After more than 4 years of fighting alongside the leading Internet freedom advocates on the planet, I’m leaving to work with a team that’s creating unprecedented, everybody-wins scenarios in the world of gaming.
It’s very much a case of leaving one dream job to start another dream job, and as such my emotional state in the last few weeks has been quite…jumbled. I’ve got my feet arched-to-aching in the starting blocks, ready to start collaborating on some mind-blowing game bundles. And yet, I’m decidedly heartbroken, ’cause the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a pillar of justice and frankly, a home away from home. So, I’ve decided to try and work out my feelings by sharing some thoughts on how bogglingly awesome these organizations are — EFF from my direct experience, and Humble Bundle from a more peripheral (but soon to be integral, I hope) perspective.
Why EFF is a pillar of justice
Principles are the bottom line. EFFers apply every ounce of brilliance and passion towards giving users the most freedom — full stop. For EFF, being on the cutting edge of technology is not a matter of ego, hobnobing, techno-dazzlement, or paranoia. It’s about advocating for the values best known to keep a society free and democratic, and making sure that those values are given their due and then some on the frontier of technology.
EFF makes sure that our liberties endure, even as the global shift to ones-and-zeros makes everything more awesome, more weird, more scary, and often, for those accustomed to power, more uncomfortable.
A pioneering, holistic approach. EFF has spent years building a dream team: top-notch attorneys, internationally recognized policy experts, impassioned activists, imaginative technologists, and future-focused fund raisers. EFF is a fantastic example of a 21st century public interest organization, where each individuals’ ideas and expertise are flexibly accessible to others in the organization, and where the work seen by the outside world represents the highest standard of technical precision, legal accuracy, and emotional impact.
The holistic approach means that when EFF explains an issue, advocates for a course of action, or condemns a notion, it’s been done with world-class attention and expertise from across domains.
An engaged membership. The supporters of EFF — from the casual social media sharer to our sustaining and major donors — are really concerned about the future and care deeply about outcomes. They contribute with their hearts and minds as much as they support EFF with their pocketbooks. As an activist, you couldn’t ask for much more than to work alongside a focused community willing and able to ask questions and challenge various authorities in the fight to make the digital world more free.
How Humble Bundle is changing the game
Experimenting well. We’ve said for awhile that experimentation is going to be one x-factor for creatives seeking financial success on the Internet. And we’ve known in somewhat abstract terms what the Internet offers — absurdly low overhead for communication, and the distributed freedom to exchange ideas and create culture. But experimentation is largely what we’ve needed to be able to take the next step. We’ve needed to put boats in the stream and exchange notes on which ones float and why.
Humble Bundle is experimenting intelligently and making excellent use of their findings to update the experience of selling and buying games.
Working for the win-win-win. Humble Bundle refuses to accept that someone in the “game developer-to-gamer” relationship should habitually receive the short end of the stick. Developers should be rewarded for the sacrifices and toil that go into making a great game, and customers should be able to engage, participate, and play the games honestly, without being treated like an abstract liability or a balance sheet line-item. The story doesn’t even end there; Humble Bundle recognizes that charities involved in world-changing work — particularly work that expands the reach and impact of gaming — are part of the community and deserve a measure of recognition as well.
Working diligently towards a “win-win-win” situation is stubborn, simple, and ground-breaking, and goddamn do I want a lot more of it in the world.
Games, gamers, gaming. I have always loved games, and I’m starting to feel that as a society, we’re warming up to their potential. Games are a favored, multidimensional way to be social, solve problems, and compete. I’m invested in seeing a future in which independent game developers are able to have authentic, innovative voices; I want to see more kinds of games being made; I want to see everyone playing more games. Humble Bundle seems like the right place to make all that happen.
TL;DR
I’m leaving a dream job with EFF to start a dream job with Humble Bundle, and I’m excited for what the future holds. EFF is awesome! Support their peerless effort to advocate for our digital civil liberties! Humble Bundles are stupendous! Support game developers and non-profits by buying computer games! (And for more regular musings and updates, follow me on Twitter, because writing long personal posts turns out to be a very occasional activity!)
