Decol Futures: "Hear Me, Hear You," Game Jams, and Data Projects

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.

“Hear Me, Hear You,” Game Jams, & Data Projects

The cool thing about data projects is that they can be anything! Some examples off the top of my brain: a metadata crosswalk, database redesign, a UX study, or something more creative like video game design.

If you’re fresh out of grad school or want to explore what you can do with your data skills, try making a video game! I’ve been on a video game kick this year. A horror game kick! I created four video games to date and I’m already eyeballing the itch.io game jam page for my next fix.

Game jams are the perfect place to start. Game jams are timed, often themed, events hosted by all sorts of groups that ask participants to make a video game from scratch. You can do it solo or find a group by talking to Internet strangers on the jam’s Discord server. And there are game jams for everything: romance with mermaids, cat-themed furniture only, or games with a pregnant protagonist (truly! I saw this jam on itch.io).

Video game design shows adaptability, creativity, and team work. It’s a portfolio project that demonstrates real-world application of:

• coding

• working with creatives like art directors, music designers, UX designers…

• animation (this is making cool stuff in JSON files! or AE files!)

• digital asset management (so many files!!!)

• writing

• level design (if you can do this, you can migrate databases or digital repositories)

In the last game jam I did, I took a leap and made a fully voice acted adventure game with live2d and hand-drawn animations, point-and-click scenes, and original sounds and music. One of the challenges was pacing. The Josei Jam was two whole months! That meant I had to keep my team’s attention amidst summer break, work, the school year ending for their kids, and more. It took time to code it all - but also to draw the art, and mix all the different assets together to form a cohesive game.

A lot of data science (especially for librarianship or archival science) is based in Python, so I recommend trying to make a game in Ren’Py. This is made for visual novels - the perfect starter game! - and the possibilities are endless.

Play my game for free over on itch.io if you’re interested in seeing what you can do for interactivity in Ren’Py!

Educational Opportunities

A short list of things to explore!

[Call for Webinar Proposals] 2024 — 2025 Research Data Access and Preservation Educational Webinars

Get paid by freelancing your data knowledge with the RDAP Education & Resources committee. They’re looking for virtual lectures, interactive workshops, tool tutorials, and more on data topics like curation, AI, machine learning, data ethics, preservation strategies, and coding. Proposals are due AUGUST 4, 2024.

[Free Course] Git & GitHub Crash Course: Create a Repository From Scratch

At some point in your data life, you will encounter Git and GitHub. Don’t be that person that doesn’t know what it is…It will also save you time when your old Lenovo or Dell computer dies. Udemy has lots of cool, FREE data courses. If you pay their subscription, you can get a course certificate.

[Thinking Fuel] Talk on Getting Buy-In for Digital Asset Management by Claire Blechman @ the Peabody Essex Museum

This YouTube video teaches you more about DAM, getting buy-in for data projects across departments, and about a specific DAM software called NetX. All three things can be added to your resume/portfolio as skills after watching this!

Let’s Create!

I’m open to collaborations, freelance gigs, and conversations about the ideas I shared. Feel free to get in touch and comment on the newsletter.