Another favourite quote...

A Favourite Quote of Mine...

Dusting Off An Old Film

Do you know that, years ago, I wrote and directed a short film, shot on 35mm? Back in 1992 shooting on "thirty-five" was a big deal. Now we have smartphones with higher resolution...

Do you know that I was, in a sense, "discovered" by John Board... a producer who worked closely with Cronenberg? John was willing to finish it, but because of circumstances beyond his control, we were unable to do that.

How did it not get finished? It's a long story which I'm not going to dwell on.

But I am going to get it out there, now. I think it's time has come. I'm dusting it off... what I have left of  it (just a video transfer of an answer print)... I'll be editing it and then I'll post it on Youtube shortly.

Here's a bit of the first shot...

Tuk Lai: A Wargame

Tuk Lai is a documentary about some friends playing a double-blind wargame - a semi-fictional military scenario set in Vietnam, 1967.

Filmed in 1997, it's one part realistic operational simulation, one part silly toy soldier fun... with a generous dose of black humour added... and a new rock and roll soundtrack, guys!

Watch as Steve and Peter, the Viet Cong players, attempt to infiltrate and destroy an American firebase, commanded by Orion and Jon, while I (Tim "XFunc" Carter) pull gamemaster duty.

SERVICES: The Counter-Strike Documentary

The original SERVICES poster, 2000

You are about to see what may be one of the most influential documentaries in videogame history... even though it's never been broadcast (until now).

SERVICES: The CounterStrike Documentary. 

(I've uploaded it to The Sand Table, my Youtube gaming channel.)

SERVICES was seen in three places only:

- At its informal premiere at the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2001.

- At Digifest 2003, "Electronic Cities", in Toronto...

- And at Valve, creator of CounterStrike. Valve first saw SERVICES about 2002.

In fact, it was almost broadcast on television, back before Youtube paved the way for game documentaries, but this was blocked because of "flickering screens".

How much has this documentary influenced this history of videogames?

SERVICES: The CounterStrike Documentary

Produced & Directed by Tim Carter

Video Interview by Mike D'Abramo & Tim Carter

Counter-Strike by Valve Software

Special thanks to all the players who participated.

Reprint: How To Save Counter-Strike

I'm linking to an old article I posted on XFunc.com, more than 10 years ago, called How To Save Counter-Strike. It was, I dare say, first-rate business intelligence, and I also dare to say that Valve mined it for all of its worth. But I'll let you decide whatever for yourself (though it helps if you were around over the past 15 years of gaming to see how Valve, Counter-Strike and Steam evolved)...

Oh yeah, fair warning: it's a bit of a plug for my film SERVICES: The Counter-Strike Documentary. After all, I made it waaayyy before the wave of Youtube gaming videos began -- indeed, it was made before Youtube existed! Back then I had issues getting the release from Valve to broadcast that documentary. The flood of Youtube gaming videos that have since come out have paved the legal precedents for me to now upload SERVICES. I simply didn't have the energy or resources to do that legal work on my own (as a way-back-at-the-start-of-it-all pioneer).

I might also say it has shadows of autistic-spectrum stuff.... but anyway, if you don't like that, tough. (That's how I roll.)

Here's the link: https://www.scribd.com/doc/261431850/How-to-Save-Counter-Strike

On The Assassination of Nemtsov, Russian Opposition Leader

Stalin got into power by a fluke of events... He was only included in Lenin's inner circle because Lenin figured they needed one of the prole's... After all, it was a "worker's revolution", but the leaders were all intellectuals. So Stalin, a token yob, but also a petty burglar, was included.

Problem is, the Bolsheviks wrote a slapdash constitution which emphasized putting control into the hands of one guy. Not a lot of thinking went into this. It was a system which, as is the achilles heal of communism, was susceptible to the cult-of-personality.

Then Lenin died unexpectedly of a stroke. And somehow things just gravitated to Stalin. Stalin, having more streetsmarts than the rest of the booksmart inner circle, knew how to manipulate things at the personal level. He was a good liar and not hesitant to knock off anyone who got in his way.

We then see the various purges and so forth, and we all know Stalin's rule was marked by unbelieveable atrocities, incomptence and terror.

There begins also a long chain of power passing from one hand to the next.

With Stalin's death in the 50s, all who were left were incompetent yes-men. So began the "crapulent" phase of Communism... shortages, economic stagnation, etc... leading all the way to Glasnost and the collapse of communism.

Putin got in essentially by proving himself as a yes-man for Yeltsin, and guaranteeing his (Yeltsin's) safety.

But we see today the shadow of those past mistakes, echoing again in what's going on now in Russia. Rule via the cult-of-personality continues. Putin's expression of condolence following Nemtsov's assassination is particularly chilling.

The problem is, nobody is guaranteeing Putin safety. And he knows that. As soon as he's out of power he'll probably be arrested.

And this is why we are here now.

--- 27 February 2015

Frontline Pandemic: A Prototype

Just a heads up on my latest project... Working title: Frontline - Pandemic.

(This is NOT offiically connected to the Pandemic boardgame franchise...)

(The photo is of the mockup. If it gets published, I imagine all the graphics will change.)

I've spent the last 9 months or so (since ebola began to break) redesigning this commercial boardgame prototype, which I originally submitted to the publisher of the popular boardgame Pandemic back in 2010. It draws on what I learned doing tabletop work to train hospital staff to deal with epidemiological events. In this game a team of players cooperatively manage a hospital responding to a pandemic.

The first prototype was in submission for almost a year. This time I've overhauled it, simplified it and fine-tuned the balance design. The game has benefited from more than two years of design, redesign and playtesting. Particular thanks go out to my friend Chris MacAllister for his time in playtesting.

The game now I think has arrived. It takes about 90 minutes to play out, and it presents players with definite puzzles which they have to truly think about to survive the epidemic. Things get a little "grindy"... in other words, you must spend some time focusing on the details... but I couldn't get away from some of this. It is simply the nature of this scenario: dealing with patient loads, dealing with resupply of materiel and personnel, finding space for the patients, and so on. That's what an epidemic looks like in a hospital. To try to manipulate it otherwise, in my opinion, is to be dishonest to the subject matter.

The Pandemic publisher rejected it I think mainly because the game's frank honesty frightened them. They felt squeamish about the subject-matter. Well... Sorry, but patients sometimes die. Sometimes in waves if you aren't smart. But this is a pandemic, after all. Oddly, while the Pandemic game franchise deals with... erm... pandemics, and all the apocalyptic destruction native to plagues, disease and so on... that franchise has a reputation as being light and fun. So I guess they didn't want to disrupt this light funness with... you know... dealing with people who are sick and sometimes having to face your inability to save everyone. (That's one thing that new doctors and nurses have to face... That human limitation of medicine.)

Anyway, not everyone has that aversion to healthcare issues. That's why there are hit hospital shows like ER, Grey's Anatomy, House, etc.

One of the most satisfying parts in this game is the Healing Phase. If you've done your job well, you get to discharge many formerly sick patients, sending them home and increasing your Dedication score. It is a very light and fun thing to do, and dealing with the devil of the details is the investment you make to win such a reward.

Reduction: Mission 1 - Moving As A Team

Here's a runthrough of Mission 1 from the campaign Reduction, which I am designing... That's me playing with "Pancage" (new to the game Alien Swarm).

I like the top-down shooter format. I feel it's a better way to teach people "squad tactics" because it doesn't have the tunnel-vision that the first-person shooter format has. First person shooters (like Call of Duty) make people myopic: they're good for teaching shooting, but lousy to teach people how to move with your team-mates. Top-down shooters give people an all-around team perspective. Of course, we're dealing with "aliens" here, but imagine what else we could do with the format?

See the blog for Reduction at PrepareToDrop.com

Red Flags: 2015

Here's an interesting, to-the-point infographic on hypothetical future flashpoint scenarios...

Red flags, all of them.

To this list, I would add the following:

The threat of ebola becoming an endemic world disease. (And I don't care that it hasn't emerged as such... yet.... My articles on ebola were hit many times, and if they helped stop ebola from reaching this point, then that's a good thing! And by the way... I can pretty much assure you that there is a defacto world travel ban to the ebola-stricken West African nations... They won't call it a "travel ban", for political reasons, but getting out of there is extremely difficult now...)

The threat of economic and legal collapse in the United States:

• Legal collapse driven by many young useful idiots, who have grown up with the narcissitic self-delusion of a world controlled by smartphones and depicted in the fantasy of unrealistic videogames. These people are magical thinkers who fundamentally don't understand how the legal system works. It's not perfect, but it works better than any other way the human race has yet created... And in their quest to create some magical, perfect legal system... where police are psychic and know when someone is armed or not in the first 30 seconds... they'll do the evil that Voltaire noted: "Perfection is the enemy of the good." (Though I will say that using a chokehold on a surrendering person is pretty stupid. I was trained by a cop in chokeholds, including having been put into one. They're pretty terrifying.)
• Economic collapse simply because the US dollar, the world's international currency, is riding on fumes now. (And yet the US still has a magical aura when it comes to economic growth. Which is probably its only saving grace.)

Friction: Clausewitz, the military-thinker, gives us a term for this build up of red flags (albeit he was speaking in a context of warfare). "Friction." It's the general pile-up of unforeseen events (and even foreseen ones), which can cause unexpected, catastrophic failures.

The world is full of friction now.

If a wider war comes to us, I suppose the Western militaries can point to a failure of civilian leadership. It will be either because of the hawkish shortsightedness of the right (if you talk war so much, guess what you'll get?...) or the negligent stupidity of the left (if you ignore conflict red flags, or implement arbitrary and destabilizing policies - such as withdrawal dates that have no basis in reality - guess what you'll get?...).

Ebola: Let The Pilots Lead Us

Flying is, contrary to the cliché, very dangerous. Dynamically-speaking

It is so dangerous that pilots do a methodical series of checks before every flight. And they have many "fire-drill" style procedures to follow in case something goes wrong during a flight (for example, the stall procedure).

Because these checks and methods are in place, air travel is quite safe. Statistically-speaking..

I make this point because I want to reveal the dangerous illusion of thinking in a statistical manner rather than in a dynamic manner when it comes to disasters. You think in circles when you think statistically. You look at things as giant lumps, from a distance, but you don't open them up and get into how they interact and operate. And you need to do that to understand disasters.

Driving is more dangerous than flying, statistically, because it's so much safer than flying, dynamically. Because it's so safe to drive, dynamically, we have a lackadaisical attitude toward it. Thus, it becomes more dangerous overall -- statistically. (Who here drives a car with  the kind of safety checklist and emergency training a pilot uses while flying? Nobody. You just get in your car and go without too much thought.)

When you understand what pilots do, you see how statistics lie. Air travel IS dangerous. If your engine goes while you're driving, you can pull over, call a tow truck, et cetera. If your engine goes while you're flying, there's a good chance you'll die. Because of that, you make damn sure your engine won't go!: you check it before each flight; you put switches and gauges in the cockpit to give you precise control over the engine; you design the aircraft with multiple engines so one can go down and you'll still survive, and so on.

Likewise, you need to think dynamically when you think about disasters. You need to think more in terms of immediate cause-and-effect, less in terms of abstractions and removed statistics. Otherwise there's a good chance you'll kill people unnecessarily.

Lets look at some dangerous illusions being caused by statistical, abstract and circular (non-dynamic) thinking patterns about this ebola situation...

Ebola: Come As You Are

Last night I may have contracted ebola. That's a very slim maybe.

I was at the local watering hole. Karaoke night. It's fun.

The karaoke master has about three gigs, rotating, between various bars. With that microphone, passing hand to hand. He was vomiting outside the pub. Stupidly I shared a smoke with him. So if he has it I now do, too. But that's okay.

He seemed to think it was just because he was drinking. (Maybe it was.) But still, vomiting? I asked him if he had a sore throat. He said no. But still. A heavy drinker, vomiting?

Ah, it's okay. I'll monitor myself. It's not like I haven't been here before...

What You Can Do To Prepare For Ebola

If ebola spreads to your region -- if people are presenting in your area with symptoms and there is a great deal of fear and uncertainty -- there are some very simple steps you and your community can take to ensure your survival.

Who am I to give this advice? I was tapped to do design on a simulation to train hospitals to deal with medical resource management during pandemic events. I've done a lot of historical research and I've worked with these people. This said, you need to listen to public health officials and authoritative sources over myself in any contradiction. Now on with it...

Take Some Time Off (Self-Isolate)
A very simple and effective way to fight the spread of ebola is to simply avoid contact with others. Pretty straightforward. The more you can avoid others, the more you avoid the disease, the higher your chances of surviving. It's something simple and proactive you can do to stay alive and reassure yourself and your family.

Pandemic Response: The Simulation

Pandemic Response is a simulation to train hospital administrators to deal with epidemiological events, including pandemics.

I provided consulting game design for this project, over several meetings and design sessions. My main contribution was to research and design a full tabletop prototype early on, and then take the team through this scenario as a learning exercise.

Partly I drew on my own HAZMAT training from the army, and while attending a hospital disaster training in DC (where I did triage in full respirator and suit).

The approach I advocated in design emphasized the overarching principles and key on-the-ground actions and strategies involved, based on historical-qualitative experience (in particular, reports on the SARS event and response at the North York General Hospital in Toronto). The final approach taken in the game was quantitative, emphasizing data simulation, with key actions integrated in a summary manner.

Pandemic Response was developed to beta stage by Simquest (from the Washington DC area), working with Virtual Heroes, and was funded by the United States Office of the Secretary of Defence.

New Russian Mechanized Infantry Tactics

Syrian Armour (Russian-Supplied) Operating In Close Coordination

A Fascinating Study of Mechanized Combat
I've embedded a propaganda video displaying the deployment of a Syrian mechanized infantry combat team. The video is from the Syrian perspective, but it has a Russian voice-over. I find it interesting because you are witnessing Western-style combined arms tactics in an Arab state, under the advisement of Russian military. It says a lot...

My Understanding of Mech Infantry
In the late-1980s I serrved with the 48th Highlanders of Canada Regiment, which was then tasked as Mechanized Infantry. We were preparing to fight the Ruuskies in World War Three -- a pretty futile-feeling mission to train for, but we trained for it nonetheless.

What To Do If The Shit Hits The Fan!

Whether it's a zombie apocalypse, a super-typhoon, alien invasion, a pandemic or total economic collapse, there are some core things you can do to help ensure the survival of yourself and your loved ones in a disaster.

I'm talking about a major collapse here. The kind where, for whatever reason, you're on your own. The authorities are taxed beyond the limit, power is out, you have dwindling water reserves, no food distribution, the fear of anarchy, and so on.

My Situation Report To The President On Crimea

Mr President, as your trusted advisor, I have the following comments to make on the situation in Crimea...

Should We Bury Fukushima?

I've watched this Fukushima situation with concern for a few months now. I have an interest in it partly because I worked in disaster response simulation design. My specialty was in designing simulations that dealt with what you might call the meta-level of situational events. (I worked on sims that dealt with how hospitals manage their resources at an overarching level during terrorists bombings and epidemic events.)

The Fukushima Diachi Nuclear Facility (displaying the 4 reactors)

Code Orange: The Simulation

I was a core designer at BreakAway Games for Code Orange, a computer 3D real-time strategy serious game to train hospital staff to deal with mass casualty incidents. I gave the project a strong new design structure and overall creative direction that reflected both the core strategic elements and the “feel” of disaster medicine at the hospital level.

I did extensive research on the topic, consulted with many experts (such as Israeli trauma specialist Dr Asher Hirshberg); brought in subject matter experts (SMEs) to work closely with myself; attended numerous courses, symposiums, meetings, disaster drills; spent many hours observing at the famous MedStar shock/trauma facility in Washington DC, and toured many hospital critical care facilities. I also became an unofficial expert in the Hospital Emergency Incident Command System (HEICS), and did extensive client relations work.

I designed a tabletop prototype that covered the response of an entire hospital to a terrorist bomb scenario. I brought the development team (overseen by our subject-matter experts) through this prototype, so they could understand how the situation worked. I wrote the design documentation for the computer game, including spreadsheet-based data fields and mock-ups of the core user-interface.

I provided design leadership, guiding the development team in taking on the complex medical subject matter; boiling complicated materials down to a workable design, especially at the clinical level.

Code Orange was a project of Washington Hospital Center's ER1 initiative.

Tim Carter: The Game Trailer Auteur (Self-Ridicule Intended)

I think I made the very first "game trailer".  The very first video that spliced gameplay action over music.

It was 1987. I was in my second year of film school (God, how I hate that term - film school... But it did let you make mistakes as a creator; it was an incubation space). Anyway, we had to do a video cut to music. So I convinced my buddy, Ed Vitunski, to go down to the arcade strip on Yonge Street, here in Toronto...

Then, Yonge was a seedy street, with lots of these quarter arcades... Now?... It's becoming less and less seedy each day, with a glassy, plastic, sickly saccarine sheen to it. Frankly, I miss the Old Yonge Street... But I digress...

The owners at one place HATED us shooting video in their place. I guess there were a lot of less-than-savoury-types hanging around there... Underworld somehow. Eh... that was the arcade clientelle. We snuck some shots anyway, and got some good footage before they noticed us and kicked us out. Then we moved on to the next arcade... there were so many back then.

Now gaming is totally isolated... Back then, you'd meet people at these places - join in together with a stranger to put in quarters and defeat the Ultimate Boss of some game... Now, we're all in our own little cells... But I digress...

Anyway, we shot footage of guys playing videogames. Some were real rockstar players: guys who were in their zone. Most were just messing around.

We also shot loads of my collection of cracked Commodore 64 games.

Plus we shot my friend Scotz (who's now a respectable advertising and real estate man, in the US), and his loopy football buddy, acting as if they were playing.

Then I cut it to Great Balls of Fire!!!, by Jerry Lee Lewis!

The result, I present here...

My next foray was some time later, in 2000, when I did something called SERVICES: The Counter-Strike Documentary (which is a whole other story...). Anyway, I put online this trailer for that documentary about Counter-Strike...