Death to the Baby Boomers!!!

[Aeson]

My understanding is it was mostly Brian Reynolds until he took much of the team and left, then Soren was left to clean up. (He did the AI and game mechanics balancing ... which is most of what makes the game the game it is.)

[Tupac Shakur]

CRESCENT LAKE, Ore.—My father taught me how to throw a baseball and divide big numbers in my head and build a life where I’d be home in time to eat dinner with my kid most nights. He and my mother put me through college and urged me to follow my dreams. He never complained when I entered a field even less respected than his. He lives across the country and still calls just to check in and say he loves me.

His name is Tom. He is 63, tall and lean, a contracts lawyer in a small Oregon town. A few wisps of hair still reach across his scalp. The moustache I have never seen him without has faded from deep brown to silver. The puns he tormented my younger brother and me with throughout our childhood have evolved, improbably, into the funniest jokes my 6-year-old son has ever heard. I love my dad fiercely, even though he’s beaten me in every argument we’ve ever had except two, and even though he is, statistically and generationally speaking, a parasite.

This is the charge I’ve leveled against him on a summer day in our Pacific Northwest vision of paradise. I have asked my favorite attorney to represent a very troublesome client, the entire baby-boom generation, in what should be a slam-dunk trial—for me. On behalf of future generations, I am accusing him and all the other parasites his age of breaking the sacred bargain that every American generation will pass a better country on to its children than the one it inherited.

We are sitting on a beach in late afternoon on a sun-drizzled lake in the Cascade Mountains, two college-educated, upper-middle-class white men settling in for a week of generational warfare. My son, Max, splashes in the waves with his grandmother; sunbathers lounge in inner tubes around us; snow-capped peaks loom above the tree line. The breeze smells of Coppertone and wet dog. My father thinks back on the country that awaited him when he finished law school. “There seemed to be a lot of potential,” he says, setting up the first of many evasions, “but there weren’t a lot of jobs.”

I’m mildly impressed that he’s even bothering to mount a defense. The facts as I see them are clear and damning: Baby boomers took the economic equivalent of a king salmon from their parents and, before they passed it on, gobbled up everything but the bones.

Generational Warfare: The Case Against Parasitic Baby Boomers

Piece continues at the link. Very damning.

[Aeson]

I am accusing him and all the other parasites his age of breaking the sacred bargain that every American generation will pass a better country on to its children than the one it inherited.

Kids these days have better toys than Bill Gates could buy with $60bn just 20 years ago. Really ... defaulting and having to learn Chinese or Canadian at some point in the future is a small price to pay for having porn streaming onto our HD cellphones.

[notyoueither]

My understanding is it was mostly Brian Reynolds until he took much of the team and left, then Soren was left to clean up. (He did the AI and game mechanics balancing ... which is most of what makes the game the game it is.)

I believe Soren came in on the expansions. He fixed some of what many complained about.

[snoopy369]

Soren was technically the game programmer, Jeff Briggs the game designer. Soren took over as designer during the expansions, I believe.

This was generally the path in Firaxis, I'd note - the lead programmer moves up to designer. Soren, Alexman, Jon all were the lead programmer for one half iteration then lead designer for one half to one iteration (one half = either a game or its expansions).

[Hauldren Collider]

Jon Shafer

[notyoueither]

Soren was technically the game programmer, Jeff Briggs the game designer. Soren took over as designer during the expansions, I believe.

This was generally the path in Firaxis, I'd note - the lead programmer moves up to designer. Soren, Alexman, Jon all were the lead programmer for one half iteration then lead designer for one half to one iteration (one half = either a game or its expansions).

Yeah, I checked after I posted. A web site listed Soren as a programmer for the initial release.

[notyoueither]

Jon Shafer

He's a good guy, he just made some strange decisions.

[Dinner]

He should never be put in charge of a game again.

[Jaguar]

He is the worst. He is a terrible game designer, and he should feel bad about making a bad game and publishing it under the Civ brand.

[Lorizael]

Why should he feel bad about creating a product purchased by many consumers?

[ColdWizard]

I remember when he was a college student. [/old fogey]

[-Jrabbit]

I remember when dinosaurs walked the earth. [/older fogey]