In 2007 I gave a talk in Tokyo where I lamented about how difficult it was for people to create and distribute games. It was a big issue at that time for those wanting to use games for self-expression. Since it was very difficult to create and share a game, few people were able to use games to talk about issues or communicate ideas. Most games at that time went through the hardware manufacturers: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Or they were disc-based PC games which were distributed through stores. So there were gates on the type and quality of content. The only open alternative was to use Flash and distribute on the web, and while the quality of Flash games was not high, there were some folks using it for extremely interesting purposes (Molleindustria stands out). But the number of groups doing this was quite small.

One of the most interesting “serious games” I’d seen by this time was from the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, the “Howard Dean for Iowa” game. The Dean for America campaign was extremely clever in its use of the Internet, pioneering many fundraising tactics and the use of social networking technologies. (These were detailed in Joe Trippi’s excellent book “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything”.) Seeing the Dean campaign make use of a game made me extremely excited for the future of games and politics. “Howard Dean for Iowa” was the first political communication-oriented game I had ever seen. Since then I’ve been fascinated to use the 4-year U.S. presidential election cycle to examine the evolution of the “political games” genre.

Since 2004 the game industry has gone through some incredible changes: mobile platforms are now the dominant way players access games, and PC titles have shifted primarily to digital distribution. It is now much, much easier to create and share a game. As a result we see that for the 2012 election cycle, the number of games which use political themes has spiked. In 2004 there were basically 2 titles: “Howard Dean for Iowa” and “The Political Machine”. This year it’s frankly difficult to count the number of games: there are many hundreds to be sure. So while creation and distribution has become much simpler, the challenging part now is discoverability. How do you find the political games which are GOOD?

A successful political game, one that is trying to communicate an idea or influence opinion, should be entertaining, engaging, and educational. This is the same metric for serious games in general: you want the player to enjoy the game, to keep coming back to it, and to learn.

There are plenty of political games this year which aren’t attempting to communicate an idea, that use the 2012 election purely as a theme. I found Whack-a-Mole games, fighting games, a bubble popping game, an Angry Birds ripoff, and a Triple Town clone among these, all using the election or the candidates. Of the political games which go deeper, the most common type of game is turn-based strategy, using the U.S. map as the game board, where the win condition is winning the election through winning individual states.

Data tracking is a new innovation this election season. Several strong political games keep track of how many players play for each political party or candidate, and report that information back to the player as a point of interest. Just as other games have increased their use of analytics to improve gameplay or monetization, political games will increase their use of analytics to learn more about the policies that players find interesting. “Budget Hero” is a good example of a game that uses this technique; we’ll certainly see more of this in the future.

Below are the six best political games I’ve played this year.

Comedy Central’s Indecision Game (iOS/Android)

Indecision is largely an asynchronous trivia game, but has some strategic elements. The game is multiplayer only – each round, you and your opponent answer three political current event questions. You get points based on how many you answered correctly in the round and whether you’ve beaten your opponent. The points are then applied to states on the U.S. map, claiming the states and their electoral votes for your campaign. Whoever wins the most electoral votes wins the game! The number of points each state requires is relative to its size, not the actual electoral votes it provides in the election. The game is very fun if you can find a good partner to play it with! Think of it as “Politics with Friends”.

Indecision asks you to self-identify as Democrat, Republican, or Independent, and keeps track of which party answers the most questions correctly each day, each week, and overall – to see “who is smartest”.

The Political Machine 2012 (PC)

The Political Machine is in its third iteration, having first shipped in 2004. Gameplay is turn-based and centered around a U.S. map. You choose a candidate to play – or build your own – and then each turn, you control where to travel, where to give speeches or fundraise, what ads to run, where to build offices, and which endorsements to strive for. The game includes policy positions and information on each candidate, as well as demographic information on each state. Each candidate has certain characteristics which influence their capabilities, and talking points for speeches must match up against the interests of each location to ensure maximum value.

TPM can be played multiplayer or against an AI. If you’ve played Political Machine 2008, the 2012 version isn’t much different. It has an updated candidate roster, but most of the rest of the game is very similar. TPM is an engaging strategy game which also manages to teach you about some of the difficult trade-offs candidates make when running a campaign.

Win the White House (Web)

This game is similar to The Political Machine, but clearly designed for students. The game doesn’t use real candidates, instead it asks you to choose your political party and select five key policy issues which are important to your candidate. Each turn represents a week of the campaign, and you can fundraise, poll, do media and make appearances. The amount that you fundraise each turn dictates the number of extra actions you can take that turn. The effectiveness of media and appearances in winning over a state depends highly on the policy issues you choose to highlight – if you haven’t done polling in a state, you won’t know which issues are important to it, so you may find your appearance has no effect! The number of electoral votes and the amount of cash each state can provide correlate well with reality, so as you’re playing the game you’ll find yourself coveting California, New York, and Florida.

Win the White House is definitely more focused on students and has less real-world data in it than other similar games. Questions around policy decisions are peppered with silly answers, which diminishes their usefulness. The game is fun and free, and definitely worth checking out online.

VOTE!!! The Game (iOS)

Epic’s game “VOTE!!!” is undoubtedly the best looking game of all the political titles this season. It’s not designed as an educational game, but as an entertaining tongue-in-cheek 3D fighting game which uses the election as a theme. You can play as Obama or Romney and beat the snot out of the other guy using a variety of props and costumes. Gameplay is very engaging and fun, just as you would expect from Epic.

VOTE keeps track of the number of times each candidate is chosen for play, and displays a running tally. Currently the count is 35.9 million for Obama versus 34.7 million for Romney! The game also includes a link that takes you to the “Rock the Vote” site to register to vote, a nice touch.

Election: Run for President! (iOS)

Election is a turn-based card game played on a U.S. map game board. Cards are either “Campaign” or “Fundraiser” types, and are played on individual states – only one type of card can be played each turn, and the game is 12 turns long. When Campaign cards are played, you assign them an amount of cash from your bankroll, so skillful use of the Fundraisers are important to make sure you have loads of cash to spend on your campaign.

Election can be played solo or multiplayer, and as either a Republican or Democrat.

Race for the White House 2012 (iOS/Android)

RFTWH is another turn-based strategy game based around the U.S. map. You choose your four campaign focus points at game start, and can then sway public opinion in each state by going on talk shows and answering a few questions, rallying volunteers, or conducting an ad campaign, in a very similar manner to other games of this type. A unique difference is your ability to both conduct covert operations to spread false information about your opponent, and research dirt about them to reduce their reputation. But it’s expensive to do! The game distinguishes itself by asking you questions frequently, with the results affecting your overall public perception (although admittedly they are pretty silly questions. )

There is not much educational content to this game apart from the general concept of traveling from state to state and attempting to improve public opinion. But it’s an enjoyable strategy game that is definitely worth a look.

–

Of the hundreds of available political games this election season, these six games are the most worth your time. I recommend playing them while watching the election returns roll in on November 6!

But first, a caveat. I live in Santa Monica, which I’ve discovered is not really Los Angeles proper. When I first moved here, I thought of the entire region as “Los Angeles”. But Los Angeles neighborhoods differ a lot, so while being in Santa Monica might seem like a minor difference it actually does have major lifestyle implications.

On driving

When we first moved to LA, I worked at THQ, and boy did I do a lot of driving. From Santa Monica to Agoura Hills is about a 30 mile trip, and it can be handled two ways: on the freeways, the 405 and the 101 (all the freeways here are “the something”, don’t ask me why), which takes between 40 minutes and 60 minutes in the morning; or up the PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway, which takes a very reliable 50 minutes. At night the freeway route is highly variable, from 35 minutes to 90 minutes, whereas the coast route is still… 50 minutes.

To give you a clearer idea of how I coped with nearly two hours of travel time each day, let me show you some illustrations. Here’s a picture of a daily commute on the 405:

And… here’s a trip via the PCH, through Malibu:

You can guess which direction I usually drove!

When we first moved to Los Angeles, people said “be sure to live in an area you like!” This seemed like bizarre advice – it’s a big city, lots of things to do, certainly we’ll drive to wherever we find we like to play. But noooooo… don’t think like this, it’s a trap! One thing you can count on in LA is that the traffic is pretty miserable. We’ve gone on frustratingly slow two hour drives to the Hollywood Hills (12.5 miles away), and one hour drives to LAX (just 8.5 miles away). The longer you live in LA, the more secret passages for travel you will find – but in general, just stay off the freeway and you will be happier. The side effect of lousy LA traffic is that MOST of the time you will want to hang out in YOUR neighborhood, because the alternative is to jump into the lousy traffic.

But hey, we live in Santa Monica. The world we’re in, the west side of the 405, has a very different feel from the rest of Los Angeles. Over here it’s beaches, palm trees, mild weather, less traffic, less pollution… but if you live here, don’t pretend that you’ll ever see your friends who live “on the other side”. It’s a universe away. Frankly it’s probably easier to just talk to your friends on Skype then pretend you’re going to ever brave the traffic to go see them.

On food

I still really miss the restaurant culture in San Francisco. There’s a vibrancy to the restaurant scene there, and creative restaurants up and down the price scale. Here in Los Angeles, we’ve got some great high-end restaurants, but the mid-range and casual is pretty rough. One entertaining thing you CAN do here in LA that doesn’t work as well in San Francisco is to go to a high-end restaurant and watch all the snooty patrons: the wannabe Hollywood agents on their cell phones, the skinny models who don’t eat but spend their entire dinner preening, the Beverly Hills Housewives, etc. It makes the “no changes” policy on a lot of menus suddenly much more understandable. I wouldn’t want to try to appease a lot of those people either!

There are definitely foods that suit LA and once we figured out what those were, we ate a lot better for cheaper. Want a salad? You’re in luck! How about sushi? It’s very fresh. Indian? Uhhhhh noooo. Pizza? Maybe, if you are in the know about where to go. Italian? Well, mediocre Italian is everywhere here. But good Italian is a little harder to find.

Where we live, it’s just a few blocks to a couple Starbucks, a Peets, and two very good local coffee joints. There are two awesome salad places. We’ve found a great calzone, and after much experimentation a decent Indian take-out. So now we’re getting by.

But the bread here is nowhere near as good as in San Francisco. When you think about that, it makes sense. How would all those aspiring actresses fit in their skinny jeans if the bread here was amazing?

On weather

What can I say, the weather is gorgeous! I loved the dry heat in Agoura Hills, and even the marine layer in Santa Monica in June (“June Gloom”) is great, it reminds me of summer in San Francisco. Well, a little. Most of the time, the weather in Santa Monica is a perfect 70 to 75 degrees. It’s amazing. If anything though, there’s a little TOO much sun here for me. I know. Blasphemer. Once in awhile, I do appreciate a nice rain.

On Los Angelenos

The one trait that most defines LA for me is not the traffic, not the food, and not the weather. It is the self-centeredness. Many people in Los Angeles are IMPATIENT. They are IN A HURRY, and you are IN THEIR WAY. If you’re on the road, beware of people barging into your lane. At the store? I’m sure she cut in front of me so her organic kefir wouldn’t spoil before she got it home. In a restaurant, you just have to feel sorry for the staff with the customers being so NEEDY. You didn’t step on the gas quickly enough at that light? *HOOONK* Hey, you forgot the lemon for my bottled water! And don’t forget the straw this time! Whew.

There are certainly nice people in Los Angeles. But it feels like an accomplishment when you manage to find where they are hiding. There’s a secret club of nice people. With a secret handshake. Whenever I meet someone genuinely friendly, I want to just give them a hug for not succumbing to the general LA impatient vibe.

On pollution

Did I mention the pollution yet? No, I guess not. Well, after a while you stop noticing. It’s just like that perceptual adaptation experiment they did in the late 19th century that flipped the world upside down, people’s brains adapt and eventually they think it’s normal. Now when I travel places without pollution the sky seems egregiously naked.

Actually, out here by the breezy beaches of Santa Monica, the pollution isn’t so bad. Attending E3 this year, downtown, I was sneezing black again. But here where the marine layer tucks us in at night, yeah, the air may not be great, but it is certainly tolerable and we even get an occasional sea breeze. That feels like a win here in LA.

There were days driving back home from THQ on the 405 that we’d crest the mountain pass and then descend into multiple layers of pollution. That made us feel so awesome. Breathe deeply!

In summary

I’ve come to the realization that Los Angeles is basically New York. It’s a big frickin’ city with a wide variety of people and tons of things to see and do. But New York is compact and dense – whereas Los Angeles is sprawling and full of strip malls. New Yorkers are impatient, and hey so are Los Angelenos. If only we had a reasonable transit system here. You know how much it costs to take a cab home from downtown LA when you’ve had a few drinks? Probably more than you spent on the booze. So seriously, live in a neighborhood that you like.

For awhile I maintained a text file where I tracked the strange differences between San Francisco (where we moved from) and Los Angeles. But then, at some point, I lost it or accidentally deleted it. In a sense I suppose that’s appropriate… the differences don’t really matter any more, what’s important is the new normal and how we choose to adapt to it.

However, these differences do seem like a good topic for a nice long blog post.

On driving

Of course one of the first things people think about when they think of LA is… traffic. Okay, maybe the first thing is Hollywood, and the second thing is smog, but the third thing is DEFINITELY traffic. Our first experience of the pleasures of LA traffic was on our drive down in the moving van. It was about 11pm at night, and the traffic report came on the radio. WHAT? There’s traffic at 11pm? Sure enough, we ran into a bottleneck for awhile. There is nothing more enjoyable than bumper-to-bumper traffic in the middle of the night as you near your destination, bleary-eyed after six hours of driving. You can trust me on that. It is an unforgettable experience.

Of course LA is gridded with highways, vast six-lane-per-direction patched asphalt ribbons that still somehow manage to become jammed with traffic at all hours. People in LA refer to the freeways with a “the”, as in “the 101″, “the 405″, “the 10″… whereas in other cities I’ve lived we just call them out by name: “I-5″, “880″, etc. Not sure why there is that difference, but using “the” betrays you as a Los Angeles resident in many cities, so mind your use of particles.

In SF we barely drove, we only had one car between us and it lived the luxurious life of a garage queen. In LA on the other hand the thing most present in one’s mind while careening down a highway is how to maximize the amount of metal and air between you and the other multi-ton metal monsters that are driving like bumper cars, or perhaps lemmings running toward a cliff. Everyone moves so fast, so close together, while dodging the ever-present random idiots, that driving takes a high degree of concentration. I’m impressed with the people that are actually able to text while doing it!

An aside: Note that we aren’t living in LA per se, we’re actually living north and a bit west, in San Fernando Valley. But the area seems by and large homogeneous on the traffic front. And we drive down to LA proper quite frequently and experience very similar traffic entertainment.

On driveway dips

For some peculiar reason, many driveways in the area are absurdly sloped, and preceded with a deep gutter for the — rain? It does actually rain occasionally so I can only assume that’s why the gutters exist. However, it could also be a clever classist scheme which prevents Ferraris and Lambourghinis from frequenting particular shops.

Even in my car I find myself frequently dashing through turns across multiple lanes of traffic, and at the last moment jamming on the brake in order to prevent spearing my front bumper into the gutter-slope of an entrance driveway. It is always a very exciting moment indeed when the driver behind me eagerly follows my lead and attempts to match my highly velocity-variant move across oncoming traffic.

On food

Our first voyage to the market was designed exclusively to acquire the fundamentals: bread, coffee, things of that sort. In San Francisco, fresh Acme Bread is king, and there are many other bakers warring for that doughy throne. At our local market in LA we found… Wonder bread, some other bagged bread, and a few “value-priced” fresh loaves apparently baked by the store itself but visually not betraying any significant differences. No yummy artisan breads from local bakers. We can only assume that the Atkins revolution has overthrown local bakers and taken over the surrounding area.

A quick trip to the coffee section yielded similar results. In San Francisco the coffee aisle is typically a vast expense populated by offerings from national and local coffee roasters, whole bean and ground – an enviable caffeine buffet. And you really shouldn’t be buying beans in a store, anyway, you should be buying them directly from a local roaster, so they are as fresh as possible. In our local LA market we found instead one rack of bagged ground coffee – mostly from nation-wide roasters – and a few open buckets of roasted beans, cheerfully sharing their delicious essential oils with the dry local atmosphere. How sad for a coffee lover!

On the other hand, the opposite side of the coffee aisle yielded a delightful array of waters: sparkly waters, minerally waters, flavored waters, “smart” waters, “oxygen” waters, all sorts of… water. There was in fact as much territory devoted to water in this market as one would normally find devoted to coffee in a San Francisco outlet. So clearly we need to become water connoisseurs in order to deal with this overwhelming bounty.

The food disparity continued when we visited local restaurants. Los Angeles certainly has many fantastic establishments, but we were surprised to discover that in many of these, the focus is on the diners – not the food. We’ve found a few wonderful places so far, but particularly remarkable have been the occasions when diners have ignored the wait staff’s eloquent descriptions of a meal, only to pause their cell phone conversations and ask “what’s this?” when lovingly-crafted plates of food arrive. The restaurants of the moment seem to more frequently be about looking good, not eating well. Well, for a majority of the patrons, at least.

The final food amusement in our new home is about drink. For some reason, most drinks seem to be served with a straw. Is it because of lipstick? Is it because lips that have been “augmented” don’t hold onto glass rims quite so well as thye do a round straw? It’s unclear. Yet, you’ll certainly have no shortage of straws if you visit local Los Angeles restaurants. But please – don’t drink wine with a straw, okay? It’s just… wrong. No matter where you live.

On the weather

Los Angeles is known for sun, sun, sun. Sunny beaches. People in bikinis. Sand, surf. And on this it certainly doesn’t disappoint! If you’re used to the rocky nature of northern beaches, you will fall in love with the sandy beaches of LA. Well, unless you really, really like walking barefoot on rocks as some kind of Zen exercise. The beaches of Malibu in particular are quite gorgeous. There’s nothing like having brunch overlooking the Malibu beach on a delightfully warm winter day. “Layering”, as we are used to in San Francisco, is not a skill that comes in very useful on an LA beach. Just a note to self: ditch the black clothes and invest in a pair of stylish sunglasses. This is a lesson I have toiled away quite hard to learn, just to share with you today. Tans are also recommended, however this is something I have yet to fully come to terms with, as I consider my computer programmer pallor a badge of honor. If you see me with a tan at some game conference, you’ll know I have successfully acclimatized to the local region.

One myth: it actually does RAIN in LA. I’ve been quite pleased to be presented with a handful of glorious downpours which have given me good excuses to hole up with food show marathons and adventure games. I imagine as we move toward spring these fantastic opportunities might “dry up”, as it were, but I’ll be one of the few who are sad about that.

A downside of the typically glorious weather, at least in our neck of the woods, is the incredible dryness of the air. We are investing in all manner of technologically-advanced goopy moisturizers, and I am drinking at LEAST as much water as caffeinated beverages now. In fact we recently bought a humidifier for our apartment, much to the great dismay of the one plant I have yet to kill: my Christmas cactus.

On billboards

As a geek, one of the very enjoyable things about living in the San Francisco area is how the advertising world targets you. Big-eyed Zynga characters peer out of billboards pleading with you to send them your resume. Google ads taunt you with complex puzzles that could net you millions in stock options – if only you were smart enough to solve them! Oracle advertisements show off the speed of their next database revision – just for your next SaaS website! And hardware companies show off their next tera or nano thingamajig. It’s an awful lot of fun.

In Los Angeles it’s movies-movies-movies… and oh, lap bands! Do you need to lose some weight so you can make that next casting call? Well, don’t you fret: get a lap band! Your insurance will probably cover it! I’m not clear what it is yet, but I am fairly sure it has nothing to do with musical instruments.

On rudeness

The last most significant difference for me is the difference in rudeness level. It’s a subtle thing generally, until: random people cut you off in a market line, barge into your lane on the freeway, or harangue wait staff over forgetting the lemon for their water. It’s enough to make you want to over-tip, do the zipper rule on the freeway, and smile like a lunatic at everyone you pass by, just to try to balance the scales.

In San Francisco, you generally assume people are nice… and then you find an occasional idiot. In Los Angeles the reverse seems to be the rule. You generally assume people are idiots, and you get the pleasure of being surprised when someone is nice. Admittedly this is more of a “big city” issue, not a Los Angeles-specific phenomenon. It’s not too dissimilar from what you find in for example, New York. But it is a slippery slope – you might find yourself feeling that it gives you license to be an idiot as well: “Out of my way Hummer H2, I’m merging!” “Move your cart of Ensure, Granny!” I highly encourage you to refrain from these kinds of temptations.

In conclusion

All in all our move has been a good and entertaining experience. I continue to maintain the belief that in all places you will find things to love, and things to hate, and that typically you won’t know what these are going in. You have to keep an open mind when you move to a new area, and consider that there are new things you will learn to enjoy, and old loves you will need to leave behind. But jostling one’s habits and expectations can only be a good thing, as it encourages you to live life more fully.

Or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself when people cut me off on the freeway.

Now I’m sitting here relaxed yet displaced, in our temporary housing just northwest of Los Angeles, and having been to my first two days at THQ I’m starting to feel like my old self again. Moving away from San Francisco wasn’t exactly high on my list – I really enjoy the entrepreneurial vibe there, from the social games community in the city to the web-focused churn of Silicon Valley. There are always so many interesting things going on, and brilliant people trying to change the world around every corner. But in recent years it’s seemed like the people of MY games community, pushing the boundaries of technology and story-telling in games, had slowly moved out of the area. Studios had shut down in San Francisco, companies had closed in Marin, East Bay companies were encountering hard times, and publishers on the peninsula had downsized or moved away. I really enjoy mobile and social games, of course, but the hub of AAA games has slowly migrated away from the hub of technology innovation, to the center of entertainment: Los Angeles.

So I was already thinking, “Hm, if I ever had to move, it’d be either Los Angeles or Seattle.” (Seattle is where I grew up, and my family lives.) Peculiarly, the day I left Google, as I was literally driving out of their driveway, some friends in LA rang to see if I knew anyone who could do some game technology consulting for them. “Why, yes! Let me drive another 10 feet forward and then tell you a story…” Hm, fate calling! Soon after, I heard about the VP role open at THQ and we started having a chat.

During the three years or so that I did game technology consulting, what I enjoyed most was visiting studios and vetting them for publishers or investors. I’d get the chance to talk to the executives in the studio, as well as the directors of production, tech, art, audio, and design. I’d learn about their best practices, and share with them tips I’d learned as well. Then I’d compare the studio against the project or publisher or investor and highlight where the match worked well, or poorly. It was always so much fun to analyze the studio and see how it worked, and try to find ways to make it operate more smoothly.

As a consultant though, at the end of the day, you always walk away. As a consultant you don’t build up much over time except contacts and your own personal knowledge. What made me immediately interested in this role at THQ was the feeling that I could take all the knowledge I’d built up as a consultant, as well as my connections to the game engine, middleware, and console companies, and use it to help build up the company by doing what I enjoyed most as a consultant: analyzing studios and helping them make their games more fun, more efficiently. How could it get any better than that?

I talked with a lot of other really good people on the road toward joining THQ, at social games companies and mobile games companies, game engine creators and middleware manufacturers, as well as other large games publishers. But seeing THQ in the middle of a reboot, with a team of new yet veteran executives recreating the company by taking risks in AAA and casual titles, with a future roster of intriguing AAA titles on track, and a back-catalog that includes Company of Heroes, WWF, Red Faction, Homeworld, and MX vs ATV… it just sounded like so much fun.

So being here in LA – it’s kind of weird. I miss walking. I miss the fog. But I feel like, perhaps, I’ve found my people here. The place may be different, but the conversations are familiar: how do we make a really great game, how can we create an experience people haven’t seen before, how do we do it in on a budget, how can we finish it on time. And in that way, I have to admit, it kind of feels like home.

It’s pretty much been since moving back to California ten years ago that I’ve had these lousy allergies, which perhaps explains why when I was a kid and living here I was sick so much. Although admittedly, when we moved up to Washington I was still pretty sick, and allergy shots for years seemed to largely help that. Hey, that makes sense.

Anyway, lately I’ve been feeling lousy, having a hard time sleeping due to sniffling and coughing, etc. My Claritin regime occasionally quits working (body gets used to it) and I have to go cold-turkey for awhile to reboot. So I needed to spend a week off the good drugs.

I remembered vaguely, about six or seven years ago, I had tried something wacky which seemed to work well. So I gave it another shot. It’s the MacGyver solution to expensive allergy HEPA filters.

I have an old 20″x20″ box fan that I got at Home Depot years ago for $20 or something. Typically here in San Francisco it doesn’t get hot enough to worry about pulling it out of the closet (the past few weeks notwithstanding). Houses don’t have central air conditioning in San Francisco since we generally have pretty good air flow here and the temperatures don’t get too crazy very often. So I scrounged the fan out of the closet again, and took a trip to Home Depot.

Interestingly, air filters for home air conditioning systems come in a variety of sizes – one of which is 20″x20″. Hey hey. For $20 you can get a pretty darn awesome “allergen reduction” air filter. There are various types and brands, and Home Depot tries to rate them with a “Filter Performance Rating” system where a higher number equals better. Get a 9 or 10 if you can.

You know what happens next. Bring home filter, duct tape to fan, turn on. I have been completely amazed at the results. I literally spent the entire week I was off Claritin in the house with this fan on. I breathed well, I slept well – a pleasant change. Okay, once in awhile I had to go find some food, and I would rapidly notice my body react to the outdoor air.

I’m not sure what’s in the air right now, maybe ragweed? But whatever it is, my body doesn’t like it. I’m back on Claritin now, and it’s helping again, but I’m in love with this hacked allergen filter. The only thing dismaying about it is that it is starting to look pretty disgusting with grime, which makes me wonder what I’ve been breathing in here the past few years. Ah well.

Highly recommended! And here are a couple others that agree. Including graphs.