[Event] Cape Town Community Night - 29th October 2014
When: 18:30 until around 21:30, Wednesday 29th October
Where: City Varsity new campus, 18 Roeland Street, Cape Town.
"For folks struggling to find City Varsity on Google Maps, it's near the bottom of Roeland Street close to parliament and in the building that used to house Charly's Bakery.
Charly's is still visible on Street View next to the panel shop if you type in 8 Roeland Street (the nearest approximation) and go down to Street View: https://goo.gl/maps/KvUhR "
Take note, there will be no free, provided food at this venue!
If you have a demo you want played, bring a station on which people can play it, and set it up before the meetup begins!
Agenda:
- 6:30 - 7:00 - Meet and greet
- Rapid fire intros (10 min)
- Community News (5 min)
- [Unconfirmed] Sarah and Colin Northway ~ 5 mins (+question time)
- [Unconfirmed] Kelly Wallick ~ 5 mins (+question time)
- Gamergate Open Floor discussion - @dammit ~30 mins
- Focused Feedback (10 min slots) x3
- 6x Mass Production Tutorials
- Merghezerds
- @BlackShipsFilltheSky game demo
- Open Demo Floor
This event happens monthly, is free to attend, and anyone may speak at the meetup - just comment beneath to let us know! This is for anyone and everyone interested in making games of any shape, size or type. Come join us!
Test games! Talk games! Make games!
Indicate your attendance on the Facebook event !
Where: City Varsity new campus, 18 Roeland Street, Cape Town.
"For folks struggling to find City Varsity on Google Maps, it's near the bottom of Roeland Street close to parliament and in the building that used to house Charly's Bakery.
Charly's is still visible on Street View next to the panel shop if you type in 8 Roeland Street (the nearest approximation) and go down to Street View: https://goo.gl/maps/KvUhR "
Take note, there will be no free, provided food at this venue!
If you have a demo you want played, bring a station on which people can play it, and set it up before the meetup begins!
Agenda:
- 6:30 - 7:00 - Meet and greet
- Rapid fire intros (10 min)
- Community News (5 min)
- [Unconfirmed] Sarah and Colin Northway ~ 5 mins (+question time)
- [Unconfirmed] Kelly Wallick ~ 5 mins (+question time)
- Gamergate Open Floor discussion - @dammit ~30 mins
- Focused Feedback (10 min slots) x3
- 6x Mass Production Tutorials
- Merghezerds
- @BlackShipsFilltheSky game demo
- Open Demo Floor
This event happens monthly, is free to attend, and anyone may speak at the meetup - just comment beneath to let us know! This is for anyone and everyone interested in making games of any shape, size or type. Come join us!
Test games! Talk games! Make games!
Indicate your attendance on the Facebook event !
Comments
The main angle is balancing morale against the value of the feedback -- to be gracious without tiptoeing or empty backpatting.
Also, FB event link please?
Okay, @Nandrew you're down.
@MNRosa How long do you need for your talk? 10 mins?
@dislekcia Have you confirmed both/either/all of our esteemed guests' attendance? :)
@dammit I agree the discussion needs to be had, how long do you need? It looks like time will be tight this month.
@raxter Cooooooool.
I think Mehrgehrzerds needs the feedback more though. I'd happily do a really short demo if that's all that's available.
Even then, why does one topic have to supplant another? Just propose your topic and people can vote to have that if they want it, we have lots of meetups, there's no limitation to what we can talk about. You don't have to defeat another suggestion for a topic, please don't make this an either/or situation when it isn't one.
If the plan is to just open the floor for undirected, open comment, then that's fine, but I won't be participating. I know that @dammit's already stated she wants to have a discussion about how SA indie devs should react, but as we've seen on these very forums, those reactions can be varied and opposing. If the stated outcome was something specific (for instance, what to watch out for to prevent gender stereotyping, or how to reach out to new audiences, or how to design socially-conscious narrative), I feel it would be a lot more focused and productive.
But I rile at the thought of an open floor discussion. It's ideological topic and anyone with an opinion has long since decided what they think. Also, "unreasonable people getting feedback on their actions faster instead of spiraling into worse behavior" - in my experience that causes people to double down and entrench their ideology because it's under treat.
But as @dammit may or may not be alluding to, there are other things around GG that may be worth talking about. Things like how communities and ideologies form. Why people opinions are so difficult to change ( as wonderfully explored here). How empathy fails online. How internet figures are singled out (This is Phil Fish). How some women have experienced very real abuse in real life and if there is anyway to avoid the actions of radicals? Really just anything besides GamerGate itself, because that a thoroughly done topic.
My thought is that the conversation around GamerGate needs to change. Instead of discussing what it is, who did what, when, where, why etc, the conversation needs to be moved towards positively building games in future. We need to stop talking as if white male teenager is the default gamer and start examining why we think a meetup that is 90% white males is normal. We need to be challenging ourselves and becoming uncomfortable to be able to change the industry. And we can start by talking about these things with each other online and off.
And, the only way that conversation starts happening is by the 90% white males changing what they talk about. That's you guys. It's not me. I cannot actually make change because I am, by nature, not part of the default. This makes it even harder for me to keep bringing up the topic and suggesting this discussion be had because if it makes you uncomfortable, imagine how uncomfortable I feel?
Edit: So the point of the open floor discussion is to ask you - as the prominent and representative indie game devs from Cape Town - how we are going to do this. What is our action plan going forward? Can we agree on what should be done?
*Mysterious hand waving*
Especially if you've not played games like SpaceChem and other "puzzle games for engineers", but anyone really. I really need to battle test these tutorials with as wide a range of people before I go too far down the level design rabbit hole :p
Also, anyone know if the projector takes HDMI? Or if I'll need a converter, or to loan a laptop with VGA/DVI?
Okay - so I've spoken to a couple of people and what we'll do it postpone Marco and Rodain's talks until next month (spoken to them both already). Both the Northways and Kelly Wallick will be speaking (just 5 mins or so each).
We postponed the talks just so we can give everyone a good chance to ask our foreign guests questions, in addition to allowing the roundtable discussion some time, while still enabling the evening to round off with some lovely focused feedback slots :).
The questions that were posed during the discussion (as I recall them):
1. Does the community have a unified stance on the gamergate issue and do we want to make any sort of public statement in this regard?
2. How do we make our community feel like a safe space for under-represented groups to join?
3. Is it fair to ask white males to make games about non-white male characters?
4. How do we actively challenge ourselves in our game design?
Some of the thoughts on these questions:
1. No clear answer on this one - and in fact this wasn't really given much attention overall.
2. Overall, I think the general gist here was that talking about these issues is a starting point. We've also started the bursary programme and we are ultimately friendly people. Having more discussions about what we represent in games and also making necessary changes to our games (like Desktop Dungeons did for their female representation) will have a slow trickle effect. We also agreed to look into opportunities for volunteering and outreach.
3. Yes. While no one is being forced in any way to make a game other than the one they want to make, the community generally felt that challenging oneself to make something different or at least question design choices (why is the lead character a guy when it's just a person in a robot?) is a very important starting point and also offers the opportunity to create games that stand out. Being different from the AAA title cliches is what makes being indie cool and is our unique angle as indie developers. It's also not impossible for any person to put themselves in the shoes of someone else - we're all a pretty creative bunch, after all :)
4. The idea was put forward to have a "minority jam" (which I realise this morning is a terrible name since in South Africa, whites are the minority, and females are hardly a minority population :P ) or an "empathy jam" where the rules of the game jam are that you have to go out of your game design comfort zone. Final wrap-up concluded with "let's put a pin in this idea".
I probably missed some things, so please feel free to add to this list for those who were not there.
Ultimately, I want to keep having these kinds of conversations as an ongoing effort for us all to challenge ourselves in our game designs. As I mentioned last night, I've been shocked to realise that in every game I've ever made, all the characters are male (majority white - but a few green ones too) so I am hardly pointing fingers here without acknowledging that this is a problem that we're all affected by.
1. I reckon it's fine if that's postponed - that energy would be better spent on the rest
2. This is tricky at best. If you deliberately make an effort to include "minorities" (in the sense of, minorities in the field of SA game dev, not the general SA population), then it can seem a bit patronising (or end up a political firestorm of its own). But if you do nothing, then you seem apathetic. Maybe the best answer is to make available as many resources and opportunities as we can, and then leave it up to them whether they want to join or not. Ultimately we're supposed to be an Association of Game Makers, so it should be about the game-making, first and foremost.
3. It's absolutely fair, and it shouldn't even really be seen as a political, or socially-conscious thing, rather just a pure creative thing: The stereotypes have been done to death, and there are so many more fascinating ideas out there. I'm sure there are games that can be built that deal with running a traditional Zulu village. Or survival games set in a sub-saharan context. Or story-driven games that delve into the incredibly rich pantheon that is the African hierarchy of mythological figures. Or even just games that tell the stories of modern-day life in other cultures: the clans, tribes, ceremonies, weddings, the identity challenges that young people in these cultures face - there's so much more here.
4. I think it comes down to: tell better stories. I know that storytelling seems to take a back seat in most game design (often by necessity), but if the focus is to explore new cultures, myths, and ways of life, then you're going to need to find the stories you can tell there.
And I don't think you should be too hard on yourself for building games with mainly white men :) Artists create from what they know, and if you (like most of us) grew up with games coming from a majority-white amero-centric worldview, then it's natural that it will be your default when creating art of your own. Look on the bright side: You recognize it now, and all you really need to do to change it is immerse yourself in the world that contains the games you want to create.
Lots of people asked if I could upload a build of 6x Mass Production, here is the link to the forum post, please go there! :)