Games - John W. Ratcliff

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	Games - John W. Ratcliff

John W. Ratcliff is a noted game developer and the founder of the controversial website AARM.

Game Development

Ratcliff's began his career as a software developer writing educational software as well as computer programs supporting cardiovascular research at the St. Louis University Hospital.

He took a job with Electronic Arts in the 80's, and created the first 256 color VGA game 688 Attack Sub. Several years later, he followed up with a sequel entitled SSN-21 Seawolf, again to critical acclaim, and in 1997 released the game Scarab.

Ratcliff's most recent title was as lead engine programmer for Planetside, published by Sony Online Entertainment. Ratcliff is also credited in Car & Driver (1992) and MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995).

Ratcliff continues to be an active member of the game development community and has been a contributing author to such magazines as Dr. Dobb's Journal. Currently, he works for Ageia Technologies, where his role is to provide open source tools and technology to facilitate the integration of physics into games.

Ratcliff especially enjoys teaching on the subject of computer technology, with special emphasis on algorithms. He also speaks at conferences, and most recently spoke at game|tech 2004.

AARM

Ratcliff is the founder and creator of the discussion forum website, AARM, which stands for 'Atheist Apologetics Research Ministry.' The name of the site is a play on words referring to the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. Ratcliff began AARM as a reaction to the suspension of several users in the moderated CARM forums; he interpreted these suspensions by CARM as systematic exclusion of atheists as well as Christians that held any liberal opinions on the forum. AARM was thus intended to challenge the values of Christian fundamentalists, particularly those that contribute to CARM.

AARM was founded in October 2004. The hosting fees were (and are) paid by soliciting donations from users; Ratcliff and these users collectively consider themselves the owners of the forum. Despite its name, AARM does not promote atheism or any particular philosophy. Members of the AARM discussion boards hold a variety of religious, spiritual, and theological beliefs, and discussions on AARM often cover a wide spectrum of religious, political, and philosophical topics. Members of AARM also frequently use its discussion boards to critique, analyze, and complain about the CARM boards.

Ratcliff has expressed a preference for unmoderated discussion forums for the purpose of discussing controversial subjects, stating "Why subject yourself to 'their' rules? It doesn't make any sense at all to me." AARM considers itself unmoderated in that it will not edit the content of any post (except at the request of the author of that post). It does, however, have users with moderator powers, and those moderators do make structural edits, such as moving a thread to a more topical board.

Beliefs

Despite creating an "atheist" website, Ratcliff is not an atheist. He describes himself as a Pantheist influenced by "Neo-Platonism, quantum physics, the Seth Material by Jane Roberts, and the works of Robert Anton Wilson." Ratcliff practices Wilson's confrontational and controversial practice of guerrilla ontology.

In keeping with guerrilla ontology, Ratcliff approves of the practice of internet trolling in the context of posting to moderated discussion boards, as he believes it forces people to confront new ideas.

Controversy

Critics of John Ratcliff from the Evangelical website CARM charge that Ratcliff is negligent for failing to use moderation to edit or remove several comments allegedly amounting to slander and/or libel from the AARM website. These critics also disapprove of AARM's unmoderated nature, wherein people are permitted to make personal attacks and use profanity and other foul language. They point out that Ratcliff has actually supported the use of such language in the past, and did so in a post that itself contained a large amount of profanity. Further, these critics note that Ratcliff once described himself as a troll.

Ratcliff's supporters at AARM believe that CARM's criticism of Ratcliff is based only on the fact that he founded AARM, which provides a forum for criticism of CARM.

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