2024 was…a learning experience. Every day I learned something, whether I wanted to or not.
It was a crash course in elder care, and an object lesson in patience, resilience, and creative problem-solving. It was, and is, a DOOM pile (a pile which you Didn’t Organize, Only Moved) of a life.
The experience
A DOOM pile is a pile of random stuff that you have to reckon with, sooner or later. This reckoning may– it will— be painful, but you have to do it if you ever want to know where things belong, in order to put (and keep) them in those places. Dealing with the items in a DOOM pile is a never-ending task, because the piles will incessantly, constantly be in a state of regeneration. And you’ll have to keep confronting them, lest you find yourself at the bottom of one.
Where, for example, was I supposed to put the complicated emotions surrounding my mother’s trip to the emergency room– three times– in a state of confusion, to the point of failing to recognize me? Where was I to put my dismay at the realization that she would deny that these trips ever happened, because after all, she didn’t remember them?
Where was I to put feelings of overwhelm that accompanied my election as the president of the board of a non-profit? MakeICT is a “makerspace,” as in, a community of people with vastly different backgrounds who, nevertheless, occupy the same space and have to share their toys– I mean, tools– and get along. And my purpose became one of unifying the seven representatives of these makers, in order to get sh*t done. Talk about hands-on learning.
Where would I deposit the creative frustration and fatigue that rained down on my artistic projects and threatened to drown all motivation to see them through?
Then there were those rabbit holes into which I dove without hesitation, the ones that became my focus of attention and deliberate learning, creating a sense of relief and accomplishment that I wasn’t finding elsewhere– what of those? I picked these subjects carefully from the bottom of the DOOM pile, moving them to the top like some bizarre game of Jenga, in which the pile keeps growing but never falls over.
But I kept throwing myself at the pile, in a constant effort to slow down its growth, if I could not truly end it. Picking up heavy things builds muscles, as I’ve learned from a hobby of welding large bits of metal to each other into hopefully pleasing shapes. So I picked up the heavy stuff, along with everything else– and it was heavy, man.
It still is. It always will be.
The focus
One rabbit hole has been learning Python—a versatile, adaptive language that shapes user experiences. It’s a common tongue, but a relatively new one for me, though my aspirations for using it include designing and building an “AI robot” with its own LLM, communicating and reacting to the world around it.
That’s a ways down the road–really far down the rabbit hole, to put it lightly (and thoroughly abuse the metaphor). But along the way, my hope is to design video games– dialog-heavy games, like the ones I love to play. I want to grow my Python skills and show them off through storytelling, even to create interactive narratives that require prompt engineering to set the scene and develop NPCs (non-player characters) with personalities.
Then the inspiration hit to translate what I’ve been learning into an experience– not just a game, but a way to explore agency. In his book Games: Agency as Art, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen describes games as means of exploring the “alternative agencies” created by game designers, experiences that are fundamental to the concept of gaming itself.
But I am not (yet) a game designer; I need to develop my Python skills further. But that requirement is no obstacle to my creative ideation. The idea to depict the last year as it has played out in my life, in game form, ambushed me like a cat around the corner. The cat doesn’t wait for you to prepare before it pounces, and neither did this idea.
The game (currently untitled)
What I imagine is part visual novel (a linear story with its own exposition) part point-and-click adventure (in which the player chooses items to explore and dialog options for conversations) , and part minigames (simple games within a game).
The game would progress from scene to scene, snippets of my life, a series of vignettes that make up the emergent property of the year’s experience. Each vignette reflects a different themes of growth, and each level is labeled accordingly.
Hospital room (resilience level)
We begin in a hospital room, generic and spartan as hospital rooms inevitably are. It’s January, but you wouldn’t know it except for the small collection of soda cans sitting on the windowsill. That ledge is like a little refrigerator, for the same reason that nobody, ever, can be observed sitting in the chair next to it.
Mom sits in the hospital bed, upright with the room’s only table– the kind of slides under the bed– extending over her lap. Clicking around the room conveys this exposition, as well as why there’s a blanket draped over the reclining chair (because you slept there last night) a pizza roll on the hard cover to the hamper (because again, there are no other tables), and a forgotten polystyrene coffee cup, because getting coffee is the only opportunity for adventure beyond the confines of the room.
The only opportunity, that is, until your mother wants a yogurt parfait. It didn’t come with her breakfast, so you’ll have to fetch it from the cafeteria. This is where the minigame comes in– the maze, in which you navigate the circuitous halls of the hospital on your way to the cafeteria, then back again. It’s a timed exercise, because your mother has an echocardiogram scheduled in half an hour. Success means getting the little plastic cup to her on time, and without forgetting the spoon.
MakeICT metal shop (problem-solving level)
The next scene opens in a metal shop, a somewhat cramped space that houses three welders, an anvil, a plasma cutter, a grinding wheel, and a work table. That table is currently occupied by steel grids so large that they extend well past the edges of the table. Clicking around the room informs you that this is an area in MakeICT, a former elementary school whose classrooms were converted into studios for ceramics, textiles, woodworking, and so on. In this case, you’re in the “hot shop.” A welding helmet sits on top of the grids on the work table.
The hot shop is also occupied by an NPC, whose presence contributes to the feelings of claustrophobia. Your friend, a long-time member of MakeICT, explains that there was apparently an act of vandalism that left the building’s air conditioning window units slashed and thereby destroyed. Stabbed by a knife, it looks like. The institute has purchased new window units from its struggling budget, and they will need cages installed over them, to protect them from the same fate.
The minigame involves your goal of welding the pieces of grate together to create one of these cages. Your vision is hampered by the welding helmet you must use, and if you don’t join the pieces of the cage in the right places, it will fall apart and you must start all over again. Success means completing a full cage, which realistically means having to weld another one, but the game allows you to end here.
ICT Comic Con (creativity level)
You see before you a large table of a vendor’s booth on which is strewn the makings of a pair of animatronic wings. Behind the table are two NPCs expressing concern that your wings will never function properly and you’ll be unable to wear them. Your costume is Tilda Swinton’s character, the angel Gabriel from the 2005 horror/fantasy game Constantine. Unfortunately without Gabriel’s enormous feathered wings, your costume becomes an unrecognizable arrangement of shredded white clothing.
The mini game, therefore, entails your attempt to assemble the wings without either making the feathers so sparse that they’re barely recognizable as wings, or so numerous that the wings become too heavy for the servos in your harness, which provide the power and movement of the wings, to handle and the wings flop dejectedly to the floor. Success means that you reach the happy medium between weight and beauty, but if the wings are layered heavily too many times, you lose the game and must begin again.
Upon achieving success, you receive a message describing how the remainder of the day is spent walking the aisles of the con, with people complimenting your costume and asking to take pictures with you.
Board meeting (leadership level)
In a large multipurpose room at MakeICT you see five rows of plastic chairs, occupied sparsely by a group of thirteen people of various ages in decidedly casual attire– six of whom are fellow board members, you discover by clicking amongst them. This audience stares at you expectantly, waiting for you to say something they can react to in some way. Their faces communicate various levels of engagement, from “barely able to sit still” to “probably asleep.”
This minigame is entirely made up of dialog options, as you must attempt to guide the conversation to stay on-track. Success is when you receive a prompt to bring the issue to a vote, but that option only comes after a series of interactions with NPCs in which you’re given the choice to encourage them to say more, or shut them down (politely!) when they try to change the subject.
Encouraging on-topic discussion allows you to move closer to a motion, while allowing members to digress takes you further away, as measured by a “persuasion meter” at the bottom of your screen. Members do not necessarily wait to be clicked on to speak– on some occasions they force the conversation, in the form of a popup message that cannot be dismissed without choosing a response, which carries the risk of encouraging more popups if you fail to shut them down (again, politely!).
The persuasion meter starts at 50%, but if it drops to 0%, the audience will shout at each other without you having any option to address it and you’ll lose the game.
CBP One app research (critical thinking level)
The scene before you is a desk with a computer and a wide screen monitor, and you hold a tablet. The monitor displays a browser window with an image of a hand holding a smart phone, and the CBP One logo on its screen. Clicking around on this image gives you a brief background of the CBP One app and how it is used today. On the other side of the monitor’s screen is a search window, with links displaying the headlines of ten articles about CBP One. You’re performing research on the app in order to write your own article.
The tablet screen is blank except for instructions on how to play the mini game, which requires you to choose the two headlines that link to articles containing the most comprehensive and reliable information about CBP One. Once you have done so, and had the opportunity to read those articles, you are given a multiple choice quiz on the laptop screen.
The answers to the questions in this quiz are contained within two of the articles that you were given the opportunity to read. If you chose those articles, you’ll have the information necessary to answer the quiz questions correctly. If you didn’t, you’ll be asked the same questions, but the articles you chose will give you misinformation, forcing you to either answer the quiz’s questions with that misinformation or guess at the answers. The quiz questions are on the subjects of the app’s appearance, performance, and criticisms.
A grade of below 70% on the quiz means that you lose– your own article contains misinformation, which spreads amongst the readership and contributes to conspiracy theories. Success in this mini game means scoring 70% or higher on the quiz, resulting in your article containing, and spreading, useful information that informs readership about the truth regarding the CBP One app.
Messy desk (curiosity level)
The scene before you is a cluttered desk, a workspace across which are strewn printouts of papers with titles like “Invisible Agents in AI Design” and “Empathy as a Metric for AI Success”, as well as a thick document emblazoned with the title “The cognitive origins of soul belief: Empathy, responsibility, and purity”. Behind the desk is a large whiteboard with messages scribbled across it.
Clicking on items on and around the desk reveals reflections from research. Clicking on the white board, for example, displays the message “Agency isn’t just about appearance, but behavior. You can put a smiley (or aggrieved) face on a robot, but nobody will be fooled into thinking that it understands something like pain. Maybe the key is not to try and make a ‘pain bot’ that impersonates a nurse or doctor, but to transparently be a robot gathering information to assist doctors and nurses.”
Clicking on the laptop displays an infographic that says “60% of respondents say they don’t want healthcare providers to rely on AI.”
Clicking on the dissertation (the thick document) displays the message “Our imaginative projection of other people’s agency is possible because we are able to recognize in them a source of very real but invisible thoughts and feelings which affect how they behave in the world.”
The mini game displays an image of prototypical “pain bot” and asks players assign features to the pain bot with the goal of achieving the best possible balance of efficiency, empathy, and trustworthiness. You must make selections to favor specific traits, each of which involves unseen tradeoffs in terms of points gained or lost within each area. Examples:
Add facial recognition for emotions? (+5 Empathy, -3 Trust)
Include physiological data sensors? (+3 Efficiency, -2 Empathy)
Use simple, transparent algorithms? (+5 Trust, -2 Efficiency)
After making these choices, you’re able to see your total scores in each category, and an assessment of how well they are balanced. Success means achieving maximal balance, with the message “Next step: secure funding and trust!” If you fall short, your parting message will be “Stakeholders worry about your pain bot’s reliability and adoption.”
The future
Playing this game invites you to step into the “alternate agency” of my year, with all of its challenges to grow and develop.
Each vignette represents tackling one part of the DOOM pile, chipping away at it and diminishing its ability to intimidate.
Each small story is a stand-in for a much larger experience that I hope to have conveyed in a way that doesn’t require playing a fully fleshed-out game in order to grasp the concept. But maybe you can still see the scenes in your head as clearly as I can, despite my tremendous advantage of having lived through those experiences.
Beyond this little experiment of an autobiographical game concept, I’m authoring this post to show, not just tell. This game isn’t just a way to reflect on my year—it’s a way to explore the intersection of storytelling, agency, and design, skills I’m honing as I delve deeper into Python and interactive narratives.
Ultimately, the DOOM pile of life isn’t just a subjective experience—it’s the mountain we all climb to make sense of our stories. For me, learning and self-expression are tools to chip away at that eternal mountain, revealing its contours and helping others see their own path forward.
Because we cannot act upon what we cannot see. Facing the DOOM pile, head on, is the first step in doing something about it.