autoethnography

DISSERTATION: Playtesting TRACES and ACT ‘NORMAL’ this week!

autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, playtest, Process Writing

I’m happy to be able to say that tomorrow and Thursday, TRACES, along with its companion larp, ACT ‘NORMAL’, will be playtested this week!

It’s been a hard road since September 1st — I easily lost three productive months (September, December, January). Technically, May is the 9th month since I started TRACES. I am hoping the next creative project goes more smoothly and fits more neatly into the 6-month timeline that I have planned for it. Actually, I am hoping to be able to use this last project to end up back on track in terms of writing the dissertation component of this project.

We will see if that happens — at this point, I think that I have to accept that doctorates are hard, doctorates while dealing with systemic issues doubly so, and that they take time. I have to be careful about how I plan my time in order to avoid burnout (I really came up to the edge of it during this project around December and January, largely because of issues related to Tom’s work). Learning to take a step back and limiting my involvement with the things that I do not have energy for is an important lesson.

Meanwhile, I have seventeen players lined up to play this week. That’s amazing! And I think it’s plenty of data for my purposes, although there will certainly be future playtests if I can manage it.

Some of the challenges around playtesting this game are that, ideally, it would be played in a crowded, busy space. The challenge with that is not wanting anything to break or go missing, or to get in trouble for playtesting publically where I’m not allowed (since I will basically gaffer-tape the sculptures in various positions where they won’t damage any paint). Getting the space that I did get is not going to be possible as often as I would like — it’s unusual for a solo project to be allowed to use the space in that way.

I guess that brings me to the Companion Larp for TRACES, which I wrote in order to try and solve the issue of not having a crowd to play in. In a nutshell, I am asking people to play characters/caricatures of people they would expect to meet in 2019.

What else should I be recording for posterity in this post? A lot of the records are in github, in the version history of documents I’ve been writing.

I guess I am just, at this point, overwhelmed with how much care I have for this game. I really feel like I’ve put myself out there in a way that feels vulnerable and exciting.

Oh, I guess it’s also worth mentioning that the “final for now” version of the Escape Room that I have been helping with is up and running as of today.

I have no idea what I’ll make next, but I haven’t stopped collecting the molded pulp paper forms when I get the chance. I’ve got some excellent ones that Marc and Gina gave me recently. For now, I’m focusing on doing the best job that I can playtesting and documenting this game that I care for so much.

DISSERTATION UPDATE: Plugging Away at It

autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, Process Writing, reflective games, research

Still working away on TRACES!

Yesterday, I edited the rewritten objects (2,5, and 7) and reached out to people to voice-act them. Some of those folks will only be available as of April 19th, so I’m back to working on the sculptures again. I’ve got two left to make and honestly, I need a bit more inspiration.

Today, I had an impromptu conversation about the project that I didn’t record (because it was impromptu) with one of TAG’s visiting artists, Jonathan Chomko. We talked about the goals of our respective projects, and, talking aloud, I identified three “pillars” for TRACES:

The first, as I wrote about when I started the project, is “Alienation” — which is one of the feelings that got me started thinking about this project in particular. The second is “Exploration” (and speculative fiction, exploring the space, etc). The third is “Recognition”, but as in, recognizing yourself in the game, or identifying in some way with the game (this one being aimed at other queer and marginalized folk).

Alongside that, I want people to feel like they’re doing something sort of covert, and like they have to watch what they do in the space.

I also expressed my worry that the game will somehow wind up feeling like an audio museum tour (I really hope this is not the case) because of the scanning of sculptures and accompanying audio. I think the kind of audio and the objects in question will prevent this, but it is something that was briefly brought up at the Arcade 11 playtest. I don’t find the comparison flattering.

So I kind of want to bring in more “game-y” rules. Maybe some kind of way to track what audio has been collected (my nightmare) would work, but I don’t think so. Maybe some kind of reward? Maybe some kind of rule for how to behave around the objects? Maybe something else? Possibly I need to help players get into character more? I’m looking for low-cost (timewise and difficulty-wise) ways of making the players more involved.

Maybe I’ll get the chance to talk this over with some other folks at some point in the near-future.

Meanwhile, here’s hoping I can get two more sculptures ready to paint!

Here’s what the task list for the game is looking like:

– Finish and paint sculptures, add RFID tags to them.
– Record and edit Audio for 3 re-written objects
– Amend the JSON dictionary for the game
– Measure timing for the text and speech in the game and adjust those variables accordingly (hopefully it’ll be similar within one object).
– Update the Raspberry Pis with the new code and audio files and hope they don’t break.
– Playtest!

DISSERTATION: Playtest Crunch

autoethnography, dissertation, playtest, Process Writing, Uncategorized

I have an unsurprising confession to make: in the time since my last blog post, I crunched to get a version of TRACES ready for playtesting at Arcade 11.

You can follow the traces (ha) of my digital programming crunch here: https://github.com/jekagames/traces

Between each commit, I was working with all the different broken processes unless I was sleeping.

The other physical object-making crunch that I engaged in is evident on instagram.

Everything took longer than expected. There was a lot to do to get the project ready — and the fact that each task took longer than I expected it to — each and every single task — was a constant source of stress.

The documentation for each of the libraries that I was using was incomplete, poorly-written, or assumed knowledge that I didn’t have (or was never meant to be combined in the ways that I needed). They’re usually open-source of course, and I appreciate that people have other jobs and other work, but when your constructor uses the same name for the variable and the data type without explaining, that’s really difficult to parse (looking at you, socket.io).

For the installation of certain things on the Raspberry Pi, I got it to work once and I’m not sure why it worked, because it wouldn’t work again on the other machines even though I followed the same instructions. So, instead, I cloned the card. I’m a bit nervous about when I have to update the code and the audio files and such. I hope it’ll go okay.

My 3D models would look fine in theory, but would have physical limitations or issues when I actually printed them. I had to redesign one particular object something like 4 or 5 times — and wait in between each re-design to print it to see what problems arose.

So, I expected to have around a week to build certain parts of the project and instead wound up with 24 hours. What a mess.

I am very, very grateful to the people that helped me — by volunteering their voices, by helping me with programming, by physically building things with me.

Right now, that’s these folks (quoted from my credits):

“VOICE ACTING
System Voice – Natural Reader (modified)
The Handler – Jess Rowan Marcotte
Object 10 – Ash Cheshire
Object 09 – Thomas Deliva
Object 01 – Gina Hara
Object 05 – Enric Llagostera
Object 02, 08 – Jordan McRae
Object 03, 04, 06 – Lukas Rowland
Object 07 – Dietrich Squinkifer

3D-PRINTED OBJECTS
Jess Marcotte (20×4 LCD cover, Arduino Uno Case top)
brandroid64 (Brandon Bowles) (Customizable Raspberry Pi 3 (A+/B+) Case)
djminnesota (Dan Johnson) (Arduino Uno Case bottom, modified by Jess Marcotte)

SPECIAL THANKS TO
Enric Llagostera and Dietrich Squinkifer for their help with all of my programming questions and for helping me debug.”

Some of that will change, though, now that I have had the chance to playtest. I have some internal playtest notes, both physically written down and that I took of my general impressions after the playtest.

Obviously, the sculptures that Tom and I made in 24 hours are not the final sculptures. I actually spent a fair bit of time calling around and contacting Molded Pulp product companies to try and find more of the kind of molded pulp that I had from our dishwasher (that I turned into objects for the game). It turns out that most local packaging companies do not make molded pulp products. One company only made 2 products, which they sold by around 20 000 units at a time: 4-cup holders and egg cartons.

So. I went to a caterer’s store and bought molded pulp takeout containers and plates in a variety of shapes. The nice thing is that they’re compostable, so I feel okay about using them for that reason since I imagine there will be waste/mistakes (though I will be painting the final sculptures). I do have a few leftover shapes from the products I had. I’ll try to work them into what I make.

So. That’s on my list. Making molded pulp takeout container sculptures. Nice.

The next thing on my list is finishing 2 more controllers to accompany the first one that I made fully. I managed to make 2 for playtesting — one that I had fully finished and one on a wooden form that Tom helped me make. So, that’s something I still have to do.

Then, from there, I want to try and further synchronize the text that’s displaying with the audio. I think that means adding another database entry and passing a variable into it in milliseconds that also changes when a specific object from the database is called, and for me to individually check how fast the text needs to display compared to the speaking voice of whoever voices a particular object.

That brings me to two very important other items: first, it seems that some of the voices were a bit distracting to players, so I will likely have to re-record those. Certain voices may also need to just be a tad louder.

Second, it seems like some of the objects are overly didactic, leading to an overly didactic impression of the game. With some playtester advice in mind, I will be thinking about whether I should cut certain objects, about whether to add or change certain stories, and whether to shorten certain parts (like in the introduction — I think I will cut a bit out from there).

This project really changed gears in November 2018 and became more about the rise of fascism in North America, in some ways. I think that I need to return to my goal of telling the stories about trans people (particularly nonbinary trans folk) in our times. The rise of fascism is a part of that, but I think there’s a little too much of it in there right now, which is why it’s coming across as didactic. Also, I was trying to write from the perspective of people coming to the past to study it — so I guess the didactic tone in that way is part of that. But I guess I need to bring it back to the characters and personal stories.

There’s a lot to do! But I do think it’s worth taking the time to do it before I move on to the final project.

DISSERTATION: Time Marches Ever Forward But Now So Is My Project

autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, Process Writing

Just dropping a note to say that work on Traces is going well — I’m actually hoping to have something playtestable for the very beginning of March, so I’m busily working away on all fronts — I’m soldering components for the scanners and screens, installing software on raspberry pis, writing code, thinking about sculptures and recording audio, thinking about displaying the script on tiny screens, thinking about the aesthetics of the controllers and how they’ll all fit together… There’s a lot afoot.

It’s exciting to be in a thick of it, even though I’m keeping a hectic pace. I would love to have something finished in time to playtest at Arcade 11 — that’s currently my goal. I would be right on track for six months with this project if I finished by then, which is kind of incredible given the delays and difficulty I was having with it earlier.

Squinky helped me with some programming last week. I also had to figure out how to work with the Uno clones that I bought (the Metro 4 Express from Adafruit), which didn’t work as expected out of the box. I had to write in a new board definition in one of the libraries I’m using and disable a different library that didn’t play well with it (the servo library). Squinky also helped me get audio working.

One on-going concern is that I have a 4-line LED screen, but I have to be careful about the max number of characters it will display because it will simply cut text off. I will have to write something that trims the dialogue to the right character length and then shows the next bit of dialogue at an appropriate pace. That will probably require some massaging. I’m sure it’s possible, but I think I’ll likely need help figuring it out. I’m currently waiting on USB backpacks for the screens that should arrive tomorrow so that I don’t have to fiddle too much with the wiring and can control the screens through one of the serial ports.

I was recently chatting with Enric Llagostera, who helped me to challenge my assumptions around what the controller could look like. I had given a lot of thought to what the objects the player scanned would look like, but other than wanting something functional that won’t overheat the components, hadn’t given thought to how the scanner would look beyond that. I had thought that I wanted a very raw look, that showed the components and looked sort of future-hacker-Shadowrunny. I’ll be trying to rethink that while, again, not overheating anything and not interfering with the functionality of the boards and such.

I also have to do some thinking about the dimensions and designs of the objects — they do have to be a certain distance away because of the range of the scanner (I don’t want the tags to interfere with each other). But I also don’t want the objects to be too huge, necessarily. I am thinking it could be cool for some of them to be installed with either suction cups or double-sided tape, so that I can vary how I position them in the space.

Well, I’m going to keep at it! Here’s hoping I manage to get it all done.

DISSERTATION: Creative Check-In

autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, game jams, Process Writing

In tracking my creative work closely, I am learning a lot about myself and how I work. I hope that eventually that data can be generalized to others, although that’s not my goal. At the very least, I can propose hypotheses. Here are some thoughts.

1. Most importantly, the more stressed and unwell that I am, the harder it is to feel able to do creative work, both in terms of scheduling and prioritizing it, and actually accomplishing it when I finally do sit down to work.

In December, I opened and looked at my script a good half a dozen times, but I was stuck. I was too worried about other things (primarily, things related to Tom’s work situation and precarity). While being busy has gotten in the way of my creative work in the past, finding the time to get down to work was always the challenge.

2. Enjoyable, challenging work balanced with breaks and personal time can be fulfilling fuel.

Sure, I am now adjusting to teaching for the first time and managing other commitments that I have made (opportunities to publish, to edit/give feedback to others on their work, to collaborate on design projects), but I enjoy that work for the most part. It affirms (in most cases) my confidence in my own abilities, even though I may have the occasional doubt. Doing work that shows me my own capabilities helps me fight impostor syndrome!

But I also definitely need to build in more breaks and rest into my schedule. Yes, sometimes that means choosing between taking the time to cook a larger (time-consumption-wise), healthier, homecooked meal or eating something fast. It’s a balancing act. I also still need to find ways to fit more exercise into my schedule. But it also means actually taking a break and actually letting myself do nothing, take naps, stay at home, and, y’know, read a book, play a video game, regardless of whether there are chores that are left undone for a while longer. I am trying to get better at balancing all of this. I suspect it’s something that I’ll struggle with for the rest of my life, especially with my tendency to overcommit (which is prized and encouraged because it makes me so *productive*).

As an example of how skewed these priorities can get, I finally managed to make myself a doctor’s appointment and attended it to deal with some issues that I had started investigating in Fort McMurray. I had to cancel my Fort McMurray appointments when we moved here, and I only got a Quebec health care card in early November. So, yeah, it feels good to have those balls rolling.

3. Recognizing and naming burnout, and taking as much of a break as you can from the things burning you out seems crucial.

I feel like I keep having these mini-burnouts — I have the evidence of them and their mounting severity every time I write one of these posts. I’m not an expert on this by any means, but after not even attempting to work on my dissertation project for the past few weeks, I have felt able to do creative work and I find myself excited to work on my dissertation project once more.

4. It is easier for me to work with someone else. I find it easier to get past blocks and prioritize working when I’m working with at least one other person. This is born out by how many solo projects I’ve released versus how many team projects, I think. At least right now, having a lot of creative control is important to me, so I like working in small groups on all aspects of the game. Maybe that will change with experience.

I’m also trying to get better at asking for help (even with individual projects) and letting other people take over tasks in groups that I’m working with. One of my problems is feeling like if I ask for something, I’m being a pest or taking up other people’s time, but I think I am fairly generous with my own time, so I am trying to ask for help in ways that I feel are fair and respect people’s boundaries.

—
Speaking of that creative work, I participated in Global Game Jam 2019 with Squinky this year. We decided to scope really small and made a queer dressup game called “Mx. Dressup: Squinky and Jeka’s Outfit Creator for Dapper Queer Millennials”, which you can play here: https://squinky.github.io/mxdressup/

Squinky and I designed the game together, then Squinky focused on the programming and I focused on the art assets. Taking a whole weekend just to draw cute clothes was so relaxing. I gave myself permission not to think about anything else. We scoped small, so whatever assets I was able to get done, that was what went into the game. It was really, really nice.

And now, as an extra surprise, my brother is in town, and Tom is teaching him to drive (with the occasional backseat help from me — I can’t be the accompanying driver because I’m probationary, but I am allowed in the car, so I can give a different perspective and whatnot).

That also means that my brother and I are doing our best to get Icosahedral (which is a working title) into fully playtestable shape, as final as we can get it. We’ve been working on the project off and on since April 2017, which is pretty amazing. We’ve already done some playtesting with an earlier version and it went really well. But now, it’s time to think about the numbers and whether other people can run it, and the usual business of playtesting. It feels great to be back at it! I think we’ll have a playtestable version ready real soon, and I’ll be sending out calls for playtesters.

Time, scheduling and how busy I am is always a concern, but I am doing my best not to worry about the dissertation project. I feel like my thoughts about it have slowly matured inside of me, and I am excited to get back to it. That’s far different from feeling like I was banging my head against the wall in December and early January trying to get something done. I will be trying to prioritize working on it more now that I’ve had the chance to get used to my new schedule a bit. Of course, Tom’s situation could throw all of my plans out the window at any moment (yikes).

Now then, here’s hoping I can manage to make more progress on my second dissertation project!

DISSERTATION: Extensions, Burnout, and welcoming 2019

autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, Process Writing

Time for the first substantial update of 2019!

The first thing that I have been meaning to bring up is that I will likely have to extend this second design project past six months, strictly speaking. Having lost most of September to travel and QGCon, I was still hoping to be able to finish in five months to stay on-schedule with my ideal timeline for the making and writing of this here dissertation. But the truth is that while I was able to get a decent amount of work done in October and November, I involuntarily took almost all of December off, and I still haven’t quite managed to get back to work on my creative projects.

It’s not that I didn’t get anything done in December: I finished my syllabus and made a course pack for the course that I am teaching this winter, I made some last edits to my paper for Game Studies, which came out on December 31st, I’ve been working on materials to help organize future QGCons and have a record of the roles and responsibilities involved, working on conference submissions, updating my CV, and writing an interview piece between myself and another queer designer where we ask each other questions that I think is really pretty awesome. That’s on top of the usual holiday commitments and slowdowns. Not to mention that I have been cooking a lot more home-cooked meals, which is part of that invisible second shift that we don’t really talk about: my laundry is done, my bills are paid (thankfully), and I am working on all sorts of neat things…except for my creative work.

There are a number of factors here: my physical health, my mental health, and Tom’s work situation… which is a coded way of talking about the on-going harassment by process that he is facing, almost a year and a half after they first tried to bully him into resigning. On both December 20th and December 24th (the day before a commonly-celebrated holiday across the world), the RCMP dropped more work with strict deadlines onto our heads. These deadlines failed to take into account that everything is closed during the holidays, and practically everyone is on vacation, so there has been information that we’ve needed that we just can’t get as easily as under normal circumstances. And even if I didn’t want to prioritize this, the truth is that it is hard to think of much else.

On the health fronts: I have been sick off and on for the past two months with respiratory illnesses, colds, at one point I think a mild flu? I was socializing with a very sneezy five-year-old at one point who clung to me like a limpet, so, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. I think that I may have a deviated septum or other issue that is leading to frequent sinusitis and headaches. It’s on my list of things to check out.

Speaking of which, the reason why it’s still on a list might have something to do with the situation described in this article.

Honestly, I have never identified so much with an article about millennials or probably anything else. I feel this in my soul. And if this article is to be believed, I’m not the only one. I constantly feel at the edge of burnout, and I note exactly the kinds of behaviours written here — optimization means that it can be really hard to make time for things that have a low payout, or seem like they do, especially if they’re otherwise stressful for me. It can take me months to make a needed appointment, and I honestly just don’t have that much time for bad news or to be slowed down by issues that’ll require addressing them and then healing from them. I have a bone spur in my thumb that I had an appointment to deal with before we left Fort McMurray — but in Fort McMurray it was easier to say no to things because I would just not physically be in the same city that things were happening in. That left more time for things like doctors’ appointments.

On a similar note: I have whitecoat syndrome when it comes to taking my blood pressure taken, but in order to verify that, I was, again, in Fort McMurray, supposed to get a 24-hour monitor to verify. Since it makes me anxious, and since I had to leave Fort McMurray, that’s another thing I haven’t done yet. But, then again, I only just became eligible and received a Medicare card for Quebec, so that’s the excuse there.

Not to mention that, because of dysphoria and trans issues, I would really, really like to get top surgery. But the research exhausts me, and so does the idea of being out of commission for potentially months. Plus, since I haven’t been going to the gym regularly (too busy with everything in my own career plus the RCMP issues), I feel like I’m not in a good place for a surgery. They say that the healthier you are going into surgery, the easier the road to recovery will be. So I do want to get into better shape before I think about surgery.

All of this is of course a recipe for disaster — I have to admit that I have been ignoring these health concerns because they don’t feel like emergencies. But then, they will turn into emergencies. I know that. I know that as much as anyone quoted in that millennial article knows that they need to register to vote or whatever other thing they’re putting off on their to-do list.

…anyhow, what this means is that it is really difficult to be creative right now. And even things that aren’t strictly creative about the project feel pretty difficult. But I’m doing my best to work on it. At this point, it feels like this isn’t just about the ebbs and flows of creativity – this is about what late capitalism does to art, what it is doing to people. How come even the most “successful” of us can’t have a damn rest? It seems like we’re all just a step away from burnout.

So. I am hereby granting myself an extension until at the very least April for this project. I still feel strongly about the project — it feels big, meaningful, and like it is pushing me artistically. That excites me. I want to give this project the time that it needs and deserves.

DISSERTATION: On continuing to be tired

autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, Process Writing

Thought it was time that I wrote another autoethnography blog post.

Since the last time I wrote, I’ve been slowly plugging away at a variety of tasks that aren’t directly related to my dissertation research. What I am coming to realize, I think, is just how much external factors affect my ability to work creatively or work on code. Yesterday, for example, I tried to do some creative writing after a meeting and spent a good deal of time staring at the screen instead. Then, when I decided to try to switch to coding, I could feel my body physically saying “nope, nope, nope” — it felt like my brain and body could anticipate what would happen if I were to code right then — the slog of working through something that I would either have to interrupt and possibly lose the thread of for next time, or that I would get caught up in and skip out on other responsibilities for (such as the roast lamb dinner I was planning for last night).

I am getting other work done, such as finishing the syllabus and course pack for the course I am teaching next winter, and writing a co-interview article with Kara Stone, and choosing the abstracts for full articles for the issue of First Person Scholar that I an editing, but that tiredness that I mentioned before is omnipresent. The threat of burnout seems to be constantly just at the periphery of my consciousness. I find myself taking long breaks, but still not feeling refreshed by them. I have had unexpected bodily aches and pains too — a bulging disc in my back giving me more pain, requiring me to apply heat to my back and return to doing strengthening and stabilizing exercises and stretches from my physiotherapist, a constant returning sinusitis causing debilitating headaches just behind my eyes, and the most awful cramps — for which I applied more heat.

The biggest pressures that I am feeling related to my dissertation work are measuring the time that I have left alloted to this project against my abilities and the work left to be done. There are still prototype portable sensors to build and figure out, there’s still a lot of programming to do that is currently outside of the scope of my skill — but only just outside — that I really should be asking for help with (but everyone is busy, eh?), and there are the sculptures themselves to build.

Unfortunately, there are so many factors outside of my dissertation and currently outside of my control that are contributing to this stress, and it’s also very difficult for me to do creative work while I am stressed. Some things are within my control if I make the time for them, and that would make me less stressed, but it also will take up time that I feel I should be spending working on my creative project. I could really use a long break, where I don’t do anything related to work, but if I take that long break, it feels like I’m just eating into my time. There seem to be more days where it is difficult to work than there are good days, especially when it comes to work that I am only accountable to myself for.

Tom has been a big help, particularly for things that have just felt like a total slog (changing all my Harvard citations into MLA for the syllabus, for example, and gathering all the articles for the course pack).

Even making these records of process make me feel guilty when I’m not doing them, but the truth is that I haven’t been getting all that much done. I’ve solved a number of important programming issues, but there’s still a whole lot more, and I’ve written about half of the script for the game, but there’s still, again, a whole lot more.

I’m happy with the work that I have, but I wish that I could be more efficient and faster. Everything is a tradeoff: if I want to make a nutritious meal, that means going home early from work, or working from home. But when I work from home, because of all that’s left to do to set our place up, I am distracted by the mess and everything that needs my attention there.

Ah, and I shouldn’t leave this out for future Jess: last Thursday, we found out that our dear friend Serge Mercier, who I wrote about in my Master’s dissertation, was on his deathbed. Tom spent Thursday evening contacting people to let them know, and then we spent Friday taking Serge’s son to be with him at the hospital before he passed. We were there until about 10:30, then took his son home, and Serge died that night. Then, I woke up another day this week to a text message from my mom letting me know about a funeral that morning for a family friend that attended her church – someone I had known my whole life. So, that happened. Maybe those things also have to do with this state that I am in.

Finally, of course, the issues with Tom’s work continue. You can read a bit about them at rcmpaccountable.wordpress.com if you like. It continues to be draining and stressful. Come the end of January, Tom will have been on sick leave for a year because of this, and he has been actively fighting these issues since September 2017. Before that, things hadn’t yet bubbled up from under the surface. It seems that there are still years to go on this issue.

I guess autoethnography can mean disclosing some pretty uncomfortable things. It makes perfect sense to me that this would all be affecting my creative process, but I can see no alternative but to keep going, and keep doing the best that I can. I’m doing my best to rest, but I am worried that teaching next semester will only further eat into my time. Still, I know that it will be valuable experience, and frankly, I have to think about saving money for when my SSHRC runs out and because of the uncertainty with Tom’s work.

DISSERTATION: I’ve Been Tired!

autoethnography, critical making, curious games, dissertation, Process Writing

Well, sportsfans, I’m keeping busy and working away on my dissertation project and a whole whack of other things.

Since the last time that I wrote, I’ve participated in a lot of events, which is the primary reason why I haven’t been able to write too much here. In between the events, I’ve just needed time to recover, work on my code, and do my chores.

Speaking of code, you can now find the repository for my working-title project Traces here.

What I have discovered after a lot of effort and working with Node JS and etc is this:

— Johnny-Five doesn’t not play well with this NFC shield. I could either get my little LED light to blink using a node server command or I could get my RFID shield to read my NFID tags, but not both. People have been asking for support on this from the johnny-five developers since 2015, but obviously it’s a labour of love and it just hasn’t happened.

— I will have try to use websocket and serialport instead, although I remember there being some issues with serialport and one of our previous projects. Alternatively, I will have to try and make everything happen through the Arduino board (this is not ideal for audio or for using multiple com ports).

Okay, so my last post was written on a Sunday. Then, there was a week of work from there, where I did some writing and a lot of code troubleshooting that I don’t have a lot to show for. On the 8th, I did a Costco run with one of the organizers of GAMERella in preparation for, you guessed it, GAMERella, which happened on the 10th and 11th.

I made a game that weekend with Narf and Catherine called “TAMAGAMEWORKER”, and it’s about unhealthy working conditions in the game industry. You have to try and take care of a tamagotchi gameworker named Tama, while they try to balance their basic needs alongside demands from work and other spheres. You can check it out here – it’s not perfectly balanced and you may have to install “Noto Sans” for the fonts to display properly (I haven’t gotten around to doing web fonts for it yet). I did the programming, most of the art except the tamagotchi animations, the annoying music, and I helped edit the writing. Catherine did most of our writing and Narf helped with programming, did the Tamagotchi animations, and helped Catherine with syntax for the JSON file.

Then, this past weekend (and when I say weekend here, I mean covering the period from the 16th-19th), was the Montreal Mini Maker Faire followed directly by the Maker Cultures conference and symposium. It was four days straight of very intense, long days.

On Friday and Saturday, I was exhibiting. I didn’t realize how tired I was ’til after — it can be really hard to take a break and have someone else watch your booth when you’re the only one who knows what needs to be done and, as the Gamemaster, your skills are a big part of the experience. It was helpful to have to explain Flip the Script! (the game I was showing) to so many people. I was also on CTV Montreal with the project — you can check out the video here (although unfortunately it misgenders me).

On Sunday, it was a day of talks followed by dinner with the presenters, and Monday was a day of workshops and trying to help define this area.

One very serendipitous meeting from this weekend was with Tess and Karen Tanenbaum from UC Irvine. We had met at QGCon in LA two years ago, which Tess was kind enough to help me remember by saying “we haven’t seen each other since…” because I had total face blindness. The Tanenbaums have done some really cool work with — surprise! NFC! That includes a storytelling NFC glove, so I definitely plan to engage with their work as I think about Traces.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I took the day off and went to see Burn The Stage in theaters. I slept in, I ate ramen, I bought art supplies, I watched a movie, I cuddled kitties, I played video games, I wrote with Tom…It was glorious.

And that brings us to today. Today, I worked on some other tasks needing my attention regarding my work as student rep and some other administrative things. I also had the chance to practice Japanese with a dear friend. She is very patient with me — with all that’s been going on, I haven’t had much chance to practice. Oh, and I got a new night-guard and had it adjusted.

I jokingly told my friend today that maybe the reason I was working so much with Time Travel themes (in the tabletop RPG I am running for my friends, for example, and with this project) is because I never seem to have enough of it and I want to make more of it.

As the Pixies say, “I’ve been tired! T-I-R-E-D spells it, spells it, spells it”.

So I’m trying to be cautious, take the time that I need to rest, and keep on keeping on.

DISSERTATION: Learning new technologies

adventures in gaming, autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, Process Writing, research

Just a quick update so that I have a record of what I was working on yesterday. I spent around seven hours fiddling with the near-field communication tech and trying out different programming. It turns out that there is a lot less detailed guidance for the recommended Adafruit libraries than one would hope — and the alternate libraries are often deprecated, don’t work nearly so well with my physical technology, or just don’t quite do the thing that I want them to do. To make matters a bit more complicated, my chosen NFC tags don’t work with newer phones, which was one of the ways that I was testing, and, without additional apps, the NFC for phones is really only designed for very specific uses (actually activating email, the phone, a webpage), or so it appears. So, just generally not a lot of guidance for using NFC for what I intend to. Generally, people seem to program them on their computer and use them on their phones, or they don’t care about what the actual message on the cards say? Or, if they do, the projects don’t clearly indicate the steps for getting there.

When I program a tag and read it on the reader with my current library (PN532), however, there doesn’t appear to be a function to a) just have it be a string of text and b) to read what the tag actually says.

The library itself has almost no clear documentation, just example projects.

So, it’s got me thinking about alternate ways of handling the issue (like just using the unique ID of each TAG without actually putting a message on it to trigger a program). But I also need to be able to translate what I’m getting from the monitor into actual triggers for the arduino to talk to a javascript app.

I was talking to Tom about this yesterday: I want to be independent and handle the tech myself this time. It’s not that I mind collaborating with others, but because I am largely self-taught when it comes to all the tech that I use, I need to prove to myself that I’m able to do it, or something like that. It seems a bit ridiculous putting it into words, but that’s the feeling that I have. Maybe the truth is that I just need to ask for help because the documentation just isn’t there. It was frustrating to work for that long yesterday and not have a lot of concrete work to show for it. Or maybe the documentation is out there somewhere and I’m just not finding it.

That’s all for now!

Dissertation: Changing Stakes

adventures in gaming, autoethnography, critical making, dissertation, Process Writing

The seven weeks since I began my latest design project, working title/codename “TRACES” have been busy, but I’ve already talked a bit about that, so I won’t go too far into it — first, Ars Electronica, then guest-lecturing, then QGCon, then Different Games, and then a family event in New York City. This, alongside further issues with Tom’s work situations. My apartment still needs to be painted, and we still have furniture to build, rooms to fix up, and boxes to unpack. One thing that I haven’t mentioned that took up a fair bit of time and energy recently is that I released an open letter talking a bit about Tom’s situation. You can read it here if you want to. There are times when this situation makes me completely unable to work, both because my help is needed, and also because it’s incredibly stressful. So I want to be sure to note that, for autoethnography purposes.

All of that means that I haven’t had a lot of breathing room to focus on the project — but things are moving ahead, little by little. Technology is on its way. I have started to write the game’s story and script. I am thinking about aesthetics, and rules, and context. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about time travel — I’ve run two sessions of my time travel RPG with my usual RPG night group, and am aiming to run a third one soon. I’ve also started to read Ryan North’s How To Invent Everything (which is a guide for stranded time travelers to recreating modern amenities and “civilization”). My spouse and I are watching (re-watching, in my case) Altered Carbon. So yeah, I have been thinking a lot about the future and about time travel.

I thought consuming this media about time travel and thinking about the rules of the technology of this world, linked to the thinking about societies and gender that I’ve been doing in relation to The Left Hand of Darkness, would be all the “research” that I needed to do for the writing. But I should have been reading about fascism, bigotry, the darkness of human history.

I wanted to tell a story about my transness and feeling undervalued and underappreciated in a conservative country’s art world context, feeling alienated by people who were supposed to be peers. I wanted to tell a story of hope and community, even if just as the backdrop for a society that did value the characters in question. But now, the stakes have changed. The real-world ones.

It didn’t happen overnight, and maybe they haven’t actually changed as dramatically as all that. But the facts remain that a major world power (the United States) and a neighbour to my country, who is currently electing conservative leaders all over the place, is trying to legislate transgender and intersex people out of existence, based on pure bigotry, ignorance and hatred. This is just the latest in a series of exhausting, dehumanizing events in the United States. Fascism never went away, really, but it just keeps rearing its head in government-mandated ways and somehow each moment feels like that’s as bad as this administration can get. And somehow people keep normalizing these new situations, or somehow believing that there are “two sides” that have equal validity and a right to be heard.

So.

This game…might not be what I thought it was going to be.