About the Designer

I created Modal Distance because I want to use science fiction to explore what happens to people inside large systems: economic systems, political systems, technological systems, criminal justice systems, military systems, and the quieter social systems that shape what choices people believe they have.

I did not come to this subject academically.

I came to it by spending most of my adult life inside very different institutions.

After high school, I spent a short time in the Marine Corps, although I do not claim the title of Marine. That experience exposed me to a wider world. After that, I wandered the country.

I had a couple of kickboxing fights.

The morning after a fight usually felt like I had been hit by a car. College suddenly started looking like an excellent career choice.

That eventually led me into systems engineering.

For about ten years, I worked for a defense contractor around complex technical systems, formal requirements, testing, procedures, and large organizations.

Then I went into criminal justice.

For roughly 20 years, I worked for Hennepin County DOCCR. I started as an STS Crew Leader and was later promoted to Probation Officer. Much of that time was spent supervising forestry and natural-resource work projects. In practical terms, I was part corrections officer and part lumberjack.

I supervised crews, ran projects, solved problems in the field, worked within government rules, and spent years alongside people whose lives were directly affected by the criminal justice system.

Later, I became a probation officer.

That job gave me authority over people in a way few jobs do. I worked with courts, attorneys, treatment providers, law enforcement, government agencies, community organizations, and the people on my caseload.

I watched policies become procedures.

I watched procedures become decisions.

And I watched those decisions become consequences in real people's lives.

That experience changed how I think about institutions.

Systems matter. Rules matter. Procedures matter.

But outcomes matter too.

Over time, I became increasingly interested in criminal justice reform because I came to believe that following the rules and doing the right thing are not always the same thing.

A system can perform an important and necessary function while still producing incentives, policies, inequities, and outcomes that deserve to be questioned.

People inside those systems can be trying to do good work and still contribute to bad outcomes.

A decision can be legal and still be wrong.

A procedure can be followed perfectly and still fail the person it was supposed to help.

This game is not an argument disguised as science fiction. I am not interested in telling players what they are supposed to believe.

I want to put them inside complicated situations and ask:

What do you do now?

• What do you do when every available choice costs something?
• What happens when the law is legitimate, but the outcome feels wrong?
• What happens when an institution is necessary, but also dangerous?
• What happens when money, authority, technology, scarcity, loyalty, duty, and survival all pull in different directions?
• What happens when you have responsibility without enough authority?
• What happens when you have authority without enough information?
• What happens afterward, when somebody has to live with what you decided?