The Creative Process #31 - Bubble of Good

Boy howdy, world events in January 2025 were something, weren’t they? And that’s just the start of 2025. I have lots of thoughts about all of that, but none of them useful to anyone, especially myself. Let’s bring thoughts all the way down from the burning stratospheres, down to the little warm nook of creativity right in front of us. Just for now.

IF Short Games Showcase

From December last year to mid-way through January, Encorm and Emery Joyce ran the Interactive Fiction Short Games Showcase, an opportunity to highlight some of the shorter games that were released in 2024. These were little games enjoyable in half an hour, to put a ring around it. While submissions were open through December, January was mostly for reviewing.

This showcase did really well - 93 entries each garnering about 10 ratings each. I submitted One True Love because it was short and sweet, and showcase-applicable. Cart, my game about authoritarianism, still hovers behind me like a black dog, unreleased and unnerving.

One True Love got 42nd out of 93 with ten ratings with an average bang on 3.5 (5 threes and 5 fours). This seems about right. It’s a shame it didn’t tickle anyone specifically, but also good that it didn’t outrage anyone. Top half of submitted games is respectable, I feel.

Of freaking course midway through voting I played my own game again and found a bug. A bug also found by mathbrush in his IFDB review. Goddamnit. Some of the writing choices I made last year were curious, now that I had almost a year’s separation from it.

I should fix the game, but then I might break it even more. Or notice more work I could do on it for no huge benefit. I still like it though.

I rated 11 games and gave feedback to a handful of them. One or two irked me by being only barely interactive, but I kept a kind and optimistic view in my ratings. I managed to play a few about food and they made me hungry, which is probably great writing.

A Careful Pace Downhill

The workshop I’m the logistics guy for is underway. After a lot of effort by a lot of people, it seems to have gotten off to a great start. Stress was understandably high this month. I don’t normally manage people or projects or have to talk to that many people, so I expended a lot of energy do those sorts of things. I’m glad that it’s going well. There’s another few weeks of the workshop so I’m trying to maintain the pace, maybe expand my responsibilities to participate in the workshop rather than just run it, and not crash in a heap.

While in the back of my mind I’ve already reserved a chunk of March for rest, relaxation and creative projects, I’m attempting to keep my focus on the here and now. Partly to make sure I don’t drop the ball, but also you can only do good in the present, so keep your attention there.

My little escapades into games this month have been limited and somewhat related. I continue to enjoy my Steam Deck and have been playing Tactical Breach Wizards, and Gordy and the Monster Moon. I got into Insurmountable for a bit, but there is only so much trudging up and down inhospitable mountains one can do.

I then dove into La-Mulana, getting much further in it than the last time I tried. I wanted the same sort of game as La-Mulana but better, so managed to get the latest Indiana Jones game working beautifully on Linux. It’s not quite a better La-Mulana, but it is a much better Indiana Jones game.

A game I’d love but could never make would be an Indiana Jones-like, where you traipse around a procedurally-generated world, finding lost civilizations and relics. Perhaps like if you took the Spinoza and post-apocalyptica out of Caves of Qud:

The Best of Text

I knew all too well that I’d find January draining, so I made sure I took rests and didn’t push myself too hard outside of what I needed to do. I did, however, find a narrow sliver of ability to do some creative work. mathbrush had a book called The Best of Text that he was publishing. He had shared some temporary cover art:

I took that as inspiration and made my own version, in Blender. As always, I added a little technical challenge to the piece, using Blender’s new Ray Portal BSDF node. There’s no compositing at all. It’s all in-camera.

The background here is designed to evoke Zork I, and I was surprised to note there isn’t a strong canonical design for Zork’s white house, nor the letter box.

I’m not altogether happy with the picture — I have a long list of things that could be done to improve it — but I’m calling it done. I asked mathbrush if he wanted to use the image instead of his art, including some cover design, but he was already good to go with his version. I think my version miiiight have been an improvement, but no point chasing that.

It’s funny that I had some wilder ideas for this piece, but tried to keep it firmly within the bounds of time and skill available. And even then it was elbowing the borders there.

Tuning in the Resonance

Last newsletter I mentioned my attempt at a yearly theme: The Year of Resonance. This turned out to be much harder than I had hoped.

One friend commented that this was basically Marie Kondo-ing my life.

In my heart, it isn’t quite right, but damn near close enough to make me frown.

By chance I had come across a new term that, again, was close to my intent but not the same in my mind: meliorism. I do think that progress is a thing within your control, and skew mildly optimistic (some days) but it’s not a sure thing. Max Roser’s quote resonates:

"The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better."

So while my focus is shrunk all the way down to now, in that little circle things are definitely a lot better than they could be. I could just maintain that, but I want the delta to be even better.

I determinedly quit DuoLingo as promised.

I took up SimplyPiano, which is a similar daily-challenge thing but way less aggressive about reminders, and a lot more fun and challenging. Also it’s vastly less skeezy about subscriptions. I’ve had to be mildly assertive about being given time to do my practice (without the kids interrupting, crawling all over the piano or otherwise messing with my practice), but it’s worked well so far. I’m considering buying a mini tripod to take videos of my piano playing to see how I progress (I admit I love those sorts of progress videos.)

Another change that I was not prepared for was actively combating dissonance. Like many others, I’m adjusting my media to manage my intake of despair and disaster. But I’ve also taken a few active steps to push back against casual misogyny or 4chan Nazi politics, where I might otherwise just roll my eyes and avoid the confrontation. I’m not a fighter, nor someone good with trading vocal opinions. I’m not sure where my limits are there, and what I’d sign my name to. Again, Cart lopes around in the background.

I do want to focus on being a creative, positive, productive force in the world. I want to bolster and enable others. I feel like my creative work can do a little bit of that, but also contributing to the bubble of community activity around the creative works can do that, like rating and reviewing work when really you just want to vegetate and watch YouTube.

I want to make cool things for cool people, and the more opportunities for cool things to exist, and the more cool people there are, the better. I’d much rather be in a happy, productive community than lord of a wasteland.

Stay safe out there, and tell me the cool things you are making!