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- Decol Futures: August 5 2025
Decol Futures: August 5 2025
Focus: Curated Decolonization News and Behind-the-Scenes of My Dungeons-and-Dragons-style Video Game
Dana Reijerkerk
August 05, 2025
A newsletter to learn about practical ways to decolonize your research and data work-lives with byte-sized drabbles about the daily life of a data professional.
Behind-the-Scenes: I’m Making a Dungeons-And-Dragons-Style Video Game
Hello hello! Last summer I did a bunch of game jams (intense timed experiences based on making an entire video game in a few days to a month) and I’ve also been playing Baldur’s Gate 3, a Dungeons-And-Dragon game. I woke up one day a few weeks ago with this absurd idea to make a DnD-style game based on the premise of a character trying to grocery shop without talking to anyone.
So I made it! I’m currently doing art for the game menus and picking colors for everything. You’ll play as Janice who battles it out with fellow grocery shoppers with moves like “glare,” “ignore,” and "bonk.”
WIP (work in progress) game menu. The game is called “Don’t Talk to Me.” I’ll animate the game menu icons (Shop, Load, Settings) with a hand picking up the grocery shelf item.
WIP (work in progress) for the game’s main screen. Janice’s DnD moves are below her character portrait and the grocery store is navigated through the window to the top right. I’m working on designing the constitution (health in DnD rules) in the top left.
Curated Content: What’s Happening in Decolonization News
Decolonization is essentially dismantling systems of power. I mainly use this newsletter as a way to dismantle power dynamics over what data work is/looks like. As data professionals, these ideas of power dynamics, oppression, and dismantling data structures touch on all of our work.
Here are some decolonization news. Click on each link to read more.
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