I have had a lot of difficulties with motivation. It has been going on for decades.

I keep asking what I really want to accomplish, as a software and game developer. I’m afraid that I am not even that interested in developing an actual game, but only in the means by which computer games are developed. I am curious, but perhaps I have no real interest in any particular computer game existing or not.

In fact, I know that is not actually true. The problem may, in fact, be doubts about my own motivations.

I think in truth that what I mostly want is a game into which I can disappear. Perhaps forever. But such a thing does not exist. It probably cannot exist.

No toy world can possibly be rich enough to satisfy all of a person's emotional and intellectual appetites. Different toy worlds can satisfy some of those needs, for a while. And then we must stop playing games, and go back into the real world, and relate to real people. Any game design—one that is both reasonable and ethical—has to exist in the context of real people taking a break from the real world, with the intention of returning again, after.

I have a difficult time understanding people. It is a serious flaw.

But the problem has gotten worse over time, even as my technical skills and abilities have improved. I could make many different types of games, if I had the focus. But what type of game do I want to make? Do I even still want to make games? Do I even still want to make software? Do I still want to be a producer (or processor) of information?

Information processing roles include anything that outputs language, whether that language is primarily intended for people or computers. (The purpose of information is ultimately to benefit people, since computers do not care one way or the other.) This includes all writers and artists, in all media, and all scientists and technologists who work with machinery, as opposed to making things with their hands. And really, even most craftspeople do a lot of implicit symbolic processing, and rely on information to improve their skills and the quality of their work. Most crafts have symbolic properties, and most crafts also go through a design phase, even if it has no visible products (like drawings or other instructions).

So, actually, it’s not so much a question of being in an information processing role, but more about how much information processing versus mechanical processing. It’s all processing. Life is process. Society is process. The universe is process.

My problem may be simpler, but more difficult. I mean, I think it is. I am deeply averse to creating anything too derivative. But for my lack of experience—as a designer—I am almost required to do something derivative. At least, that’s one philosophy of practise. You must start with simple and familiar designs. First you can make small changes. Then larger ones.

Unfortunately, I cannot seem to maintain my enthusiasm for building derivative products.

There is another problem, however. It is less about information processing than about automation. But there is also an aspect of doubt about the medium. It is not just computation but simulation and modelling, and their benefits to humanity. The primary purpose of automation, and the models which enable it, are the large scale processing of natural materials—that is, the destruction of natural systems—organisms—into raw materials meant for industrial production.

I know that humanity relies on industrial scale automation, destruction, and production (plus the associated generation of harmful wastes), in order for eight billion humans to survive (and a few of them to live like gods). I don’t have to like it.

It has been over forty years since I first learned computer programming. It has been almost thirty years since I have pursued it professionally (if you count a decade of unpaid and tangential work). In the late 1990s, most people didn’t realize, or see a risk, that "software was eating the world". The Internet was a niche thing. Computer games were a small hobby. Computers were meant to empower people.

Now, we worry that computers are enslaving people. Just like every other technological innovation. Because the machines are owned by a small number of people, and everyone else is beholden to them. Computers are the agents of our overlords. We were promised that computers would help us. But that was simply a lie. Computers are here to make us weak and dependent. Do I really want to be part of that?

I don’t have to be, of course. I don’t have to abuse users and players—if I ever have any. But nearly every model of software and game development innately uses or abuses someone.

How do you make a game about politics? How do you make a game that lets people explore and experiment with aspects of relationships and societies? Without being a simple multimedia wrapper around a static narrative, or at best a simple narrative tree with a few different endings?

Can computers simulate relationships? Can they simulate complexity? Beyond very simple kinds, like fractals? How do you model social relationships in a binary computer system?

Computers can model some aspects of relationships. They often simulate two: transactions and violence. Both kinds objectify. Both obliterate human complexity. That is bad.

There is a relatively new kind of software that pretends to simulate more complex aspects people, but it is a lie. What many loosely call “AI”—more correctly called “machine learning” with “large language models”—is not a model of human thinking. It is a process whose output is eerily similar to human behaviour, but is in fact a complete charade. I won’t stoop to using that deception in any software I produce.

There is really something problematic about using any kind of model to simulate human behaviour in a computer program. Because any such model is an over-simplification, and therefor a kind of lie. Sure, mostly there is no one literally being lied to. Few people are naive enough to mistake NPCs or even enemy bots for real people. (Though more people have been confused by LLM chatbots, which is worrying.) So it’s less about the lie, per se, than the echoes of a world where we regularly treat the lie as if it were true, and treat people like simple machines, for the sake of money, status, and power.

I don’t want to be part of the great dehumanization machine.