Life reflecting Art

Wow... I've got a bit of a following of folks on social media who regularly respond to the memes and assorted links I post. Among them are current colleagues, former colleagues, friends and gamers I've met over the years and family... I guess we've all got a social media community like that, especially once we get to a certain age.

As an English speaker, it's probably not surprising that many of the contacts I've made in gaming circles have been US citizens. Some of them I've met personally at conventions over the years, many more are friends of friends, people I've connected with by mutual reputations, or folks who I feel like I vibe with. 

With things happening in the US at the moment, where we are watching a real-time attempt to dismantle democracy by oligarchs... where we are watching the most mundane elements of cyberpunk dystopia coming to fruition, without the fun elements. I'm a little scared for a lot of the people living in the US at the moment. I don't know how it's all going to play out, how much worse it's going to get, and whether war or revolution is on the cards... or maybe the whole thing will blow over, a bit like COVID, and the media will move on to new types of reactionary story to try to make us forget how close the fragility of the USA brought us to the end of the world.

I've been designing game based on cyberpunk, dystopias, post-apocalypse, rebellion, and outsiders trying to find a place in the world for so long that it's just a part of my psyche. It's what I meme on social media, it's what I try not to talk about in my school classes, because I don't want to tell a new generation what to think, instead preferring to show them how to think for themselves. It's feeling like designing these types of games in the grand scheme of things is either a frivolity that isn't worth pursuing, or maybe it's the ultimate act of punk rebellion to give hope and a bit of escapism to communities who are really struggling at the moment.

Anyway, enough for today's rant. I'm probably writing this because I've seen a few posts from people who are expressing the same feeling that they're screaming into a void, and no one is listening. While, there are rarely comments directed to me here on the blog, I know there are folks out there who read this (often responding to shares on various social media platforms), so I'm still feeling like my art and design work is making a difference.

Maybe I'll go back to some storytelling, like the way I started off the year.