Quotes by Game Designers - Page 3

No one is more vulnerable to fear than a man who keeps another in bondage. He will do anything to prevent justice from rearing its head — for he knows well what he deserves at the hands of those he subjugates.
Jane Jensen
Even the most outspoken of the critics must admit that long before we had print and film media to "spread the word," mankind was engaged in all forms of cruel and despicable behavior. To attribute war, killing, and violence to film, TV, and role-play games is to fly in the face of thousands of years of recorded history.
Gary Gygax
I must admit that I feel that the best form of government is benevolent despotism.
Jeff Grubb
Doubt not your purpose nor your strength.
Joe Dever
Frankly, I believe that identity is what's inside us.
Theo Coster
That a universe exists within every human being. That to the blood cells and organs in your body, you are god. That this universe is only one individual among infinite others.
Peter Tieryas
Cope laughed. “I wouldn’t worry yourself, my friend. Eobasileus has been extinct for thirty-seven million years.”At this, the preacher could no longer contain himself. “Nonsense! Utter nonsense!”“Nonsense?” asked Cope.“The archbishop James Ussher, using the Holy Bible itself, worked back generation by generation, mathematically, and calculated that the Earth was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC at precisely eight a.m.”“Did he, now? Eight a.m., precisely?”“Precisely,” the preacher insisted.Copy and Sternberg exchanged amused looks.“Well,” Cope replied, “since the rotation of the Earth assures us that it’s always eight a.m. somewhere in the world, I suppose I should applaud him for guessing the correct time, at least.” The cowboy couldn’t help but interject.“Pardon me, Preacher, but if I recall correctly, didn’t the Bible say something about the Lord resting on the seventh day?”The preacher looked confused. “What?”“I’m certain of it.” The cowboy quickly snatched the Bible from the preacher’s hands and opened it to the first page of Genesis. “Sure. Here it is. He got started on a Monday, making light and darkness. By the time he got around to creating the Earth it was well into the third day. I make that to be Wednesday, not Sunday.”Nonplussed and blushing, the preacher snatched his Bible back. The cowboy shrugged. “Looks to me like your archbishop pulled a fast one, Preacher. Or maybe he just wasn’t all that good at calculating.
Wynne McLaughlin
World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. Randy has worked out a set of mental blueprints for a special cereal-eating spoon that will have a tube running down the handle and a little pump for the milk, so that you can spoon dry cereal up out of a bowl, hit a button with your thumb, and squirt milk into the bowl of the spoon even as you are introducing it into your mouth. The next best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap’n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap’n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds.
Neal Stephenson
Life is all about lies. It's about what you can stomach.
Peter Tieryas
Sometimes a lie builds until the truth does more harm than good
Luke Scull
Ignorance is worse than authorization.
Peter Tieryas
Feelings are memories. Memories are also feelings.
Margaret Stohl
What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded, and finally they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it. . . . The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier.
Neal Stephenson
The world seemed to go red. He wanted to scream his outrage, to charge at Skarn and tear the murdering bastard's face off with his bare teeth. But he knew that meant certain death. No, he had to be ice. Not fire, but ice.
Luke Scull
One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered... I'm going to put a mask on and scrawl my name across the face of the world, build cities of gold, come back and stomp this place flat, until even the bricks are just dust. So you can just shut up. All of you. I'm going to move the world.
Austin Grossman
Unix is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic: a living body of narrative that many people know by heart, and tell over and over again—making their own personal embellishments whenever it strikes their fancy. The bad embellishments are shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, incorporated into the story. […] Thus Unix has slowly accreted around a simple kernel and acquired a kind of complexity and asymmetry about it that is organic, like the roots of a tree, or the branchings of a coronary artery. Understanding it is more like anatomy than physics.
Neal Stephenson
Jack had wondered how geometers could be so inventive as to produce so many types and families of curves. Later he had come to perceive that of curves there was no end, and the true miracle was that poets, or writers, or whoever it was that was in charge of devising new words, could keep pace with those hectic geometers, and slap names on all the whorls and snarls in the pages of the Doctor's geometry-books.
Neal Stephenson
... as Eskimo language is to snow, so archaic English is to 'metal objects designed to cause harm'.
Austin Grossman
Men believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time. Bobby Shaftoe learned most of his practical knowledge – how to fix a car, butcher a deer, throw a spiral, talk to a lady, kill a Nip – from the latter type of man. For them, trying to do anything by talking is like trying to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. Sometimes you can see the desperation spread over such a man’s face as he listens to himself speak.
Neal Stephenson
It's--my God--like you stretched a tarp across a stadium to turn it into a giant tom-tom and crashed a 747 into it.
Neal Stephenson
No, they can't. They can't be Luke Skywalker.
Aaron Allston
[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?"I notice that I don't hear from them much lately.
Tracy Hickman
I just saved your fucking life, Mom...It's like, if you--people of a certain age--would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn't have to take these drastic measures.
Neal Stephenson
Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.
Neal Stephenson
I just saved your fucking life, Mom. . . . You could at least offer me an Oreo.
Neal Stephenson
The world's full of wonder, he said. Or at least horror that looks wondrous from afar.
Luke Scull
Losers are not necessary in this world.
Ryukishi07
Rena: Come on. Who was that man?Keiichi: I-I don't know him!Rena: Liar. What were you talking about?Keiichi: S-S-Something that doesn't have anything to do with you!Rena: Oh...Ah-ha-ha. Oh. So it has nothing to do with us...Keiichi: Th-That's right...Rena: You're lying!!
Ryukishi07
Wha...what are you smiling for...? If I'd swallowed that needle, I'd have died! It's not like putting tabasco in ohagi!!!
Ryukishi07
Lo!" cried the demon. "I am here! What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose? Smite me no more with that dread rod!" He looked at Cabal. "Where's your dread rod?""I left it at home," replied Cabal. "Didn't think I really needed it.""You can't summon me without a dread rod!" said Lucifuge, appalled."You're here, aren't you?""Well, yes, but under false pretences. You haven't got a goatskin or two vervain crowns or two candles of virgin wax made by a virgin girl and duly blessed. Have you got the stone called Ematille?""I don't even know what Ematille is."Neither did the demon. He dropped the subject and moved on. "Four nails from the coffin of a dead child?""Don't be fatuous.""Half a bottle of brandy?""I don't drink brandy.""It's not for you.""I have a hip flask," said Cabal, and threw it to him. The demon caught it and took a dram."Cheers," said Lucifuge, and threw it back. They regarded each other for a long moment. "This really is a shambles," the demon added finally. "What did you summon me for, anyway?
Jonathan L. Howard
Miko: You would stand between me and this evil murderer?Hinjo: I'll stand between any two murderers I wish, thanks.
Rich Burlew
Your intentions will be good. Without consideration and forethought, however, your actions could still be evil. That is the problem, of course, evil is always easy and resisting it is never so. Evil is relentless; and anyone, if they tire, if they are not vigilant, can fall prey to it.
Michael A. Stackpole
From this moment forth, my sword shall be with you and your fate shall be with me.
Kinoko Nasu
This is one of the most important moments in your life. Nothing will ever be the same. We might get rich. We might get killed. We might just have an adventure or lean something. But we have been changed. We are standing close the Heraclitean fire, feeling its heat on our faces.
Neal Stephenson
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished, sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
Neal Stephenson
See, that's the problem with putting too much stock in the old days. You remember all the GOOD stuff, but you forget about the time you got spanked by your best friend's mom.
Jeff Kinney
He had spoken with such absolute confidence that I knew he had to be blowing this out of his rectal orifice.
Neal Stephenson
I'm basically one of the best people I know.
Jeff Kinney
I won but I wasn’t like Pat. Because—and why this should be I’ll never know—I never did a thing that wasn’t somehow touched with selfish, furtive hunger, with a private, annihilating need for recognition. Because I’m like a child in a fairy tale cursed from birth, and there has never been anything I can put my hand to without tainting it, no triumph so great or solemn that it doesn’t turn spoiled and ridiculous. Because, sooner or later, the darkness always gets in.
Austin Grossman
It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. What matters is you can look in the mirror, and love who you see.
B. Dave Walters
You have 100% control over yourself, and your life. It is up to you to stop giving your power away, and to decide what you want to be, do, or have...and go after it.
B. Dave Walters
A man is only as common as his dreams.
Harvey Smith
I've chosen a life that's so different from everybody else's that it cuts me off from them. Practically everybody I know treats me like a guest celebrity. Of course it's my own fault. I feel so damn alone sometimes, I feel like I could just float away into the stratosphere and everybody would stand there looking up at me and not one would haul me back down to earth. No ropes.
Jordan Mechner
I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she said, by way of explanation.
Alexander Freed
Seven billion who need to be kept happy, and docile, until the end. How do you do that? What's the best way to calm down a scared kid, get them to go back to sleep? Tell them a story. Some shit about Jesus or whatever.
Neal Stephenson
So yes, black mages often can be evil. But black as a color is not inherently evil. Being influenced by black’s philosophies does not necessarily mean that one will commit an evil act. That being the case, we cannot say that black represents evil. More closely aligned with evil than the other colors? Fine. More ripe with potential for evil? Sure. Evil? No. And that's a very important distinction
Mark Rosewater
Two years of oblivion have reduced me, if not to emptiness, than to something that sits closely beside it. It laid waste all that I was inside, and severed what connection existed between my memory and personality through two years of “living” like a shell, on the boundary of emptiness. And though there was precious little drama here compared to actual societal rejection, it drives me to worry all the same. All my memories are just reflections on the water, and I don’t know whether I’m the reflection or the real thing.
Kinoko Nasu
Note to the wise: whenever someone insists that he wants to buy something from you, but tells you there’s no real value in it yet, two things are happening: he’s lying, and you’re being taken.
Mike Stackpole
As we reached the wooded hill that led to the pipe, Cheater said, "Uh-oh.""What's wrong?" I asked."Is anyone here thinking about kicking the crap out of me?" he asked."Not me," I said."Me either," Lucky said."Maybe tomorrow," Flinch told him. "But not at the moment." hidden talents
David Lubar
Some days I spent up to three hours in the arcade after school, dimly aware that we were the first people, ever, to be doing these things. We were feeling something they never had - a physical link into the world of the fictional - through the skeletal muscles of the arm to the joystick to the tiny person on the screen, a person in an imagined world. It was crude but real. We'd fashioned an outpost in the hostile, inaccessible world of the imagination, like dangling a bathysphere into the crushing dark of the deep ocean, a realm hitherto inaccessible to humankind. This is what games had become. Computers had their origin in military cryptography - in a sense, every computer game represents the commandeering of a military code-breaking apparatus for purposes of human expression. We'd done that, taken that idea and turned it into a thing its creators never imagined, our own incandescent mythology.
Austin Grossman
But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator’s report card would say: "Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.
Neal Stephenson
I guess this was what it felt like to love someone and feel like you had lost them. Even when you were still holding them in your arms.
Margaret Stohl
Turn your cheek' only works with physical slaps, only works pre-Second coming. Against guns, bombs, and the most inhumane practices ever conceived, we must protect ourselves. We must become the agents of God's vengeance.
Peter Tieryas
I don’t need luck,” Chirrut said. “I have you.
Alexander Freed
selflessness is the only antidote to evil. It provides the light that destroys the dark.
Michael A. Stackpole
It's not easy to be Light when you've been Dark. It's almost too much to ask anyone.-Macon Ravenwood
Margaret Stohl
That’s what games are, in the end. Teachers. Fun is just another word for learning.
Raph Koster
The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.
Jane McGonigal
If you're going to be a narcissistic schmuck, kid, don't bother studying Faulkner. Go straight to Brett Easton Ellis. He's the role model you need.
Arinn Dembo
The woman was simply leaving us alone with our future, the future she wouldn't be a part of. She didn't know how to do it or what it was, but she was trying to give it to us.
Austin Grossman