Recent Writings
Added 2016-06-03 14:34:13 +0000 UTCHey all! I finished a draft of the script last weekend, and I'm rather happy with it! I've been stalled all week on doing revisions and beginning the edit as I tend to a bunch of freelancing and other responsibilities. I have found time to do some other writing, though, so I'm collecting that here:
A little something I want to get off my chest
This was a short, pithy post that went more viral than anything I've ever put on Tumblr (by, like, a factor of 10), because short and pithy is how Tumblr operates. I'm finding this rather irritating, because when I write short and pithily, I note a lot of incorrect impressions people take from the writing, but had I been more thorough with my language, it would have been seen by fewer people. Also annoyed at how any edits you make don't carry through to people who've already re-Tumbled it, and the people who re-Tumble from those people keep repeating the language you've changed. (Someone pointed out that I'd thoughtlessly used some cisnormative phrasing, but even though I've changed it, the unchanged version is what's gotten 7000 notes). Tumblr is a mixed bag.
Thoughts on Telltale's Game of Thrones
A pretty muddled experience, which is how I've been feeling about almost all of Telltale's post-Walking Dead output. Honestly made me consider giving up on Telltale.
Thoughts on Tales from the Borderlands
Me swearing a lot about how this game is amazing and now I can't give up on Telltale.
I finally talk about that health issue I was having earlier this year, and why I've been hesitant to talk about it. Meditating on how talking about your personal life can make people feel entitled to private information, while not talking about it can perpetuate stigmas.
Comments
As a cis person, I try not to hypothesize on whether or not the seemingly higher-than-average number of trans people in game development is actually real or if trans developers are just more visible. And, if it is real, I try not to hypothesize as to why that would be. Armchair diagnosis with neither statistical data nor lived experience is rarely worth much. Similarly, I don't know if gamesy folks have a higher-than-average rate of depression and anxiety or if game development/games culture just exacerbates the people who have it, making them, as well, more visible.
Ian Danskin
2016-06-03 16:37:20 +0000 UTCWorking in video game circles over the the years I've noticed two things about people I've met. 1) Many say they are clinically depressive and have anxiety attacks. (I sometimes wonder what this is physically like, or if it is physical.) 2) Of all of the women I've come in contact with, all but a few are, it turns out, Male-to-female women (I don't know the preferred way to write that.) On 1) I wonder about people who play video games. I work in video games, but I haven't really played them at all for years. Not like a regular activity. I often go a year without picking up any video game whatsoever. And I wonder what it would take to get me to play them as people do. I wonder if it's a depression coping mechanism. (Of course I played many more when I was younger--very young. Although I often wonder how I ever managed it! I'd play more if I actually enjoyed more, or thought they were valuable artistically--not merely commendable efforts.) On 2) I think the obvious "explanation" here is that girls and women were not encouraged to engage with video games, and so we have the strange situation where the only women who did so, were boys when they did so. It's just my personal experience, but I'd hazard to guess women who work with/around with this medium, right now, are probably closer to 5/10 M-to-F than 1/10. (My experience is like 8/10.) Just two physical characteristics that have often given me pause. I sometimes wonder that if my life wasn't so perfect, I might fall off the wall so speak, and be depressed myself. I have a gut fear, but that's probably normal. I don't know how I would react. I don't think video games would be a viable salve for me, because I just am so genuinely unimpressed with the offerings of this medium.
Michael
2016-06-03 15:53:24 +0000 UTCThe comments are yours.
Ian Danskin
2016-06-03 14:36:17 +0000 UTC
