I’ve just gone and submitted my first week’s entry to IF Writing Month, and I figured I might as well share it here. The assignment was to create a simple world with a few rooms and objects in it. Hence, I did just that, and the final result can be played here. [1] Whee!

Obligatory Disclaimer: This was written in, well, a couple of evenings, and as such, there’s not much to do, and it hasn’t been beta tested. Also, it’s my first time ever writing a text adventure, [2] meaning my technical proficiency in doing so isn’t quite up to scratch. The next IF games I write will hopefully be much more awesome.

The ever-so-fascinating Mory Buckman recently released a game called The Perfect Color, and I highly recommend that you all check it out. [1] On the surface, it’s about mixing colours, bringing to mind my days as a curious toddler in Montessori school in the late 80’s, but it’s real message is more to do with the creative process and outside forces that influence it. So, yeah, play it, and you’ll definitely see what I mean.

In the meantime, here’s what I wrote to Mory in response:

I thought it was absolutely wonderful, and that it really spoke to me, as a relatively young newcomer to the video game industry. At my job, even though I work for a company that’s supposed to be all about innovation (and honestly, compared to most places, it definitely is), at the end of the day, we need to make money, so there’s a certain amount of pandering we need to do to the “masses”, so to speak. Plus, I’m working in teams, and many of my teammates have completely different tastes from my own, meaning that there always has to be compromises.

This is why I still try my best to work on my own stuff on the side. However, I noticed that in the game, as with in real life, it was very hard to get my colours exactly the way I wanted them, particularly as the game progressed. In real life, I get bogged down with outside pressures when I’m working on personal projects, so I often release things that aren’t perfect. So, in the endgame, my colours were certainly brighter than the “copy-protected” ones, but they didn’t stand out as much as I hoped they would. This is how I tend to feel about my own work at times. It’s saddening, but I still hold out hope that someday in the future, I’ll finish that one game that’ll really shine, and that I’ll hopefully be remembered for after I die.

So, yeah. I liked your game a lot. Thanks for making it.

There’s an Interactive Fiction Writing Month event going on right now, and I’ve decided to take part in it. Hey, it can’t be any worse than NaNoWriMo, right?

Anyway, if any of you dear readers want to give this thing a whirl as well, do let me know. It seems like it’s going to be interesting. As it stands now, I’m already happily tinkering with the nifty natural language goodness of Inform 7. It’s almost like not programming… which means it’s almost like not doing real work!

Last night, I finished playing through Blue Lacuna. All I can really say about it is that it’s one of those interactive stories that makes me feel like I have no business writing interactive stories at all, because someone else just went and did something I’ve always wanted to do, but ten times better. Anyway, what I mean to say is that you should definitely check it out, if you haven’t already.

On a sort of related note, if I were, by chance, to write an IF game at some point in the future — an actual IF game with a text parser and stuff, not just a hypertext/choose-your-own-adventure thingy like the stuff I’ve already done — how many of you would be interested in playing it?

I’ve been following a discussion on Chris Bateman’s blog that started out having to do with Islamophobia but later on, as most conversations tend to do, veered off into the general topic of whether or not it’s justified to take offence at jokes directed towards a social group that one belongs to. The point was raised that “individuals who do not feel strong affiliation with any group (ethnic, religious or cultural) sometimes struggle to appreciate the concerns of those who do draw upon such groups for their sense of identity”, and a couple of responses — both, quite tellingly, from white men — expressed that they did indeed feel more like “individuals” than “members of a group”, and therefore couldn’t for the life of them understand how people could possibly get so fired up about those damn jokes.

I have to admit that there was a time — comparatively recently, in fact — when I expressed the same sort of attitude. I’m a woman of mixed race, but I’ve never felt like a stereotype of either of those groups, so why not just ignore said stereotypes? And yet, as of late, I’ve been noticing with increasing frequency that in the society I live in, “default person” essentially translates to “young white male heterosexual”, which means that if you don’t fit into one of those default categories, most people will see you as part of a “different” group, even if you yourself don’t. After a while, there’s just no escaping the “wow, she’s a GIRL!” or “wow, she’s NOT WHITE!” sentiments, no matter how hard one tries to ignore them. Whether I like it or not, I am defined by my gender, and I am defined by my mixed race.

So, do I get offended when people make sexist/racist/insert your favourite “ist” here jokes? Hell yes I do, although I think it has less to do with being offended personally than it does with being saddened by the thought that people even feel the need to put others down for their own amusement. And when people who are privileged enough to be seen as “default” accuse those who are not of being overly sensitive… well, I can’t help but be sceptical of their claims. Maybe I should just ignore them.