Once upon a time, I was a tinfoil-hat doomer kid. The defining geopolitical events of my youth were Chernobyl, Tiananmen Square, radiation/ozone/global warming hysteria, Desert Storm, the fall of the Soviet Union, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, and the LA Riots. Many Americans saw our government (and the UN) as an all-powerful totalitarian regime like Stalin's USSR and today's CCP. Spooky rumors and conspiracy theories ran rampant in the pre-internet information fog; they even went mainstream in Megadeth and RATM videos, The X-files, Fight Club, X-Com, Deus Ex... the shit that makes us gen-Xers all nostalgic now.

I graduated from that blackpilled paranoid nihilism to a whitepilled positive fatalism and ultimately, in the years after 9/11, to redpilled realism. The real world is full of naive NPCs following orders from stupid assholes (and a few charming psychopaths who rose to the upper echelons of society). Most of the news is real, and anyone with half a brain can see right through fake parts. Most alt/fringe sources are worse, thanks to psyops and and cults and con artists poisoning the well. I've trained myself to cast a wide net across relatively reliable sources, avoid biased algorithm-driven news aggregators, verify anything that affects me or interests me (most of which turns out to be obvious clickbait), and ignore everything else.

If I were paranoid about pandemics, the coronavirus would have crossed my radar no later than January 1 when authorities shut down the Huanan Seafood Market; it was reported internationally as a possible SARS outbreak. But thanks to Chinese government coverups, there were only a few mildly alarming news articles for the next 3 weeks. They said we'd learned from SARS and everything was under control.

On January 21 more alarming stories hit the news, and many people thought it was just a run-of-the-mill scare story, maybe a false flag. That was the first I heard of it. I checked the numbers... with 9 deaths out of 440 hospital patients, it wasn't scary enough to be a false flag. Not yet. Maybe a false false flag, knowing China. Whatever.

Two days later Wuhan was quarantined and the internet went nuts. I started paying attention.

A week later, 259 of the 440 patients were dead, implying an Ebola-tier 60% death rate, but with another 12,000 infected it was anyone's guess. Peer-reviewed studies confirmed SARS 2.0, now with airborne contagion and 15% enhanced death rate. Yet the official death rate was "only 2%" (actually scary) where it remained almost to this day despite evidence that it's 20%+ (plague-tier) when hospitals fill up. And the info-war swung into full gear. The first hero was Zerohedge's Twitter account, permabanned for covering the bioweapon theories at the behest of an alleged journalist with an alleged fondness for young boys serving a mainstream media juggernaut owned by one of the world's 10 richest men, who tried to buy his way into the US presidential election while this was going on, allegedly. What a timeline!

This reality is becoming too much like the situation in our game -- heavy-handed policing, AI censorship, misinformation everywhere. The only thing missing is an alien conspiracy. (Or is it...? lol)

Unfortunately my creativity suffered when I realized the odds of releasing my pre-apocalyptic RPG this year are worse than my odds of dying of coronavirus or surviving in a post-apocalyptic RPG reality. Odds are greater still that civilization marches on like nothing happened -- after a year or two of massive disruption -- but this is still epic.

So what do we do?

If I die, nothing -- easy decision! If I live, and the supply chain disruption creates a huge demand for factory and repair work, I kinda have to. I can continue gamedev as a nice relaxing side project, as long as there are still PCs and gamers. I'm not giving up -- I love this shit.

Releasing a combat demo remains our immediate priority for now. We need more people to test our engine, gameplay, and GUI. We'll start with gamedev friends who'll forgive a few ugly glitches, then release a public demo as soon as we choose a name for it. Since it'll just be combat, I might attempt a quick port to Godot for comparison.

I'm determined to release something in 2020, at least a tactics game, hopefully the full-scale RPG as planned. We can do it if we leave some warts and bang it out in a hurry like we have a publisher breathing down our necks. It's just a rough debut release. It won't be a masterpiece and it probably won't sell very well in this hypersaturated small-indie market. A small cult following would be great.

Barring some unforseen success, we'll begin the followup/sequel as a part-time labor of love while I'm busy with other work (unless I join another RPG project). We'll try to grow a fanbase and bring in a few collaborators. If at some point we have enough resources and the business climate is right, we can get more ambitious with artwork, voiceovers, etc and make a name for ourselves.

Speaking of names, I'm thinking about dropping "Doom Cult". RPG gamers will get the joke, but with a doomsday cult spreading the plague in real life, I just don't know. It's not really unique enough either.

Anyway, I spent more time on coronavirus than gamedev last month. I just wanted to know if it's a serious threat, what we can do about it, and when. It's been interesting but I think we finally have the answers. It's too late. It's here. It's happening.

So, back to gamedev.