Geoengineer Devlog #2: Survivorship Bias

Analysts studying returning bombers noticed clusters of bullet holes in certain areas. Their first instinct was simple: reinforce those spots. But statistician Abraham Wald pointed out something crucial: those planes made it back. Every bullet hole on them represented a part of the plane that could take damage and still survive.

The missing data (the places without bullet holes) revealed where planes were being hit and not returning. And that’s where the armour needed to go.

This is of course the canonical survivorship bias story, revealing our tendency to learn only from visible survivors and ignore the invisible data from what didn’t make it home.

Survivorship Bias in Games

We are encouraged to study successful titles, mimic their store pages, mirror their genre tags, copy their marketing beats. And yet, all around remain infinite blank spaces. Untested audiences, overlooked platforms, forms of play that don’t fit into neat genres. We rarely see data from those spaces because the experiments that reach them often disappear before they can teach us anything.

Guess, Inspect, Adapt

It's not rocket science but this is what I've been doing:

Guess. Try something that doesn’t quite fit the established mould — in this case a browser-based 3D factory game with a twist.

Inspect. See what happens when real players interact with it.

Adapt. Reinforce the places that prove fragile — the untested parts that might just hold if strengthened.

Why Make Geoengineer?

It’s a free, 3D browser game about helping refugees orbiting a distant planet — a strange mix of terraforming, logistics, and empathy.

No one’s asking for this game. But maybe it’ll resonate with some people who don’t usually play games. Maybe it’ll connect with players who only have ten minutes and a browser tab.

If nothing else, it’s a chance to learn from a different part of the map, and to learn godot and blender and game dev along the way.

What’s Next

We’re in the final playtesting phase now, tightening up the systems and tuning the story before release.

If you're curious to discover where the armour still needs reinforcement, I invite you to play Geoengineer in your (Chrome) browser and share your thoughts. Every bit of feedback helps us see the shape of what’s missing. Here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6Ezex4zflz9mPuT_LyME-nK2VGY-DtW0DDXTrJqMCQ368hQ/viewform