Things I’ve written
Sometimes I write things, very slowly. I think everyone could write more, even if like me, they don’t see themselves as a writer.
Keep Up
I will eventually spin up a mailing list here.
Latest piece: ./ROI: Balance is more than numbers
Play
I talk a lot about game design, occasionally about other things game-related.
In the modern era, gamers demand their Game Is Balanced. The biggest taboo a popular game can make is when one “tool” or combination turns out to be significantly more potent than others. This has obvious ramifications in competitive multiplayer games. But even for single player games, players get pretty invested in any statistically significant discrepancy in end-results from options that are presented as equals. “Busted”1 and “garbage” are equally unfun for players, even when there isn’t a human opponent inflicting this imbalance upon them.
Operation Dicestorm is a 1 versus 1 tactical strategy board game we’ve been working on for a while. The armies of completely asymmetric factions duke it out till only one has units standing. In the spirit of Blizzard RTS games like StarCraft and WarCraft, we prioritized making each unit type feel completely unique, yet comparably powerful in the grand scheme of things. While this makes for a lot of variety in the gameplay, it is extremely challenging to manage complexity, balance and a variety of other design considerations.
A note: If you happened to stumble upon this piece but aren’t particularly interested in game design, know that this framework is also useful beyond just game design, as I outline towards the end.
One of my big projects is our one-on-one versus board game, dubbed Operation Dicestorm. While it’s my first focused attempt designing a board game, a lot of lessons I learned analyzing video game design is directly applicable. This post is about the concept of “Fun to Face Too,” an important paradigm to observe specifically when designing multiplayer games (pretty much every board game, and most modern video games), to create the very best game mechanics.
Learning
How we learn being the foundation of how we do anything else, I circle back to this topic regularly. Surprisingly often I’m torn between placing a post here or above in Play, because I talk about games + education a lot.
There was this Naruto episode I watched, about 6 months before I started college, that got me thinking about what lessons are worth being taught in school.
For those who don’t want to watch it, plot summary:
Gaming has gotten a lot of attention recently as a medium for teaching real lessons and training. The topic has developed so much that I cannot address everything in a single post.
Tech/startups/product
Product ideas, thoughts about running a business, technical nitty-gritty.
It’s happened. I’m officially one of those “good ol’ days” people, at the ripe old age of 35.
Quicksand
I hate how we exist online: a stream of isolated thought-bytes (and thot-bytes) taken out of context and embedded in an algorithmically knitted tapestry from across our acquaintances, crushes, IRL celebrities, tapestry-celebrities and “I-don’t-remember-why-I-started-following-them"s.
So I decided to rewrite my formerly jekyll-powered personal site with hugo.
Why?
I’ll say upfront that I believe one should use
- static sites for 99% of use cases
- Jekyll, for 99% of static sites
I love how mature and true to its core Jekyll has remained. My switching has nothing really to do with Jekyll or its limitations.
ℹ️
2023/12: Sadly, this article is outdated. I attempted to get this working again but abandoned the project for getting too invasive with the desktop OS as described in the text. Keeping it up as a memoir of what once was
It’s a fairly common question near- and new-grads try to answer in the STEM field.
Should I work at the small startup/start my own company, or join a big corporation?
Places and culture
I didn’t think I’d write about this much. However, being a nomad became a significant part of my identity and cities became my closest friends so I talk about it now – a lot.
The following is a little loaded and very personal, so if you do read it I am grateful for your time and letting me dampen your mood a little bit.
This question is a popular modern gripe among Asian Americans. Really this bothers the descendant of an immigrant of pretty much any ethnicity, in almost any country.
I understand some of the motivations behind that question – a succinct question and answer to create a rough model of who I am based on their knowledge of the world. What language(s) does he know? What are his core moral values? What kind of culture is he familiar with? Is he religious, and what type? What food might he like? What did he probably study or work on? What are some of his favorite pastimes? And of course, what ethnicity is he? That last question could be anything from idle curiosity to subconscious racist inclinations, and this is the aspect that mostly bothers people.
Meta: writing, life, the world
My least incoherent thoughts about all other things.
Since 2012, building BitGym has been my full time job and I have spent a lot of time researching health and fitness products, services and, more generally, advice. What I’ve noticed is that a lot of what we’re told about tends to be unsubstantiated pseudo-science as often as not, with lots of contradictory advice and weak explanations.
This post is weird because it’s a retroactively written intro to my site after I’ve already drafted and completed a number of essays. But I feel better about writing this intro post this time than every other time I’ve intro’d my blog because I’ve finally developed into a somewhat consistent writer.