good morning almost not morning anywhere
you guys hungry for lunch so growing up
I lived in a house like this we didn’t
have a computer we didn’t have a TV or a
phone or electricity or plumbing so when
we moved to the city and we still didn’t
have a TV or or a computer but we did
have electricity I was old enough that I
can remember learning how to use a light
switch and a toilet and that has stuck
with me not just because it was
something that I had to figure out it
wasn’t natural to me it wasn’t native to
me it was an alien interaction but
because it was obvious to me the first
time that it was much better for the
individual in the community not to have
to go in this scary smelly cold place
full of spiders when I was about 5 or 6
I visited my grandparents for the first
time for the summer and they had a
middle-class kind of house and it had a
dishwasher and a TV and some other
technology that I had not experienced
they also because they were having
grandchildren come to visit they had
this game that they’d hooked up to their
TV was called pong it was awesome
and I played a lot of pong that summer
if you’d asked me who made pong I’d have
said um maybe sky robots because not
only did I not have the vocabulary to
understand what was happening inside the
machine but I didn’t
and have the context or heuristic for
how you might possibly affect the
machine to make it take care of the
rules while you did the inputs and got
to experiment and see what happened but
I did remember that experience I
remembered it very very well so
fast-forward about 12 years and I’m
living with a roommate who has a
personal computer which is very exciting
for me and she’s cool if I use it but
only when she doesn’t have to use it
she’s in college so she’s using a lot so
it turns out the only time I can really
use it is when she’s asleep so middle of
the night and the problem with that is I
don’t know how to use a computer
not at all and I don’t want to wake her
up because that’s kind of not the deal
so I figure it out and I figure it out
for one reason I wanted to play this
game this The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
galaxy game was based on a popular
science fiction novel of the time and I
wanted to play it really badly I had
read the novel and uh and I knew I liked
games and so I figured it out I figured
out how to turn the machine on I figured
out how to load the operating system by
putting a floppy disk into the thing and
then to load the game I figured out how
to type because this is a text game and
so the way it works is the game
describes to you the room that you’re in
and what it what is in the room and you
type in what you want to do get up turn
on light eat buffered analgesic is there
anybody here who’s typed those words so
I learned how to use a computer and I
learned how to type and I learned that
it’s not a great big black box with
mysterious things happening behind it
but that it’s a system of logic gates
which I can affect and understand and I
learned that I can learn how to use a
computer and that was very exciting for
me but if you’d asked me who made
Hitchhiker’s Guide I’d have said
ah some kind of genius wizards because I
knew enough at that time to know that
computer programmers made games but I
didn’t know what did that mean what are
you doing when you’re programming a
computer I had no idea
uh-uh and I’m not even sure I would have
known that they type you know I was I
was that far away from being able to do
any of that so for the next five or so
years I worked a series of reasonably
uninspiring jobs I was a cashier at a
large retail store I worked a lot of
fast food I was a dog
washer one summer I came home every day
smelling like wet dog it was not awesome
uh and because my my daily life was kind
of wasn’t great my reality was pretty
dull I wanted to escape a lot into this
thing that I had found games I really
wanted this and uh so I found a lot of
ways to get my hands on computers I went
to the library I went to coffee shops a
lot of times coffee shops at that time
would let you play with their machines
as long as you bought a lot of coffee I
bought a lot of coffee I would save up
money and I would buy games here are
some of my favorites I would go to my
friends houses and hang out and play
games with them I would suggest to them
that maybe they would want to play this
game that I had bought because they
would run on the machine but a lot of
times I could get access to a computer
but he didn’t have access to a game
they’re really expensive especially for
somebody who’s working fast-food right
but almost every machine at that time
had this game solitaire on it shipped
with every with every machine in fact I
think it may still ship with every
machine and so I played a lot of
solitaire and one day I’m talking to a
guy that I went to high school with and
he says the game company that I work for
needs people to come do this kind of
boring hard work that nobody wants to do
I said Who
really want to do that work but I don’t
know anything about computers I don’t
think I’m qualified and he said if you
can play solitaire you could do this and
I thought I can play solitaire I can
play a lot of solitaire and so I went
and somehow I talked myself into the job
and I got the job and I worked in game
development for the next 20 years and
that was pretty great I got to do a lot
of things I wouldn’t have had gotten to
do otherwise I I got to work with
machines that were way outside of any
budget I could possibly have imagined
you know $40,000 workstations with
$20,000 worth of software on them that
was very exciting I worked a lot of
really late nights I learned how play is
the primary way that people like to
learn things that motivated people will
learn almost anything through play I
learned that people like me made video
games that you didn’t have to be a
genius wizard and that was pretty cool
and fast forward 20 years last September
I was invited to a sort of senior game
designer gathering where a bunch of
senior game designers get together and
we talk about things that game design
can solve and problems that game design
causes and all kinds of stuff like that
and this guy was there does anybody new
who is that what is stainless Steve
maretskiy Steve maretskiy is the genius
wizard who dropped out of MIT to make
the Hitchhiker’s Guide whoo okay so you
got to tell Steve right
he made the game that changed your life
you got to say something
sohal weekend I come up to Steve
oh no not right now I’d walk into the
room that Steve is I’m gonna tell him
I’m gonna tell him it was really it made
a big difference in my life I’m gonna
tell him walk up Oh
not right now day three it’s pretty much
last day you pretty much have to do it
so Steve gets up to get some coffee and
I kind of sidle up to Steve and I say
Steve he’s really tall and he says yeah
and I say you’ve probably heard the
story a hundred times and he says
probably and at that point I almost
failed but like it probably would be
worse to bail at that point than to
actually just tell him right and so I
say I learned how to use computers
because of Hitchhiker’s Guide and now
I’m a game designer because of it and he
says you’re wrong I haven’t heard that
half story a hundred times I’ve heard it
a thousand times and I said oh wow so
original Harley but thank you anyway
and he said you had no problem and I’ve
been thinking about that conversation a
lot since then because here’s the truth
Steve maretskiy is a genius but he is
not a wizard he was somebody who had a
rarefied skill set at the right time to
be able to do something that touched a
thousand people in a dramatic way taught
them a skill they didn’t know that they
were ever going to be able to learn and
there were a lot of other game designers
at the time who did similar things and
made games that touched other people and
those people got together they learn
computers and they changed the culture
that we live in from one where computers
were not an inherent part of everyday
life to one where computers are an
inherent part of everyday life that
snowball effect started with people like
Steve and I hope that I have managed to
inspire and touch some players with my
games in my life the truth is I’m not
even a genius though like Steve
I’m not a wizard I’m just somebody who
was kind of interested and stubborn
enough to keep trying to do it and so
that kind of leaves me with this
question right when computers when games
started being made they were hard to
make but it was people like Steve that
made it easier for them to make because
they they gave us the skills and be the
world changed and and computers have
certainly changed our culture in other
ways as it is an easy example you know
Hitchhiker’s Guide game was made because
there was a popular book these days
people write books and make movies
because of a popular game so there’s
been a cultural shift there as well you
don’t have to even be stubborn to make
games anymore all you need is interest
you can download for free powerful game
engines that will let you make your
vision you can download tools that will
let you make the art and animation for
free to put into your games you can go
on places like YouTube and twitch and
you can watch a vast array of tutorials
and explanations of how to do what you
want to do from some of the brightest
minds in the industry they’re out there
and they want to teach you you can buy a
computer at Goodwill for a hundred bucks
that does more than that forty thousand
dollar computer I learned on so these
days making games is still powerful and
it can still change our culture but now
it’s easy and now we have a whole
generation of people who unlike me who
had to learn technology at every step
people who are digital natives people
who understand more than I do how easy
it is to learn technology they’re
comfortable in that space so here is
what I came out here to tell you making
games is easy and anybody can do it
and
games are really powerful tools they can
change our culture and if those two
things are true then therefore anybody
can change our culture so my question
for you is what changes do you want to
see thank you
you guys hungry for lunch so growing up
I lived in a house like this we didn’t
have a computer we didn’t have a TV or a
phone or electricity or plumbing so when
we moved to the city and we still didn’t
have a TV or or a computer but we did
have electricity I was old enough that I
can remember learning how to use a light
switch and a toilet and that has stuck
with me not just because it was
something that I had to figure out it
wasn’t natural to me it wasn’t native to
me it was an alien interaction but
because it was obvious to me the first
time that it was much better for the
individual in the community not to have
to go in this scary smelly cold place
full of spiders when I was about 5 or 6
I visited my grandparents for the first
time for the summer and they had a
middle-class kind of house and it had a
dishwasher and a TV and some other
technology that I had not experienced
they also because they were having
grandchildren come to visit they had
this game that they’d hooked up to their
TV was called pong it was awesome
and I played a lot of pong that summer
if you’d asked me who made pong I’d have
said um maybe sky robots because not
only did I not have the vocabulary to
understand what was happening inside the
machine but I didn’t
and have the context or heuristic for
how you might possibly affect the
machine to make it take care of the
rules while you did the inputs and got
to experiment and see what happened but
I did remember that experience I
remembered it very very well so
fast-forward about 12 years and I’m
living with a roommate who has a
personal computer which is very exciting
for me and she’s cool if I use it but
only when she doesn’t have to use it
she’s in college so she’s using a lot so
it turns out the only time I can really
use it is when she’s asleep so middle of
the night and the problem with that is I
don’t know how to use a computer
not at all and I don’t want to wake her
up because that’s kind of not the deal
so I figure it out and I figure it out
for one reason I wanted to play this
game this The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
galaxy game was based on a popular
science fiction novel of the time and I
wanted to play it really badly I had
read the novel and uh and I knew I liked
games and so I figured it out I figured
out how to turn the machine on I figured
out how to load the operating system by
putting a floppy disk into the thing and
then to load the game I figured out how
to type because this is a text game and
so the way it works is the game
describes to you the room that you’re in
and what it what is in the room and you
type in what you want to do get up turn
on light eat buffered analgesic is there
anybody here who’s typed those words so
I learned how to use a computer and I
learned how to type and I learned that
it’s not a great big black box with
mysterious things happening behind it
but that it’s a system of logic gates
which I can affect and understand and I
learned that I can learn how to use a
computer and that was very exciting for
me but if you’d asked me who made
Hitchhiker’s Guide I’d have said
ah some kind of genius wizards because I
knew enough at that time to know that
computer programmers made games but I
didn’t know what did that mean what are
you doing when you’re programming a
computer I had no idea
uh-uh and I’m not even sure I would have
known that they type you know I was I
was that far away from being able to do
any of that so for the next five or so
years I worked a series of reasonably
uninspiring jobs I was a cashier at a
large retail store I worked a lot of
fast food I was a dog
washer one summer I came home every day
smelling like wet dog it was not awesome
uh and because my my daily life was kind
of wasn’t great my reality was pretty
dull I wanted to escape a lot into this
thing that I had found games I really
wanted this and uh so I found a lot of
ways to get my hands on computers I went
to the library I went to coffee shops a
lot of times coffee shops at that time
would let you play with their machines
as long as you bought a lot of coffee I
bought a lot of coffee I would save up
money and I would buy games here are
some of my favorites I would go to my
friends houses and hang out and play
games with them I would suggest to them
that maybe they would want to play this
game that I had bought because they
would run on the machine but a lot of
times I could get access to a computer
but he didn’t have access to a game
they’re really expensive especially for
somebody who’s working fast-food right
but almost every machine at that time
had this game solitaire on it shipped
with every with every machine in fact I
think it may still ship with every
machine and so I played a lot of
solitaire and one day I’m talking to a
guy that I went to high school with and
he says the game company that I work for
needs people to come do this kind of
boring hard work that nobody wants to do
I said Who
really want to do that work but I don’t
know anything about computers I don’t
think I’m qualified and he said if you
can play solitaire you could do this and
I thought I can play solitaire I can
play a lot of solitaire and so I went
and somehow I talked myself into the job
and I got the job and I worked in game
development for the next 20 years and
that was pretty great I got to do a lot
of things I wouldn’t have had gotten to
do otherwise I I got to work with
machines that were way outside of any
budget I could possibly have imagined
you know $40,000 workstations with
$20,000 worth of software on them that
was very exciting I worked a lot of
really late nights I learned how play is
the primary way that people like to
learn things that motivated people will
learn almost anything through play I
learned that people like me made video
games that you didn’t have to be a
genius wizard and that was pretty cool
and fast forward 20 years last September
I was invited to a sort of senior game
designer gathering where a bunch of
senior game designers get together and
we talk about things that game design
can solve and problems that game design
causes and all kinds of stuff like that
and this guy was there does anybody new
who is that what is stainless Steve
maretskiy Steve maretskiy is the genius
wizard who dropped out of MIT to make
the Hitchhiker’s Guide whoo okay so you
got to tell Steve right
he made the game that changed your life
you got to say something
sohal weekend I come up to Steve
oh no not right now I’d walk into the
room that Steve is I’m gonna tell him
I’m gonna tell him it was really it made
a big difference in my life I’m gonna
tell him walk up Oh
not right now day three it’s pretty much
last day you pretty much have to do it
so Steve gets up to get some coffee and
I kind of sidle up to Steve and I say
Steve he’s really tall and he says yeah
and I say you’ve probably heard the
story a hundred times and he says
probably and at that point I almost
failed but like it probably would be
worse to bail at that point than to
actually just tell him right and so I
say I learned how to use computers
because of Hitchhiker’s Guide and now
I’m a game designer because of it and he
says you’re wrong I haven’t heard that
half story a hundred times I’ve heard it
a thousand times and I said oh wow so
original Harley but thank you anyway
and he said you had no problem and I’ve
been thinking about that conversation a
lot since then because here’s the truth
Steve maretskiy is a genius but he is
not a wizard he was somebody who had a
rarefied skill set at the right time to
be able to do something that touched a
thousand people in a dramatic way taught
them a skill they didn’t know that they
were ever going to be able to learn and
there were a lot of other game designers
at the time who did similar things and
made games that touched other people and
those people got together they learn
computers and they changed the culture
that we live in from one where computers
were not an inherent part of everyday
life to one where computers are an
inherent part of everyday life that
snowball effect started with people like
Steve and I hope that I have managed to
inspire and touch some players with my
games in my life the truth is I’m not
even a genius though like Steve
I’m not a wizard I’m just somebody who
was kind of interested and stubborn
enough to keep trying to do it and so
that kind of leaves me with this
question right when computers when games
started being made they were hard to
make but it was people like Steve that
made it easier for them to make because
they they gave us the skills and be the
world changed and and computers have
certainly changed our culture in other
ways as it is an easy example you know
Hitchhiker’s Guide game was made because
there was a popular book these days
people write books and make movies
because of a popular game so there’s
been a cultural shift there as well you
don’t have to even be stubborn to make
games anymore all you need is interest
you can download for free powerful game
engines that will let you make your
vision you can download tools that will
let you make the art and animation for
free to put into your games you can go
on places like YouTube and twitch and
you can watch a vast array of tutorials
and explanations of how to do what you
want to do from some of the brightest
minds in the industry they’re out there
and they want to teach you you can buy a
computer at Goodwill for a hundred bucks
that does more than that forty thousand
dollar computer I learned on so these
days making games is still powerful and
it can still change our culture but now
it’s easy and now we have a whole
generation of people who unlike me who
had to learn technology at every step
people who are digital natives people
who understand more than I do how easy
it is to learn technology they’re
comfortable in that space so here is
what I came out here to tell you making
games is easy and anybody can do it
and
games are really powerful tools they can
change our culture and if those two
things are true then therefore anybody
can change our culture so my question
for you is what changes do you want to
see thank you
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