How to Make & Sell Software Without Going to Hell

There can be a lot of legal and ethical issues with the production, sale, and protection of digital goods (which have near zero duplication cost so the payment for a copy is a return on the development investment and not really about paying for the cost of making the copy).  Here is an outline that has evolved as an intranet document for the last few years providing some guidance to making a fair deal with users, developers, and investors.

This is very much a work in progress document that has gone under several major revisions, is not written in a consistent style, and could easily have flaws in the logic that it argues as a unified approach to software sales in this era of global and digital distribution.  Expect future revisions from time to time, which will be flagged as such.  Now seems as good a time as any to expose it to the critical light of day.

Respect for the users

Software is being executed on the user's hardware.  Our code is a guest on their system.  Through this lens the obligations of the developer are clear and unacceptable behaviour stands out far more starkly against a background where major developers have lost sight of this fact.

Customers are being sold content, that is the personal license to all the copyrighted works involved and without limitation on their freedoms within the overall restrictions that copyright involves (to limit further duplication).  Users cannot duplicate content for others, especially for sale, but spending time and effort restricting their right to play with the copy they now own is wrong-headed.

Enabling users to express this freedom to tinker with the copy they own without impairment includes distribution of our source code with every sale (not to be redistributed to non-owners, same as all other content sold in the package).  No DRM or online activation should prevent the user from accessing their copy of the software.  No End User License Agreement (EULA) needs to be signed for use of our software.

Added 1/11/13: A personal license (if one is required by the local laws) to duplicate the content sold for personal, private use is required to enable the previous two clauses to work.  The access to source code is no use without, at minimum, the ability to create a translated duplicate via compilation.  This freedom does not provide license to duplicate work for others who do not hold their own license to the material (via purchase of our software).

Copyright was not designed to operate how it currently does.  We will release titles with a clear expiry date of copyright at which point it will transfer to the public domain for easier reuse and remixing into the wider culture without the need to show fair use.  We will also attach an upper bound price to the effort that created the work, if this return is realised (after taxes) then the work will be released to the public domain before the expiry date.

We will always try to balance the rights of our customers when it comes to creation of derivative works (and the line between this and uncopyrightable ideas that may be freely reused) and protecting fair use vs the defence of our copyrights to avoid improper monetisation and distribution of our work.  In cases such as online streaming and screenshot photography we believe in most cases this is a clear fair use (generating a transformative derivative work which justifies a fair use defence) and even if not the slight monetisation of ad supported streaming is not something any developer should ever try to limit.

Edited 5/8/16: We certainly allow any customers to stream out their experience of our software, including on monetised streams such as competitive gaming and ad-supported "let's play"s as a derivative work for which the creators should also claim their own copyright to protect their work.  We would request creators contact us before fully commercialising (via, for example, digital or disc sales of footage) a derivative work so we can agree that the bar for fair use is being crossed and can provide legal clarity & security to their IP via any free license.

Users should be invited into the community spirit of submitting patches to progress the main software for all owners and offering up modifications (mods) for use by other owners of the base software.  A system for sharing should be created to allow this to avoid the issue with distributing copyright material to people who potentially do not own the game and so should not have legal access to the base code / assets (underlying work).  The creation of mods usually involves the creation of derivative and independent works and the additional copyrights this generates should be protected while offering an easy way for those who desire to share this work (providing permission for their copyrighted work to be shared and even remixed).

Due to the desire to play on a level playing field, the use of multiplayer should attempt to enable a restricted mode where each player knows that the other is playing by the same rules.  This does not mean no mods or that this is the only way people can play together.

Games are a set of agreed restrictions on play.  House rules are the ability of players to agree on the rules outside of a dictated set from the game designer.  We should enable players to implement house rules as far as is possible.  Viewed at a certain angle then Counter-Strike is just a particularly complex set of house rules for multiplayer Half-Life.

LAN play is an expression of the freedoms granted to users to play outside of a managed online experience.  The addition of LAN spawn installs provides possibilities for players to evangelise multiplayer modes and should be considered as a mulitplayer demo mode where possible.  DRM free software does not technically restrict players from simply duplicating the software for this purpose but our copyright assertion is that this is not acceptable so a LAN spawn option must be developed to enable this promotional duplication use.

Solo cheats are an expression of the freedom to modify the copyrighted works sold, they should not be offered as DLC for sale and if they are offered for sale as part of an online component then that is an implicit permission for users to modify their client to make it seem like they have already purchased these cheats.  Basically don't do it because it's bad design and ethically questionable.

Customers are buying.  This means they gain something after handing over money.  Systems must never be built that allow players to give money without gain unless they are clearly marked as pure donations.  (egregious example:) If a virtual currency exists then it must not be simply deleted as it is unspent money (that this needs to be committed to such a document is remarkable).  Customers must be made aware of exactly what they are buying (for example if you've already sold a game including music files then the soundtrack may be no more than a more easily accessible and mp3 formatted version of something they already own).

The case can and has been made that pre-orders do not serve the industry as a whole in best matching users who wish to spend money with the most enjoyment they can derive from this purchasing power.  We currently err on the side of not taking money for the promise of future, as yet unscrutinised, content.  Companies leveraging their future value is not at all unusual and many smaller developers can only afford to develop the projects they are passionate about by leveraging the risk of their fan base.  This is a dangerous path and we are not certain of our ability to repay that risk transferral with adequate value.  Companies with several billion dollars in revenue certainly do not need you to take on risk by pre-ordering games and should rather look at revenue via the long tail of the extensive catalogues they already control and have full access to.

Current game sales management, discounting, and pricing are designed around a model that does not accept the first-sale doctrine or similar legislation that provides balance to copyright by forcing the author to compete on price with the existing copies of a work they have duplicated using their exclusive right.  We would like to move the industry towards recognition of this consumer right but expect to find some technical and competitive hurdles to implementing it unilaterally in the current marketplace.  We are open to suggestions for how to allow this but hope the marketplace can be transformed by establishment of precedent in cases such as those currently going through the European court.

We hope retail partners will be open to facilitating such consumer rights to trade and gift 'used' games on their stores.  Due to the DRM-free (and shared source) nature of our product, transferring the product under protection of first-sale doctrine (by moving the copy, not duplicating it) will not be prevented by any technological means and we would not try to oppose it; our sales partners may not share this view and so would prevent transferral of the download access (which complicates the ability to unilaterally offer transferral of an online account to a new owner without incurring the cost of providing this download link ourselves or expecting the user to manage their own backup solution, such a burning to a disc or saving to a backup hard drive).

Exclusionary design and narratives that restrict the reach of our games via bigoted, outdated, or simply wrong choices do not help sales and do not show a respect for our customers.  This is not the same as targeting a niche of enthusiastic gamers with a narrow focus title even if the distinction between the two may be more of a scale than two distinct categories.  Accessibility is a right and we will work to make our software as accessible as we can.  We always aim to try and respect all people and minimise the effect of our prejudices on our design and the stories we tell.

This extends to not discriminating against who should be able to buy our games, while fitting into whatever local legal system exists at the point of sale. We will be out here on the internet selling to everyone for the same price (baring local taxes that we are required to collect and with some lag from constantly moving exchange rates) on the same day and with the same content.  Obviously there are global legal issues that may impede our ability to execute this but we will never choose to impose limits.

Respect for the developers

Full chain of content creation and use.  Was it included in some way in the bundle sold to users?  Then they deserve to be credited.  Creation is a chain and so that doesn't mean the final assets need to have been directly created by someone, was their work reworked to generate a derivative work?  Authorisation is required (usually through employment contract) and deserves crediting.

Everyone has to right to be an Alan Smithee.  This is the balance to the previous mandate.  Working on something gives you the right to be credited but you can obviously always opt out, especially as it might not have been you who last touched something.

While we try and release some of the copyright restrictions on our own creations to better serve the users and wider culture, we also understand the importance of these copyrights to other developers and comply with them.  We will always respect the copyrights of others and their work.  We will work with external parties contributing to our projects to make sure we can secure licensing for work that allows us to bundle it under the same restrictions we distribute under or with a clearly separated line between the works (which may come up with items like licensed music).

Crunch is counter-productive beyond a few days.  We can all push ourselves to get stuff done but to do things well (and coders know this all too well as they debug the code they wrote on hour 20 of a binge) rest and time off are key.  Not only can crunch not be considered mandatory working conditions, it must be prevented to ensure the quality of work is maintained and the health of workers.  We want to make great software, but we're not going to ruin people's lives to do it.  We believe in sustainable development.

We believe in the independent review process and the scoring of games based on the viewpoint of the author as much as the technical merits of the software or even an 'objective' evaluation of the merits of the work.  We will not base bonuses on averages of review scores or work with investors who make such demands.  As sales drive our available cash then we may create bonus structures around sales figures so the bonuses can be calculated to pay for themselves.

Unions are a valid form of collective bargaining for workers.  We will work with unions and help to enable our staff to join or create them while preserving the freedoms of the individual staff.  In practical terms that means we will not agree to terms that require or compel union membership (distinct from that of a professional body) as a condition of a job opportunity.  While it may be considered in the interests of the individual employee to reinforce the power of a union, we do not agree with the removal of their freedom in this way to facilitate it.

No developer should be unaware of our commitments to the customer and how this restricts our actions.

Respect for the investors

The best way to increase the value of the company is to serve our customers, which will provide long term revenue streams on which to generate profits.  Short term revenue maximisation methods are fundamentally flawed.

No investors should be unaware of our values before investing.



All of the above are practical and ethical positions.  We do not believe in the religious zealotry of declaring such ideas dogmatic or that we must only work with others who exactly share these ideals.  This is not a commitment to forever hold or apply the above notions to our work; our position may evolve, it is simply a snapshot of our current thinking.

First-Sale Doctrine Drives Bad Game Design?

As the Xbox One policies have flipped around, the backlash to the backlash has emerged that says the path to the future has been set back by retaining a classic model of physical goods.  Here's the argument.

So because games have to compete with their used stock (as the designers of copyright intended, fair use and first-sale doctrine being the safety valves built into the exclusive right to duplication given to creators at a time when reasonable copyright terms were a decade or thereabouts) this is what has forced everyone to use DLC, filler content, micro-transactions, etc etc.

It isn't that DLC/micro-transactions were only made possible by internet connectivity and that started during the 6th generation of consoles (DC/PS2/xbox/GC) but was only there on the ground floor (with significant population coverage) for the 7th gen (PS3/360/Wii) so that is where it came to power?  Filler content is a result of a move to combat used?  If so then why is it something that has existed since the beginning of time (where it was first linked to the quarter slot and need to get more money to see the ending, an alternative design choice to hard and arbitrary death mechanics) with 'grinding' (especially in RPGs) being far more extreme well before used was a 'debilitating' thing (ie before there were significant retail presence for games at all, let alone used)?

Case study analogy: The automotive industry is 'losing sales' to used cars.  They can combat this with the application of repairs at authorised dealers and sale of spare parts for those repairs.  There is therefore tremendous pressure on car manufacturers to get their engineers to build less and less reliable cars to reinforce the value of buying new and extract the maximum value from those used cars for which they don't directly get a cut of the sale.  If we look at vehicles over the previous few decades we can see that this pressure has done nothing to reliability.  A competitive marketplace where the ability to increase reliability within a cost envelope increases your perceived value and so ability to stand out against peers has driven up the reliability of all types of vehicles at all price points.

Does the video game industry have something to hide?  Should they be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission to work out if this is some anti-competitive cabal where all the players have agreed not to compete on value with each other in order to stifle the marketplace competition that should be driving up quality or driving down price?  My thoughts are no, the entire argument doesn't hold water that links used and these practices.  The industry looked for additional revenue streams as soon as they were technologically viable and this was independent of used games and that perceived issue.  Expansion packs have been a traditional form of expansion content and those actually moved the other way, to enabling more sales by selling as standalone (so not requiring the original game disc/installed content) before DLC and piecemeal expansion content was considered to be cheaper to produce/generating better revenue for manpower expended at a time when traditional expansion content build on the same engine and gameplay mechanics was now being used as annualised sequel fodder at $60 per disc.

Here is the end-game of the digital revolution: subscription services.  The global music industry can entirely replace their annual income from wholesale music sales with 90m premium Spotify subscribers*, assuming the cost of streaming is below that of physical disc production they currently pay on those revenues.  Done.  That's how you monetise a zero duplication cost/IP item.  You form an evil cabal, call it an artists collective, and collect such a wealth of content (and new content production) that anyone would be culturally excluded if they didn't sign up.  Use the volume of people to make the per-person price very affordable.  Be aggressive in picking up new talent that is potentially initially incubated outside of the collective (where they live on direct sales or free distribution of their content and donations).

Here's what goes wrong with trying to walk down that road by first removing first-sale doctrine (while retaining your demand that copyright be enforced using harsher and harsher legal penalties for non-compliance and cooperation with data connectivity services and providers to remove potentially fair use and non-infringing content at the mere accusation of copyright infringement) to tighten up the traditional sales mechanic to bleed as much money as possible from each individual: You're going the wrong way stupid!  We're aiming to bring down the per user cost and bring up the numbers and make sure our collective products are culturally essential at a great value.  Stop driving people away by trying to increase how much you extract from each individual by any means necessary.  Here's how you sell a premium product: delight the consumer.  Get them to eulogise the value anyone should obtain from making the transaction they did.  Apple can make an almost 50% profit on their products (ie they are priced about twice as high as they could be and still be viable) and they don't do it by making people feel ripped off when they've purchased something.  This is a perception war, stop fighting to make people feel like their $60 doesn't buy the entire product and demonise people who increase the value of your new product (by offering people who do purchase it cash to sell it at a later date).

In the current climate then digital marketplaces should look at how they can better serve the consumers (and creators) by enabling their traditional rights (and in doing so protect creators from potential issues with challenges to their copyright under grounds of failure to comply with the conditions of fair use and first-sale) and any move to justify the import of current digital license rules into the physical product world should be noted as highly suspect and probably unable to hold water.  This is a companion piece to my article last month about how the technical limitation of DRM on a closed platform stands opposed to the viewpoint that the medium has and will continue to increase in cultural significance and provide a good value purchase for more and more consumers.


* Twelve monthly payments of $15 x 90m = source for total revenue figure.  There are over 7 billion potential pairs of ears out there, the music industry only needs the current subscription value from less than 1.3% of them.

How Call of Duty ends

This week I realised I don't care about Call of Duty.  What I caught of Modern Warfare 3 looked terrible and by the end of MW2 I did not want to know more about that story so I'd skipped it.  MW2 managed to hit peak crazy by the time it ended and there was nowhere the series could go that I wanted to join it.  But Black Ops was rather enjoyable, Mason and I had found out what the numbers mean, and eventually BlOps2 arrived on my doorstep to partake in.

It was during a section filled with unskippable cutscenes (at least they seemed to be unskippable, they had a pause menu rather than a skip option and I couldn't work out how to make them go away and get to the bit where you can actually play the game) which would eventually end with a grenade and a civilian getting married in a cutscene.  There was an area that is bugged (as in I could Google and find people describing the exact details of what was wrong and advice to restart the level to fix it rather than anything useful you can do because the checkpoint seems to encode the corruptions so going back will never unstuck you) and after a long time looking for an enemy to kill to trigger the next section and an NPC unlocking a door to a cellar, I decided the enemy probably fell out of the level or was outside of the invisible walls preventing my free movement so I would never be able to progress.

I tried getting back to the checkpoint a few times but every time played out the same way, whether I triggered the optional extra wave of enemies by climbing up to the sniper's nest or not.  So I restarted the entire level and watched the many cutscenes and 'played' a section where I found out I could just run around and not actually play the game, just sprint between the checkpoints with a 'rage' buff making this very quick (also making it even more obvious that the scripting was changing my selected weapon rather than the level contents having anything to do with what weapon I had equipped).  Then I got to the actual game bit with shooting.  I made my way to the assault the mansion section and the bug was there again.

"Walk forward you useless NPCs, you need to unlock something so I can continue playing!"

I restarted again and walked away to make a cup of tea while the game played a cutscene to itself.

This time I managed to not encounter the bug and so got into the cellar to kill some more bad guys before triggering the final cutscene where we saw the grenade go flying from a different perspective than the flashback cutscene that had come just before the level started.  But I didn't care.  I didn't care for the story.  I didn't hear the numbers.  I didn't even want to hear the numbers, to find out what they wanted to tell me.

There is a difference between doing something you want to do and doing something so it is done.  I wasn't playing BlOps2 because I wanted to do it.  I was playing because I wanted to have played it.  And at that point I realised I didn't even care to have played it.  Who knows how many more hours I would have thrown away if I hadn't repeatedly walked into that bug and taken a step back to work think about what I was actually doing.

I'm done.

Rental & Game Purchases and Why it Matters

I am not going to touch the approach Microsoft (MS) used for this reveal. I believe others have quickly gotten to the core of the issues that this presentation had compared to the focus Sony decided to take a few months ago. This is just about the details, as they have been confirmed via interview, of how DRM is handed on this new device for physical software purchases.

I don't buy used (unless I need to get my hands on Shadow Hearts: Covenant because at some point I lost a box of PS2 titles during a move - this does not appear to be for sale new anywhere from old stock, digitally or not, and so I cannot give either the developers or whoever owns the rights to the stuff they created any money; also see System Shock 2 until a month ago) and this goes as far as looking for new stock for PS2 titles (as in I just paid for a new copy of Persona 3 FES a few weeks ago). That said, there are no more demos and the TV/movie/music world has moved to a subscription model so I do rent games and consider this a normal part of consuming mainstream media. I often buy them once I've played them but only the ones I want to own so one day I will play them again without the need to worry about the previously discussed used game hunting where you pay some 'collector' rather than anyone related to actually creating the thing (seriously, if you have a mass produced PS2 title on ebay for £100 go jump into a fire and if you own the rights to it then PSN is a solution to my desire to give you money, even if I'm going to also need you to not track illicit downloads as I grab the ISO to actually play on a better device called my PC).

That said, my major issue here is not that rental services won't stock Xbox One games (for all we know MS have got a plan for rentals just like they have a plan for used that no one is allowed to know because it is anti-consumer and so not telling us is better than confirming our worst fears). My issue here is that it is a step beyond signed code and signed code was already the limit of my acceptance of 'purchasing' this product rather than getting it as part of a £10/month or less, all you can eat subscription which is clearly labelled as a rental agreement where I own nothing and when it ends I have nothing but my memories.

Right now I buy a console game for my closed platform console (which cost me less than it cost them to build it and ship it to me + pay staff along that chain to help move it) and the signed code on the disc and any anti-piracy techniques they use to press it allow the box to recognise the disc and play the game. This will work as long as I can get a box to run and the discs haven't degraded - at which point, where the 30 year old silicon / foil coated plastic is probably no good, we hope that a preservation effort has been in place to collect archives of the data, that I retain my right to hold private copies of, and an emulation device that reads and executes it in a close approximation of the original device. This is what a console game purchase means and is how they can maintain the same unit price despite dropping replication costs (memory chips on a cart anyone? manuals?) and a widening customer base that more than makes up for their extravagant R&D and (more critically) advertising budget. Inflation makes me feel like the deal I am getting is pretty good still.

Whatever policies MS put in place for used and rental services for the Xbox One in the future, the games are not auth'd by having signed code and security features on the disc you buy. The console sounds like it will still require signed code (and maybe the discs have some security features to stop them reading in other bluray drives and stop BD-Rs reading as normal discs in the Xbox One) but the auth is a cd key that uses an online check to refresh the auth status and so far sounds like it expires after 24 hours.

If you cannot get online in 24 hours then it doesn't matter if you have a disc with the game on, your games will not launch. If MS cannot get their servers online for the window when you need then then you cannot play any of your games. If MS retire their servers or allow EA to run their own auth boxes and EA retire those servers then you will no longer be able to launch your games. They will simply not work. This is a rental service without the corresponding price change. With their throw away comments about b/c MS have said they do not care for the cultural artefacts being generated on their platform. There is no retro gaming to MS. There is no generation of objects with ongoing value to society. "Games do not matter" is the message.

There is merely product to be consumed before it goes bad, rotten. I do not feel the need to consume from the trough being offered to survive, there are alternative channels where I can avoid contributing to people who have this disregard for the value of the product, who only focus on the cost/price and pumping swill. I play to relax, to express action in a safe virtual space, to communicate or spend time alone, to look at a space and rule system developed by someone whose perspective may be foreign to me. But this is not the only place I can pay people for their games, DRM free is a thing and so are open platforms and there are a lot of good games out there vying for my time and money.


How is this different to Valve/Steam? Other than the many games that don't use Steam DRM and so are just using it as a pipe through which I can access the data, even Steam DRM is built on top of an open platform (as in Windows is open, not FOSS 'open'). Owning the CPU means I can subvert this system, it means that there can not be a perfect offline DRM system as I can get between the hardware and the game/ecosystem and lie to it. If you give me an auth ticket that lasts for 12 hours then I can make sure the auth system never thinks it is more than 12 hours later by lying when it asks the time. Even if you try to tie the in-game systems into the clock (so I can't lie while playing), this only means I can't play for more than 12 hours at a time (then I quit and reset the clock to the start of the 12 hours) and even this is a hack away from defeating. Steam currently gives out auth tokens that last for 2 weeks (and simultaneously unlock all games that use Steam DRM) and is so popular I probably won't even need to use my expertise to defeat it if the servers ever go down.

Open systems mean we have a much better chance of exerting the rights we are paying for. The console system only works because they had physical tokens so they lasted effectively forever (until it was so historical that Moore's law and accumulated knowledge could be used to break down anything that was locked) and a razor/razorblade model to give out subsidised hardware to make cash back on a cut of every sale (so us hardcore gamers who paid for a lot of titles were ideal customers for software and hardware groups).

You can't just try to import the anti-consumer side of the Steam digital store DRM system onto your closed platform and expect it to be fine without changing your pricing strategy. Especially when you're also telling consumers their existing digital purchases will not play on the new xbox without so much as a mea culpa. Especially as a mandatory DRM system rather than an optional service for the developers on your system to utilise if they want to.


This proposed system, from the outlines they have currently explained, is too defective by design for me to sign up. I want to give someone money for new Forza, Halo, any Remedy titles, and more. But not at those buy prices for a rental. I want to own these potentially classic games to play when I want, just like I can with the decades of accumulated history of gaming I have on my shelves and (open platform) digital stores.

The Coffee or Beer Price Comparison

There is a rallying cry behind the call for cheap games to be purchased blindly by other consumers. The sales pitch from fans of a game or shills who are paid to astroturf online discussions (isn't that an awesome thing that actually exists as a potential spend for advertising money) is that the consumer isn't losing much if the decision is a bad one. The golden example is via comparison: "it only costs as much as a pint/coffee!". The problem is this analogy breaks because you repeatedly buy identical drinks. If you waste money on a game you wasted a one-shot buy and almost certainly didn't gain any useful information compared to the value of the spend.

When you spend £2/3 on a drink to find you don't like it then it cost you that much to find out that (at only one a week - those who have the daily coffee retailer ritual on the way to work or who drink freely down the pub from only a select pool of tastes should try multiplying the numbers accordingly) you shouldn't spend £150/year on buying more of these. The potential benefit was that this could be your new favourite drink or drink you must buy when you're in that mood. The cost of a few quid is against a future potential spend of thousands on buying the same, dependable option over and over again, replacing a former choice with either a lower cost or better quality making the decision. No need to get a free taste when you've got that upside, give it a go when you're next grabbing a drink and expand your knowledge of the field.

When you spend a few quid on a game that is not to your tastes (and possibly not to anyone's by being plain bad) then you have spent that money that would otherwise buy you what could be 10+ hours of fun for nothing and you have not learnt anything beyond possibly steering clear of games from that dev (who release a product every year? in a pool of thousands of choices?) Even if you had otherwise continued to obsessively buy every game from that dev then it would only save you a few quid a year. Ye, not exactly a valuable bit of info to exploit in future sensible purchasing decisions.

The demo is a long established model to allow players to decide if they want to purchase your full product and if we really want to go by the numbers for beer/coffee then for a £5 games you should possibly offer a 5p demo to give the equivalent value to the total buy in vs the initial taste test. But at 5p then that is all going to middlemen (card processing etc) so you might as well give it away for free and see how many people want to own the full game. So rather than telling anyone that they should buy a game sign unseen because it is only as expensive as X, tell them to grab the free demo or check out this great LP/QuickLook and try before they buy. The only people who gain from consumers being uninformed is people peddling substandard wares. The way to long term health for the games development ecosystem is by trying our best to match up people with money with the games that give them the best value for that money. We don't want to scam a quick buck, we want to establish games as a major art form in the 21st Century that provide relevant entertainment and culture to the masses with each sale a best fit for that consumer.

"Give up; don't even try to understand this"

Trying something different here on the blog: shorter, unresearched posts that are too long to do justice to on Twitter.  This will hopefully inspire me to start turning the many draft posts into completed output and post far more frequently despite paper deadlines trying to persuade me not to waste any time researching a blog post.


Here is a deeply troubling meme/joke used by a lot of writers in the gaming enthusiast press from time to time, this time as written by Adam Smith (emphasis mine):

The post about how the AI for individual settlers function is a great insight as well, even if it does contain actual lines of code and therefore frightens my simple mind.

"Oh no, computer code! Too much for my brain to read!"  I've bumped into exactly the same sentiment when people are linking to very basic proofs that use the standard mathematical terminology (sometimes nothing more than a few ∀ and ∃).  I've even had some lectures where maths was being spoken to people outside of the discipline but still subject adjacent (Computer Science for example) to the depth that full proofs were being provided but were being written out in plain English rather than with symbols, presumably to provide a wider base; but this was a class being taught advanced concepts that would require outside reading which is full of the standard symbols.  It is always better to explain on the first use if you feel you need to ease people into something potentially new rather than try to step around standard form to try and broaden a highly technical talk.

The code in the article Smith links to requires the understanding of objects with dot methods and parameters, methods outside of this calling convention, and if/else clauses.  I would hope a rigorous secondary school syllabus that prepares students for the world would contain a lot more programming knowledge than this but even if people came through before CompSci was taught then this is not rocket science.  In fact this is really good stuff to be able to parse as a technical writing style.  I start one of my talks by saying that to get to higher tiers of education you have to have been able to deal with English, so you already know how to work within the constraints of a grammar far more complicated than any programming language I'm going to show you, and you have to have made it through mathematics, so you had to work out manually applying algorithms to generate results with things like long division and I'm not expecting anyone to manually iterate over any of my code in exact detail to keep up.  So I am not expecting anyone to reach beyond skills they would expect someone who is in their early teens to command.  If you don't tune out then we can look at some cool code together and if you get confused then just ask me and we'll make sure you're following.  It's not a perfect open, but at least it tries to cut through this 'turn off at the first sign of technical' dismissal of things the audience hasn't already seen.  The entire point of spreading ideas is that not everyone in the audience has seen everything already, if you have the you probably don't need to be there.

Going back to the post about AI linked to, the surrounding text even does a fine job of making the code less daunting to someone who has no idea of anything outside prose English.  The main hurdles to understanding the piece are in fact the technical terms used in that very text, not the code blocks.  State machines, FIFO... you don't need to know the terms to read it but calling out the use of some very simple (pseudo)code is missing the actual challenge of passing on that message to someone unfamiliar with computing.  A bit of Google/Wikipedia will hopefully catch people up or send them on a deep dive into learning about some potentially fascinating topics but the same can be said of occasionally reaching for the dictionary when reading anything and this nicely wraps into a (less than usually) rickety analogy (my favourite tool when grumpy about something):

Imagine if writers linked to an article but warned you away in such a jokey, 'this is above you and you shouldn't even try to understand it' way because it is full of long words you might possibly need to look up due to an overenthusiastic use of an English degree or dictionary reading obsession.  I'm sure we all have favourite authors and journalists who may have a bit too much love of the flowery language or straight up arcane word use in places.  Maybe they just like to mix it up or maybe they do want the precise meaning their unusual choice describes but you don't often see people prefacing links with a warning that a quick online dictionary check may be required and that said author doing the linking was to simple to possible manage with comprehending the text.


You may have noticed that even when I try to avoid writing for more than a few minutes, my keyboard loves the abuse.  This post has not been edited to the same standards as before so I apologise for any lost meaning from a dyslexic slip here and there into an incorrect word use.