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In December I ran an online workshop called "Research Gamemaking: Skills, Cultures, Politics" as the capstone of my DECRA that's been researching Aus game development
Here is a long thread about 1) the public archive you can access and 2) how I tried to run a decent online event
Here is a long thread about 1) the public archive you can access and 2) how I tried to run a decent online event
1) The public archive
The workshop brought together researchers of "videogame production" (broadly defined!) that have super influenced me over the past three years. Lots of great talks and discussion about recent and in-progress studies. It was really wonderful and stimulating!
The workshop brought together researchers of "videogame production" (broadly defined!) that have super influenced me over the past three years. Lots of great talks and discussion about recent and in-progress studies. It was really wonderful and stimulating!
Here is a PDF of the workshop program, complete with abstracts of presentations and links to videos of the talks where available: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/207132/
The event mostly took place on the Workshop Zone, a virtual space designed by @jemztones and @haraiva based off @molleindustria's virtual LIKE LIKE gallery. Zone is so exciting to me for so many reasons.
The Zone is now open to the public, here: https://researching-gamemaking.glitch.me/
The Zone is now open to the public, here: https://researching-gamemaking.glitch.me/
Upstairs you will find a series of classrooms where you can attend the different sessions. Check the program to see what room each talk is in!
Downstairs there's an exhibition of choice quotes from my 150+ interviews with Australian game devs, as well as links to various browser-based Australian videogames I think are neat. Really excited for people to explore this!!!
You can also just find the publicly available talks in this Youtube playlist if you want: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8EvBPKtPNjNPW4CbM9Bvlvo0uBiw5jot
Some speakers didn't want their talks publicly available, and they've been removed from this playlist and the zone (the abstracts are still in the program though)
Some speakers didn't want their talks publicly available, and they've been removed from this playlist and the zone (the abstracts are still in the program though)
Perhaps most exciting in that playlist for most of you are the 3 talks I got commissioned from aus game devs:
- @Wrenegadey talking about Unpacking as an 'accidentally commercial' game
- @Tezamondo talking about 'new wave Australiana'
- @Nvekm breaking down Necrobarista's budget
- @Wrenegadey talking about Unpacking as an 'accidentally commercial' game
- @Tezamondo talking about 'new wave Australiana'
- @Nvekm breaking down Necrobarista's budget
Lots of really great talks and exciting new areas of research around videogame development! It's an area that #gamestudies has only recently really started latching onto and it was so exciting to see such diverse topics and methods. Check it out!!
I'm worried about losing all these tweets so I'm going to tweet them before moving on to Part 2 of this thread.
Right. 2) How I tried to run a not-boring online event.
I really wanted to avoid just asking people to sit on Zoom for like 8hrs a day. Real-time online confs just don't work except for very small groups imo. People can't commit the time or attention while working from home
I really wanted to avoid just asking people to sit on Zoom for like 8hrs a day. Real-time online confs just don't work except for very small groups imo. People can't commit the time or attention while working from home
I also wanted to invite people from around the world (why not???) so timezones are a thing. It was also meant to be a 'workshop' so I wanted to find a way to make it feel collaborative and conversational, not just one-way content delivery.
So I designed a fully asynchronous approach that worked really well! Idea was a 2-day workshop spread over a week. Participants could spent 2ish hours a day, whenever works for them, engaging with the workshop around their other commitments.
Presenters pre-recorded talks and then we used a Discord server with a text channel for each session where discussions evolved over the course of the week, non-linearly, as different participants engaged with different panels. It seemed to work really well!
Then I also had 4 entirely optional Zoom catch-ups, some better for different timezones, which were essentially the 'chat in the hallway between sessions'. Just to give a face to everyone. These were particularly lovely after that whole 2020 thing.
The Zone also helped immensely to give a sense of place and presence to the event. Virtually sitting in a classroom with people was super lovely and nice.
The one issue we had, just like any sort of 'flexible' work, is that people constantly felt like they were not contributing enough, even though they were. So that's something to think about: how to not make 'you can engage whenever' feel like 'you should engage always'.
But overall it was great and I'm super grateful to all the participants for giving it a red hot go. Online events can be great if on the one hand you don't over-engineer them and, on the other, you don't stubbornly try to make them the same as IRL events.
For this one, it came down to me thinking about what sort of experience and vibe I would want the event to capture if it were IRL (collaborative, communal, chill), and then thinking about how I could do the same if the event was online. ~fin~
Oh, one final point!! The Discord server is now living on as a general 'videogame production studies' community. If this is an area you vaguely work in as an academic (employed, independent, student, whatever), DM and I'll send you an invite link.
