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Pokemon GO is bad. Pokemon is ripe for the most amazing "social" gaming experience of all time. Just let them battle each other and don't screw with the existing formula that WORKS. Ahhhhh... Really though, knowledge of the underlying systems (mostly due to modding games and learning how to use GIS software) means that I can conceive of both the mechanics they utilize as well as how they got there from a design perspective. They want eyes on their app and they're going to do it with an interminable power creep as the generations of pokemon are added over time, mark my words. Instead of focusing on pokemon the game to use as a template, they're using it as a brand to market their existing formula. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who likes to learn about app development, but it is still mightily disappointing to anyone excited for a real life pokemon game. Judging by the player base of this broken game, that audience seems to be quite massive. As ...

I am a humanist. So much so that I can barely understand why one would not want to be a humanist. As someone focused on humans and their wellbeing/function I really love ecology and how its principles translate to economics and back again. The two theoretical frameworks reinforce one another beautifully. Okay, one person helping another is seen as a good thing. It follows that if everyone helps everyone else, everyone has a good thing done for them. That's (mostly) the extent of my general philosophy on life. My goals and hopes revolve around the idea that everyone should be trying to better what they can as much as they can. Everything should be getting better all the time, and if it is not we must try to make it so. Complacency is death. In the natural world, species always face the dilemma of a changing environment to some significant degree. I don't mean something like seasonally, but rather evolutionarily. The only species that don't face this dilemma are the ext...