AUDIENCE [INTERESTS]

- educational workshops
- skill-building events
- networking opportunities
- worker rights

- interest in specific games and genres

- broader view of culture
- cultural comparisons

from gack (cont'd):

GOALS

Looking at goals from a new perspective; initially I wrote that these are all "internal. Self-serving." but now. i guess i see it differently... these are useful to understand. reflecting.

"gain recognition for games underrepresented"
---> shorter games with less action - not sure if they are underrepresented - what is the external social value of this? consider the social value of emersion, emersiveness... games for people... who want games to remain part of their lives, but can't or don't want to engage with really large monolithic games?

"provide visibility for cultural and social groups marginalized"
---> do i do this? i try to strip away identity into abstraction. what would it mean to make games that bare more culture and social context? ... a question for later.

"provide audiences with methods of engaging critically with games"
---> throw the games you don't like in the recycle bin :) yes this is interesting. critical by default. you can share individual play-systems, individual moments. i like this, i don't like this. the parts can be detangled. neatness that appeals to me. what's the external value? shareable. i mentioned sharing above, too. i thought about it w/r/t 31 unmarked games, too. bite-sized games can be individually criticized, can be individually shared, etc. that's interesting to me. they won't be eroded and disappear in patch notes...

"celebrate videogame subcultures"
"recognize, expand, and celebrate gaming skills and expertise"
---> hmm.

"[share] videogames as critical cultural phenomena"
---> the games themselves as critical? a problem for later. this relies on the content of the videogames.

from gack:

VENUES (ONLINE)
- consider what you have to gain from the online experience
- choose the software or tool based on your audience and the experience you want to create
--- what is my audience?
--- what is the experience i want to create?
--- (and, consider my choice of software/tool/platform...)
- ludic experience: playful, dynamic ways of approaching the game experience... "field trips to online games with a specific goal (scavenger hunts), virtual performances, ludic gatherings playgroups[..]"

ONLINE
- audience can go beyond regional boundaries, wide reach, low costs
- analysis or critique of online-adjacent themes
- don't expecting anyone to be in front of a screen 24 hours a day; digital events can provide set times for interaction; mix sync and async activities

TEAMS
- know why you want help - specific labour and skills? excitement, diverse skills, and community growth? "What do you need help with?"

EXPECTATIONS
- "Only do work that matches our shared vision and goals" (attempting to define vision/goals)
- "Celebrate all work"
- "Say no to growth when we are low on energy or time."

It returns me to my recent letterclub, "fear":

Quotewhat does it mean to seek out a haiku game?
what does it mean to be satisfied by a haiku game?
what does it mean to wait for a new haiku game?
what does it mean to remember a haiku game?
what does it mean to share a haiku game?

I would like to take some time to consider the game arts curators kit notes I took earlier this week.

I am making games that will work equally well on mobile as on desktop; touch and mouse controls, though I might include keyboard shortcuts on desktop. This feels right: a timeless control scheme.

I'll publish games on the web. Self-hosted, not on itch.io -- I want direct control over the presentation environment, as well as the possibility of passing data between one game and another, or with an individual's persistent data. An 'account.'

I don't like touch or mouse controlled platformers. The platformer is... gone? Wild. Hmm. I won't go into too much more detail here, since it's ongoing and this new forum (Things That Have Happened) is meant to be reflective, not prescriptive or predictive.

Please see my current active project:

So where am I now? There are a lot of things that have basically been settled in my mind, which is a good place to be. I like it here.

To wrap things up. Where am I now?

I've become more fascinated in underlying systems and novel ways of interacting with them... Databases have been fascinating me lately, as have strange APIs, as well as the ability of a thing like ChatGPT to process a lot of messy data and present it in a human-readable way.

There is a lot of data in the world.

In terms of input scheme, I have begun to think of the platformer character controller in Starseed Pilgrim as deeply incidental, not core at all, just the control scheme that I happened to be familiar with. I am not against platformers but SSP was not a deeply interesting platformer, was not a project deeply interested in platformerness. It was a simple control scheme that suited my platform  (no pun) in order to enable interaction with the 'real' system...

And lately, indeed for many years, I have not really been in love with playing platformers. On the keyboard, on a controller. I just haven't. I loved Cave Story and La-Mulana and even FJORDS but these are ancient games. Old news.

So it's not in my comfort zone. So what? I want to make a game I can play on my phone. I want a game where I can point and click on systems. (I also enjoy typing a whole lot, but I think it's a better bet to focus on developing point-and-touch design patterns; typing is nicer on a keyboard than on the phone and it's something I can already enjoy without a game to make it enjoyable.)

This is going to be rough. Seriously. But, it makes sense.

I also realized... I love doing things myself. I want a level of control over my platform, over my data, and I know how to separate concerns but not in a platformer — the indie platformer seems a particularly awful genre for collaboration. It is perfect for a solo dev.