I am fully aware of his past. I agree with most criticisms of it, and I'm a former cop myself. My point was to simply point out that someone died who was involved with games, after he had retired mind you, games that I have played numerous times and had immense fun with.

Don't look calm to me.
Honestly, he deserves to be recognized. Even if the guy was a kiddie-raper (and no evidence suggests he was :p) he made a pretty huge contribution to gaming. One could easily argue that the Rainbow Six games and the entire tactical shooter genre itself came from the latter Police Quest/Early SWAT games.
Just because someone is a horrifyingly bad person doesn't mean they can't contribute good things. A lot of people love the work of the Cthulu dude (Lovecraft?), yet he was insanely racist. A lot of people love the work of Isaac Asimov, and he was a Scientologist (admittedly, he admitted that he only joined due to peer pressure).
Nobody is saying that he was a good man. We are just saying that he was involved in a great contribution to gaming.
That being said, I also owe the guy a punch in the face. Because of his contributions (and the SWAT 3 they led to) I always stop to identify what I am shooting before I click the clicker. That results in me dying horrible deaths in twitch shooters that aren't SWAT 3 :p

i don't know this guy don't know what he did but:
If he was a bad man no RIP for him no matter what he contributed to the gaming industry. Especially since causing riots is much bigger deal than making a silly game (yeah. i love games but they are hardly a big deal)
dead shouldn't get more respect that people who are alive solely based on fact that they are dead.
:) just saying. ill hit links later.

Erm what? where did you get that idea? Asimov was always pretty negative about scientology and even made quite a few remarks that indirectly involved scientology. There's lots of quotes of him around that support this. I think you're confusing names here.

lol
the same argument can be made but opposite:
Who the hell cares about some silly games? The riots were among the worst of the worst in LA history. I have never been as disgusted with Police Officer as with Darly Gates when he says those racists comment. And his view on drugs (though somehow understandable) was pathetic and got worse with his age.
tadam :D

Hmmm last time I looked words were just that...words. That riot in L.A was bound to happen anyways at some point, it was just a pot waiting to boil over. Awfully petty to slam and rag on someone after they are dead.
Tadam. :)

His autobiography :p

The problem is, those riots only happened because of the policies that Gates implemented as chief of the LAPD. It may have been a pot waiting to boil over, but Gates not only filled the pot, he lit the burner.

And you can tell me straight faced that those riots were his fault? He was the one that made those officers kick the shit out of Rodney King right? His attempts to clean up gang activity didn't do a single thing right?
Yes he was probably a racist, he was getting old and his management skills were probably going down the toilet. But he did not tell those officers to kick the shit out of Rodney, nor the population to go ape shit and destroy their own neighborhoods.

Daryl F. Gates is also the person who started up the LAPD SWAT team, which would later influence almost every single city in the US to have a similar unit. He founded CRASH, which was sucessful (Up until the Rampart scandal of 1999, long after Gates had left the LAPD). He had also served through the Watts Riots, and IIRC, was the investigator involved in the Manson Family case.
So, because he had a stint in the early 90's, at the end of his law enforcement career, where some controversy lay, it's enough to condemn him?

Yes. Thanks for asking.

anyhow:
never played police quest. only new the swat game which interests me not.
Now i wanna play PQ. seems awesome. especially the realistic one.

If this man was as bad as some here claims, what does this say about Ken & Roberta Williams at Sierra who jumped on the chance to hire him to work on one of their most popular series immediately after the riots?
Maybe simply that there are more than one side to the story? Whatever. It doesn't matter now. Rest in peace and all that.
Edit: For me, the best Police Quest game will always be the first one. I wonder what happened to Jim Walls.

If anybody has read his Wikipedia page, He has had his fair share of successors and controversies. Sure he may have created swat and crash but he has had plenty of screw ups and bad moves. Hitler came up with some great things like the blitzkrieg, but he is still an jerk. Same with Gates. You can respect the achievements they may have made but don't let it color the fact of who they really are.