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I know its trendy to moan and complain about life, and the government, and how things are SO BAD and are GETTING Worse. I used to do this when I was 16 too. Then years later you look back on life then and realize things are definitely NOT getting worse, and it was a combination of selective news-reading / alcohol / puberty / political bias that makes you think that way.

Everyone who is young thinks things are getting worse and they have never been this bad. In the UK at least…that’s probably not true. I’m not saying the UK is perfect, far from it! But I took the time to research some stats, and went only to official stats sources, no spin or selective reporting. here is what I found.

So not everything is bad! Remember to look at the big picture when you think ‘things are getting worse, its never been so bad!’. Everyone thinks that in the short term.

See…I can do optimism. I just generally choose not to :D

I’ve tweeted and facebooked it, so may as well add it here too. I’ll hopefully make a new video tomorrow, but in the meantime here is a screenshot showing the efficiency GUI for each slot. In this case you can see that fitting valves to the engine is massively held up by waiting for resources (valves one assumes!) to show up…

More details at www.positech.co.uk/productionline

Relatively non partisan thoughts incoming…

I was strongly against trump, he won, I’m not going into a debate about him, or individual policies, but thought I would try to articulate what I think is going wrong in the US (also the UK and Europe) and how (maybe) to fix it.

Most pundits are suggesting (I’d guess accurately) that trump won because of the disillusionment of  blue collar workers on low wages, or with no jobs. Putting aside a lot of the surrounding fluff that the campaigns were wrapped up in (personal accusations, talk of misogyny, who-slept-with-who, size of peoples hands and so on), I think it basically comes down to blue collar American workers saying that economically they are losing out and something must be done, and they are absolutely right about that, and have been for a while. Trump tapped into that, and has become president as a result, and although his identification of the problem is spot on, his remedies are absolutely wrong, and in my opinion will actually make things worse, for those very blue collar workers who see him as their saviour.

There is a fairly watchable film released way back in 1991 starring Danny De-vito called other peoples money. Its not comedy gold, but it has a very well articulated point about, bizarrely the US election in 2016. Here it is:

For people who don’t want to watch it, its basically a rant by Danny DeVito as an ‘evil’ wall street guy telling cable factory workers that fiber optics killed their industry, and the company is dead, and to deal with it. Its harsh.

It’s also true.

Fact: Kodak in 1998 employed 145,000 people worldwide. It went bankrupt in 2012. Its one of many companies that have been technologically vaporised. Facebook employs 14,495 people, almost exactly a tenth of kodak at its height, and provides a lot more than the sharing of photographs. Arguably facebook provides 10-20 times the ‘end consumer services’ that a mere photo printing company did, for 1/10 the staff. We are talking about a situation where we need 0.5-1% of the people now to do the same work in terms of providing value. And facebook lets me share a photo (for free) with the entire planet. Kodak gave me a blurry cardboard feeling thing at high cost that fades and was a fixed size (and only 1 copy).
Yay for technology.

People complain about unemployment in the US. The US unemployment rate is 4.9%. There will also be an issue of under-employment and low wages, but still…thats actually not *that* bad. When every company does a Kodak and gets replaced by a Facebook, that 4.9% will be a far off dream, a paradise that people think back to.

Technology vastly improves and transforms our lives, but its killing jobs, and replacement jobs are not being created fast enough. The BIG problem, (and here is where it becomes relevant to the US election), is that when it does create jobs it only creates very highly skilled, high pay ones. If you do not have an absolute familiarity and understanding of computers, and preferably some computer programming knowledge, engineering knowledge, or maths/science skills, the future economy is not going to work out for you.

Trumps blue collar jobs are gone. They are not coming back. Its not the Mexicans who took them, or the Muslims, its these dudes:

Robots.

Stuff can be made anywhere. Trump bemoans outsourcing to India/China, but with global trade, stopping that is impossible, and walling the US off from its biggest markets will only accelerate the death of the US economy, and encourage facebook, google , apple etc to relocate outside the US. Trying to stop global trade or automation / technology is liking trying to stop the tide. The only solution for trumps voters is to find a way to be useful in the post 2016 automated high-tech economy. That means skills, that means education. (I know some people think that means universal basic income instead. Personally I’m not a fan, but thats a whole different topic).

If I had to pick one single policy that would fix the problems in the US in the medium to long term, it would be adult education. Not schoolkids, they already understand and use computers. They aren’t scared of them, they will eventually realize that they need to knuckle down and ensure they study hard enough to get a job programming or high tech engineering/science. Young people in the US are pretty tech savvy. The people who need education NOW in the US are the age 40+ blue collar workers who used to work in factories, on assembly lines, or in warehouses. They need to skill-up, NOW.

They have no money, because tech killed their jobs, so they need help, and the government HAS to step in and fix this. I refuse to believe that you cannot re-skill at that age. I refuse to believe that you cannot transition from manual work to complex tech work. When I was 24 years old I hammered rowing boats together for a living. It was the technological opposite of what I do now. I’m 47 and work as a computer programmer. Transitioning from one to the other is HARD, but it can be done.

When I wanted to learn programming, I qualified for free evening classes in C and advanced C programming, paid for by my government here in the UK. I also attended a 2 week crash course on C++, paid for by the government because I was unemployed. I also studied my ass off, spent a LOT of time in libraries and the few books I could afford, and it worked out. The government could have made it a LOT easier, but at least they did something.

Despite my hatred for him, Trump DOES know what is wrong in America, and identifying the problem is actually very helpful. Now is the time to help focus on the real long term solution, not short term knee-jerk misdirected anger.

The USA does not need a wall, it needs a program of adult education & training.

 

 

Releasing a game is always fraught. If you are not a game developer, or are one yet to release your first game, your only experience of it is probably watching Tommy Refenes looking sad in indie game: the movie.

In reality, there is a combination of terror, worry, anxiety, excitement, fear, depression, euphoria and disbelief. As a publisher, its different, your two concerns are likely to be ‘will this lose me a fuckton of money?’ and ‘how does this affect my reputation?’. I have mitigated this a bit by firstly not spending a massive chunk of my companies money on any one game (more of it is invested in wind farms and solar parks than games), and also by constantly refreshing the page with Democracy 3’s sales figrues every day to try and trick my brain into disregarding any concerns about having a game that flops.

Obviously neither tactic actually works. I still hate to lose money, and I still hate releasing a game that does not do well. The good news is that I have some data that suggests that I am making ‘good’ bets. The biggest flop I have ever released has still made me a ROI of 6% and has made a profit. Not a Great big ‘buy a ferrari’ profit, more like a ‘buy a nice laptop’ profit, but nonetheless, if even on your worse days you still make money, that’s pretty cool.

The game I’m talking about, which releases in 48 hours, is Political Animals. It’s developed by these guys in the Philippines, and published by me. because I made Democracy 3, its a good fit for ‘my audience’. It’s also a political strategy game being released a week before the most high profile US election in decades. Good timing huh?

Political Animals is also the latest in a long line. I learned a bit about press with Democracy 3 and Gratuitous Space Battles, learned a bit about user testing with Gratuitous Tank Battles, learned a bit about youtube, streamers and blogging with Big Pharma, learned a bit more about PR with Democracy 3:Africa, and learned a LOT, a real LOT about advertising with further promotion of Democracy 3. In short, I have gathered a lot of experience about what should work, and what might work, and what does not work.

Of course, there are no guarantees, which is where the risk and anxiety comes in. Maybe people are sick of politics now? Maybe the game has bugs we are yet to find? Maybe we are releasing at the wrong time in the year? Perhaps it just does not resonate with the audience? Perhaps we spent too much money on localization and testing, and spent too much on shows? nobody will know until about midnight on Wednesday.

Yup, scary though it sounds, your first few hours on sale ARE a very good predictor of how the long 3+ year sales period of your indie game will do. There will literally be a point, roughly midnight on Wednesday, where I will sit back and either go ‘yay! it worked’ or ‘fuck it’. This is big time stress (more for the developers than me), but if you want to win the game, you have to play, and we play with live ammunition in the real world. Not that the falloff is a simple curve. here is the first week of sales of one of the games I released (note these are UNITS not revenue…very different):

and here is the much longer 18 month chart:

I have to admit, I love it. I love the idea of ‘calculated risk’. I am VERY happy to take an enormous risk if the calculations in my head say that it is worth it. I’ve invested in Ukranian Iron Mines (fail!), Companies that print dates on eggs (not bad!), Israeli share trading platforms (fail!), Short-selling bitcoin(fail!), robotics(Woohoo!) and even some leveraged stuff that accelerates the factor by which you win and lose. I like calculated risk, its exciting. it’s an adrenaline rush.

Its much more fun, and less terrifying when you don’t have a mortgage though.

Spare a thought for Ryan & his chums at squeaky wheel on Wednesday. Its a big day for them. And check out the game, it really is rather good indeed. If you are press and need a steam key email me, and there is a rather awesome press kit with details, descriptions, screenshots, logos and character art here.

 

 

Hi. I’m a huge company. A global mega-corp. I am at the cutting edge of data gathering, of customer information processing, and I have an R&D budget of billions. I already know your name, your home address, your bank details, and probably your work address too, plus your phone number(s), obviously. By looking at what you buy from me, I can work out if you are single, live-alone, if you earn a lot, or very little, what technology interests you, probably what political views you have, if you have pets, how old you are, how often you stay in at night. I can make an educated guess as to your sexual preference. I also know about a lot of the TV shows you watch when you watch them, and all the ones that you watch multiple times, and the ones you quit watching after 1 episode. I know about virtually every book you have written, and in many cases I know what you thought of them.

When you read some of those books, I know which page you got to before you quit. I know your reading speed, and I know which words you had to look up. BTW I also know when you are in another country, because you take me with you. I know when your house is empty.

That time you got pregnant, I knew because of your purchases, and the sadness of your miscarriage, I know about that too because of that book you bought to help you deal with it. I know about all those wedding presents you got, and who bought them for you, and I know about those birthday presents you ordered for other people too.

I feel I want to know more about you. I would like you to install a microphone in your house for me. It will be on 24/7 and record everything you say. There are terms and conditions and legalese of course, but you wont read them, and how will you know if I stick to them anyway?

If you talk to your loved ones in the evening about a relative and how they seem ill, I can make a note of that, work out who is, and sell that information to their insurer. How will you ever know?

If you and your partner argue in front of of me (and you will), I can sell that information as well, maybe to one of those infidelity dating sites. How will they ever know?

That time your partner was logging into your internet banking and asked you to read out the card number and pin number and other details… I was listening. That time you told a friend who was house-sitting what the alarm code was? I was listening. Why do I store all this? *something something machine learning hand-waving*

Don’t worry, I secure all this stuff really well. Internet company databases never get hacked. Never.

Anyway, I’m available now, from amazon, called alexa. No, I’m not free, not even to prime members.  Thats what George Orwell imagined. This isn’t 1984, its 2016 and you get to pay money to let people put an unaccountable microphone in your living room.

Sweet Dreams.