My Double Life

Posted on December 3, 2022 by Meg

“Oh, since you’re here,” my supervisor said, “Could I ask you something about your resume? Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you this since we first hired you.”

At this point, naturally, my head exploded. What could it be? Does one of my professional references secretly hate me? 

Oh no! She must have  figured out that  I put down one teaching job for “summer 2016” but I was really only teaching for 8 weeks, not from June 1 to August 31, so now I’ll have to explain the gaps on my resume. No! I also wrote that I kept state-compliant attendance records for my ESL classes, but really more than one supervisor has had to remind me to submit the attendance. I’m about to get fired. And what if I committed a crime and then forgot about it? Definitely fired.

“Yeah, I googled you before we hired you, I just never had time to ask about it. Did you really work on some Nancy Drew games?”

“Oh, yeah. That was me.”

“I loved those games!”

Posted in Boston, Gaming Culture | 1 Comment

I Remember Snow Crash

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Meg

I don’t usually yearn for Books As Physical Objects. I don’t have great detail vision, so I usually like the large-print, high-contrast of an ebook for comfortable reading. I can read a typical paperback, but it’s enough effort that it sometimes keeps me from drifting off into the bookworld.

But this description of the 90s Snow Crash paperback in Jason Guriel’s essay I Remember the Bookstore just hit me in the feels. I read this copy too, a heavy, thick paperback with that plastic-coated cover. I almost felt it in my hands when I read this description. It was lent to me by a high-school friend, just like Guriel lends his in this article, though I promise I returned this in better condition. I carried Snow Crash in my bag to read on my train commute on my way to work as a quest designer at an MMO. The book and that time in my life are so deeply connected for me.

For instance, I remember standing in Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore—“long gone now,” to lift DeLillo’s line. It was around 1996, and I was considering a paperback copy of Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. The cover, you see, had cried out to my teenage self. A ninja type, sword raised, stands before an arch of ancient brickwork, bulging with duelling bulls in relief. But beyond the arch, across a plain of circuitry, a futuristic skyline awaits. Above the title, a header declares the book to be “THE #1 SCIENCE FICTION BESTSELLER,” the definite article doing some work. Below the title, a blurb from something called Los Angeles Reader (also “long gone now”) is blunt: “Stephenson has not stepped, he has vaulted onto the literary stage with this novel.”

On the back cover, there’s a vote of confidence from William Gibson no less, maybe my favourite writer, plus other appealing endorsements. “A cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland,” says one blurb. A “gigathriller” sporting a “cool, hip cybersensibility,” says the publisher’s copy. Hey, it was the 1990s.

Source: I Remember the Bookstore – Longreads

 

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And Here’s The Copier Code

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Meg

In 2007, I was the newest staff member at LCC, and I shared a classroom with a teacher who let me know that she’d had the room’s supply closet organized this way since 1999 and she  had no intention of moving a single thing to make room for my supplies. Also, she knew exactly where everything was and that she’d know if my students ever touched her flashcards or books.

We have a new college intern at my school now, who’s teaching one conversation class per week. I really took a lot of joy in setting her up in my classroom, showing her where I keep my speaking games, crayons, bingo cards, books, my secret backup lesson for bad days, etc. Here’s how to use the projector and the copier. Please, come in, move the chairs around however you like, this is your room one afternoon a week.

There are a lot of things people told me would change when I got older. These are usually sad things, about losing interest in my hobbies or falling out of love with my husband or finding all young people annoying, and it’s been really nice to not get older that way.

 

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The Office: Somehow We Manage

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Meg

Haven’t done a gaming post in ages, but I have to tell you about the idle game I’m playing on breaks these days.

The Office: Somehow We Manage is an iOs idle clicker about everyone’s favorite dysfunctional paper company. Send the employees to their desks, where they work hard until you automate them (this saves having to tap the stacks of cash that appear beside their desks every so often), spend the money starting more desks and upgrading and getting more money to spend on upgrades for more money to spend on… Ok, you get it, it’s another idle clicker, just set the show world.

The humor comes from little scenes from the show and little show references. In the beginning of the game, it’s fun to see how each actor was drawn for the game. Then each worker has personal items on their desks, and it’s fun to see the little references from the show.

Now, I should probably mention that this isn’t a particularly well-done game. First, The Office frequently resets chapters, and while it’s always annoying to replay a level after a technical glitch, it’s particularly annoying in an idle that’s literally all about time spent in game. And it’s constantly asking me to wait while it downloads the next chapter. I have no idea why it needs so many updates, because the app is a 2D cartoon picture of our favorite Scranton paper company, with the same working and automated animations for each character in each chapter.  Each chapter does have a couple screens of text bubbles from the TV show, but seriously, the frequency of downloading updates and how long it takes just does not seem in line with the game assets at all.

And this isn’t the only place where internal text is accidentally shared with players as flavortext, it’s just the one where I took a screenie.

Ok, so now that you all know this isn’t a terribly high-quality game, let’s talk about how freaking charming it is. Seeing the Dunder-Mifflin friends doing their repetitive work tasks makes a fun little break from my repetitive work tasks. And since it’s a pay-to-win style idle clicker, the huge stacks of cash become kinda meaningless and it’s the other, special currencies, like coffee, ShruteBucks and ScottCoins that are actually valuable. The cash quickly maxes out thousands or billions or actual numbers, and becomes aa, ab, ac, etc. There’s something ridiculous about the workers getting billions of billions of dollars but actually needing, say, 27 coffees to complete the next objective, and then after getting all the objectives, getting the 15 ScottCoins for completing the chapter. It makes a really delightful break when doing the kinda pointless and repetitive tasks that so many workplaces seem to require.

There are also special events, which are EXACTLY the same game, only at the end of the event, players instantly lose all money and other currencies, and get a very, very low-value tiered reward. This is hilarious because what’s more Dunder-Mufflin-y than the workers getting nothing? And also if you look at the ranking in the events, the top players are massive The Office fans so all their usernames are silly show references. There’s no chat, but I’m pretty sure they’re all trying to overlook the glitches for show jokes, too.

Anyway, this is objectively not a unique or innovative or high-quality game, there’s no character development or exciting mechanics, but if I’m in a meeting waiting for someone to figure out how to share their screen or unmute or whatever, I’m probably checking on my friends at mini Dunder-Mifflin.

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Just Thinking About How Fake and Stupid This Sounds:

Posted on August 29, 2022 by Meg

At our Christmas party in 2019, my then-bosses gave Workbro and me a hard time about nothing. It made me feel really unappreciated at work, so I decided to start looking for a new job. So when I went back to school the first week of January 2020, I had a whole plan about changing jobs, and the first step was to digitize all the worksheets, class activities and lesson plans I’d made, and put them in my own Google Drive, so I could easily take them with me when I left. It took me about 2 months to scan and upload and organize everything I had in my class binders, so by the beginning of March 2020, I just happened to have put all my teaching resources saved and easily accessible online.

Just so I’d be prepared whenever I found a nice new job. Definitely not because I was about to spend the next 3 years of my life teaching online.

If I read that in a novel, I would roll my eyes so hard.

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Beijing Ghost

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Meg

If You Could See The Sun, by Ann Liang, uses a supernatural invisibility power to tell a moving, realistic story about class, money, and adolescence in Beijing.

When teenage “Study Machine” Alice Sun discovers her invisibility power, she immediately puts it to use to earn money to pay her exorbitant school fees.  She’ll do favors and perform secret tasks that only someone invisible could accomplish, anonymously, of course.  Once Alice started getting secrets and requests of secret favors, I thought this was going to turn Gossip Girl, but there’s a uniquely Beijing flavor. No mean girls or gossipy backstabbing here, as much as ambitious high-school students willing to do anything for success.

To get her invisible-favors side hustle going, Alice has to turn to her (handsome) academic rival, Henry Li. Henry agrees to build the app and split the profits, which starts out as BULLSHIT because ALICE is the one doing all the DANGEROUS work! Also Henry doesn’t even need the money! But as their app, Beijing Ghost, takes off, Henry somehow starts doing more decoy work to let Alice work her invisibility magic. Henry creates increasingly goofy and risky distractions as the story goes on, adding humor and also making it clear that he doesn’t think they’re rancorous enemies.  I thought the book’s title should have been Beijing Ghost. I mean, the story’s about the invisible parts of Beijing: the unofficial rules and class divisions and struggles, Alice’s own secrets and then her classmate’s secrets.  I also loved that her plan was an app — you can order anything from Taobao in Beijing, so why not a secret favors app? This is so Beijing and so now, and just a wonderful, obvious next step for Alice’s situation.

I taught in a Beijing high school, although it wasn’t nearly as high-class and prestigious as Alice’s school, so a lot of the school life felt familiar. The extreme exam pressure and the glorification of exhaustion made such a good background for the supernatural storyline, and Alice’s own story. I loved that this book talks about fuerdai students avoiding the gaokao in an IB school, without feeling the need to explain fuerdai or gaokao in detail. It made me feel like If You Could See The Sun was for me.

I want to highlight a scene that stuck with me: Without spoilers, there’s a recounting of a crime in the only Asian-owned business in a town, and the responding police officers say it’s probably not race-related, just random. And there’s no way to prove it was a hate crime.  I filled up with rage, like this was every guy who’d ever said, sure, that particular woman earns less than her coworker, but are you SURE it’s gender-related? I mean, did the boss specifically say he won’t pay women decent money? Can you prove it? Same thing here… a criminal targeted the Asian-owned store and harmed the owners, but did he specifically say he’s racist?  Ugh. This part is infuriating, but also highlights this whole invisible-rules theme in the book.

I’ve read other novels about ambitious social climbing, like Everybody Rise, Snobs, or Social Creature, or just books about characters who aspire to more than they have. Alice is sort of in this mode, with her intense (but still likable) ambitions. The twist really is her invisibility powers — this isn’t a manners novel of a working-class girl carefully imitating the style, speech, and correct designer handbags of the upper classes. Instead, Alice’s superpower comes from being unseen and unnoticed.

Being the Beijing Ghost while getting top grades is exhausting, but Alice can’t give up either one.  Eventually, Alice has to decide how much she’s willing to do to stay in Airington High School and achieve her goals. This section was an absolute pageturner, because I wanted Alice to be able to stay in her school and follow her ambitious and I didn’t want her to do the increasingly sketchy (and increasingly well-paid) ghost missions at the same time. This question of what are you willing to do? where do you draw the line? who are you becoming is such a solid YA center, with a great character and so much Beijing style here.

Don’t let the generic cover fool you. This is not a generic YA.

(Crossposted to my book blog)

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Online Learning, Again

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Meg

Dept of Ed: To improve online teaching quality, we’ve decided that teachers need more paperwork. There’s now a new form for lesson plans and you have to submit then in new places and there are new, required PD sessions where a boomer will tell you about Jamboard again and we have a new evaluation system for teachers on how well you’re incorporating technology and there are new benchmarks and paperwork for this and you’re supposed to evaluate your junior teachers on this and there’s another mandatory meeting about how to do that and of course you won’t be paid extra for any of this.

Me: I’m not doing any of that bullshit. Make me.

My student: Hi teacher, I’m doing class in my car parked outside Starbucks because the wifi’s out in my building, but don’t worry, I brought a pencil and my homework packet.

Me: Ok, yes, I’ll work very hard to make our online classes work for you guys.

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Sad Zoom Graduation

Posted on June 30, 2022 by Meg

Zoon Graduation Background

My year teaching of ESOL 3 at my new job, back in adult ed, ended today, with Sad Zoom Graduation. I was kind of dreading this morning because I’m so completely burned out on Sad Zoom versions of all our milestones, forever.

After I read my students’ names and congratulated everyone on completing Level 3 English, one of my students said “Teacher, may I say something?” and then she READ AN ENTIRE SPEECH that she had WRITTEN IN ENGLISH thanking me for the class and listing all the reasons she liked the class. And I cried.

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Meg

I accidentally read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, over a game convention weekend, while I spent the rest of my time demoing my games, playtesting a new game, and talking about game design. We also did a panel where my husband/co-creator explained his workflow as a wind-up robot, that gets keeps going and going, and I had to say that I have 10,000 ideas in all directions, but not every idea is a great game. Then I came home and read this story about gamemaking creativity and relationships.

In Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, childhood friends (and sometimes frenemies) Sadie Green and Sam Masur agree to spend a college summer making a game together.  With Sam’s college roommate, Marx, as their producer, their first game, Ichigo, becomes a massive hit. This is the goal for all of us making indie games, but the novel is actually about long-term creative collaboration, not about the magic of a success.

Their game creativity is a special kind of work, there’s a lot of time between Cool Idea and Finished Game, and that’s when we see our characters grow and change, fall in and out of love, struggle to understand and be understood. I particularly loved how Marx, the producer, was described as doing all the invisible work that let Sam and Sadie do their work better. There’s a lot about inspiration and accidental inspiration, with game journalists making connections the developers didn’t see.  The book has a couple experimental sections, and they’re not all quite as engaging as the main narrative, but I think in any book about game dev, a chapter set inside the game world is basically obligatory.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is not just about games, it’s also a story about disability and trauma and overcoming the past. Mazer’s injury, and the way he feels about his body play a major role in his personality.  (It’s not exactly pleasant to read about his injury and amputation, but it’s not too gross, either.) We can see him developing and changing over the years. Overall, I think seeing our characters develop over time was one of my favorite parts.

You needn’t know a lot about games to follow the story, but some gamer moments resonated for me, and maybe they will for other gamemakers, too.  Sadie starts out making Solution, which is not exactly Train, but has a similar feeling (Weirdly, this same weekend I directed some younger game designers to this talk from Brenda Braithwaite). and EmilyBlaster, which is not exactly Stride and Prejudice, but has the same feeling. For me, this made the whole story feel like it was grounded in real games.

Those of us in the Oregon Trail generation often joke about how the best part of playing games these days is a character waking up fully rested or facing only solvable puzzles, so I enjoyed the novel’s comments on the achievable goals and restarts of gaming. The characters are the right age for Oregon Trail memories too, and there’s a running joke about the classic you have died of dysentery line.  But this is about friends riffing on a shared experience, this isn’t a book about getting the gamer jokes. I mean, I liked Ready Player One, but ultimately found the barrage of pop culture references exhausting. It started to feel less like fandom and more like a fandom test — did I like the correct cool things? was I the right kind of player? had the correct lines and bits of trivia made the correct impact on me? Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow uses games to tell a story about love and creativity, it’s not a story about liking the correct games.

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adulthood

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Meg

Me: Why? You ask me why? For personal joy and artistic expression, for lifelong learning, for intellectual curiosity, for connection to the human experience, for —

My accountant: Let me clarify. Was this class in game design so you can claim your tuition as a company expense?

Me: Oh. No, not really.

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