TIME Bids Fond Farewells to Gary Gygax, Randy Pausch
TIME Bids Fond Farewells to Gary Gygax, Randy Pausch
December 23, 2008
TIME is currently running a 2008 retrospective, including a section on notable passings which pays homage to a pair of influential gaming figures.
Everyone who follows gaming knows Gary Gygax, of course. Of the D&D creator, TIME writes:
A college dropout from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Gygax was one of the creators of a game that transformed popular culture... Dungeons & Dragons sold millions of copies in the 1970s and 1980s and laid the cultural groundwork for movies such as The Lord of the Rings, video games like World of Warcraft and a generation of fantasy writers and fans...
Also mentioned is Carnegie Mellon prof Randy Pausch, who founded CMU's Entertainment Technology Center and is best known for his inspirational last lecture, which was later expanded into book length. From TIME:
He could have canceled the lecture. He was, after all, dying of pancreatic cancer. Instead, Pausch, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon, delivered a wise, funny talk on the great themes: Captain Kirk, football and how to live your life. Pausch also showed us how to die: calmly, gracefully and gratefully.
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Posted 11/08/09 at 09:02am
DarkSaber: http://tinyurl.com/yez7jyo
DarkSaber: http://tinyurl.com/yez7jyo
Posted 11/08/09 at 09:01am
DarkSaber: Oh for gods sake, the Gearbox pres is gobbing off about Valve again
DarkSaber: Oh for gods sake, the Gearbox pres is gobbing off about Valve again
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:53am
JDKJ: But cheer up, Austin. If the unemployment rate continues to double-digit as predicted for the next few years, your half-dozen stands a better than likely chance of returning to power.
JDKJ: But cheer up, Austin. If the unemployment rate continues to double-digit as predicted for the next few years, your half-dozen stands a better than likely chance of returning to power.
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:46am
JDKJ: @DS: If he had added the line about "or hiring illegals aliens under the table to work as nannies," it would have been a completely perfect descripition. And, yes, it's about the same difference between a six and a half-dozen.
JDKJ: @DS: If he had added the line about "or hiring illegals aliens under the table to work as nannies," it would have been a completely perfect descripition. And, yes, it's about the same difference between a six and a half-dozen.
Posted 11/08/09 at 08:31am
DarkSaber: My god, that description makes them sound almost Republican. Still what did you expect, Obama is only marginally more left than republicans.
DarkSaber: My god, that description makes them sound almost Republican. Still what did you expect, Obama is only marginally more left than republicans.
Posted 11/08/09 at 01:07am
Austin_Lewis: Health insurance, brought to you by the same kind of bureacrats who couldn't, in timely fashion, investigate the comments of any of the men Obama appointed Czars. Or their past. Or their history of not paying taxes.
Austin_Lewis: Health insurance, brought to you by the same kind of bureacrats who couldn't, in timely fashion, investigate the comments of any of the men Obama appointed Czars. Or their past. Or their history of not paying taxes.
Posted 11/08/09 at 01:06am
Austin_Lewis: Yes, and what a piece of crap it was. Arresting and fining people just because they don't make a personal choice to buy healh insurance, creating over a hundred new bureacracies, and worse.
Austin_Lewis: Yes, and what a piece of crap it was. Arresting and fining people just because they don't make a personal choice to buy healh insurance, creating over a hundred new bureacracies, and worse.
Posted 11/08/09 at 12:24am
ZippyDSMlee: JDKJ:the only trouble is a bunch of witless hacks wrote it....its going to be a train wreck....
ZippyDSMlee: JDKJ:the only trouble is a bunch of witless hacks wrote it....its going to be a train wreck....
Posted 11/07/09 at 11:33pm
JDKJ: BREAKING: In a photo-finish at the wire, House passes health care reform bill. Relatedly, in a fit of pique, Austin Lewis kicks innocent dog.
JDKJ: BREAKING: In a photo-finish at the wire, House passes health care reform bill. Relatedly, in a fit of pique, Austin Lewis kicks innocent dog.
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:27pm
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:26pm
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:23pm
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:18pm
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
Posted 11/07/09 at 03:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:58am
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:56am
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:51am
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:48am
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:11am
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:07am
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
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Game Politics and Game Politics logo are trademarks of the ECA.
Comments
Both great men we lost this year.
Breaks my heart to think there are people who will actually celebrate their deaths.
QFT +++
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"The most difficult pain a man can suffer is to have knowledge of much and power over little" - Herodotus
Great lost.
iPod Charger
Nintendo Wii Console
Oh, God. You again. *sigh*
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"Game on, brothers and sisters." -Leet Gamer Jargon
While I can see "D&D-is-the-devil" people celebrating Gygax's death, what kinda of d-wad would celebrate Randy Pausch's death? Was there some controversy I was unaware of?
I rather think the Lord of the RIngs novel laid the groundwork for the movie trilogy myself...
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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.
I'm guessing that their arguement is that D&D was what made the movies a viable prospect. D&D becomes popular/well known -> fantasy fanbase and cultural acknowledgement of it grows -> movies can be made of the LoR trilogy that are actually well funded, directed, and widely popular.
-Gray17
Technically, D&D was based off the LotR books. The halflings were origianlly hobbits, but there was a trademark dispute and they couldn't use the term for the game.
I am unsure of how much influence the movies gleened from the game. Most of the movies seemed to be based off the books. As for your claim that the movies success was somehow related to the popularity of the game, I don't think so. D&D does not have the popularity level high enough to account for that success. While D&D is no longer attaacked and is generally accepted, it is still a niche product.
I would attribute it more to the drought of quality fantasy entertainment. When something comes out that big, a lot of people will see it. The fact that the movies were good helped its success.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
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Zach, I don't think anyone's saying that D&D was directly inspiring the LotR movies. Just that it was D&D that really brought medieval fantasy forwards in pop culture, so that the genre became popular enough that a well-funded and well-done LotR movie series was a viable option. Was D&D alone responsible for that rise in popularity? Probably not, but it was one of the earliest popular medieval fantasy games and probably provided stimulation for the genre as a whole.
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I'm not under the affluence of incohol as some thinkle peep I am. I'm not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don't know who is me, and the drunker I stand here, the longer I get.
Thank you Alex, you got what I was getting at.
As Alex said, I was not trying to argue in any form that D&D inspired the LotR movies. Rather I was saying that their claim that D&D laid the groundwork for the movies seems to rest on the general cultural effect it had. While it was in is a niche market compartively speaking, it did help grow/encourage the general fanbase, who in turn made their own/competing gaming systems, novels, comic books, etc; with their own fanbases and such. For example, the Dragonlance series. It also took a lot of the early criticism/mocking of people unfamilar with the fantasy genre.
So by the time 2000 rolls around, medieval fantasy works are much more mainstream than they were in the 70s. Broader popularity, and those that the fantasy genre wasn't popular with were at least aware of it's existence. D&D is partly responsible for that.
-Gray17
While I originally never knew of Gary, I do know of him now and I gotta say he left before his time, IMO. Good man.
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"Game on, brothers and sisters." -Leet Gamer Jargon
At least Al Gore won't be telling Gary to stop rolling the dice or he's gonna take them away.
Seriously though, both of these men were good people, and its a shame to see them go.
We also lost Ronnie Drew this year.
I did know Gary Gygax, though I never worked with him or for him. I met him early in my game dev career (late 70s) and appeared on the guest list with him at a game fest in southern Germany in 1999. Definitely an interesting character.
Also passing away this year were two more-or-less high profile game development figures, whom I also knew, but who did not or will not get the kind of national attention that Gary got.
Bob Bledsaw, co-founder of Judges Guild (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judges_Guild), one of the companies that helped make role-playing games a commercial success in the 1970s (and whose better known game adventures are still in print 30 years later). While Bob never worked on computer games, he nevertheless influenced a generation of later game developers.
Erick Wujcik (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erick_Wujcik), designer of the Amber diceless roleplay system (based upon the licensed work of the late author Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber novel series), and designer of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles roleplay game rules. Erick later went on to have a career in computer games.
--Verbinator
I had no idea that Erik W died...
I loved his work with Palladium games.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
Wow I used to have some of those core books. Even incorporated parts into our D&D game. (Like the Wolfen empire, what a shock for the ranger who's enemy was Lycanthropes.)
Hunting the shadows of the troubled dreams.
I don't want to knock Gygax for doing some fantastic work, but LotR grew popular in the 60s and early 70s, before D&D was created in '74.
While the two cultures are probably intermixed, I doubt the game had much (if any) influence on the movies or their following.
He'll be missed. It's unfortunate his creation has become such a mess, though.
Gary is going to be rolling in his grave...perfect 20's
...its hard to take that offensive or not considering who it is. Anyways...it was a sad moment in life in this house, considering everyone here has played the game.
I think what is ment by the comment that D&D influenced LOTR movies, is that if it were not for D&D and its creators, The LOTR series of books might have faded just enough that Hollywood would never have considered making a movie out of them.. Gary Gygax helped bring Fantasy into the mainstream by helping to build a driving industry that precursored the fantasy movie and videogame generes.
I think Mr.Gygax and others like him are... Heros of the Imagination..
It would be great if GP/GC would start a "hall of heroes" for fallen people such as these.
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"The most difficult pain a man can suffer is to have knowledge of much and power over little" - Herodotus
Gygax is one of the main reason why I want to be a game designer and a vg music compoer. Randy himself was just a great men who inspired so many.
R.I.P to them both.
"We may be human, but we're still animals" -Steve Vai (World's greatest guitarist!)