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Interview With id Software's Robert A. Duffy
LEXI writes: "Accompanying our recent first set of Q3Radiant Tutorials I had the chance to interview one of the programmers behind the editor and the new engine, Mr. Robert A. Duffy of id software. 10 questions asked, 10 answers given. Topics range from personal details, education, job description, over to the new engine and the new tools, to violence in games and George W. Bush. The English original can be found here; the German translation resides at this very spot. The interview should be interesting for as well the quake player desperately awaiting the new engine, as the fresh or old-school mapper."
As far as I understand legislation in your country, it is part of the constitution that every american citizen is allowed to wear a gun. In my opinion that is one major reason for teenage high-school killings - while claiming games like "Doom" guilty is completely ridiculous. What is your opinion?
Are you kidding me? They get a chance to ask this guy 10 questions and this is what they come up with? Anyone do any research on this?
Slightly offtopic, but I was wondering how typical non-American's view Americans concerning the second amendment? Surely people don't think we're a bunch of cowboys shooting everything in sight ala Homer Simpson.
Robert Duffy: Well wearing a gun and owning a gun are two very different things and neither of them have to do with any game in my opinion. The only countries I have ever seen citizens wearing guns are ones where it was illegal. I don't think to date I have seen a citizen wearing a firearm in public here in the US.
Riiiight. That's not a gun in my pocket, I'm just happy to see you.
In case of the Slashdot effect, here's the interview:
Interviewer: Boxers or briefs?
Robert Duffy: I'll have to keep my take on this to myself.
Interviewer: We would like to thank Robert Duffy for taking the time to answer our questions and wish both him and id software all the best for the future.
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
I always wondered what happened with Sergeant Duffy after his roles in Infocom's Witness and Deadline...
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
id Employee's have always been good at keeping their mouths shut, and it often prevents them from looking like idiots.
Too many game companies shout out dates and features that they never meet or implement.
Gamers are cranky and stubborn, its best we don't hear anything until we can try it.
When my father joined the navy, he took the same oath that the President of the United States, the Vice President, Senators, Congressmen and judges take, namely to "preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foriegn and domestic". His oath was not to the President, Congress or any other person/entity. If the President and/or Congress started to act unconstitutionally, the military would join the rebellion, not fight against it. That is why an officer cannot be ordered to do something unconstitutional, because his oath take precedence over his orders.
I have met quite a few US citizens and they were every bit as nice as the Europeans I know. I'm sure the same could have been said about Germans 1933 to 1945, of course (forget Godwin's Law, I am trying to make a point here).
As individuals, US Americans are not all that different from Europeans. In fact, from my personal experience, I couldn't tell whether they are more likely to be gun nuts, and they certainly didn't seem to be xenophobe.
But put a bunch of people together to form a nation, add some context (history, environment), and small differences you didn't notice before add up to something significant. It's not individuals. Nations and societies are different.
First and foremost, your French friends were blasting the US, not you. The funny thing is that most US citizens don't seem to understand this because they have no idea what their country looks like from the outside. Not a pretty sight. Of course you can argue that the foreign media have it all wrong, but that won't change a bit the way the US is perceived.
The way you describe how you enlightened those poor French folks about the true meaning of Liberty doesn't help much in changing that picture, either. If you think you can change what boils down to cultural heritage of a society just with reasoning, you're kidding yourself.
Death penalty, environmentalism, gun control, social standards, etc. have very little to do with reason. For each you can argue either way in good faith and with sensible arguments. Which way you're leaning is very likely the result of the society that raised you, not the product of your own deep thinking. It is hardly by chance that your opinions seem so neatly aligned with US mainstream.
So when they can't hack it at 'Teen Beat' anymore, really awful interviewers work for German game websites?
The Internet is generally stupid
Frankly, I don't have strong feelings about the 2nd amendment one way or another. But ninety percent of the arguments made by the pro-gunners seem so strained, ridiculous and hysterical, that it actually weakens my respect for their stance. (Versus only about 20 percent of the anti-gun arguments.)
As far as I'm concerned, all countries are equally unfree as long as the core, essential freedom of being able to do with your own body want you want is universally infringed. I say this as a teetotalling drug-abstainer: that the criminalization of drugs, especially pretty harmless ones, is a far greater civil liberties issue than the 2nd amendment. But you don't see the would-be warriors of freedom doing much about it.
I submit to you Exhibit A: The Afghan mujahideen, who used rifles and a few light rockets to defeat an army of well-trained soldiers equipped with tanks, helicopters, and fighter-bombers.
I submit to you Exhibit B: Palestinians, who, with the exception of their abhorrent use of suicide bombers, have made a major pain of themselves using only light weapons and homemade explosives, managing to destroy two Merkava tanks -- arguably the best tanks in the world -- as well as successfully ambushing a number of Israeli patrols.
I submit to you Exhibit C: The Chechnyans, who used (and still use) small arms and homemade explosives almost exclusively to not only hold back the well-trained, well-equipped Russian army, but to also make Chechnya the most feared assignment for a soldier since Afghanistan.
A rifleman standing up to a tank is committing suicide. A coordinated team of private citizens, well motivated and using light weapons, can conduct a guerilla campaign to exploit the weaknesses inherent in a large, well-equipped force. Armor is meant for use against armor and fortified structures. Vehicles are inherently less mobile than people. Soldiers do not want to march into certain death. All are weaknesses that work well to a rebel's advantage.
Consider, also, that even with a peak army of two million personnel, the United States armed forces would have been facing a significant portion of 250 million guns, and you gotta get out of that tank sometime.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
However, routed in a few weeks by US-led forces.
Exhibit B: Palestinians, who, with the exception of their abhorrent use of suicide bombers, have made a major pain of themselves using only light weapons and homemade explosives, managing to destroy two Merkava tanks -- arguably the best tanks in the world -- as well as successfully ambushing a number of Israeli patrols.
The only area where they have made an impact is the suicide bombings, which is based on explosives and, more importantly, instant worldwide video coverage. Their guns aren't relavent; few would notice if all they did was pick off a few Israeli sodiers.
Exhibit C
I don't know enough about that one to comment.
Small arms are increasingly irrelevant in today's conflicts. The effective weapons used by today's rebels and/or terrorists are already illegal in the US.
The average gunowner could do just about diddly squat to overthrow a hypothetical oppressive regime in the 21st century. The regime would probably be elected into power, no offensive assault necessary. The people couldn't launch a counter-offensive because modern technology allows the tracking of all communications and movement; a bad regime would use these methods to their fullest extent.
All that would remain to cement the hold on power would be to use old-fashioned Stalinist methods to eliminate the most troublesome 5% of the population one household at a time, in the middle of the night. The secret police would have body armor and better weapons than most any of their victims.
If you really want the Constitution to protect you from evil governments, you should consider bringing it up to date with the latest advances in information technology. For example, an ammendment to prevent the government from accumulating a Gestapo-like dossier on each citizen by correlating all available tidbits of personal knowlege in a database.
Ultimately, however, the most effective way to avoid this scenario is for each citizen to work against putting these types of people in power in the first place. All that requires is voting intelligently.
OK i'm drunk..
No. 1... no
2. That interview is so fucking lame..
no 3. i gave credit to the editors for posting good articles.. till now...
time to puff a bong.. almost makes me sorry i gave 5 bux to slashdot after this article..
The Taleban were routed in a few weeks by US-led forces. That's not the same as the mujahadeen that fought off the Soviets in the 80s.
With little more than rifles and a few anti-aircraft missiles supplied by outsiders like the United States and China, the mujahadeen inflicted losses on the Red Army as had not been seen since WW2. The Russians had used similar tactics to resist the Germans, but then grew complacent in their technology as the decades passed.
If you really want to see how low they went, look on Kazaa or a similar program for the keywords "Russian soldier" and watch as one gets executed. (WARNING: You'd better have a STRONG stomach to watch that film, and not have eaten anything in the prior half-hour.) Such simple, brutal deaths led to the complete demoralization of the Red Army and the resultant withdrawal. When your army doesn't want to fight anymore, it's hard to press them into battle. Technology was not a factor in those battles. The mujahadeen made themselves difficult to hit, and inflicted losses despite the changing tactics of the Russians.
As for the Palestinians, what you don't often see are the deaths and injuries on the Israeli side of the gun battles. With a well-planned ambush, Palestinian gunmen recently led Israeli troops into an ambush in which 13 soldiers were killed and a further seven wounded. Israeli soldiers have died in other engagements. The only limiting factor is the terrain, which is hard to hide in by the Palestinians.
In the United States, as in most countries, we have varied terrain in which to fight. They're STILL looking for Eric Rudolph for the bombing of an abortion clinic (or maybe two) and the Atlanta Olympics. He disappeared into the Appalachian forest, and the biggest manhunt in US history ensued. His knowledge of the terrain kept him from being found. The same could -- and does -- happen with small groups of rebels. Consider that it took a couple of thousand troops to dislodge/kill 800 al Qaeda forces in Operation Anaconda, even with air superiority, and the US side still lost at least nine soldiers. I haven't seen how many the Afghan allied forces lost.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Who the hell are they? Unless we are conquered by external forces, (not likely) they are the ones we elect.
If we are sure to never elect the type of asshole who would take our right to vote away, we avoid this whole military confrontation crap in the first place. This kind of vigilance will be more effective at avoiding bad government than keeping your gun oiled.
Relative to the rest of the western world, Americans have an astronomically high number of gun deaths each year. For 1998, there were 30,708 firearm-related deaths, 11,798 of which were homicides. And this was the lowest point of a 35 year downward trend.
To contrast, the United Kingdom, which has a population of around 60 million, had 49 firearm homicides in 1998. If you scale this to the US population of about 270 million in 1998, that would still only be 217 deaths. Given this, the US has roughly 50 times the firearm-related homicides of the UK.
So it's no wonder why the rest of the world thinks Americans are gun-toting cowboys... relative to them it rings true.
Just to provide balance, the United States doesn't have the highest homicide rate in the world, just of industrialized western nations. For example, Canada's homicide rate per 100,000 is about 2 in 1997, whereas the US is 7.2, yet Mexico is 14.6.
South Americans, on the other hand, enjoy an even higher homicide rate, ranging as high as 70 per 100,000 for Columbia in 1997. But Americans don't compare themselves to "third world" nations, only to G7 nations, really.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
If you (clever people) are not even able to do that with ICANN, how do you hope to be able to do that as a country filled by less-educated people who vote according to what they see on TV or with arguments like "my family has been democrat since 822 BC" or whether some dude screwed his secretary?
I really wonder...
Note that I'd wish it to be the case, but I have no trust in US citizen (as a whole) acting in a responsible way, as they don't seem to have done so since the revolution...
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence