Possible Futures and My United Books of Academia

It's almost the end of March, and there's snow in the sky. I don't think I need to say anything else about that.

As I'm preparing to take off for GDC, I find myself gazing wide-eyed into the future - or trying to anyway. There are so many things for me to learn and so many people for me to meet in the days to come. But more importantly, there will be so many opportunities for the things I learn and the people I meet to boomerang around again and show up in my life in an impactful way. I'd like to hope so, at least.

Another thing that has me looking far ahead is The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half  the Twenty-First Century. It's a few years old, but I've been so tuned out of science since I graduated high school that it's fascinating me. The breadth of the essays contained within it also promises insight into a stunning array of specialized fields. Right now, I'm reading about how science has been able to transfer portions of the brain between species, and what consequences these types of transfers might have on humans. Bizarre stuff that one would only expect to see in fiction.

The reason I'm reading this is because I was inspired to look to the future by the post-literacy presenter at ACRL. While post-literacy served as a starting point for my research, I'm bouncing around quite a few ideas right now: nanobiology, transhumanism, the post-information age, and plain old human and brain evolution. All quite fascinating. I think I may have been spurred to dive into the stacks and max out my borrowing allowances because I had just come from a library conference, but it's been a while since I got my hands on a big pile of books, and I'm really enjoying the process of scanning through them for the information I need, while paging more slowly through the information I like. Ain't research grand?

I'm also trying to whip through a book on why children need fantasy violence, Killing Monsters. It's a pretty interesting read thus far, explaining how violence represented in media that are distinctly separate from a child's reality (toy soldiers, comic books, cartoons) can help children to understand violence better rather than desensitize them to it. I'm curious to get to some more in-depth analysis of where the border is between fantasy and reality, because that's where trouble often ensues, at least from the critics' perspectives.

This post was a bit all over the place, but I'm just out to share my thoughts lately - it takes a lot less time than actually stringing together the pieces, and guarantees I share anything at all!

Rousing Round Table

I've just come from the working lunch round tables, and although I'm not sure the round table discussion wound up being about the true topic at hand, it was fun nonetheless. I sat down to a table centered on the topic of "Delivering Resources to Developing World Users." Naturally, I was curious what the library industry was doing to address this issue - I hoped to gain insight into some possibly non-electronically based delivery methods. The table facilitator was Jaron Porciello, a librarian from Cornell University working on a project called TEEAL: The essential electronic agricultural library. Sponsored by a long list of partners, this LanTEEAL 2.0, or the Agricultural Library in a Box, works to deliver hard drives jam-packed with full-text articles to agricultural scientists in four different languages.

Two of the women at the table sat down because they saw that we were relatively lonely, and Tim joined as well (obviously because I was already there). The last contributor to the discussion was a man from the Netherlands working with learners in developing countries. He said that at least one of the foreign libraries he was working with had only one computer with a .5kbps dial-up Internet connection to service the entire campus population. The librarian also knew little to no English, and therefore could only sort the books in his library by the LC classification, having no other idea of what each book actually contained. I mentioned to him that we were using cell phones as a way to reach populations with limited computer access through the UN project, and he received a few other helpful contacts from the women at the table before taking off for another.

As seems always to be the case, the conversation diverged because there was an interest in hearing more about the projects that we were working on. One of the women at the table has a 44-year-old brother with cystic fibrosis, so she and Tim fell into a rather natural conversation, while I continued talking to Jaron about the possible entry strategies to marketing and distributing the UN game in the long run. The conversation was wonderful, fruitful, and energizing. I look forward to continuing a correspondence with her in the months to come as the UN project really getes underway with its development.

All very exciting, and it all happened in such a short amount of time. Even if my ever more frequent contemplation of what life would be like as a librarian turns out to be nothing career-altering, I'll never stop loving what the world of academic libraries has to offer me.

Sky-High Night, Low-Hanging Morning

Fortunately, the title of this post has more to do with the weather and my current location than it does with my spirits. Last night, Tim and I went to the Chair's Reception at the Columbia Tower Club, on the 75th floor of the Columbia Tower. The view was absolutely gorgeous - it reminded me why cities everywhere fascinate me. We had a good conversation with Mat Willmott, the puzzle master for the earlier MIT session, too. Looking forward to getting a peak at the Cambridge area from an insider's perspective at some point in the future.

This morning, the classic Seattle clouds have finally rolled in, and rain is on the agenda. This may give me more motivation to stay indoors and do work than I already had, but I may still venture down to Chinatown with my camera - I promised someone I'd get a few good pics of the city.

I'm looking foward to a wrap-up of the conference. Though it's been a great experience, it'll be nice to get back to the normal ebb and flow of things for...well, a few days before I'm off to San Francisco. I can't stop thinking about how bizarre and wonderful the past two years of school have been. I'm definitely going to miss it, but I think I'll enjoy the days without a constant surprise on the horizon more than I can even imagine right now.

The Absolutely True Conundrum of Sherman Alexei

So the rest of conference day 2 was a bit up and down. I listened to a panel presented by a group from MIT who were using puzzles published in their student newspaper and posted around campus to teach students about the tools available through the library. Very cool, makes me wish I were better at making cryptograms and psuedo-sudoku that embed a necessary recognition of ISBN numbers and how to request materials from archives.

Then, local writer/poet/playwright/comedian Sherman Alexei gave a keynote speech. Having read his bio in the program, I came into the session wondering what he could possibly say that was at all related to information literacy. Sadly, I came out of the session thinking the answer was "not much at all." Don't get me wrong, he was an entertaining speaker, quick with his words and unabashed in his self-expression, but I was frankly surprised that his talk was so much about himself and his perception of the world. I am left wondering now if he was tasked with being the mid-conference keynote speaker simply to provide a pick-me-up for the attendees.

On my way out, however, someone turned to me on the escalators and said she recognized me from my presentation earlier in the day. We had a brief conversation about gender studies, and I wish I had gotten her name to continue the conversation. For me, that was the pick-me-up needed.

Surfacing for Air

I keep saying it: I'm a terrible blogger. But wow, 3 months this time...oh how the time goes by. I'm listening to Owl City's "Hello Seattle" in...you guessed it, Seattle. Maybe it's because it hasn't rained yet, but I'm really loving the city. Well, I am now that I've been down to the Pike Street Market. It's the largest year-round market in the country, which I think is just phenomenal, not to mention its diversity of offerings in local and imported arts and crafts.

I discovered today that wearing my polka-dotted dress, Ann Taylor sweater, white costume jewelry, and funky red lipstick, while not particularly mature by my standards, has gotten me called ma'am an awful lot. Or at least that's what I attribute it to. Maybe eating and shopping alone is just considered an older person's thing to do. What I also discovered was the best panang curry I've ever had in my life, at a Thai place called Typhoon down by the water. Perfect combination of creamy, peanutty, and spicy. And the deal-sealer: it was cheap. I love a place where I can afford to be a foodee.

My presentation this morning with peer Tim Miner and Information Literacy Librarian Sarah Cohen was quite possibly the most fun I've had giving a presentation in a long while. Many of the questions we expected to be grilled with were passed off on the presenters just before us, who were paired with our session. Either way, I think we could have handled it, and our ideas were generally accepted well. Yet another day where becoming a librarian feels at least marginally feasible.

I say marginally because being here makes me realize how little I really do know about librarianship. I've done my best to get excited about the panels and contributed papers, but I just don't know what a lot of them are trying to address. That said, this is probably the friendliest community of conference goers I've met thus far, and so I at least don't feel like running out of the room when I realize I don't know much about the topics at hand.

So, one more day of the conference to go before I fly home and get back to business, which there's been quite a lot of lately. I got my first apartment, which has switched on the financial freakout flashing red light in my head, and consequently I've been becoming increasingly more nervous about securing a sustainable career in Burlington. Heck, I'm even unsure of finding a sustainable job in Burlington, let alone something that will advance my life goals. I hope my portfolio will sell my abilities as an individual, and I hope that I soon find the time to work on that portfolio more!

But enough of worries. There are plenty of things to celebrate. I'll be going to GDC for the first time in just over a week now, and I was on VPR last month talking about games and higher ed. with the fabulous Ann DeMarle and Wesley Knee. That was another fun presentation-esque experience, and yet another strange thing for me to put in my CV.

I'm seeing more and more that my life may not always be full of surprises, but it sure is full of strange things, and I think it's something to be valued. On that note, back to the conference I go!

There's a Battle in My Head...

There's a battle in my head that stops the words in my mouth before they dare escape. It renders me motionless, pulling my mind into a state of complete philosophical quandary. I start to see conflicting factors cast above me like stars, and the voices around me feed into this elaborate atmosphere. Meteors, constellations, and nebulous schools of thought begin to form, but none claim my focus as I probe for the answers to life... or at least, the answers to my life.

For a long time, I've considered games with meaning and an intellectual or educational purpose as the pinnacle of my design goals. I expected to be fighting an uphill battle, but I felt that the fight would be one that engaged many: strong, sharp minds sounding the call to war, weathered hands with experience and determination wielding the standard. What I forgot to expect was the vast array of problems that slow down any band of warriors: the volley of setbacks that snag the troops with budget restraints, communication breakdowns, and deadlines that force a loss in quality.

It's gotten me thinking about whether it is worth the scars. Would it be any easier to ignore the intense messages and clearly-defined educational goals of "serious" games? Would it make things simpler if I focused on creating games for people who already play them, love them, and will shell out their money for anything with strong reviews and a good ad campaign? Would I feel better if I allowed this conflicted battle to carry on around me without my input at all? It's not unreasonable to expect that someone is going to come up with an idea for me rather than with me, and that I will only find challenge in working within such constraints. Would it be best for me to cool my fires and settle to the task without question and concern?

Easier, simpler? Maybe. Better? Definitely not. It isn't in my heart to stand down, to stop pushing boundaries, to stop asking questions. I certainly don't expect to be able to devise the strategy for every revolutionary assault on game development, but I do expect to remain a messenger and a reporter in the fray. I see a lot of things, and they aren't often pretty or easy. My only hope is that the relay of such observations will not fall on deaf ears. I can see that I am in a good place to sound the warning, and while messages are often lost in the frantic swells of production, I think a watchful hand from above that knows how to use its many eyes and ears is really all I can ask for.

Long Day, Late Night

Well, I'm sitting in the Emergent Media Center and it's 1:30 AM. Don't worry, I'm not working overtime - I'm just using an incredibly quiet space to catch up on my academic life. A programmer sits across the table from me, doing the same. I could take this as a bad sign, but I am beyond contemplative right now. I have reached a point where there are decidedly too many things to do in a day...so I'm going to do them through the night for a bit as well. I'm confident that nothing is riding on me being awake right now, but it certainly is nice to have a moment to lay down some thoughts.

I was actually inspired to write by someone else. I would call this person a co-worker, colleague, and peer, but I'm not sure that he would view me on such equal footing. As projects are wrapping up for the semester, he approached me to ask what I thought of the situation, and we proceeded to spend the next hour talking about the projects we're working on together, his classes, how much he learns from other students, teachers he likes, teachers he's frustrated with, and the ability to capture my personality for use as a constant source of motivation. I never thought anyone would want a "Lauren in Pocket" as he called it, but it was rather touching to hear that I have had such a positive impact on another person's college experience. I've never viewed myself as particularly inspiring, but I suppose a kind ear goes a long way. With a spring in my step despite the late hour, I went on to shoot the professional breeze with the other young worker in the room for another half hour or so. Just one night of such conversation has left me pondering the immeasurable value of human connections.

If anything needs to be a part of my daily/weekly/monthly routine, it is finding time to talk to interesting people. It may feel highly unproductive at times, but it stirs up a sense of accomplishment that reaches beyond to-do lists and milestones. In this particular situation, it did turn into quite a valuable conversation, allowing me to tune into the flaws of production processes past and present as viewed from someone else's perspective. Next step: finding a way to accommodate those disparities. Maybe I like being a producer more than I realized.

Moral of the story: talk to people. Talk often, and on any subject that presses against the edges of your mind. You never know what will come of it, but it is guaranteed to make you feel better on a deeper level than any mild source of entertainment or leisurely recreation.

Tools of the Trade

Okay, so I haven't blogged since September. I'm a bad person, I know. I would argue that my life is busy, but the whole point of blogging is often for me to share my ideas quickly with a handful of incredible but widely scattered people. If I have lost anyone's interest by taking so long to get back on the ball, I'm sorry!

I definitely haven't written for lack of things to write about. I gave a speech at the EMC's Grand Opening about a month ago, and I just got back from the Montreal International Game Summit. It is for the latter reason that I now write, and that I now force myself to publish the post without leaving it drafted for another three weeks. There are many things to consider and share about my time at MIGS, but I'm going to break them down into chunks that are easier for me to commit to writing.

So, the first thing that became a pretty strong trend over the course of the conference: meaning in games. I will have to stay away from commenting on Jonathan Blow's final keynote speech on the subject because I left early to help out at the glorious Gamma 3D party, but I did catch enough of his presentation to know that he was addressing the issue. I also attended a panel discussion on the subject, however, which was followed by a round table. In that time, I noticed a very interesting dilemma.

During the panel discussion, it was easy to observe that the men lined up before me to debate the issue of meaning in games were not new to the industry; they looked at least a little seasoned and comfortable in their shoes as creative directors (Although Jason Della Rocca was on the panel and isn't a creative director, he looked quite comfortable anywhere I saw him over the course of the conference). At the round table after, I was struck by the fact that 95% of the participants were students. What does this mean?

To me, it means that being able to inject meaning into games, or even being able to stop and think about it seriously with others, is a privilege within the industry. In college, we are pushed to experiment and question and theorize in ways that we cannot when there are jobs on the line. Once you've climbed the latter and find yourself resting on a sturdy rung, you can then return to the thought that you should hold firmly to values and create meaningful experiences.

At least that's the way it looks right now. If I turn to Warren Spector's opening keynote speech on the game industry, it was clear that he had a great amount of faith in the upcoming generation as design pioneers, ready to take the foundations of game development and utilize them in previously unforeseen and unfeasible ways. I hope that his was an accurate forecast of times to come. If it was, I would be legitimately excited to immerse myself in the game industry and to create something that is both meaningful and engaging. However, it was made abundantly clear that this is not industry standard at present.

One of the first sessions I attended was a talk by Eric Chartrand in which the paradigm of games was identified as unrealistic and inaccessible to most members of the new game audience. He pushed for games that would appeal to larger markets, and for doing so by questioning the facts of games we take for granted. They were humorous rules, noting that all good things must come in crates and that every few minutes a huge bad ass monster boss fight will occur, but he made an important point. We have established a language of games that is neither comprehended nor appreciated by a vast majority of human beings.

Randy Smith went on to reference similar aspects of games in his talk on games as art. Observing that games are able to make as much or more money than films when only targeting a small slice of the audience that movies touch, he called for a shift in beliefs away from the fact that games have to be fun and for more informed design choices that speak to a real message. This is not necessary in all games, but it is important to compare movie and literature genres to game genres. How long has it taken for us to begin to encompass not only sci-fi and fantasy, but horror, comedy, historical and realistic fiction? When will we get to the documentaries, dramas, and biographicals? How lightly do we touch on these genres without ever getting beyond the surface? When will there be games that feel like short films, or even poems?

I have reached the conclusion that if I get into the gaming industry without veering off in the direction of serious games entirely, I will want to make a game like a poem. A really epic poem.

Expansion Three: The Working World

Today's tidbit before the real deal is: I got my letter to my dad back in the mail today. This saddened me a bit, but the good news is that it was returned because it couldn't be forwarded to the right address, not because he did not read it and returned it himself. So, round two with a different address begins tomorrow. I hope it works out better.

So, on to the main topic. I'm in a strange state this year, it's official. I don't feel ready to venture out into the world, but the tediousness of gen. ed. classes is wearing me thin. I rush to get done with simple reading and writing assignments, and find myself with little real time to commit to my design work. I have great hopes to complete some real work of my own this semester, but I also have great desires to see the other projects I'm working on come to fruition in the best possible way. In some ways, it's frustrating because I feel like I don't have quite enough effort to go around. In other ways, it's refreshing to have responsibilities in my workplace that are purely focused around my field of study. This is my first year without a desk job that fills my time with peaceful but irrelevant tasks. Any work that I'm doing outside of the classroom right now is definitely a part of who I am and where I want to go in life.

That said, I still haven't quite nailed down the "where I want to go" part...A month ago, I was ready to start applying to the JET (Japanese Exchange and Teaching) Programme, which would ship me off to a school in Japan for a year starting next July or August. It's a rigorous application process, but it's a wonderful opportunity to see the country and to be immersed in the language. After only a day of listening to my family speaking rapidly back and forth in Japanese, a part of me felt at home again, and even more determined to push my education further.

About a week and a half ago, however, I was reminded that I had expressed interest in helping my program director start a gaming business right here in Burlington. There are many things about this plan that appeal to me. I love Burlington and the Champlain community. I want to make games with a meaning or a message that is more than just entertainment value or driven by profits. And I want to stay tied to the college community in a way that may allow me to help expand the possibilities for Champlain students to the point that I'm painfully jealous of the opportunities available to them. This would be a pretty big feat, given how lucky I think I've been in my own college experience, but it's one I'd be happy to strive for.

Then there's the down side...is it a good idea to stick so close to what has quickly become my home? Should I be getting my feet wet out in "the real world"? Am I going to be missing out on opportunities of my own by staying? I can't answer any of those questions, which is part of the reason why it's so easy to commit to Burlington. And if I don't reach out, no one's going to reach in and pull me away, that's a guaranteed fact. As more and more of my friends and colleagues begin to take wing, I'm sure I'll be wondering even more than I am now.

But no matter my conclusions, I must remember two things...I'm young, and the future is vast. Even five years in Burlington would be a drop in the pond (I hope) by the time I'm done with my professional career. And given my track record so far, I know that amazing opportunities can pop up right underneath your feet. So, I'll be holding out and chugging along for the next eight months, and here's to whatever comes next!