Hey all. I think most of you guys on this community already know who I am, but I thought I'd give you a brief resume, because you might not know EVERYTHING that I am or have done.
1981: I designed the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game. It's still around. It was the first horror game ever made, and introduced H. P. Lovecraft to the world (he was obscure before then). I then went to work for Chaosium Inc. where I designed lots of scenarios & expansions, as well as creating the Ghostbusters roleplaying game (for which I won a reward). In 1987, I helped develop the Arkham Horror board game (designed by Richard Launius). Later Launius took it to Fantasy Flight, where they re-developed it and released it as one of the biggest & best horror board games of all time. Well done, Richard.
1988: I left Chaosium and went to work for MicroProse Software, where among other things I designed a game called Hyperspeed, and helped out (a bit) on the first Civilization.
1993: I went to id Software, where I did the majority of the levels on Doom and Doom 2, and one of the chapters of Quake. I'm pretty proud of this, and y'all will be hearing more stories from this time if you stick with us.
1997: I moved to Ensemble Studios, where I participated in the entire Age of Empires series, including Halo Wars. Good times.
2009: When Don Mattrick murdered Ensemble Studios, I became a professor at SMU in Dallas, teaching video game design. Yes you could have taken courses in level-making from Professor Petersen. At least for two years.
2015: I came back to board gaming and published Cthulhu Wars - still a gold standard in awesome asymmetrical strategy games. I've done more since then - Evil High Priest, Planet Apocalypse, and Hyperspace.
2026: $Doom appeared and after some initial trials, I am now able to make it work for you, me, and everyone.
I hope it doesn't seem like I'm boasting. I've had a long successful career but in my heart I am still just a gamer, like you guys. We all like the same things, we play the same games. The only difference between us is that I am lucky enough to have a job MAKING games for us all to play. But you guys are my peers, not my "customers". Anyone who's met me at a convention or elsewhere can testify. I'm one of you!
Jeremy Clarkson opened a pub in August 2024 with one rule: every single ingredient British. Here is what that rule immediately deleted from a perfectly ordinary pub.
- No coffee.
- No Coca-Cola.
- No gin and tonic. Quinine will not grow here.
- No lemons. No limes.
- No ketchup, for two years.
- No avocado. No pineapple.
His own line was that instead of a slice of lemon you would be offered a slice of turnip.
That list is not a gimmick. It is an audit of how much of a normal British menu now arrives by ship, and the answer turns out to be most of the small things nobody thinks about.
Then the figure underneath it all. A sausage made from his own pigs costs 74p. The same sausage made from imported pig meat costs 18p. He is absorbing that gap on every plate that leaves the kitchen, which is precisely the gap every British pig farmer is asked to compete across, without a television programme paying the difference.
And the ketchup has the best ending in the whole story. So many people asked for it that a sign went up telling them to stop. Then a producer in Chatham built one out of Isle of Wight passata, Hampshire cider vinegar and Essex salt, and it went on the menu.
The demand was always sat there. Nobody had bothered building the supply.