Well, the question of how to stay fresh in games has been really on my mind quite a bit and, uh, I was invited to be on a panel at this GDC about age discrimination and-and some friends of mine, who were basically getting together to talk about how tough it is to find a job now, and how their skills, you know, aren’t valued. And I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about it - I have certainly had difficulties at time, and it’s a bit dismaying for me to see that, technologically, I used to be a programmer, but, you know, now even the name programmer, I’ve learned to say coder for the most part instantly makes me sound old, and I know so little about modern coding technology, I keep telling myself I want to get up to speed on something new, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. And yet, on the other hand, I have learned all sorts of new things, and the simple answer as to how to stay fresh in this industry is, you have to constantly learn new skills and re-invent yourself. And at the heart of that, you have to love to do that. I’ve had friends who specialized in one sort of thing and loved only that, and they left the industry because, eventually, no matter what it was, it became obsolete and not vital anymore. But I’ve always loved variety - it-it actually has been a weakness of mine that, if I had to do the same thing day in, day out for years at a time, it would just bore me to death and I’d have to find something else. And I’m thankful that, if anything, variety exists in greater profusion now than it ever has in the games industry, and it’s just a matter of staying fresh, keeping up on it. Uh, I mentioned Hal Barwood, who was a collaborator of mine, and Hal actually had a successful career in the movie industry and left it at around the age of 50 to do games, spent two decades making wonderful games with us, and is now working on a second novel and has re-invented himself as a novelist. You know, he’s one of my role models that way, and has always had one of the freshest and most inquisitive minds I’ve known, and I really think that’s the trick, that if you just want to do one thing and complain that nobody’s letting you do that and pay you for it, that’s sad, but that’s pretty much the reality of life.If you’re willing to try new things, if you’re excited about new things, and you’re ready to dive in there and re-invent yourself to learn about serious games, or neuroscience in gaming, for example, then it’s a wonderful world with all sorts of fresh opportunities that let you use old skills that are still useful, but re-invent them much in the way I described making games fresh by taking familiar elements, but always adding something new and fresh to them. You really have to design your life like a game designer if you want to stay fresh in the business.
