nature of the experience matters. You're appealing to an authority that is not valid.

As an example, consider William McGonagall, who was a notoriously bad poet. He wrote somewhere around 200 poems over the course of 25 years. By your logic, we should consider him a more accomplished poet than someone who wrote poetry for only 5 years; and yet, having read some of his poetry, I can say that teenagers have written better poetry than he did. If I needed someone to write a poem for me, I would not hire William McGonagall, I would hire the teenager, on the grounds that McGonagall's experience isn't useful to me.

Another example: in the early days of Microsoft (about 1976 or so), Bill Gates was a programmer, being involved with writing Microsoft's early BASIC products. After that, he slipped into a management role, however, and ceased to have programming responsibilities very early on. He may have been a founding father in Microsoft's history (and indeed, in the world of computation), but there is no way in hell I would hire him for a programming position. His experience simply wouldn't be relevant for that.

In fact, now that I think of it, I've worked professionally with some older guys who, like you claimed 30-40 years of experience. The ones who constantly drew attention to their experience tended to be the ones who were stuck in the '90s - unable to change their habits to match the times, or work well with others. The subject tended to come up when they weren't getting their way and they wanted to assert dominance over other devs. Most of them didn't actually write great code, despite their years. At this point, talking about one's past achievements as much as you do is an active red flag for me that says "do not hire this person, he will be arrogant and probably incompetent."

"Number of years doing something" does not entitle you to a job, relevance, or respect. It doesn't even imply that you're competent! Being the one who invented something everyone uses does not entitle you to those things, either. That's simply not how the world works; past experience does not dictate future performance. I suggest you erase this fallacious assumption from your thinking and stop harping on how long you've been doing things for. Swallow your bitterness and find some other way to market yourself.

I suggest, for a start, talking about what you have done rather than how long. 

Addressing a few points in no particular order:

Pure design positions are indeed a role in the industry, although they're comparatively rare and generally require a proven skill set. Most people in these roles got their chance by making their own projects, by being given a chance on some low-risk project, or by having experience in tabletop game design. Steve Cole is a good example of someone who could qualify for such a position. There are actually entry level pure design roles as well, but they're significantly more limited in scope and don't match what you with to do - you would probably consider them more akin to a design assistant, working on small bits of a project as part of a more senior designer's team. 

The reason noone is really considering this as a viable option for you, is as I covered earlier in the topic: you simply do not have a verifiable track record of relevant experience. You may well have designed hundreds of games and be very good at it, but as far as you've made us aware you only have verifiable credits on two released products: as a contributor to the SFB Tactics Manual (along with 25 other people credited for design), a design credit for Sinistar Unleashed (which had very unpopular design), and perhaps if you're lucky and someone remembers it your IKNFL mod. You haven't claimed to have any relevant formal education.

You may well be a fantastic designer with a wealth of experience, but you have nothing to prove it, so it's exceedingly unlikely a business would risk money on the chance that you'll be as good as or better than someone with verifiable qualifications - noting again that the sort of pure design role you're interested in is generally not entry level and isn't going to fresh-faced Devry graduates either.

So, if pure design roles are a thing, why do people keep telling you to learn how to program? They're actually giving you different advice, not aimed at getting you in to a pure design role. For the reasons above, people have trouble believing you would be able to get into a pure design role, so they're offering you an alternative: learn to make things yourself so you don't have to be held back by the industry, or so that you can produce something suitably convincing to get into a position you want in the industry. Remember above how I said pure design roles generally only go to people with a proven track record? Sometimes those people get that proven track record by learning another discipline such as programming or art so they can work in other roles until they prove themselves. In short, the suggestions to learn programming do not actually contradict the suggestions that pure design roles exist.

In sales, they say that it doesn't really matter what's true - it matters what is believable.  You're essentially trying to sell yourself to us, and you're constantly making some pretty huge claims about your abilities and about what 'rube' can do. Maybe the things you're saying are really true, they're certainly not impossible. They're certainly not believable though.

You tell us you're a founding father of our industry, but none of us have heard of you and you aren't credited on the published products to prove it. Maybe it's true. But it's not believable.

You tell us rube is 'a functioning simulation of god', but you won't share anything but the smallest details (and you make us wade through the most amazing amounts of text to get those small glimpses), and you even claim the full potential of rube can't be realised with current day computing limitations. It may well be true. But it isn't believable.

Stop trying to sell us your truth, and sell us what is believable - once we believe, maybe people will start to see your truth.

It's not believable that you're a founding father of the industry with years decades of design experience on hundreds of games, because the games aren't there for us to look at, so instead show us something we can believe: polish up some smaller, simpler designs and just show us that you're a good designer.

It's not believable that rube is 'a functioning simulation of god' (whatever that means), so stop talking about the unprovable possibilities that current computing can't even handle, and stop talking about things you aren't willing to share details of. Talk about something we can believe, and show us what these lesser forms of rube can actually do in an implemented design.

Don't talk about the history, and don't talk about future possibilities: stick to what you can actually show us right now (or in 6 months or in a year if you need time to work) in full detail, so that we will have no choice but to believe. That is how you can get some actual interest in the other stuff.

Star Fleet Battles is one of the most (if not the most) complex and detailed game rule sets in existence, and you keep discussing how other games (such as Master of Orion) pale in comparison. You keep saying this shows how much more skilled the designers such as Steve Cole are.

I don't think anyone disputes the skill of Steve Cole and other table top designers. They're work is fantastic, and many of their games have a very loyal following and have made plenty of money, often for years.

But you don't seem to allow for the fact that taste in games is subjective.  You love how complex and amazingly detailed the rules of SFB are, but many people hate it for exactly the same reason.  When a designer produces a simpler game, it doesn't necessarily mean they are less skillful, it just means they had a different objective in mind. Often, these designers have been very skillful in designing a less complex game that appeals to the great number of people who prefer simpler games.

You've mentioned a few times that the industry has no respect for table top and board game designers. I'm sure there are some people who don't, but I can assure you this isn't some all-encompassing attitude shared by the whole industry. I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone about it who didn't have a huge respect for those designers. Many people in the industry play and love table top and board games.  Many study them to learn. Many design them as prototypes, or as full products to develop their skills. Many table top designers have made successful transitions to our industry and are now well respected designers. 

You're having trouble finding anyone who respects you, because (at least in my experience of you) you're all outrageously rude talk with no demonstrable credits or released product to show that you're actually worthy of respect, but in general I'd say our industry has a huge respect for table top gaming.

It isn't laughable to defend Devry graduates getting positions while you can't get one, because you aren't after the same entry level roles that they get, and they are more demonstrably qualified than you for the roles they are able to get. You may well be a great designer, but you can't really prove it right now, whereas a fresh graduate can be assumes to at least have a baseline level of skill in the field taught by their course. Noone wants to make the same assumption about you when all you're giving is your word that it's true.

You say the Pirate Dawn design document was actually quite well organised. It wasn't. I'm one of the people who tried to read it, and at least when I looked it was a disorganised unapproachable mess riddled with typos. Maybe that's because 'the industry wanted you to add a bunch of stuff', but that doesn't change what you presented. It just was not. If you'd like to fix it up (or have already done so in the past 10 years) I'm sure some people would actually try to read it again, but there's no point just telling us we're wrong about it - multiple people tried to read it, and we all have the same assessment. For whatever reason, it was a mess.  

If you have the time to write 500 pages, you probably have the time to go back and fix it up as well. Don't excuse it or explain it, just fix it.

Lastly, you seem to think this offensive, overly wordy cult-of-personality you have going on is helping you, and have even suggested a few times that you "have to put it on to get attention".

It isn't helping you to get any valuable attention. It just makes you look like an insane rambling crank who doesn't know what he's talking about, to the point that a great many people think you're trolling.

If you're genuinely pretending to have this abrasive personality, knock it off. It's not serving you well. You've got plenty of people reading your posts and engaging in conversation, so stop screwing around and do something useful with the attention. Stop driving away attention you've got with paragraphs of irrelevant or unbelievable nonsense.

Put your money where your mouth is, and show us you can walk the walk and not just talk the talk. If you're a brilliant designer, show us some actual, playable, brilliant designs.

Feedback on Armageddon Chess will be coming in a day or so, we were pleasantly surprised that you claim to actually want to hear it, so some of the others are getting their thoughts together for me to pass on too.

Good luck, shut up, and for the love of all that is good and holy show us some actual games! 

Hope some of that helps in some way.

(The above posted from mobile, please excuse any small formatting errors, auto-correct errors, etc.)

I don't want to attempt to reply to everything that was said here, obviously that reply would be too long.  I did not just help with the SFB tactics manual, I as a member of the Staff who represented the Romulans during my time on the staff.  And I was on the staff during one of the three critical periods of the design of the game, the design phase of the final "Captain's Edition" of the game.  That is why I am one of the more well known people in the history of the SFB Staff, I was there at a critical period.  I was also one of only four people to ever be hired by the company, I actually worked at Task Force Games.

I have been hired by every game company that has ever interviewed me.  Both of them, Task Force Games and GameFX.  You generally ignore pure game designers.  Only one computer game industry ever so much as responded too me... and they hired me.  In 20 years of doing this your way, only a single company ever so much as responded too me and they hired me.  I've been hired by every game company who ever responded too me.  

I was not comparing Master of Orion to SFB, I was pointing out that Master of Orion plagiarized SFB.  And it really is like kids playing with SFB in a sandbox.  It's really primitive, even childish.  Master of Orion is like Candyland.  You really have no concept of how far behind us you are when it comes to space ship games.  The biggest thing that prevents you from making a good space ship game is that you don't know the tactics of space combat, what I call the science of "2D ACM without gravity".  If you don't know the nature of the fight, you can't make a game about space ships fighting each other.  It is a very complex subject that has taken a lot of very smart people decades to begin to put together.  As an example, their is a big problem with Deadlock that will prevent it from ever being able to truly shine.  The ships move so slow compared to the rate of fire of the weapons, due to BSG canon, that it can never be made to be an interesting fight.  It will inevitably be a slugfest with almost no tactics too it other than "get in range and shoot until a ship blows up".  I know some ways of making what our tactical knowledge calls a "knife fight" more interesting than what you are seeing in Deadlock, but that is still lacking all the dynamics of how this actually works.  Without the primary phases of the fight present (approach, battle pass, separation) all you are left with is a knife fight slugfest that is pretty boring compared to what you have when you understand the tactics of the situation and design the game to work with those tactics.  This is just a tiny little example of an endlessly complex subject.  But this has always been the root cause of why you can't really make space ship games.  If you don't know how the fight plays out, you have no idea how to make the game work or even how to design the ships.

It's far too much to write here, but the tactical knowledge accumulated by the SFB Staff over the last 40 years is akin to the laws of physics of how this all works.  They apply to any situation where objects are fighting in an environment with no gravity, even a game like Diablo for example.  You simply don't possess the knowledge to make a good space ship game, because you don't know the tactics of the fight.  You are "flying blind" when you attempt to make a game that focuses on combat between ships.  We really do know what we are doing, we really do have this down to a science.  I really would make space ship games at a whole new level that you have never seen before, and many other current and former SFB experts could as well.  It's not just me.  You really have no idea how far ahead of you we are when it comes to this specific subject, or how blown away you would be by one of us making a space ship game.  We may as well be from a different planet compared to what you do with space ships.  That's not exaggerating, in fact it is understating the situation.

I thought I'd add a bonus to this thread for anyone who has actually read the PDU story, and paid close attention to the song lyrics along the way since they are always the spine and backbone of the story. I shouldn't be revealing this one, but at this point I will almost certainly never get to make the 10th game of the PDU... so why not. If you got into the story and know it, every word of this song will have great meaning too you. This is a part of the very end of the story of Fallen Angel Rising, one of the first songs of the end sequence story of the entire chronological timeline. If you've read it, it is probably obvious too you that the sun had to have exploded at some point during Astral Invasion. In Fallen Angel Rising, about 300 years after that, humanity is going extinct. There are very few humans left in the galaxy, the last generation of what little is left of humanity will soon die off and there will be no more humans left in the galaxy. Cindy/Ashling is about to “do her thing” and give humanity a second chance. This song is the beginning of the end of Cindy's story, and of humanity's story. Every word of it is profoundly relevant if you have taken in the story on my blog, if not it's just a song that won't have much meaning too you. I shouldn't be giving this one away, this is a present and thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read my story and likes it.

Oh... And I have shown you 14 inter-woven games on my blog... How many more will it take?  One is playable, another is a first draft "starting point for discussion".

I'm mostly reiterating what has been said before:

What exactly are you looking for here in this forum?

The concrete things that you have elaborated on are nothing that haven't been done before. Honestly, you don't seem like a terrible game designer. Many of the things you've stated are decent mechanics. However, I don't think your ideas are half as original as you think. You come off as an arrogant ****. No one wants to work with an arrogant ****.

You have a huge presentation problem. If you cut out the hyperbole, namedropping, blaming, and self boasting your posts are quite empty. Show or describe something concise and tangible. The game industry is not your problem. Even if the fools in 'the industry' are the root of your problems, do you expect an entire industry to change? Has your current approach been working for you?

It isn't too late to change. It won't be easy, change is hard.

I think rube is either not as revolutionary as you think, or not feasible with current computing power to be revolutionary. If you die without rube being realized that's on you not us. I hope you prove me wrong. Good luck.

Also: Children of a Dead Earth

A game that I would pit against any spaceship game that you concoct in your lifetime.

On 8/5/2017 at 2:27 PM, Kavik Kang said:

You should already know the significance of a functioning simulation of God.

I doubt that anyone on this forum doesn't understand the significance of the idea but that's all it is at the moment, an idea. All we have is your word that Rube is an actual 'thing'.

People tend not to care about other peoples ideas; everyone has ideas. If you want help building it though  this is the place; gamedev.net is an exceptional helpful community.

Demonstrate what it is Rube can do, show us why we should care.

Nacro: I am just trying to find a way to make at least one of my games, I would assume Territories, before I die. I've spent my entire life on this since I was 7 years old, I'd just like to publish at least just one game before I die. I tried it the normal way for 20 years, in all that time only one game company ever even responded too me. Someone early gave me advice about interviews... I've been hired at every game company interview I have ever been too. I don't have 20 years to manage to get a single response again. There is also the issue that just sending a resume to someone that lists the Task Force Games and the Star Fleet Universe as your primary experience does no good when nobody has heard of it before, or understands the significance of who we (and our fearless leader) even were.

I always forget to mention this, but because of IKNFL Sierra offered both me and my brother jobs designing Front Page Sports Football 99 out of the blue. I hadn't even sent them anything. Of course, my luck, that came at the same time as GameFX so I had to choose between them.

To put some of the things I say into perspective, I really only make two kinds of games. Like pretty much all game designers I have one or two things I do well. I would never dream of competing with an FPS guy making an FPS, or an RPG guy making an RPG. With the sole exception of Armageddon Chess which is a board game where all I have really done is add a simple combat system to chess, all of the games of the PDU are either strategy war games or tactical space ship games. That's my thing, that's what I do. I can only make a truly good sports game with my sports-guru brother to put the final paint job on it, I can't do that alone. There are no RPGs in the PDU, because people who like RPGs wouldn't like mine. Same goes for everything else. If you are a talented “FPS guy”, you are the reason I can't make an FPS. Mine would suck compared to yours. If I tried to make an RPG I'm sure anyone who likes RPGs would say “this isn't an RPG, this is X-Com with a few RPG elements”... and they'd be right. That's why I wouldn't try to make an RPG. The RPG guys would destroy me. I don't think I can do everything, I make strategy war games and tactical space ship games. That's it. I can't compete with anyone who is talented at working in any other genre because that's their thing, and it's not my thing.

I thought that I should take the time to give you an example of this knowledge of “2D ACM without gravity” (most of it also applies in 3D) that I had mentioned in the previous post. This is not my knowledge, this is the accumulated knowledge of hundreds, if not thousands, of people over a period of 40 years. I possess this knowledge at a level that maybe only three or four dozen other people in the world do. I was never an great “ace”, I was a great “rules lawyer”. One of the most complex subjects within this body of knowledge is what we call “The Kaufman Retrograde”. This is one of those types of subjects that has no final answer and another SFB expert and I could endlessly debate several points I will make, so this is partly my take on what is an endlessly debatable subject. This is a very brief and incomplete synopsis of this concept, any true SFB expert could easily write 10 pages about this subject before needing to stop to think of something to write next.

The Kaufman Retrograde has a deep effect across almost all aspects of the tactics of “2D ACM without gravity”. The basic concept is simple. A ship moving away from a pursuer is at a great advantage. Any mines dropped by the running ship are weapons moving quickly towards a pursuer, any mines laid by the pursuer are simply left behind and irrelevant to the enemy. Any missiles launched by the pursuer have a long, slow, uphill climb to the enemy. Any missiles launched by the running ship have a significantly increased rate of closure. The design of the ships would change this, but as the ships of the SFU are designed the Kaufman Retrograde can be almost a 3:1 advantage. Three equal ships would be a fair fight against a retrograding opponent. It can make that big of a difference depending on the design of the ships involved. This is probably the most serious balance issue within this type of combat environment, it affects most aspects of tactics and maneuver.

Although it is always a viable tactic, sometimes even only very briefly without any extended pursuit taking place, the retrograde is normally only a serious balance issue when the sole objective is attrition (the destruction of ships). You can't attack an objective by running away from it, you can't defend an objective by running away from it. The retrograde is not usually a balance issue whenever there is an objective other than attrition. So adding an objective to a scenario/map can be used to eliminate or at least mitigate this as a balance problem. The best general “solution” when the objective is attrition that the SFB community knows of is to limit the size of the map, what we call “the boxing ring”. Because of the Kaufman Retrograde map size is a critical factor in balancing a tactical space ship game. An “open map”, one that is not restricted in size, will provide a large advantage to any ships that excel at the retrograde, which are usually ships with seeking weapons such as missiles and plasma torpedoes. It can also make for very long, drawn out, and boring fights. Space might be infinite, and it might seem “right” that the map should be endless, but you will encounter very serious balance issues on an “open map”.

This is a core subject, a part of the very beginning of truly understanding the “2D ACM without gravity” that governs this type of combat. You don't have to tell me, I already know that you are aware of this concept by whatever term you use for it. You can't miss it, it jumps off the map/screen at you. But, based on your games, you don't understand many of the implications of it. I've played most of your space ship games and they are riddled with easily solved problems caused by the Kaufman Retrograde. If you had this knowledge, those obvious and simple to resolve issues wouldn't be there.

Going back to the Deadlock example I've been using, and applying this to that issue, the retrograde is not really a factor in Deadlock. The ships move so slowly, the combat is at such close range, and the missiles are moving so fast compared to the ships that the Kaufman Retrograde effect is essentially not present in Deadlock. Deadlock is one thing, an approach into an endless knife fight. I don't doubt that Deadlock will be a game that a lot of people like, it looks like I will like it because I love this stuff so much. But, in reality, there is almost nothing too the combat in Deadlock... “gamers don't miss what they have never had.”

...and there you go again, just ignoring the advice I gave. What you're telling us might be true, but it's not verifiable or believable.

5 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

I did not just help with the SFB tactics manual, I as a member of the Staff who represented the Romulans during my time on the staff.  

[...]

 I was also one of only four people to ever be hired by the company, I actually worked at Task Force Games.

Maybe true, but not verifiable or believable. Where is the design credit on the released product to show this?

If you just keep saying it without any proof it looks like unbelievable hyperbole.