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Photo: Library of Congress
I have a slip of paper that I found among my grandparents' things. As I read about the travails of the economy and the latest waves of game industry layoffs, I think about what the paper says.
103 years ago, my grandfather got up early one spring morning, stretched, and looked out the window of their apartment in San Francisco. He was just two blocks away from where we now celebrate GDC at Moscone Center.
As he looked outside, the brick wall of the building across the street collapsed onto the pavement. Their apartment started to shake violently.
When the shaking stopped my grandparents breathed a deep sigh of relief, because they were all right and their building was intact. But soon columns of smoke were seen across the city, as ruptured gas lines caught fire. Most of San Francisco had been built hurriedly of wood fifty years before, during and after the Gold Rush. The blazes soon raged in an uncontrollable firestorm that devoured block after block.
My grandmother was four months pregnant. As the fires came closer they packed what they could carry and fled to Golden Gate Park. Most of the city burned to the ground in The Great Fire of 1906.
The army brought in tents for them to live in. My father was born five months later, no worse for all they'd gone through. Like hundreds of thousands of other people they eventually rebuilt their lives, and in the process rebuilt San Francisco.
That piece of paper. I found it in an old wallet of my grandfather's that I came across while helping my parents clear some storage boxes twenty years ago. It was a tiny yellowed newspaper clipping from late 1906, the year of the Fire. It read simply:
"Although our city lies in ruins, no one should doubt that we will rebuild San Francisco into something even greater than what was here before."
Of course, we now know that this newspaper editor spoke the truth. San Francisco did rebuild an even better city, and only nine years after the Fire held a World's Fair to prove that the comeback was complete.
Why do I think about this now? Because the economic firestorm that has damaged our country so badly -- and chain-reacted into so many game industry layoffs -- is something from which we will recover with a better economic system.
In 1906 hard-working people in San Francisco made that editor's optimistic predictions come true. In 2009, people who are committed and passionate about games and game development will make my optimistic predictions come true, too. If you're reading this article, I bet you're one of them.
I just wanted to say that this is a very, very good post. I came here looking for your contact details and - after reading several blog posts - realised that most of what you had to say was worth reading.
This post however stands out because we are in an age where every achievement and victory is cast down and every failure and problem is elevated. Pessimism and cynicism are two things that I find in abundance right now. It truly is a breath of fresh air to see one looking at things with a reasonable eye.
I commend you sir :-)
Posted by: A Reader | July 30, 2009 at 07:38 AM