J'aime Bien Toronto

Introducing... Gargoyles!

In June I was lucky enough to test out my new game Gargoyles at the Recess.TO event held by David Fono and Katie Raynes-Goldie, a "forum for experimental games" and an inclusive, all-around fun time.

Gargoyles is a turn-based physical game that plays with proximity and comfortable distances. Often, games require rough physical contact and I wanted to flip that notion on its head. What if players had to get uncomfortably close, but not touch? Can we become more comfortable with strangers in our personal space if it's in a game? 

First, players are separated into 2 or 3 teams. During a team's move, players must jump, stick the landing, and freeze "like stone" in place. If they touch rival players, they lose. The strategy in Gargoyles is to wrap your limbs around rivals and encircle them so that they cannot move during their turn without touching you (and thus, losing).

Ethnic Aisle: A call to arms for unicorns

Since I read about 15-year-old Jamie Hubley's suicide, I have felt deep, deep sorrow. His agonizing search for acceptance, his lingering self-doubt, his sense of defeat that ultimately led to him taking his own life—how many other queer teens are facing these same issues and desperately needing support? How many other "unicorns," to use a phrase to describe someone who is magical inside and knows it from Glee—one of Jamie's favourite shows—are close to forgetting or throwing away what makes them so special?

And with Jamie's story, I feel something new. I feel sick to my stomach, because in all honesty, I look at some of the ways the queer community treats each other and I know we can do better, especially in honour of how hard our teens are working to escape into this world. 

(Now, you may note that you worked much harder to come out, and no one can take that away from you. But then you must also know that coming out is just the first step.) 

As much beauty and good as there is from telling our children that "it gets better," the videos are a first step. We need to do more. We need to make the community safer, better, brighter for the kids to see how much better it can get.

You might note that in high school, the world after high school is very far away—and I would agree with you. However, I believe in Gandhi's words, that we must be the change we want to see. 

How can we shake our heads about how bad bullying is in high school, when there can be bullying right in our own community? When Jamie talks about wanting to be loved, I know it is something that is shared universally, and yet I bet most gay men would agree that this community is a culture that treats hearts flippantly, that engages in relationships recklessly.

Quick notes on the Jobs legacy

I'm sitting in an airport about to board a flight from New York to Los Angeles so I'll keep this brief. This post contains thoughts I've been circling around since I arrived Monday, but the launch of the iPhone 4S and Steve Jobs' passing tie in neatly.

On Tuesday, for lunch, I went to a soul food restaurant in Harlem for fried chicken and waffle. (It was delicious!) Harlem has been gentrifying and the area I was in was a mix of new and old, of lower and middle-upper classes. One thing I noticed however was that nearly everyone had a smartphone, a mix of Androids, BlackBerries, and older iPhones. Something that had been a hallmark of the business class had trickled down, and, as many of my creative classmates will attest, having that amount of mobile computing power leads to change.

Many of the innovations (a capacitative touchscreen, a smooth Internet experience, apps) weren't by Jobs, but he did push a mandate of design along with the innovations. (Let's not forget the old days of clunky computers that never acknowledged that an actual person had to use them.) As Jobs pushed these devices, Apple early adopters bought them at whopping mark-ups, allowing the corporation the ability to present the next set of better devices at the same prices. (Yes, the costs of parts went down industry-wide, but I'll wager Apple's massive buying power plays a large role too.) This pushed down the prices for the field making the devices more accessible. Now, on a contract, people on a limited budget can eschew a computer they may not need and just depend on the phone in their hands. That's pretty powerful.

I also think about how the emphasis on design means greater accessibility for elderly people and children. We've seen the videos of infants using the iPad but people rarely see beyond the gee-whiz novelty. Let's not even look at the iPad as creativity tool (that $700 could go a long way for Play-doh and markers) and think of how it can help children communicate earlier, and also those with disabilities that, say, hinder typing. Not every child needs an iPad, but I can clearly see Jobs' influence in accessible design being a boon for children.

The benefits are even clearer for the elderly, who found computers too complicated. By streamlining and curating the experience, Apple devices helped bring seniors into the online experience, with all its potential social interactions and creative opportunities. I don't think Jobs was thinking of how older people would use the devices, but when the Western culture habitually dismisses and makes ineffective its elders, the iOS devices did the opposite. (I will note however that I once saw an Apple employee trying to sell a MacBook Pro on an elderly woman and I nearly kicked him. Lucky for him, she declined.)

I don't want to lionize Jobs: he was a ruthless businessman. I also still have mixed feelings in the near-religious loyalty Apple products instill in people. (When people thank Jobs for giving them a life, I assume they're also thanking, maybe, their parents.) However, this is a time to reflect and these are points I rarely see put out by the media, which often dismisses the segments I mention here.

Ethnic Aisle: Standing up for the assembly line house

When people from downtown think of the suburbs, they tend to think of rows of identical houses, each lined up like on a factory line. So bland. So same-y. So dull. Blah! Look at that conformity, critics say snidely. Whatever happened to originality? they ask. Everything wrong about the suburbs comes down to the uniform exteriors of the houses, meant to signify the conformative, uninspired thinking inside.

But here's my question: shouldn't the person who lives in the house get to decide what it looks like? And if they like living in the house and are happy with how it looks, who is to say you get to judge them for that?

What people don't see is that the uniformity of suburban homes actually allows more flexibility, not less. When houses are made similarly, costs go down, and that means people have more money in their pockets to make a choice over how they want their houses to look. People who want special fixtures can do so independently (since people may want different kinds of special fixtures) while those who don't want frills aren't forced to pay for them.

Furthermore, people can choose where they want that money to go. Not everyone cares what their house looks like, but they may care about their kids being able to learn piano or go to hockey practice. This is a benefit to society because culture isn't solely dependent on how one's house looks like on the outside—we need pianists and hockey players too.