Interview: Soren Johnson - Spore ’s Strategist

Designer and programmer Soren Johnson came to work at Maxis on Spore in late 2007, after more than 5 years working as a designer on the Civilization series at Firaxis. Most notably, he programmed the AI for Civilization III and then stepped up to lead designer and AI creator on the acclaimed Civilization IV - so adding him was a significant coup for Will Wright’s Emeryville-based team.

He brings to the now almost-finished Spore project, which will debut in full this September, an understanding of what gamers want and expect - both from the micro level of how the controls work, to the macro level of how AI should behave in a strategy game.

At a recent event related to the game, Gamasutra sat down to talk in-depth with Johnson, somewhat of a public face for the game in its late stages.

Independence Day, originally uploaded by NathanF.

Happy 4th!

Saw WALL-E last weekend. It is, of course, superb. When we were leaving the theater, two of my friends were talking about all the merchandise they were going to buy. I think they might have missed the point.

Summer = Grilling (2 of 2), originally uploaded by NathanF.

Got a new grill for the summer.

Some analysis of the pros and cons for Obama of choosing Jim Webb as his running mate:

Though the media is now full of chatter about whether Barack Obama will select Hillary Clinton as his running mate, the betting markets say that Jim Webb is about as likely a choice for Vice President. There has been heated discussion about whether Webb would be a wise or disastrous pick, with most pundits coming down firmly on one side or the other. Now, with Obama’s Vice Presidential Search Committee already at work, the time has come for a sober assessment of Webb, balancing his strengths against his weaknesses.

Webb’s assets as Obamas potential running mate are considerable:

1. In a party often perceived as soft on defense, Webb is a genuine war hero with considerable experience in managing the military. For his service as a Marine in Vietnam, he was awarded the Navy Cross the second highest decoration in the Navy and the Marine Corps for “extraordinary heroism” as well as a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. Quite simply, this is not a record that can be “swift-boated.” And Webb has extensive service on the civilian side of military affairs, having served as first Assistant Secretary of Defense for Rescue Affairs and then Secretary of the Navy under the Reagan administration. In 1988, Webb resigned as Secretary of the Navy on a matter of principle; at a time when the Pentagon was under pressure to reduce the budget, he refused to cut the size of the Navy.

2. Webb was an early and prescient opponent of the Iraq War. In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in September 2002, he argued that there was no “absolutely vital national interest” that would justify a “unilateral war” and asked bluntly whether such a war would “actually increase our ability to win the war against international terrorism.” Webb delivered the Democratic response to Bush’s State of the Union address in 2007, offering an eloquent and moving critique of Bush’s conduct of the war.

3. Webb has been a powerful critic of the growing class divide in America. In a stunning piece entitled “Class Struggle” published in of all places the Wall Street Journal, he denounced “our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century.” Noting that “the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made” when he graduated from college in the 1960s but now makes “400 times as much,” he denounced the “sense of entitlement … bordering on hubris” that “has set in among elites.” This theme of economic fairness also figured prominently in his response to Bush’s State of the Union address.

There are some pretty big down sides too. Click through to the article to read those, including his somewhat bizarre views about the Confederacy.

Really, America? Really?

Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science – and especially evolutionary biology – tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles.

US courts have repeatedly decreed that creationism and intelligent design are religion, not science, and have no place in school science classrooms. But no matter what courts and school boards decree, it is up to teachers to put the curriculum into practice.

“Ultimately, they are the ones who carry it out,” says Michael Berkman, a political scientist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

But what teachers actually teach about evolution and creationism in their classrooms is a bit of a grey area, so Berkman and his colleagues decided to conduct the first-ever national survey on the subject.

Remember, these are science teachers:

When Berkman’s team asked about the teachers’ personal beliefs, about the same number, 16% of the total, said they believed human beings had been created by God within the last 10,000 years.

This essay on procrastination perfectly describes everyone I know who gets things done.

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

Sam Harris writes an essay about the lack of spine shown by most people in Western Democracies when it comes time to stick up for free speech about religion.

Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world’s most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam. Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna (”strife” in Arabic) over the internet. The film has been deemed offensive because it juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur’an. Given that the perpetrators of such violence regularly cite these same passages as justification for their actions, merely depicting this connection in a film would seem uncontroversial. Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders’ right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of “religious sensitivity.”

Florida is awesome.

Land O Lakes, Florida — The stories in the news about inappropriate relationships between teachers and students have been overwhelming. There was even a substitute teacher in New Port Richey who got in trouble after investigators say she had a relationship with an underage student.

Well, another Pasco County substitute teachers job is on the line, but this time its because of a magic trick.

The charge from the school district — Wizardry.

Dave Barry: How your taxes turn into manure

Taxpayers: It’s almost April 15, and you know what that means. It means the Miami Dolphins already have been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

But it’s also time to file your federal tax return. Yes, this is a pesky chore, but remember that paying taxes is not a ”one-way street.” When you send your money to the government, the government, in return, provides you with vital services, such as not putting you in prison. The government also uses your money to pay for programs that benefit all Americans, such as the Catfish Genome Project.

I am not making this project up. According to a group called Citizens Against Government Waste, the United States Congress (motto: ”Hey, It’s Not OUR Money”) is giving $871,854 to researchers at Auburn University in Alabama so they can develop a better catfish. Now if you ask me, the way to improve on the current model of catfish is to make it look less like a hostile life form from the Planet Klorb, and more like Nemo. But the goal of the Catfish Genome Project, as I understand it, is to create a bigger, stronger catfish, a Shaquille O’Neal catfish that can stand up (so to speak) to global competition from foreign catfish.

Perhaps you wonder why this project is being financed by taxpayers, as opposed to the catfish industry. The answer is that the Catfish Genome Project is crucial to achieving a vital national goal that we all share: reelecting the Alabama congresspersons who stuck it in the federal budget.