It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to update this, and that’s because of something I’ll talk about down below.

First, I promised that I would post my thesis once it was publicly available, and here it is! Hybrid Knowing! You can download the PDF for free from the Spectrum archive:

Marcotte, Jess Rowan (2021). Hybrid Knowing: Preserving Physically and Digitally Entangled Traces in Hybrid Game Design. PhD thesis, Concordia University.

So, why haven’t I been updating this blog with process notes from my latest creative projects? Well, on the one hand, I didn’t do all that much game creation while I was writing my dissertation, and as soon as I defended, I pivoted to helping to launch the Soft Chaos Cooperative! The past few months have been a combination of administrative work and doing my best to rest up after completing such a monumental long-term project.

Exciting news on that front! Soft Chaos was the first project to launch on Comradery as part of the alpha (well, first after the core team of developers from Comradery)! Comradery is a patron/subscription-based service where you can support artists and creators. Importantly, the artists and creators have a big say in Comradery’s decision-making process because Comradery is a cooperative! If you want to support me on there, you can currently donate to Soft Chaos at this link (as they roll out features including locked posts for subscribers, this will get a little more sophisticated). Check us out here!

Finally, now that a chunk of that administrative work is complete, we’ve started a new creative project which I’m really excited about. Process writing remains important to me, so I’ll be trying to keep you updated on the design process here, but a good chunk of that writing, especially the ones with more project-specific details, will be pivoting to Comradery, so I do hope if you’re interested in my design process work, you’ll check us out there. Still, you can expect occasional updates here.

This new project is for two players to enjoy asynchronously, and it came out of a list of ideas that I made for a new method we’re trying. We’re essentially taking turns leading the team in short design projects, aiming to make one project a month. As “captain” for September, I made a list of game ideas and we started our brainstorm from there.

As usual, I used my notebook to map out and connect ideas on the page before any digital work happened. We used one of the ideas as a jumping off point and then, naturally, we latched onto a joke that Squinky made and took it deeper. This will be a game where you get to explore out-of-doors at your own pace, and where you’ll decide how long the game is with your play partner ahead of time.

More to come! I’m pretty stoked about getting to create again!