Game Designers

"“Would anyone, even low-breeds, be so ingenuous to believe such a tale?” “Remarkably, yes. Their power to believe what they wish, if not given incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, is rather astonishing.”"

"“You would have been quite pleased if Hitler had won World War II. That would have made your job easier for you.” Sukhinin, whose family was said to have suffered horribly in his nations Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, wore a smile that was more reminiscent of bared teeth. Shethkador’s reply was almost casual. “Of course we would have preferred that outcome. You would have been preacculturated to our ways.” Downing raised an eyebrow. “So Adolf Hitler is your idea of an ubermensch?” “Hitler? A superior being? Fate, no. Do not mistake our approval of the ethos of a regime for admiration of its leader. Hitler was a weak, superstitious amateur whose profound insecurities and absolute in ability to perceive himself accurately ultimately caused the downfall of his project.” “How so?” “Is it not obvious? Firstly, he surrounded himself with those like himself; fanatics who were also cranks, individuals whose personal derangements or need for rationalizing their own inferiority led them to a psychopathic projection of their own feelings onto others. The true object of their exterminations was what they most feared and loathed in themselves; weakness, insufficiency, flaccidity, cowardice. They could not admit this, of course, so they protected the roots of their self-hatred by ensuring that these traits were not the overt criteria upon which their social extirpations were based. Rather, they demonized specific groups and then attributed these treats to them, thereby amplifying the political appeal of their movement by invoking traditional prejudices and stereotypes through suitably crafted propaganda.”"

"“How would you answer their demand for justice and vengeance?” “I would begin by insisting that justice and vengeance are different. Vengeance is often blind to reason: all it can see is the object it hates. Conversely, justice is blind to our preferences and prejudices; all it may see are the deeds and the conditions under which they were carried out.”"

"“On the surface, it’s crazy, right?” “It’s crazy down beyond the surface, too,” Dora affirmed."

"“I do not disagree with you, Bannor Rulaine. But in my culture, when tradition is challenged by law, the law is often twisted, construed, and reconstrued until it can be made to conform with tradition. I believe your word for this is teleology: where a result is decided before the process debate or discovery is initiated.” O’Garran snorted. “Fancy word for saying, ‘they’re going to have it their way, no matter what.’”"

"“Virodok!” exclaimed Sukhinin, who sounded short of breath. “Do you monsters hold nothing dear beyond yourselves?” “No, we do not, and that is the source of our power: to reject the delusion that any human, anywhere, at any time, actually does anything or feels anything that they believe is not, at some level, in their own interest.”"

"No matter which images of battle and carnage came to haunt him, no matter which specific terror rose up through them, the lessons they rehearsed were always the same: There’s no such thing as certainty. Control is an illusion. Death and destruction descend the moment you forget to watch for them. That was what two years of intermittent war had taught him. And once you learned those lessons, you didn’t just remember them: you lived them, moment to moment."

"Riordan almost smiled. “You sound like another historian I know.” “Historian?” She stiffened. “I am an observer. I do not claim to convey a unified story, just the pieces for which I have data.”"

"Riordan stared. “Your…media…really advertised things like, uh, canned vegetables named after mythical monsters?” Paulsen shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe what our media did, on occasion.”"

"“We need no technological assistance. Hkh’Rkh capabilities and engineering is unsurpassed.” Yaargraukh managed to keep his tongue from writing out in a spasm of grim hilarity. “I have heard others say the same thing.” “And your response to them?” “That their empty rhetoric is delusional lunacy spoken as truth.”"

"All enlightenment begins in ignorance and humility. This place has been a constant instruction in both."

"Well, no plan survives contact with reality and today is no exception."

"“If there’s a chance to talk our way out of a fight, this is the moment. Once blood is spilled, it becomes an Honor issue. Finding a way back to a parley would be difficult and highly unlikely.” “Yeah, I heard about that crap,” Karam muttered. “Scuttlebutt is that once Honor is involved, they become bushido bear-aardvarks beating their horse chests and making much ado about nothing.”"

"If the motivation was simple greed, then that was a promising target for development as an agent inside the enemy’s camp. Greed was not only a predictable impulse, but was an indicator of the dependability of the individual being suborned. It was overwhelmingly associated with profoundly self-centered egos and values."

"“So,” sighed Rulaine, “we’re pretty much screwed.” Yaargraukh’s black eyes stared. “I do not understand your expression—‘screwed?’ This is a carpentry metaphor?” Bannor almost smiled. “Not exactly.”"

"Your arrogant self-importance is complicating your perception of what is a very simple matter."

"Well, so be it. Today we only have time for the truth. Battles are won by facts and physics, not self-congratulatory ideology."

"Bigotry was not only invulnerable to the appeals of logic and deduction; it was often blind to counterproofs such as those Yaargraukh had just witnessed."

"Veriden cut an annoyed glance at Riordan but said nothing; he suspected that even she saw the irony in starting an argument over whether she was argumentative."

"But then again, discipline and its trappings—ranks, protocols, traditions—did not define the difference between a soldier and a civilian. The difference was in outlook. Brilliant civilian researcher Hirano Mizuki stared into the shadowy reaches of alien underbrush and saw no reason for caution. Caine, on the other hand, saw an unguarded perimeter in unexplored terrain that might conceal unknown threats."

"Look: nations screw up like people do; sometimes they mean well, sometimes they’re selfish or delusional bitches on a spree, and sometimes they just plain make mistakes. But the megacorporations don’t make mistakes; if they do damage, it’s because they like the cost-to-benefit ratios, dead innocents notwithstanding. Nations are bulls in the global china shop; corporations are sharks."

"They still grumbled, of course, but never within his earshot. Besides, grumbling was the true anthem of every military unit that had ever existed. And their current grumbling was simply aimless grousing about the food, the cramped quarters, and anything else that struck them as modestly annoying. It was, in summary, both a harmless and timeless bonding ritual."

"Idrem sensed Brenlor swinging toward the rash reactivity that the Srin often mistook for decisive action when confronted with a crisis."

"They are not speculating upon the mysteries behind us, only upon the possibilities before us."

"Where greed is great, corruption is simple."

"I know it’s human nature to want to draw conclusions, but I distrust straight-line projections when we only have two data points."

"“So nothing has really changed.” “Sometimes, when your adversary is trying to precipitate dramatic change, stability is the best victory.”"

"And in the time it had taken to reflect upon the significance of the moment, the moment was past. That was, after all, the nature of moments."

"“Did he just wink?” whispered Downing. “If not, he developed a very timely facial tic,” Caine replied."

"Most of my professors can’t see the wider forest of meaning because they’ve become obsessed with a few mostly meaningless trees."

"Beings that can laugh at themselves, particularly their own foibles, stand the greatest chance of attaining wisdom."

"Zkhee’ah Drur the Elder had once observed that while one is yet alive to complain of misfortune, the greatest of all misfortunes has not yet occurred. But this turn of affairs seemed very close to disproving that ancient axiom."

"Nice bluff—but I was born on the planet that invented poker."

"Richard, we have fallen into the common trap of seeing ourselves at the center of the universe: all that goes on around us somehow has us as its subject and raison d’etre. But in reality, all the events, all the plans, all the acts we interpret as intentionally malign—or benign—to us may, in fact, have almost nothing to do with our species."

"You are to be congratulated on your talent for deception."

"Human social evolution is unique in that your race has achieved the maximum, even optimum, balance of violent aggression and social cohesion. Again, consider your recent past. What other race could teeter so long, and yet not topple over, the brink of nuclear self-extermination? And all in the name of ideals, which were simply the facades behind which you hid your national prejudices, racial fears, and innate savagery."

"“The megacorporations have a long history of mining antigovernment organizations for support. They throw a lot of money at them: sometimes directly, sometimes through plausibly deniable proxies.” Hwang screwed up his face. “And do these groups really join forces with the megacorporations? They’re far more autocratic than nation-states.” Caine shook his head. “It’s not a direct alliance. But the megas aren’t really looking for cocombatants against ‘the tyranny of nations.’ They’re just funding grassroots resistance to national authority.”"

"So what you are characterizing as conspiracy is merely an unfortunate coincidence."

"“You think she’ll make it?” “She should. Unless something else goes wrong.” Tsaami’s tone was sour. “Caine: this is a battlefield. Something else always goes wrong.” To which Riordan had no ready response. After all, Karam was right."

"“Whatever destiny we assign to ourselves also defines our doom. It is there, lurking, waiting, from the instantiation of sentience. It is the antipodal defect of the virtue we call ‘foresight.’”"

"The hard parts were: writing code that was fast enough, writing code that was small enough to fit in the cartridge, and writing code that would fit in the RAM. Basically everything was hard."

"I never expected to see a day where people from around the world can connect via the Internet and communicate with others on smartphones. With how procedural generation technology and A.I. has greatly innovated game development, I believe the game industry will expand into games that are created to help solve problems within society."

"I don’t particularly see any reason why gender would play a major role in game development. Similar to fashion designers, creators are able to imagine what their customers want regardless of gender. I think that applies to video game development, too."

"While I was at Atari, it went from a pretty big company, to a huge company, to a complete flop."

"If there's such a thing as an evergreen video game, I would say Dragon's Lair comes close to that."

"When business executives are making the artistic decisions and don't understand animation, things can go awry. Now they call in all of the authority figures they can find and hire them – the cost has gone up. The picture may or may not get better, but definitely, it gets more cumbersome. It's like trying to turn around an army of tanks, instead of being able to move lightly on your feet or being able to listen to what's going on inside of you – because that's what's telling you what to do. It gets bogged down."

"I think the destiny of all men is to be kings, the destiny of all women is to be queens. In some fashion or another, that's the destiny that we call it family but it's supposed to be that."

"If I have one thing over other people in this industry, it's this: I've made more mistakes than anyone else. You're seeing people repeat the same mistakes we'd already made years ago."

"Showing characters is where 3-D animation comes up short. It's hard to create lifelike figures that move in a realistic, believable manner-unless you're going to go into "dummy dolls." But when you take 3-D animation and put it into a first-person perspective and create a fly-through environment-well, that is where it shines. So what we're doing is using both mediums for their respective strengths."

"Games have this eternal, immortal attraction. Of course I do go back to old games if I need a refresher, but I think it is important to intentionally play and observe new games, to know what’s out there. Games that are coming out now are just incredible; they’re amazing. Even for people who say that they grow out of games, once they have kids and there’s a game they can play together, they return. It’s not about quitting or graduating from playing games; it’s about finding what’s enjoyable for you at that time in your life, and playing that."