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​ This weekend was the Global Game Jam, and once again, I didn’t participate. I would like to, but I have been doing a writing jam instead.

​ As much as I enjoy getting together with people to bang out a goofy game, I also enjoy spending a bunch of time with myself arguing over what word to put where. The arguments are, again, with myself.

​ While the approaches might be very different, the process is sort of the same. There are prompts, time limits, technical limits, and a bunch of technology involved.

​ The game technology is pretty obvious. Game engines, graphics tools, IDEs, and maybe even weird input devices.

​ The writing technology is a bit older and a bit less well understood. Writing is absolutely a technology, but stories are too. Writing is a technology created to allow people to speak to one another over distance and time. You can write something down and someone far away from you a few years from now can pick it up, read it, and understand what you were saying. Super useful.

​ Stories are a slightly different technology, since they existed before writing, but writing them down is probably the best way to trade them. Stories are a culture building survival technology that lets groups share learning and information and our feelings about those thing. It’s a way of packing up our thoughts and feelings into packages that we can then give to other.

​ So, older, weirder technology, but otherwise just the same as using Unity.

​ Back to jammin’