GAME PROGRAMMING, SIMPLIFIED
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I studied computers in school, and I use what I learned to make computer games. 
It is fun work, and I work in a cool office with cool people.

I don’t make the pretty pictures and movies you see on the computer. I make 
the parts that tell the computer what you can do, which pretty pictures and 
movies to show, what happened, and what you can do next. Most people like the 
pretty pictures more, so my part is not thought of as cool to work on. I like 
it, though. I always liked numbers, and my games use lots of numbers. Sometimes 
I get to use numbers in fun new ways, and I talk about it with all my work 
people. They never get as excited as I do.

My games are the kind that many hundreds of hundreds of people can play at 
the same time as each other. They can be any place in the world–sitting across 
the room or across the world.

This can be very hard. Computers are not very good at a lot of people doing 
different things to the same thing at the same time. I spend a lot of time 
making sure that the computer does not get confused about which person is 
doing what and who can do what. I come up with ways to keep the computer 
from getting confused but also keep the game fast and fun.

We are always trying new things to let more and more people play our game. 
Sometimes I have to use ideas from many places to make a game work. Sometimes 
I make up new ways to look at how a game could be played.

I make sure that the games are played right and that bad people can’t do bad 
things against the game or the people. Some people are not bad, they are just 
mean. We make sure that mean people are not allowed to keep being mean. Mean 
people work hard at being mean, so I have to work harder sometimes. It is both 
sad that people are mean and funny when I get to stop them from being mean. 
Sometimes when I stop them, they call me very mean things and try to scare me. 
When they try to scare me, I laugh very hard.

Sometimes my game seems not important and they are not, really. It makes me 
happy to give people a game to play. Sometimes I go play a game with them and 
ask them what they think. It makes my job great when they tell me my game 
is fun.