Would you give this man $125,000?

July 15, 2009 9:06 AM

System and method for creating exalted video games and virtual realities.This patent application, describing a new genre of "exalted video games," starts simple -- with a woman quoting Lenin -- and spirals out into a rambling tome on arts and economics over the course of 100 pages, from Aristotle to Clint Eastwood. It's easy to write off physicist/poet/entrepreneur Dr. Elliot McGuckin as a standard Internet crackpot -- except that he's also a professor at Pepperdine University, received a $125,000 grant from the Kaufmann Foundation, and teaches a class that was written up in the NYT.

For more context, here's an hour-long talk he did and his blog on Gamasutra (don't miss the comments). I've tried to make sense of it all, but I simply can't. There might be some reasonable ideas about the emotional complexity of videogames in there, but it's so unfocused, it's hard to tell what he's talking about. He's like the walking embodiment of "tl;dr." What's the verdict? He's extremely prolific, but is he saying anything?

posted by waxpancake (68 comments total)

It's easy to write (him) off ... as a standard Internet crackpot -- except that he's also a professor at Pepperdine University, received a $125,000 grant from the Kaufmann Foundation, and teaches a class that was written up in the NYT.

None of those things would automatically disqualify someone from "crackpot" status.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:13 AM on July 15, 2009 [3 favorites]

Does "exalted" even have meaning in this context?
posted by LSK at 9:13 AM on July 15, 2009

If he's so good, why are all of his books self-published?
posted by gene_machine at 9:14 AM on July 15, 2009

From another game design post here recently

"Jason Rohrer (Gravitation, Passage, Between, etc) meets the legendary Chris Crawford (ex-Atari, designer of several classic computer games and author of "The art of videogame design")"

posted by acro at 9:17 AM on July 15, 2009

i especially enjoyed the way he intertwined WWJD and WWOD (O = Odysseus), given the plot points of the Odyssey, i.e. lust, lies, crude violence, mass slaughter.

also

npc1 encounters npc2 vampire who quotes lenin -> npc1 becomes vampire/communist

I'd totally pay money for this game.
posted by geos at 9:18 AM on July 15, 2009 [4 favorites]

Glancing at the tags for this post I misread "mcgucken" as "mcquacken", which somehow seems (more?) appropriate.
posted by howling fantods at 9:18 AM on July 15, 2009

I want to know how many words a minute he types (check the timestamps in the Gamasutra threads). Fuck the Gold 45 Revolver, that man needs to unleash Dr. Elliot McGuckin Teaches Typing on the world.
posted by togdon at 9:19 AM on July 15, 2009

Just goes to show it's a lot easier to design a chat bot which will apply for grants than one that can pass the Turing test.
posted by ecurtz at 9:19 AM on July 15, 2009 [9 favorites]

Pepperdine, huh? Is that still a right wing shill university?
posted by the dief at 9:24 AM on July 15, 2009

His page at Pepperdine says he's a visiting instructor, which suggests a non-tenure track position at best and more likely an explicitly temporary position. The grant press release calls him a 'visiting assistant professor.' In any case it's unlikely to be a tenure-track position and quite probably his appointment will end when his grant runs out.
posted by jedicus at 9:26 AM on July 15, 2009

If he's so good, why are all of his books self-published?

I don't know this man or his ideas, so he could be out to lunch, and I don't care one way or the other about him specifically. I just wanted to note that outside of small publishing communities with a true interest in curating their own legacy and nearly zero interest in making money (contemporary poetry is the best example), the publishing industry is interested in sales figures and not ideas. This especially applies to ideas like "novel, exalted videogames that present deeper gameplay," which sounds like sales poison, however interesting it might be (and is) to me and probably a bunch of other people.
posted by sleevener at 9:29 AM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

So I checked the patent application on PAIR, and sure enough he's handling the patent application and prosecution pro se. That application is dead in the water, I think. It also shows that Pepperdine isn't supporting him quite enough to fund his foray into the patent office.

Although the office actions (patent office rejections) will probably be somewhat dry, as they always are, it should be entertaining to watch him flail around in his responses.
posted by jedicus at 9:34 AM on July 15, 2009

If he's so good, why are all of his books self-published?

That view may have been true in the 1980s, but the landscape of publishing has changed a lot since those days, especially with the Internet becoming an important distribution channel. If you know your market and have established a reputation, self-publishing can be much more profitable and successful than dealing with traditional publishers.
posted by crapmatic at 9:36 AM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

[0057] In all the contemporary and prior art of games and video games, never will you hear an ingame character quoting Abraham Lincoln, Ron Paul, the Founding Fathers, nor Jesus, nor Socrates.

I'm guessing Bioshock doesn't count?
posted by acb at 9:38 AM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

In Fallout 3 you'll hear an ingame character misquoting the founding fathers all over the place... does that count?
posted by fusinski at 9:46 AM on July 15, 2009 [2 favorites]

As I understand the concept of patents, he is not describing a patentable method or system -- not even close to doing so. Am I missing something?
posted by lodurr at 9:55 AM on July 15, 2009

>... sure enough he's handling the patent application and prosecution pro se. That application is dead in the water, I think.

I'll bet you a quarter.

Normally, I'd just be fleecing you, but with the attendant publicity, it's actually a fair bet.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:56 AM on July 15, 2009

In all the contemporary and prior art of games and video games, never will you hear an ingame character quoting Abraham Lincoln, Ron Paul, the Founding Fathers, nor Jesus, nor Socrates.

The guy has never played Alpha Centauri then. It's the only popular video game I know of that quotes Kant.
posted by painquale at 9:57 AM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

He's no Brenda Laurel.
posted by Artw at 9:57 AM on July 15, 2009

ANd here's his wikipedia page. D'ya think he suffered a brain injury at some point?
posted by grobstein at 9:58 AM on July 15, 2009

Perhaps video-game patent applications are a more efficient way of getting one's screeds out into the world these days than by stapling them to the business reply card of a folding wall company or something.
posted by acb at 10:03 AM on July 15, 2009

"If you know your market and have established a reputation, self-publishing can be much more profitable and successful than dealing with traditional publishers."

1. Really, no, and yes, actually, I'm just the person to be able to say that;

2. Certainly not in McGucken's case.

McGucken was one of the resident cranks of the alt.society.gen-x newsgroup back in the day, bloviating in as generally non-hinged fashion about the classics of literature and/or some right-wing talking point or the other. He was annoying but basically harmless. His blather about the classics was independent of his science work, primarily in optics, if memory serves, which I was led to understand was not unimpressive.

That said, this stuff reads more like his stream of consciousness newsgroup silliness than serious scholarship.
posted by jscalzi at 10:03 AM on July 15, 2009

How about the narrator in Civilization? I mean, shoot, Lincoln is a character in 21 videogames and Jesus Christ is a character in 6.

In fact, the Civilization series seems to be substantial prior art over many of the claims, such as claim 1 "A method for creating video games and virtual realities wherein ideas have consequences."

claim 2 "The method in claim 1 where said ideas are rooted in classical, epic precepts such as those found in the Great Books and Classics, and exalted at the pinnacles of Western culture and history."

claim 11 "The method in claim 1 where the character can battle for said ideas that are based upon classical moral and economic principles of famous philosophers, prophets, poets, statesmen, and economists including Plato, Moses, Jesus, Gandhi Sun Tzu, Buda, Jefferson, Aristotle, F. A. Hayek, Martin Luther King Jr., Homer, Ludwig Von Mises, Adam Smith, and others, and witness the consequences of both their success and failure of their battle, as the consequences are rendered in the game's physical world."

claim 15 "The method in claim 1 where the said ideas will be supported or opposed by in-game characters, and the player will have to choose how to interact with the said in-game characters, based on their ideas, including but not limited to whether or not to befriend them, agree with them, disagree with them, ignore them, recruit them, shoot them, save them, judge them, or forgive them."

I mean, shoot, that's practically a roundabout way of describing Civilization right there.
posted by jedicus at 10:03 AM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

Do check out auntie pixelante's bibleshock for a very literal taste of the exalted video game system in action. It's everything the flowcharts hint at and precious little more, but it's a few minutes of good absurdist fun while it lasts.
posted by CheshireCat at 10:06 AM on July 15, 2009

JOIN THE GREAT BOOKS RENAISSANCE
posted by grobstein at 10:09 AM on July 15, 2009

...never will you hear an ingame character quoting Abraham Lincoln, Ron Paul, the Founding Fathers, nor Jesus, nor Socrates.

Just one counter example: The You Testament, in which you play the forgotten disciple of a Buddha-inflected Christ in a wide-open sandbox version of Judaea.

(No, I'm not making this up. It's the avowedly final achievement of MDickie, a one-man development studio who used the proceeds (and the game engines) from an endless conveyor line of cheap wrestling sims for bizarre forays into new genres: a convict simulator, a time-travel war.

The You Testament is the ultimate culmination of both his ambitions and methods: absolutely novel in conception and desperately shoddy and tedious in actual play. But the game exists, mania realized in code rather than paper and flowcharts. It is possible in this world to suplex the Lamb of Hosts.)
posted by Iridic at 10:11 AM on July 15, 2009 [6 favorites]

PLAYER -> Encounters Hooker

Hasn't this been done already?
posted by Xoebe at 10:12 AM on July 15, 2009

I always wondered what would happen if Lew Rockwell became a game designer.
posted by ryoshu at 10:17 AM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

As I understand the concept of patents, he is not describing a patentable method or system -- not even close to doing so. Am I missing something?

Depends on what you think of computer-implemented inventions. If you believe they're patentable, then he's close-ish were it not for the heaps and mounds of prior art, his rambling, incoherent written description, and the myriad technical deficiencies of the application.

Strictly speaking I don't think there's anything unpatentable about a new, nonobvious genre of videogame. The problem is that almost every kind of game was either done pretty early on or is an obvious extension of an existing type of game made possible by advances in gaming hardware. Further, most new and inventive types of games are usually based on the kind of creativity better protected by copyright than patent as it is really hard to nail down precisely what makes the game different.

There are possible exceptions. I believe some of the time-based gameplay in games like Braid and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, for example, is easily described enough that it might have been material for a patent application that would have at least passed the laugh test. More importantly, it is not directly derived from any real-world experience the way most games are.

I think part of the trick with videogame patents is inventing a type of gameplay that is neither an analog of a real-world activity nor ever described in literature else it would probably be obvious (under KSR) to make a videogame out of it. To use the time-based gameplay example again, it wouldn't surprise me if there were prior art from science fiction.
posted by jedicus at 10:22 AM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

Pepperdine? Isn't that still a party school for the rich and fatuous?
posted by shetterly at 10:26 AM on July 15, 2009

And on page 44:

"Fiatocracies have the amazing ability to exalt groupthinkers to unheralded heights, and suddenly string theorists are physicists, feminists are poets, and soulless men who never read nor reference the Great Books are university presidents yada yada grant proposald replete with buzzwords such as "green energy", "smaller carbon footprint", and "social entrepreneurship". Many of them are women, who have been told that men robbed them of the right to create airplanes, electricity, Shakespeare's works, the lightbulb, powered flight, artificial retinas, computers and relativity; and they are getting their revenge by creating fiat bureaucracies which exalt and profit off the 50% divorce rate and the war between the sexes that destroyed the classic American family... You would think they would thak the men for doing all the work all those years, but the genius of feminism is that it criminalizes the creator... 'Ths another reason they don't want the young students reading Homer's Odyssey and witnessing the feminine dangers of Calypso, the Sirens, Circe (sic.), and Agamemnon's wife.

Followed by a sentence on how this is responsible for the supplantation of the virtuous femininity of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn with the likes of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

That is a goldmine of crazy right there.
posted by acb at 10:30 AM on July 15, 2009 [5 favorites]

If I understand those flow charts correctly, it's a simple tree where different things happen as a result of different actions (in this case, speech) on the part of the player. Nothing unique.

If the only thing that's unique is the subject matter of the narrative, how would that be patentable? And if it is, doesn't that expose a major flaw in patent law -- and couldn't anyone then patent any specific branching narrative? E.g., couldn't any specific game be patented?

Probably not formulating these questions as well as I could, but I'm stuck on the idea that this could even approach passing what jedicus called the "laugh test."
posted by lodurr at 10:32 AM on July 15, 2009

jscalzi: 1. Really, no, and yes, actually, I'm just the person to be able to say that;

Depends on how you make your money. If you make it by selling books or doing stuff directly related to selling books (e.g. paid speaking gigs, teaching at Clarion), you're absolutely right at this point in time AFAICS. I've yet to hear of anyone who made a fortune selling or made his/her reputation off of a self-published book. You would definitely be the person to be able to say that.

OTOH, e.g., if you make your money primarily by doing the things that the book is about, you are probably more interested in using the book as a tool or a prop than as an actual revenue-generator; ergo, you can "make more money" self-publishing than trying to find an actual publisher. (That's partly driven by your initial credibility, of course.) Books can be incredibly useful in consulting contexts, in several different ways: Something to leave behind, something to reinforce your message, something for your clients to pass along as a reference, etc. (Leaving aside for the moment questions of credibility; best way to handle those in a scrupulous biz relationship would probably be openness: "We publish this way because we don't want to waste time and resources...")

The latter is what I assumed he was talking about.
posted by lodurr at 10:39 AM on July 15, 2009

"Fiatocracies have the amazing ability to exalt groupthinkers to unheralded heights..."

Yeah, pretty much that.
posted by ryoshu at 10:40 AM on July 15, 2009

"anyone who made a fortune" -> "anyone who made a living"
posted by lodurr at 10:42 AM on July 15, 2009

If the only thing that's unique is the subject matter of the narrative, how would that be patentable?

His flowcharts don't really represent patentable subject matter, it's true, as basically what they describe is the idea of a dialog tree, which is of course old hat. If you give the application an incredibly charitable reworking and take it about 20 years back in time, though, you might be able to come up with something patentable.

If you look at how I described the similarity of the claims to Civilization-type games, then I suppose if a much-cleaned up version of the application had been written 20 years ago, then it might have been patentable to claim a game of exploration, expansion, and conquest wherein the players and computer controlled characters could adopt political, religious, and cultural values that had meaningful consequences within the game world.

The problem, of course, is that in modern patent law one would say 'well, you've described an historical simulation game, but of course we all know about history, and it is common for videogames to simulate aspects of the real world, so a game that simulates history is obvious.' But at least it wouldn't be laughable.
posted by jedicus at 10:42 AM on July 15, 2009

Also, previously on the same page, fiat money is responsible for abortion.
posted by acb at 10:43 AM on July 15, 2009

ANd here's his wikipedia page.

Same page, before it was cleaned up by non-IP numeric Wikipedians.
posted by effbot at 10:47 AM on July 15, 2009

And here's the AfD page. At least someone knows how to use a proxy.
posted by effbot at 10:51 AM on July 15, 2009

From his site:

Dr. E doesn't really blog as he'd rather rock eternity. He's always been drawn to those things bigger than us--the mountains and the ocean, Shakespeare and Einstein. They set him free. And they'll set you free to, if you hang out with Dr. E. Cruise his websites and buy his books, and for a few bucks you'll get the classical education that's essential in making all deeper dreams a reality.

I dunno about his patent application, but he'd make a pretty entertaining NPC in just about any MMORPG; I'm halfway tempted to create a Doc Rock Eternity adventure using the Mission Architect system in City of Heroes.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:00 AM on July 15, 2009

effbot: Great find. The AfD page, in particular, is very entertaining.
posted by waxpancake at 11:13 AM on July 15, 2009

Strictly speaking I don't think there's anything unpatentable about a new, nonobvious genre of videogame

In re Bilski might change this. I'm hoping the Conservative Four go the right way here.
posted by @troy at 11:22 AM on July 15, 2009

Holy crap, effbot, the man quotes his grad school rec, at length, as evidence of his genius in the article.
posted by FuManchu at 11:24 AM on July 15, 2009

I hate moral choice games. The only choice you get is gutless good or maniacal evil. The world flourishes or quivers in fear based on contrived binary options.

I sentence this man to 1 year of playing Black and White.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 12:32 PM on July 15, 2009

I hate moral choice games. The only choice you get is gutless good or maniacal evil. The world flourishes or quivers in fear based on contrived binary options.

I actually just posted a short essay about this, here. I think it would be really cool to have moral choice games where the decisions are interesting, but mostly I think the focus on choice is a misdirection.
posted by grobstein at 12:39 PM on July 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

If he behaves well he should get time off to play Deus Ex.
posted by Artw at 12:39 PM on July 15, 2009

Wow, what a loon. At least he's in his own little world, not bothering anyone except his unfortunatle students. Not like this dude. What is it lately with bogus academic scholarship of videogames? More importantly, when are universities going to purge this kind of nonsense? (I know: never).
posted by Edgewise at 12:40 PM on July 15, 2009

Holy shit, McGucken. I also remember him from the alt.society.generation-x days, and I have to tell you discovering the fact that he still exists has me whooping and hollering and firing pistols in the air like a grizzled prospector in the 1849 Crazy Rush.

All these posts, and no mention of his magnum opus, The Drake Raft Field Trip? Or his shit epic poem, The Wrath of the Jolly Roger? And if you're still clinging to some semblance of sanity like the protagonist on the next-to-last page of a Lovecraft story, behold the glory of his poetry for physicists.

(You may notice the sun turning blood-red and an unearthly choir of demonic children singing blasphemous Latin by about the fourth sonnet. This is completely normal.)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:20 PM on July 15, 2009 [2 favorites]

jedicus: "Strictly speaking I don't think there's anything unpatentable about a new, nonobvious genre of videogame."

Your statement makes me want to run out and implement the twenty-or-so damn ideas I've got banging around specifically so some asshole won't patent them and make it so I can't ever realize them.
posted by JHarris at 2:59 PM on July 15, 2009

This patent application, describing a new genre of "exalted video games," starts simple -- with a woman quoting Lenin

[Glances at linked patent application.]

Oh, I see, the application describes a video game which starts with a woman quoting Lenin.

This is somewhat less bizarre than what I imagined from the FPP: a patent application where the text of the application begins with a woman quoting Lenin.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:42 PM on July 15, 2009

Your statement makes me want to run out and implement the twenty-or-so damn ideas I've got banging around specifically so some asshole won't patent them and make it so I can't ever realize them.

Describing the ideas in a printed publication is usually sufficient (and generally publication on the internet counts). That creates prior art under 35 USC 102(a) if it is done before the other guy invents it and under 35 USC 102(b) if it is done at least a year before the other guy applies for the patent. Even if the prior art doesn't fully describe every element of the claimed invention, it can still be brought in under 35 USC 103 in combination with other prior art to defeat the application on obviousness grounds.

That said, I'm not a lawyer, and that's not legal advice. You should consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction for advice on intellectual property and its protection.
posted by jedicus at 3:49 PM on July 15, 2009

That said, I'm not a lawyer, and that's not legal advice. You should consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction for advice on intellectual property and its protection.

As a sidenote, isn't it ridiculous that the law of lawyering requires those "this is not a pipe" disclaimers?
posted by grobstein at 7:08 PM on July 15, 2009

I just looked at the poetry and some of the prose pieces. This guy is a major crypto-anti-intellectual -- a serious David Foster Wallace wannabe (the "Drake Raft Field Trip" thing is a good example of that in action). Everything "post-modern" seems to be bad (except when he does it).*

And boy, does he ever have some serious issues with women! I think he must have been humiliated as an undergrad by some pretty girl who quoted Lenin.

--
*DFW does some of this too, but he's usually careful to point out when he's doing it.
posted by lodurr at 6:14 AM on July 16, 2009

Dr. McGucken, I presume?
posted by lodurr at 6:57 AM on July 17, 2009

As long as you're here, could you explain what's unique about the idea of a game where actions branch to consequences? It seems to me that you're simply describing the essence of gaming: Actions taken by the gamer branch to consequences. Is your claim that the actions being "moral" makes them somehow qualitatively different from other actions?
posted by lodurr at 7:09 AM on July 17, 2009

"Monthly year-over-year comparisons have been worsening in recent months" hints at economic causes. We are, after all, in the middle of a spot of economic trouble. It would be useful to see the numbers over the previous two years, and ideally to see #s on how gaming revenues normally respond during economic downturns.

As far as deeper causes, such as "a vast and rising demand to wield the Gold 45 Revolver in the soulless, dumbed-down, boring, morally vapid gameworlds, and shoot Zeus's lightning as the swarms of zombie/vampire/fanboys descend, shrieking the fiatocracy's slogans and raging against the universe's moral premise" -- I'd like to eliminate the obvious economic explanation first.
posted by lodurr at 7:20 AM on July 17, 2009

golf45revolver, as you're new here, you may not realize that the MeFi ethos frowns on copy-paste and self-linking. We tend to expect people to answer the questions put to them without resort to a pull down menu of pre-composed retorts.

So you might find that your initial posts get deleted. If so, it will be happening not because you said anything that was unpopular or uncomfortable, but that your post violated guidelines.
posted by lodurr at 7:27 AM on July 17, 2009

sorry about that!

i will do my best to conform to the stringent code of honor and absolute moral principles. :)

i can appreciate this, as that is what drives my novel technologies/research. :)
posted by gold45revolver at 7:48 AM on July 17, 2009

Yeah, welcome aboard, but if you want to participate here your comments really need to stop looking like advertisements or copy/paste exercises. Participate by actually talking to people, not shouting catchphrases and linking your website, please. This a community, not a bulletin board.
posted by cortex at 7:55 AM on July 17, 2009

oops.

ad hominem attacks = good.

posting exceprts to answer questions = bad.

i get it. i get it. :)

but why did you delete my post to the music video which expressed the way i have been feeling, right up until i found my new band of brothers here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urY1aZCRs7c

good to meet everyone. the big picgture is that soon we will be seeing novel Gold 45 Revolver Technologies which exalt ideas thet have consequences and the moral premise in video games.

I would link to my blog @ gamasutra, but I am not sure we are not afforded the First Amendement here, and I do not want to upset the fanboy gods of planet metafilter.

good to be aboard!
:)
posted by gold45revolver at 8:24 AM on July 17, 2009

ad hominem attacks = good.

You were a subject, not a participant. It's hard to have a discussion ad hominem without the discussion being ad hominem.
posted by lodurr at 8:27 AM on July 17, 2009

ad hominem attacks = good.

posting exceprts to answer questions = bad.

Stern warning from one of the people who runs this place to somebody who just showed up and acted for all the world like a spammer = you getting more slack than someone acting like you have would normally receive, and only because I suspect you were just being foolish, not malicious.

There's a whole lot of site culture here that you need to slow down and familiarize yourself with. I'm happy to have you add your voice to this thread if you can manage to do so without piles of gratuitous links and non-sequiturs, but the onus is on you to get acclimated and avoid trampling any further the mefi guidelines or acting like a jerk out of the gate.

Feel free to include a link to your blog on your profile page. That's what it's there for. If you are looking for wholly unrestricted freedom of expression, I recommend a nice meadow in Wyoming; here, we clean up bizarre spills to keep this site from descending into anarchic crap.

Again: you're welcome if you can manage to cut the crap and engage with the site on good faith terms, but if you were hoping for somewhere you could blast text and links without reservation you have badly misapprehended the site.
posted by cortex at 8:33 AM on July 17, 2009

i like the moral code of honor here.

let's light this candle and play this game!

not only am i the subject of this thread, but i am now the participant! please do not let my presence diminish the ad hominem attacks, as they are perfectly in accord with the moral system here. you are allowed to link to my work, but i am not, so please have at it! i have paid my $5, and i do not want it to go to waste, so i will only link to my work in my profile.

the economy is crashing, the family is breaking up/fading, the videogames industry is shedding thousands in jobs and billions in market cap, and if we only adhere to the high moral standards here, we can turn the tide of the debauchery of the currency and culture!

best,

Dr. E :)
posted by gold45revolver at 9:15 AM on July 17, 2009

A couple more random comments removed. Seriously, I don't want to make your day any worse here and anyone here can tell you how much I generally like it when the subject of a post drops by to join the conversations, but manic disengaged posting isn't okay on mefi.

If you're here to be a member of this community, you need to get familiar with it, because you are way off the mark so far; if you're just here to shout about whatever McGuckin-qua-McGuckin randomness pops into your head, you are in the wrong place and need to redirect it to your own blog.

Now please ease way, way off the throttle and familiarize yourself more with the site and it's general culture and conventions before you resume posting—another burst of postkakke from you and I'm going to have to close your account. That's not something we do very often and not something I like to have to do, especially with someone who could in theory add some personal insight to a thread, but you're acting out really, really badly so far and if you can't figure out how to get control of that yourself then there's not anything else for us to do about it.
posted by cortex at 10:18 AM on July 17, 2009

Hooah!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooah

"Heard, understood and acknowledged" (backronym as "HUA")!

I would be happy to answer any questions regarding the novel Gold 45 Revolver / Ideas Have Consequences / Moral Premise video games technology.

Best,

Dr. E :)
posted by gold45revolver at 10:42 AM on July 17, 2009

I expect that some mysteriously anonymous editor will update Dr. McGuckin's wikipedia page to say 'Metafilter's own Elliot McGuckin' pretty soon.

Hi, Dr. E! I look forward to playing your video game when and if it is released. Have you played Civilization or Alpha Centauri before? They are games I think you would like.
posted by painquale at 9:59 PM on July 17, 2009

Hello!

@painquale. yes--I have played played Civilization or Alpha Centauri! I hope you enjoy games with the gold 45 revolver / ideas have consequences / moral premise technologies in the future!

I think a more open form of discourse would work wonders here.

But I do appreciate and respect metafilter's rules!

I hope I am not stepping out-of-bounds by posting links to two entertaining and informative threads (on sites that are not mine) in which you can get to know me a bit better. One is not defined by anonymous ad- hominem attacks alone in this world. :)

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3173757&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=366448

Best,

Dr. E :)
posted by gold45revolver at 11:20 AM on July 20, 2009

Seriously, this is not your blog. Slow-playing the random linkery about yourself is not getting you under the radar, so cut it out.
posted by cortex at 11:06 AM on July 22, 2009