Monday, July 15, 2024.
While excitedly talking to my friend Mroo about a game jam they'd completed on Itch.io, I wondered if I'd also enjoy the participatory model that such challenges offer. This is of interest to me because of my prosocial-motivated personality profile, naturally, because I love the idea of people working together toward a common goal. Though I've been out of the video game industry for a really long time, I also still have a warm feeling about the world building and humane engineering that goes into game development.
That said, I felt some trepidation about it because I don't like joining groups that don't have clear alignment between goals and personal values.
If I were to join a game jam, I would want it to be like All The Animals Are Friends.
All The Animals Are Friends, Revisited
This is the recurring fantasy I want to make into reality that I've been talking about for years, most recently in last month's Groundhog Day Resolutions Report when I added these two directives:
The Meadow is a place where where All the Animals are Friends, cooperating with each other to empower and elevate each other toward shared prosperity.
...and...
The Animals want to live free of the fear for being different.
It is in the best interest of everyone to build a sanctuary for those who want to be heard, be seen, and understand each other.
All this lore captures the yearning idealism that I feel, and as I mentioned in last week's GHDR post I felt this had been a missing element in my pitch to date. And this was also the feeling I wanted to have in any group I joined for even something like a remote game jam.
Silly Epiphanies are Best Epiphanies
"You know," I typed to Mroo, "if I joined a game jam, I would need a studio name. It would be neat if All The Animals Should Be Friends made the game together, so maybe I should name the studio that!"
"You've been talking about All The Animals Are Friends for years," Mroo calmly observed, dragon claws meticulously tapping out each weighty letter with an aura of authority.
It slowly dawned on me that this was a super exciting convergence of many themes, brought upon by friendly conversation with people who understood just what I was talking about.
For now, here's what I think the new direction is:
All The Animals Are Friends is the vibe, the vision, and the story upon which my community activities are now anchored.
It is something I can feel deeply, and also use as a star to steer by.
This solves the issue I had with multiple goals from the July 7 report related to describing what a "PPM Community Space" was for different audiences. These felt very much like chores that I really didn't want to do, despite recognizing their importance.
By focusing on All The Animals Are Friends, the excitement of using narrative techniques is much more in alignment with how I feel. I also think that people who can appreciate the childlike storybook aspects of the presentation are exactly the people I want to reachIn other words, the opportunity for writing fun stories is also much more enticing than writing another white paper or brief on the important of prosocial factors in the formation of culturally-relevent civic organizational development, etc.
A good story should theoretically convey the same information in a much more engaging and visceral manner, which is the kind of communications design I like..
I have also updated the All The Animals Are Friends page to more strongly connect all these themes together. Progress!
That's it for now. Looking forward to creating the All The Animals Are Friends landing pages!
INDEX of GHDR 2024 POSTS
This year's single goal is Building The Colony!
Made a simple "functional area" diagram using Whimsical to help gather my thoughts.
I converted the Whimsical doc from yesterday to Affinity Designer.
Created new subsite at /the-colony/
Wrote stream-of-consciousness "vision statement" for later cleanup
Convert stream-of-consciousness into a "phrase cloud" for further deconstruction
Artifacts of The Colony: Pebbles, Seeds, and Rings
Created a "refined phrase cloud" grouped into five categories, based on boot 05's work.
Extracted "foundational" statements from yesterday, but they didn't leave a strong impression. Punt "why" to tomorrow's post.
Created a "Selfishly Sri" printable assessment to gauge outside interest.
Reducing scope from Colony to Outpost.
Desired results are distilled down to two main ideas, which will cover the next couple of months.
A slow start to the year, as I focused on paying work for most of the month. Set four directives to achieve this mont
The set of analysis notes that I authored with ChatGPT4 to refine my understanding of "prosocial motivation"
New goal is to start connecting with future chatty collaborators, as my brain runs on "prosocial motivation" and meaningful human connections.
Delving further into my "predominantly-prosocially motivated" profile (PPMP), and how to turn this into action given the dilemma of "needing the energy from a group to start a task" being at odds with "needing to start a group so I have energy".
The task of "talking to someone in-person about PPMP-based community" didn't happen. Happily, I had several empowering insights along the lines of wealth, doing what is good, and accepting myself that I think will help with that.
A new approach to "reduce uncertainty" instead of "pushing through" tasks, I take the time to define the mission and audiences more carefully.
Change of emphasis to All The Animals Are Friends as the anchoring concept for communicating my ideas!
Aug 8
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Sep 9
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Oct 10
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Nov 11
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Dec 12
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