Introduction & Games

[Kiba]

Hey everyone! I haunt the #lesswrong channel on freenode because I am
attracted to improving human rationality even if I am not that serious
at it.

I am working on a game called "The City" at http://kibabase.com/projects/the-city
which I hope will be a fantastic simulator of societies in a cyperunk
dystopia world.

[Emile]

Hi folks!

I work on games as my day job, and sometimes on side projects when I
have the time and energy (lately, my side projects have been kinda non-
gamey, though I have some games on the back burner; nothing really
finished. Having a one-year-old kid doesn't leave that much free
time).

I'm pretty interested in game design theory, and in using games to
*teach* useful or important stuff, though I haven't really put that
into practice much yet (my games still tend to be mostly about
gameplay for the sake of gameplay).

Emile

On Feb 16, 9:38 pm, Kiba <hackerk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey everyone! I haunt the #lesswrong channel on freenode because I am
> attracted to improving human rationality even if I am not that serious
> at it.
>

> I am working on a game called "The City" athttp://kibabase.com/projects/the-city

[thomblake]

I am merely an enthusiast - I've been making little games
recreationally for about 25 years, but don't have much time to spare.
Considering getting into web game programming when my graduate work is
done; hopefully by then the js libraries will have settled a bit -
I've been following craftyjs for a while.

Thom Blake

[curiousepic]

I've been a game QA tester for the past 5 years. But after a number of
acquisitions, I find myself a Project Manager at a studio
internationalizing/localizing Facebook games for a top entertainment
company.

I've always been an aspiring game designer with tons of half-begun
design docs. A number of years ago I messed around with the drag-and-
drop coding in Game Maker for a few months, but was ultimately
confounded by needing to learn actual code/scripting to do stuff I
wanted. Since then, I've only flirted with the idea of learning to
code, to make indie games, or perhaps develop for iOS.

But last night, I came across http://primerlabs.com/codehero which is
just entertaining enough for me to stop procrastinating and Learn To
Program. Or so I hope. Just beat fizzbuzz this morning :)

I have a goal to make rationality games, and/or to make a profitable
game in the service of rational philanthropy. But at this point I
should definitely just LTP and Make A Game.

[Alexei Andreev]

Hi everyone,

I've been making games since I was 13. I have a very solid background in game programming, and a pretty good foundation in game design. I have experience designing, writing, and publishing my own game. Currently I'm working for A Bit Lucky in San Mateo, where we are using Unity3D to create a cross-platform competitive multiplayer game.
Lately I've been re-evaluating my goals, and how I am achieving them. After talking with Anna Salamon and Luke Muehlhauser, I've came to the conclusion that the best good I can do for existential risk reduction is to donate money. In the past few days I've been thinking if that's best accomplished by doing a tech startup or game startup? I've come to the conclusion that, given my skill set, game startup is better. (If you are interested in concrete reasoning I followed, or if you care to weigh in, by all means contact me.)
This means one thing: I want to create a game startup that focuses on making money in the most efficient way possible. I don't care what games we make, I only care about the profits it will generate over the next 5-20 years. I'll be doing a lot of research into this issue in the next few weeks. (If it turns out that the best way to make money is to create slot machine games, then that's what I'll do. If it's freemium games, then that's what I'll do, etc...) (Again, if you have any insight into doing this kind of research or have any data, let me know.)
I'm wondering if any of you would be interested in joining my endeavor. I'm planning to donate at least 50% of all the profits I make to SIAI. That doesn't have to be your goal, though it would be nice, but you would have to be on board with the company's goal: to make money. This way we should have very few disputes, since we can always look which way the data points (and if it's ambiguous, design and run experiments to find out).
I'll be at GDC this upcoming week. If you are there, we should meet up, even if you are not interested in doing the startup. I'm still interested in rationality games, but, unfortunately, that's not the optimal way to reduce existential risk.

Alexei