It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update so I figured it’s about time to do just that.
Firstly, let’s talk about Cave of Atman DX. Towards the end of last year I continued to build out the game and responded to some of the feedback from a round of play testing. Unfortunately I hit a bit of wall with some HaxeFlixel bugs that don’t look like they’ll be resolved anytime soon. As such I decided the game would need be rewritten in another framework (thinking was MonoGame or Godot). Beyond the framework issues I was also struggling with some design challenges with later puzzles.
Despite these issues I think the game is in quite a good state. There’s a good amount of content (4+ hours) and a solid design base. There’s just a lot of polishing and refinement that needs to take place.
Around this time I came up with a compelling new game idea. Since releasing Expand in 2015 I’ve found it difficult to find new ideas that are worth pursuing. Expand was a huge time investment and so I’ve been weary when it comes to jumping on larger projects. This game idea was quite small, focused and compelling.
So from November last year till mid June I chipped away at some of foundational code and tooling for this new project. It too is in a good state but has some design issues to work through so has been put on ice for time being.
This is where things diverge….
Towards the end of last year I got quite involved in political activism. I’ve been politically engaged for a long time but beyond the odd online petition or regular donations I hadn’t done any real activism. I tried joining a political party but couldn’t handle the banal branch meetings.
In late November 2018, I received a call from a youth climate group who I was donating money to. They were running some training and asked if I’d be interested in coming along. I completed the training and was invited to help at their booth and at their protests around the national Labour conference. I spent three days talking to Labour members about the climate crisis and participating in several protests. It’s was pretty insightful and I really enjoyed myself.
Given I’m now in my early 30’s I figured I was a bit too old for this group. Plus I had a bunch of concerns around how effective the work we did was. I’ve always been skeptical of shouty protests. I like the idea of direct action but nothing was happening in this side of the country.
At one of the protests I spoke to someone from GetUp!. They suggested I come along to their local Action Group and do some calling. They had a great pitch and GetUp!’s data driven focus was very appealing. I volunteered with them for about four months in the lead up to the Australian election in May. I did weekly calling, door knocking and a tiny bit of training for new callers. It was a good experience but after the election I felt like I needed to move on.
While doing GetUp! I was also involved with Extinction Rebellion (XR). Despite being politically engaged for a long time it was their UK bridge action in November 2018 that pushed me to get more involved. I’d never seen anything like it. It was festive, respectful and compelling.
In February, Extinction Rebellion ran their first major public event in South Australia. It was a talk followed by the formation of several working groups. I came along to this and got pretty involved from the get go. After the terrible election result XR felt like the place to be. I’ve been helping them out ever since.
It’s been tricky trying to manage game development and activism. Since July I’ve been just doing activism. I’m hoping with the summer break I can rebalance things. We’ll see how it goes.
