Mike Mearls, Political Junkie

I suspect that, of all the pages here, this is the only one that can possibly land me in any sort of trouble.

Working as a game designer is tremendously fun, but at their core games remain a triviality in the grand scheme of things. That does not mean I don't take games seriously. They are my craft, and I honestly love working on them. But it does mean I acknowledge that games qua games are not Important in the same sense as environmental issues, or the Israeli-Palistinian conflict.

Oppps, I said it. Yeah, I like to think about the current state of the Middle East quite a bit. I think my friend Eric would label me a "hardened conservative realist." I approach social and political issues in the same manner I approached computer science and now handle game design. I consider the ideal final state of a problem, look at the current situation, and think about how to move from where we are to where we want to be.

The Middle East fascinates me in part because I was in NYC during the attack on the WTC and because the current mess there is such a tangled, thorny batch of problems. Even getting basic information that isn't ass-sucking propaganda generated by either side is hard enough. The leaders on both sides are war criminals. There are no good guys here, which is about as far as you can get from gaming.

I will also use this page to mercilessly mock Libertarians. HA! Libertarians. They crack me up.