For The Love Of Ayn Rand, Do Not Quote From Marx Or The World Will End In FIRE

Posted on July 15, 2009 by Scott Jennings| 243 Comments

Build 1.0: You see a comely lass in a short skirt and a low cut blouse emblazoned with the Evony logo that beckons to you brazenly. WHAT SHALL YOU DO, GOOD SIRRAH.

Build 2.0: You see Prokofy Neva. RESPOND! RESPOND NOW!

Build 3.0: Realize that you have achieved a masterwork of commentary on the human condition that “MBA Fanboys” can never comprehend. Have a Paul of Tarsus moment where you are struck with the beauty of your innovation creating a game with real moral choices that quote from the greats of philosophy and literature. Ignore prior art such as Bioshock and Civilization. File patent so that your genius is properly compensated.

Bonus points: make sure you have as many reference to whoring women in your patent application as humanly possible.

Also, include a message board thread. Patent reviewers love that.

Build 4.0: Write a book. Write a Gamasutra blog. Just freaking WRITE. A lot. Ignore all the hataz. Get a non-profit grant to fund your hyperlibertarian game design. Get a faculty position at Pepperdine.

Build 5.0: Smoke a bowl. Get a hot model to pimp your media empire. Ask her which philosopher she’d quote.

Congratulations! You’ve won the game. Or, as Trotsky would say, “insurrection is an art, and like all art, has its own laws.” (WORLD IS LOST)

Hat tips: mystery, Metafilter, SA/LF!

This entry was posted in Academia, Ayn Rand Died For Your Sins, Patent Trolls, _. Bookmark the permalink.

Njal

Boggle.
Bleaktea

Wait, we’re on the porn standard now? That explains all those pallets of DVDs they were taking into Fort Knox…
Guido Jones

What. The. Fuck.
Ingmar

I am trying to formulate a response to that patent filing, but all I can keep thinking is TIMECUBE!
http://tprjones.com TPRJones

“Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.”
Informis

Little-known fact: those guys at the USPO are suckers for any patent that makes multiple references to Vampire-Communists.
MCM

As a lawyer and a gamer, reading this ruined my entire day.
kildy

… what. What in the hell kind of insanity performance art is this.
MCM

“… what. What in the hell kind of insanity performance art is this.”

Actually I think it’s the kind where nobody will publish your shitty polemic against video games so you use the USPTO as your publishing house.
Outlawedprod

tldr
Mercury

FFS!
Keybounce

Oh my bleep.

Did anyone actually _READ_ that patend app and those flowcharts? It seems more like one of those bad “Choose your path” adventure books than anything decent.

Make all the right decisions, based on what the game maker says? World is saved. Have a difference of political/economic views than the game maker? World is doomed! Doomed! DOOMED, I tell you! Repent! Embrace the one true ideal!

Geez, was that patent app actually approved??? Haven’t people heard of prior art — tons of books just like that?
Sjofn

Y’know, if my choices are living alone with a cat or living with a dickhead like that, the cat wins EVERY SINGLE TIME.
John Arras

I can’t tell if this guy is serious or being ironic, but I will assume that he is serious.

1. The patent is most probably useless since nobody with any clue about making games would make one where you have to quote the correct philosophy or literature in the game to advance. Why wouldn’t this be done in the gameplay? Heck, the first time I remember moral decisions like this was in Ultima 4 which was 20-25 years ago. Maybe someone should give him a copy of Ultima 4.

2. He seems to think this is easy. He wants to get to “Epic Storytelling” (his words) by branching dialogue. Branching storylines are limited and have been beaten into the ground. Creating a compelling story world where stories are told is very difficult (and I think hasn’t been done).

As a baseline, such a world must have very good character AI in it. One of my favorite quotes about working in the area of believable characters comes from Online Alchemy: http://www.onlinealchemy.com/AITech.asp

“Dynemotion is not state-based or built on any traditional AI architecture. It has elements of a beliefs-desires-intentions (BDI) architecture and other layered architectures. Neural nets, self-organizing maps, and genetic algorithms are not explicitly used in Dynemotion, but it incorporates elements from each. Dynemotion also relies on software implementations of psychological and neuroscience models.”

It’s so hard that he doesn’t even know enough to start asking the right questions, let alone finding the right answers. He is apparently taking the first, most obvious idea that anyone who has ever thought about this comes up with and decided to base his career on it. (I can’t wait for this SECOND patent where he realizes he needs a Story Engine/Drama Manager and patents the idea without actually going into the details of realizing it’s really hard.) The reason nobody else is going down this path is that after a little bit of thinking about it, most people come to realize that this is a VERY HARD PROBLEM and that branching dialogue cannot get you to epic storytelling.

PROTIP: There is something that everyone should keep in mind when they’re coming up with new ideas:

There are a lot of smart people out there. If something is easy for you to think up and you think it’s easy to implement, then a lot of other people have thought about it, too. If they’re not using your simple, easy idea, then it isn’t because they’re stupid. It’s that the idea is wrong or difficult to implement and you haven’t worked hard enough on the problem or thought about it enough for those problems to become evident to you.

AI research generally involves trying to pretty much solve a narrow class of problems experienced by humans. Attempting to make believeable characters and going beyond cardboard cutout black/white good/bad dichotomies is beyond the ability of branching dialogue to accomplish.

3. I can’t tell if you linked to a patent application or a manifesto. I don’t think he realizes that many people in the game industry want to make a great work of art where players experience a world where they can do more than just kill everything in their path…but it’s realy hard. And his examples are taken straight from the “Wouldn’t it be awesome if” Late Night Dorm Room Bullshit Sessions ™ series, but it looks like this guy is paid to come up with this stuff and he thinks they’re somehow novel ideas.

When developers say they don’t know if games will ever tell great stories, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they don’t know how. They probably don’t want to be quoted as saying it’s possible and end up looking like donkeys when it doesn’t happen for another 50 years.
Outlawedprod

Actually now that I’ve read some of the stuff….

I think that guy back in the 80s on those TV paid advertising scams was a better salesman. What was his name… Johnny Woo? He was the asian guy with the ads with him in a sports car, next to swimsuit models, and owning a mansion while promising you can just be like me if you buy my book and follow this plan.
http://www.epicslant.com Ferrel

This late in the day, after many hours of work, my brain cannot comprehend what my eyes just saw!

I liked the flow charts though.
http://www,damnedvulpine.com/ J.

SA/LF all love.
Ingmar

I found another little fun thing from this guy:

http://forum.deviantart.com/jobs/offers/1323752/

I think he may run into more Feminized Vampire Communists on deviantart than he knows what to do with…
http://tagn.wordpress.com/ wilhelm2451

I am in awe.

I do want to point out though that my own pension is now only partially bolstered by the destruction of the Judeo Christian soul, the desecration of motherhood, and the exile of the family. My tax guy suggested I diversify a few years back, so I have a decent holding in Chinese communist revisionist imperialism and Swiss Francs.
Technogeek

It’s like what would happen if Ayn Rand created HYBRID.

So beautiful…should have sent…a poet…
Ingmar

Guys, I think I get it now. THE FIFTH ELEMENT IS HOOKERS.
http://killtenrats.com Ravious

This is so funny. I wish I could say more, but I can’t. Thanks for making my (and a few other’s) day.
http://mmomisanthrope.wordpress.com/ Dblade

@John Arras:

You don’t understand, you don’t argue with that. That’s pure net.crazy, that’s like the guy on IRC that argues about zeropoint physics or cold fusion. You really have to check out his webpage and blog to get the true impact of the insanity. His web pages is nothing but quotes from classic authors and bandwidth-killing pictures of this one hot girl wearing a swimsuit mostly and posing. Either he is God level-awesome and doing this as an insane stunt, or he needs medication.

Look at this little gem from a blog comment reply:

“Alone our lone rider stands in the thundering downpour, as the lightning reveals the grotesque swarm–the horror of their collective countenance is only trumped by the screeching words. Alone he stands, with his 45; and if he has done the right thing throughout, legend has it that the 45 will glow gold and shoot Zeus’s lighting, slaying the hundreds, if not thousands of rough Vampire/Communist/Zombie beasts who slouch his way, screaming, distorting the words/slogans of the declining fiatocracy in a most demonic manner.

See? There are billions of dollars $$$$ in the novel, emotional, exalting gameplay alone. I know you can feel it deep in your bones. You *want* to hold that Gold 45 Revolver. Or you want to obliterate it and that lone rider. But either way, you know you *have* to play the game. That will be $69.95 for the collector’s edition, complete with a metal box. For $179.95, you will also get a life-like Gold 45 Revolver replica, based on the single-action Colt .45–the Peacemaker Smokewagon–the Judge Colt and His Jury of Six.”

or even better, in the same thread:

“Imagine you are standing in Best Buy. There are two versions of Gears of War. In one, the Locust Horde can be reformed and brought over to your side by quoting excerpts from the US Constitution–by engaging in dialogue–and where, in order to win, you are going to need to win their minds/hearts and souls. In the other version, you can only shoot them in campaign after campaign. Which would you buy?”

Thank you, Lum, for posting this, this is some fine insanity. You wonder what his students at pepperdine must endure.
yunk

” Attempting to make believeable characters and going beyond cardboard cutout black/white good/bad dichotomies is beyond the ability of branching dialogue to accomplish.”

This is why I was so dissapointed in The Witcher. I mean I liked the combat and alchemy systems, but everyone raved about “all the choices” there were few to no choices. It was just “save it, do it twice, move on” they say they tried to make it so you couldnt do that, but mostly failed. They say they tried to make it seem like all choices were morally equal, but failed at that too.

I think the only game that did it well was KOTOR, because I could force the Wookie to kill his best friend. That made it all worth it.
Daniel

Scott. That post was the work of a genius.
http://bdadv.blogspot.com Bonedead

Hi I’m a picture with words and you can’t read me.
http://www.brokentoys.org/ Scott Jennings

Firefox -> View -> Zoom -> Zoom In if your eyesight is not exalted like mine.
http://www.independentcreator.com matt

Wow.

Ho-ly shit.

(unable to formulate a response)

(views gold45revolver.com)

(head explodes)

Pepperdine professor uses position to meet women, take swimsuit pics of them, post them to site somehow about gaming? Or… what? There’s nothing other than SI calendar pics on that site? *head explodes again*
dartwick

the chick with the 6 shooters is kinda hawt
kildy

This man is a fountain of amazing. His anonymous wiki edit fights are wonderful, where he does nothing but pimp his own page and vandalize physics theories/physicists he doesn’t like.
http://www.eartheternal.com Matt Mihaly

This is hilarious! His naivete about the market is just….precious. Anyone who is convinced gamers want to play by quoting historical writings at NPCs is clearly possessed of such an enviably childlike ability to live in an ivory tower that it’d be a crime to burst his bubble. Doing so would be like taking an adorable little kitten and forcing it through a Clockwork Orange-esque process to rid said feline of its innocence. That’s just cruel. Let him live out his fantasy and just enjoy watching him like you’d enjoy that kitten frustrated by a ball of string that’s stuck behind the couch.

–matt
http://castle-bravo.blogspot.com Sam C.

His game, brought to life: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/500921
It’s just as good as you’d think. His rantings are a walkthrough for it…
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ Jeff Vogel

Looks like another Internet Crazy Person (and thus not really worth refuting), but a truly exceptional one. He gets big cash grants and hangs out with beach babes, so he knows something I don’t.

But the flowcharts in the patent application are AMAZING. I had to force myself to stop reading them for fear of being infected with some brain virus that will manifest itself the next time I write town dialogue.

- Jeff Vogel
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/
http://terranova.blogs.com greglas

VALIS is a better read. (Plus it’s fiction.)
http://tidehorizon.blogspot.com Tide

Patents are not hard to *provisionally* file. But to actually have them reviewed by the USPTO or an other country’s agency costs thousands of legal dollars. From your description the douche probably did it just to claim on his resume that he has a “patent pending”, which is easy to do.
Orrey

the treatis is beyond me – the web page:
1. HTML can be written on more than one page. – free hint
2. Most cameras have a white balance feature – learn it
3. Thats a .38 at best – the 45 has a Huge barrel – google is your friend
4. one hot brunette in a red bikini in a pile of eye searing junk
5. Just cause she lets you take pictures doesnt mean she’s a model – okay that one was a bit mean
Keybounce

We need a new Trope at TvTropes.org: YouFailGameDesignForever
Keybounce

Maybe make that: YouFailStoryDesignForever
Boanerges

Those nutty kits and Metaplace. What WILL they come up with next?

@John Arras

The patent is most probably useless since nobody with any clue about making games would make one where you have to quote the correct philosophy or literature in the game to advance.

In what country do you live? This is the 21st century we’re talking about. Basic premise is

1. File patent application for something entirely too vague and/or impossible to make as of this moment
2. Sit on said patent. Maybe do something just to keep patent people happy
3. Watch someone else build something that, in the right light, might look like something you own said patent for
4. Once said project is now up and profitable (or they have buckets of cash already) you pick the right time and get your lawyer to file a lawsuit (preferably over a holiday weekend or during some other occasion where their lawyers will be slower to react)
5. Hope like crazy that the judge at least lets it go forward
6. If you survived step 5 and can get a judge/jury to agree that, yes, you really have patented that thing PROFIT

So it doesn’t matter if its impossible or even really hard to do. Imagine some game where you have even the smallest discussion tree. You could claim that such a mechanism infringes on this patent.

@Tide

Maybe, but there could be some people in Malibu (where Pepperdine is) who would pony up the $20k or so in the hopes that their patent trolling would pay dividends later. The Blackberry trolls hit it big, after all.
http://dsob.wordpress.com geldonyetich

I don’t know what’s up with this guy.

As a fellow who is indeed working on creating games with meaningful choices (in between protracted bouts of procrastination) it seems unlikely that I’d need to worry about his patent. The concept is so abstract that he may well be trying to copyright choice itself, and he missed his chance to establish original precedent of proof of concept some time around when programmers invented the If statement .

If he’s making a spectacle out of himself to make us painfully aware of what’s wrong in America, then he’s actually a brilliant liberal-leaning thinker who has infiltrated a Christian business school for the affluent. Bravo, well played sir.

On the other hand, if he’s serious, then what we see here is one of the more dangerous forces in human existence. A man instilled with great passion to succeed while simultaneously having a moral structure shed of critical thought, with social connections that may well vindicate any resulting monstrosities he brings.

I fear it may be the later. There reaches a certain point where intelligence, unchecked by awareness, can reach a crescendo of such overpowering madness that it becomes an infectious force that destroys everything and everyone it touches. Every once in awhile throughout history, we’re given a reminder that we haven’t evolved that far from an easily excitable Ape after all. I don’t worry so much about an individual, such is merely a symptom, so much as the social environment they must live in that such madness is created and empowered to act.
Hally

“Let the feminist movement triumph, and abortion and porn reign supreme, for women like porn far more than men do. Men just watch it while women are in it…”

For the love of god we should all be contributing to a fund to pay this man and Derek Smart to collaborate on making Dawn. None of us would play it, but we’d all be entertained for years non-the-less.
http://word-of-shadow.blogspot.com Melf_Himself

I think this actually wins the title of most epic dick patent in the history of humankind.

And that’s saying a lot.

My mind can’t even begin to comprehend the epic failure of this tard, the patent review system, and whoever gives him funding.

Seriously, my mind just refuses to compute this right now.

On the plus side, it’s nice when despite our differences, we of the gaming blogosphere can all agree to point and /fail at a common enemy.
http://idempot.net/blog/ Matthew Weigel

Seriously, you just like making my eyes bleed with flow charts.
Guy

Pure bullshit. I can’t stare at it, it burns.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com Prokofy

“One step forward, two steps backward.” Lenin
Steven Dafonts

“In legal terms, any person who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent, subject to the conditions and requirements of the law.

You Can’t Be Too Obvious
Even if you don’t find the prior art to prove it – you will not get a patent if your invention is not different enough from similiar inventions that are already out there. A patent maybe refused if the differences between your invention and another invention are too obvious. Your invention must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to your invention. For example, the substitution of one material for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable. You can’t paint paint it red and make it twice as big and expect a patent.”
–http://inventors.about.com/od/patents/a/patent_novelty.htm
Steven Dafonts

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DrElliotMcGucken/20090710/2366/That_will_be_6995_for_the_collectors_edition.php

“You guys just aren’t thinking big enough. We were graced with divine reason and imagination, so why not use it? Think like a developer/marketer for a major billion-dollar company here; and come up with some scenes exalted by the new “Gold 45 Revolver” technology!

Think big, like in the ending wherein the Fiatocracy’s Vampires/Communists/Feminized MBA Fanboys swarm our lone rider in the mountain town, screaming/shrieking the words of Lenin/Marx/Feminism/Fiatism in Banshee voices, trying to claim his ideas and his soul.

Alone our lone rider stands in the thundering downpour, as the lightning reveals the grotesque swarm–the horror of their collective countenance is only trumped by the screeching words. Alone he stands, with his 45; and if he has done the right thing throughout, legend has it that the 45 will glow gold and shoot Zeus’s lighting, slaying the hundreds, if not thousands of rough Vampire/Communist/Zombie beasts who slouch his way, screaming, distorting the words/slogans of the declining fiatocracy in a most demonic manner.

See? There are billions of dollars $$$$ in the novel, emotional, exalting gameplay alone. I know you can feel it deep in your bones. You *want* to hold that Gold 45 Revolver. Or you want to obliterate it and that lone rider, and destroy/take his ideas and his soul. But either way, you know you *have* to play the game. That will be $69.95 for the collector’s edition, complete with a metal box. For $179.95, you will also get a life-like Gold 45 Revolver replica, based on the single-action Colt .45–the Peacemaker Smokewagon–the Judge Colt and His Jury of Six.

Who wouldn’t want to play that, just to see if their Gold 45 Revolver fires Zeus’s lightning in the end, or just a little puff of smoke, like a fanboy who took out his hate for the feminist movement (which debauched his father’s classical, epic soul and exiled him in the divorce regime) by killing too many unarmed women and innocent hookers?”

haha h aha ha ha
Ted Striker

The Gerry’s Quest game is absolute brilliance, hands down.
kondratti

I was giving the benefit of the doubt about being an ironic piece… until I visited that blog at Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DrElliotMcGucken/20090710/2366/That_will_be_6995_for_the_collectors_edition.php)

Definitely not ironic…. Timecube levels of crazy there.
Ratman_tf

That’s a hell of a lot of text. I just skipped to the gal in the cowboy hat.

For The Love Of Ayn Rand, Do Not Quote From Marx Or The World Will End In FIRE

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