CyanD-ULTra

A generous $20 tip from work earlier today (at a performance job that doesn't typically yield them) led me to the local taqueria. It's a convenient 5-minute walk from my apartment. I proudly wear my PJs to local haunts and did no differently today. Partway there--my pockets stuffed with my wallet, phone, keys, and airpods--I realized I wasn't going to end up needing half my things.

Dependence on technology is an insidious thing. It slithers over and into us, controlling us without us even knowing. Through all tech's benefits, it's critical to keep those downsides in mind. I can't say I would have pondered them so thoroughly tonight had I not already born a headache.

I decided not to use my phone the entire outing. I already had a headache, and I really wouldn't need it regardless. It's not like anything urgent was hovering over me; at least, not at that exact moment. But we are so deeply linked to our devices that the act of pulling out a phone is an unquestionable instinct. That is: you don't question your instinct. Instincts are designed to allow you to thrive in the world you have built. But is that the only world there is?

It's kind of incredible just how much there is to see when you actively stop to notice things. Sat at the outdoor tables with my food, I ate slowly. I loosely dropped in on nearby conversations and wondered at how separate my life is from theirs, that their talk concerns people I will never know. I noticed the way the trees in the parking lot lined up with one another. I noticed the clover-looking leaf that hung beneath the brush in the nearby pot. I noticed all the people walking to and from their cars and how they engaged with one another; how they paid their unrelated peers no mind. I noticed how strangely self-aware I inversely became just by noticing these things, and I noticed the backwards kind of comfort I found within that sort of terrifying feeling.

At least once a week I am struck by the reality of this universe we live in. That we live on a giant rock spinning through space, and my day-to-day concerns are centered on whatever the made-up concept of "Illinois" is. We live within such small and simple regards to a universe that extends wider than our minds are equipped to handle. That said, we really do contain multitudes, if we are able to notice those things at all.

I understand the same as anyone that it often feels impossible to put down the phone. It's a tool designed to make our world more bearable, condensing our experience of it into something algorithmically sifted and easier to sit within. But the longer we live this way, the harder it becomes to fight our instincts: the ones we know are detrimental, but "cannot help."

Not everything you notice will make you uncomfortable. Some of it will. But isn't that discomfort what makes existence interesting? It's our gift to notice, to think, and to feel. Why waste it?

(For what it's worth, I did pull out my phone, once: to update my team on what I'd accomplished that day. It could have waited until later, but the threat of losing one's current thought to the aether is real enough to inspire a reasonable break of metaphorical immersion.)

There's something kind of awesome about how, in this day and age, new vocabulary can be coined by a tweet. You've probably heard by now of the "friendslop game:" take PEAK, R.E.P.O., Lethal Company, or Among Us. Wikipedia defines friendslop as follows:

"[...] a subgenre of cooperative video game that focus on a low barrier of entry and social interaction. Created as a portmanteau of "friend" and "slop", [sic] these social games tend to be low-budget, low-cost indie games intended to attract entire friend groups to purchase copies to play together online."

Nothing puts the recency of the field of video games into perspective as much as the irrevocable fact that this subgenre could not have existed without its sociopolitical context. Taking Among Us as the first true (or, at least, popular) friendslop game kind of puts this into perspective. I'm immensely interested in how the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the way people around the world engaged with the internet and digital media, and this is a great case study for that.

Multiplayer video games are certainly nothing new. They've been around since the beginning, starting at arcade cabinets before jumping to home consoles with shared controllers. But friendslop is set aside from the typical multiplayer game by the very nature of that multiplayer engagement. Friendslop is what it is, and works how it does, because players do not share the same physical space. Friendslop games rely on that wireless connection, using the game itself to bridge that gap. It's about playing with the artificial feeling of connection we get when we are virtually in the same digital space as our peers. During the pandemic, this form of connection was invaluable, and it's why Among Us exploded in popularity in 2020.

It's no wonder that following such a drastic social shift in the world, these types of games would stick. Though of course we are now able to go back to playing in-person with our pals, there's something simple and comforting about hopping into #vc and booting up a game or two of PEAK with the boys. It's accessible, it's familiar, and it's something you can do from anywhere, no carpool coordination required. It goes hand-in-hand with the rising prominence of Discord as a platform for the average person. I had Discord for very specific purposes in 2019, and that was as someone who already spent a lot of time engaging with people on other online platforms. But through using Discord servers for courses and group chats in university, I noticed more and more people (including those who would otherwise not have been as "online") engaging in these spaces. Lines could be drawn to the expansion of fandom spaces from 2020 onward and the repeated commentary I have seen about what happens when "offline people" find and begin engaging with these longstanding internet fan communities. It's a merging of worlds: a natural symptom of what happens when a society at large becomes more and more deeply engrossed in the digital sphere.

Friendslop as a term comes with supposedly negative connotations given how we understand "slop" as it stands alone. The frequent association with AI doesn't help matters much. The use of "slop" is meant to indicate a cheapness behind development, or an implication that it's nothing more than a cash grab. I don't think the former is a bad thing, and I don't think the latter is necessarily true. I'm unsure why the very concept of a game being cheaply made is automatically detestable. If it works, and it clearly grabs an audience, then what's the harm? Is it so bad that a group of indie developers--or sometimes a solo dev--would see success from something simple they cooked up on their weekends? The more these digital engagements bleed into the mainstream, the more the "gamer" side of the equation really sees the "developer" side. Game development as a practice has seen a major boom over the last decade largely because developer practices are more accessibly publicized. It's not a secret practice of wizardry: these are real and tangible skills that you could learn, that you could apply. Why feel threatened by that fact? There are only going to be more and more games releasing every day, anyway. Could that really be such a bad thing? (The discussion of an ""oversaturated"" indie game market is a discussion best left for another day.)

All that is to say: I really love how developers have co-opted the term "friendslop" and used it for their own gain. At GDC this year, there was a talk titled "Putting the 'Friends' in Friendslop: The Story of 'PEAK.'" Needless to say, this freaking rules. I didn't see the talk and I'm not familiar with what it discussed, but the fact that friendslop made it into the title of a GDC talk is nothing short of great to me. In the face of a struggling industry, we are seeing an indie boom unlike anything we've had before. I love the fresh new takes and practices studios like Aggro Crab are bringing to the table. That mentality will save the industry someday; it's already begun.

This week has been a little wild in terms of graduate school discussions. My last application was submitted at the beginning of January. That period of my life was so unbelievably stressful. I struggled so badly to get the ball rolling on my applications, especially the statements. Most of them were written in the one or two days before the deadline and while I felt okay about most of them, I was sure it wouldn't be enough.

I was in kind of a dark and doomy attitude about my future at that time, which is exactly where I was when I was applying for undergrad in high school. I am sensing a pattern...

That said, despite only applying for four schools, I am thrilled and absolutely shocked to report that I have actually been admitted to the three I have heard back from. What? What?

It feels weird to celebrate knowing I've gone about things the wrong way, so I haven't really been celebrating. I've been told my whole life that my reactions to wins like these have been strangely subdued, and I'm feeling that now, too. It is exciting, and certainly worth celebrating, but it's a whole new host of stressors, too. Most of all because getting into these different programs means I have to choose one.

Back in the fall, when I was meeting up with some of my mentors (and letter writers) for advice, one of them warned me not to rush into this and to be very sure what I wanted to pursue before applying. If I applied to very different programs and got into more than one of them, then it would be about more than just choosing a school: it'd also be about choosing a specific career path. Back then, I acknowledged that they were right, but I went ahead and did it, anyway. I was so stressed, fresh out of undergrad, and needing a new direction in life like water. Today, as expected, their advice rings very true. I applied to two library science programs, one academic/research program, and one game production program. How is one meant to choose a path under such insane pressure?

I often struggle to know what I want. Or, maybe deep down I know what I want, but it's an entirely different challenge to honor that desire. For the past year I have been taking every possible step to establish myself as a game producer. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the very nature of the role may be antithetical to how I work. I chose production a year ago simply because it seemed like the role most able to employ my wide variety of skills. But there is very little flexibility in a role like that: a reality that I think would kill me in a professional setting.

I'm sure that studying Game Production in Utah would be a hugely illuminating experience. I can't stop thinking about all the incredible scholars I would be working with and alongside. (C. Thi Nguyen: a philosopher with focus in games and games as agency, whose book I recently checked out from the library. Jose Zagal. And many others.) That program would make a AAA job in the industry much more likely, and I'd gain the skills necessary to thrive in that environment.

But then I stepped back and considered how much I have struggled and suffered throughout the development of Speakeasier. While I'm sure things would be much more manageable with a dedicated programmer (I make myself responsible for way too many things), a big project like that is a major expectation no matter what. Maybe game development is something better left a craft, not a major way of life. As with many forms of art, taking things too seriously often sucks the fun out of it. I love games so much, so I need to be careful how I engage with them. The last thing I want to foster is a jaded attitude towards a field I love so much.

On one hand, it's hard to say that I'm starting to move away from that career path. But on the other? It's massively relieving. After talking things through with my therapist Wednesday morning, I came away with the deep sense that maybe game production (on a large, professional scale) isn't for me. Having that clarity helped me a lot. That's one less potential path to worry so much about. And I certainly don't feel like the progress I have made there was in vain. There is still so much to learn from my experiences with production, and I will continue to seek out more opportunities to learn. Game development and production will still play a major role in my life. I just think that role will develop into something more casual and, dare I say, healthier. Because all art is better done on one's own terms. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, and I think the whole team will have a better time because of it.

That leaves me with only two major paths to choose between: games scholarship and library science. Either way, I would be focusing on digital media and games. My library science statements talked a lot about the increasingly necessary archiving of digital materials like websites and games (including indies). I have a definite focus within that field. I feel I will prefer engaging with the medium in this alternate way, and that way I can still have a place in their spaces, their conferences. As long as I can center creative work in my own practice, I'll be happy. And it's genuinely important work to be doing. For the first time in a long time, I'm excited to see what I might be able to work towards and contribute to the field.

I'm supposed to hear back from UCLA sometime today. Then, the real planning can begin. There are so many unknowns in this process, but for once I'm trying to be positive and trust that I can craft a life I'd really be proud of. For someone as infamously divided and indecisive as myself, that is a huge, huge step.