Uncertainty and Staying Healthy

The cancelled events due to coronavirus keep piling up. Two of the biggest hits to the games industry were the cancellation of GDC and SXSW. Both provided venues game studios needed to find publisher and promote their games. Funds are so tight for fledgling studios that a GDC Relief Fund was created to help offset some of the non recoup-able costs born by indies to attend GDC this year.

The event cancellations may feel like an overreaction to some, however given how sensitive exponential growth models are to daily rates, it makes complete sense: If the virus is as bad as it could be, just need need to slow the infection rate a little bit to dramatically reduce the number of infections before we have a vaccine.

We all have work to do, and most of us still do it together in the office. Keeping your hands clean, and away from your face is a huge factor in preventing infection from diseases like the flu or COVID-19. A much more effective approach is to work remotely. The more physical isolation people can maintain, the more they can lower the overall infection rate.

The tools to collaborate remotely are everywhere. Google Docs and Office365 provide real-time document sharing. Slack, Discord, and MS Teams provide chat services. Hangouts, Zoom, WeChat, Skype, and many others provide real-time video calls and video conferencing. If you are writing code, Github, Bitbucket, and many other services are options to work remotely. For larger institutions, providing a PC connected to home office via VPN is an easy way to provide internal services much more securely.

Granted, not everyone can work from home effectively. However, whatever the loss of productivity will be, it will likely be much less than having your team get sick. There is a societal benefit as well, as any effort we put in to slow the spread of the virus will help reduce the overall number of people in the future.