Observations of the Fox

 He wasn't a close friend, he was an acquaintance I knew who shared a passion for game design. He was someone I shared meals and drinks with, and who I talked gaming and game design with... ...and now he's gone. Steve's last public work was a blog post with a link to an unfinished game . Curiously, there's a bit of overlap with my last post with topics of Dunning-Kruger in it, and it generally touches on a lot of the ideas that arose in discussions I had with him. There's lots of mediocre stuff out there and mediocre people who have only managed to get public attention because they've got confidence more than refined skill or natural talent. The catch is that you need to actually do things, and not be discouraged by the mediocre crap that's getting more attention. Like Steve, this has been a long term struggle for me, and I know plenty of other talented designers who feel a similar way.  Steve was generally a friendly and genial person (at least that's w...

It's a heavy start to 2026, but here goes...   I saw this news article a couple of days ago, and was really conflicted in the thoughts I had about it. The title of this post basically sums things up, yet I really need to deconstruct the ideas embedded here. I just need to get those ideas out of my head, because they've been festering. It also goes back to the earliest posts I wrote on the blog when I started it. ( Here 's where it all started, but I really got to the point in the second and third posts)  In the second post I referred to an idea that I called "Corporate Chromatography" at the time, and a lot of my thoughts at the time hold true almost 18 years later (wow, 18 years, has it really been that long) . The point behind that post was the idea that those at the top of the corporate world love to say that "the cream rises to the top", however in my experience "pond scum rises to the top". Those with the lowest amount of ethics to weigh...