We have a right to our opinions, but we act on what we believe; and so we have a responsibility to seek opinions that mirror reality and its potentials. That means the flip side of a right to our own opinion is a responsibility to challenge it and listen to those who would challenge it (especially constructively, but ideally anyone at all, adjusted to realistic constraints like time, energy, and mental health). I have a right to my opinion, and you have a right to tell me my opinion is bullshit. And I have a responsibility to consider that peaceably, without making you an enemy for challenging my thoughts.

Game development is an almost infinitely multidisciplinary pursuit. Or it can be. That's what attracts me to it.

What has no possible relevance to game development? I can't think of a single fact, idea, or feeling.

It's also a danger: the infinite regress of tangents.

Capitalism is widely seen as competitive, the competition strengthening the products. Capitalism forces you to live with other people's bad judgment. You go to a restaurant, and you're drowned in fat, sugar, salt, unnatural flavorings, etc. All the healthy snack bars disappear from stores. When hungry, I've often wanted to just go to the supermarket, get some produce, wash it, and eat it in a corner - but you're forced to pay $6 if you want a handful of washed strawberries, and in most supermarkets you don't even have a place to eat them. That's competitive and superior? That's a parade of bad judgment and lack of the obvious amenities.

There's this pervasive idea that capitalism is competitive and selects the best products, weeding out the inferior ones. I disagree. Often the superior products fail, and the ones that rip you off succeed. That isn't the rule, exactly. But just look at snack bars. Your local store selects the snack bars that are not good for you. As in restaurants, you're forced to live with other people's poor judgment. The bars that are good for you? They systematically disappear, often entirely discontinued. Why? Well, use your imagination.

Do you want to know when a topic has gotten unrealistically polarized? Curiously, you don't need to know the real truth to see. Ask yourself a simple question: how many obvious points are people not making, compared to how many times people make the same (often weak) points as each other? There's your answer. If a modestly intelligent person can quickly (say, in an hour) find 20 solid, obvious points that no one is making, that's probably because most everyone's blinded into a camp.

Why do people insist that the book is ALWAYS VASTLY SUPERIOR to the movie? Come on. Some movie renditions are good. Occasionally, they're just as good. It has also happened that the movie is better. Hasn't it? It's silly to insist on ALWAYS rules like this, trying to sound clever.

When you chant that the book is ALWAYS VASTLY SUPERIOR, you do several things on a socioaffective level that you may not be reflecting on closely. Most obviously, you're taking the opportunity to share that you have read the book. Because books still tend to carry more intellectual prestige than movies, this in itself could be simple self-aggrandizement. Still, room for sharing, of course, and what's the worst that could happen - someone thinks you're annoying, or feels down about not reading more themselves? (Real feelings! And ones I've experienced! But limited in scope.) Next, with ALWAYS you not-so-subtly claim that books are the VASTLY SUPERIOR medium. Clever you. Third, you position yourself as a connoiseur fit to judge such sweeping claims. Oh my knees tremble. Fourth, you put yourself with the "us" who say such things, so you give yourself a community. Fifth, you may be brushing aside the opinions and feelings of others about a fundamentally subjective question. Sixth, you self-assuredly show no sign of humility about the probably vast quantity of books and movie renditions out there that you have not yet encountered. Aren't you so charmingly confident.

Listen, it ends up being a very personal and even situational thing. For example, everyone thinks the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings adaptations are about as good as anything can get. I thought... they were ok. Really not bad. Quite decent. Even good. Sometimes excellent. But they mostly did not capture how I felt about the books as a kid. That's an issue. For me. I hate the way the orcs look, for example. They look stupid and Hollywoody. The battle scenes are pretty boring and take up too much time, relatively speaking. It doesn't quite feel like a travelogue in a mysterious land full of secrets in runes. Again, for me. And so on.

You might say that's because the book is ALWAYS VASTLY SUPERIOR, and that might be an adequate explanation for you. I'm not particularly criticizing the movies, either. I do feel they're better than I have much right to expect, and I admire and wonder at the work and care that went into them, and don't begrudge them any success or praise.

Meanwhile, take an "unfilmable" book like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and a film adaptation that plenty of people panned (Terry Gilliam's, so far the only one). You know what? I like the movie better than the book. On some level it's just a morally irreponsible story, but I think the visual feast and actorly fireworks are even more extraordinary than the delirious travelogue. I don't have to justify it. And I'll admit I saw the movie first, then read the book. But it could still have gone the other way: I could have thought, damn, this book is so much better. Instead, I thought it was a little flat after I'd already seen the whole idea play out multiple times. There were some extra reflections, and those were nice, but... who cares? Does introspection make the book ALWAYS VASTLY SUPERIOR? (I'm an almost unnaturally introspective person; maybe it's like pomegranates at a pomegranate orchard.) It hardly surprises me that some introspections didn't make it to the screen. The question then becomes: are these so great and worthwhile that they override my feeling that I miss the movie? To be sure, I'm not claiming the filmed version is better. I'm saying that, for an attempt to film an unfilmable book, it vastly exceeded my expectations, to the extent that I personally prefer the result, given the choice between the two. Here, the difference was not less than, but greater than usual: not just a book, but "unfilmable." This isn't supposed to happen!

Or what about an example like Jurassic Park? I saw the movie first, and given that Michael Crichton had directed films based on his stories before, and the novel was filmed, you have to suspect that he wrote the book with the silver screen somewhere in the back or front of his mind. This story's the opposite of unfilmable, then. It's a completely groundbreaking movie, climbed straight into history books and newsreels and documentaries. Everyone in my 5th grade class was stunned by it. In fact, it seemed everyone was stunned by it, period. Yet I remember my dad reading the novel maybe two years earlier, and he left it in a hotel room half-way through. He said, this author has brilliant ideas, but he doesn't quite know how to execute them. He didn't feel like finishing it. Fast-forward a few years, and I read the book myself, after seeing the movie repeatedly and loving it, thinking there was nothing else like it. Guess what? I enjoyed the book at least as much. I couldn't put it down at all. Does that make the book better? Not necessarily. I'd still say the film is the more extraordinary achievement. But, damn, that book was fun to read as well. I didn't really know what my dad had meant.

Let's try Solaris. I've seen the Tarkovsky, the Soderbergh, and the uncredited adaptation Event Horizon. I saw those three movies before I read the book. And I enjoyed all of them a lot, actually. And... drum roll. The book still blew me away. For me, the book here is king. But that doesn't diminish my appreciation especially of the Tarkovsky movie. It's just so radically unlike anything I've seen before or since. It is not at all what I'd imagine a film of Solaris to be. And it's wonderful. But, again, I enjoyed all three of those movies and want to see them all again. And I want to read the book again. Is the book better? Maybe. Here I'd say it probably is. As astonishing as Tarkovsky's Solaris is, I think a better movie could still be made, at least in theory. And I definitely enjoyed the book most.

I've been reading Dune. As a child, I saw the much-maligned Lynch version many, many times. A quarter of the way through the original, I'm really enjoying it. This is understandably one of the greatest classics of science fiction. But there are things in the movie that are wickedly well done. The book is not better in all respects. And I'm reading an audiobook. Despite all the boos from critics for the Lynch movie, this award-winning audio production very clearly takes after the movie, in terms of its sound design and some acting choices. Movie - flopped, disgraced. Audiobook - Audie award. Yet the audiobook emulates the movie without being (to my mind) nearly as good. (If I didn't read so much on long walks, I'd much prefer to read all of the story in ebook form. But I don't say that because the audiobook is always lesser than the pure text, or because this particular audiobook is poorly done. Some audiobooks add to the text in a way that I would claim is even objective - check out Joss Ackland's reading of The Screwtape Letters!) Sure, the novel contains many more little details and contexts, so far. And I appreciate all of them. But let's be blunt: quite a few of them are prosaic. At least in the first quarter of the story, which I can address, David Lynch and his team made what I would say are excellent calls about what to put in and what to leave out, given budget and time constraints, and what to embellish. Now, much as I love the (yes, definitely flawed) movie, I'm more than willing to say the novel is a greater achievement, and better (in the sense that stands the test of time), not just "better." But I must say, all the most exciting scenes, I can see and hear them in my head from the movie, and they came out really damn well. And, again, the extra details (UPDATE: this changes) are often pretty bland. Frank Herbert himself felt much more positive about the movie than the critics. He said he inevitably had some issues with it, but they'd done a great job. I'm going to be pretentious and simply side with the author, here. What he said, as I've just found out, is how I'm feeling. Doesn't that make me special and smart.

It's a personal thing, though. Wouldn't it be easy to say the book is ALWAYS VASTLY SUPERIOR and leave it at that, smugly. No, it often is - which makes sense, because when a movie is based on a book, that's usually because the book was extremely successful in its own chosen medium. Conversion to a new medium is inherently risky, and conversion to a shorter length is inherently lossy. Yet it can succeed.