User:Barbs/T2 Assessment
WORK IN PROGRESS!
.✦ BEFORE XPUB
From 2020 until 2024, I studied a bachelor's in Creative Media & Game Technologies at Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht. When I started the course, the industry was booming like never before.
It didn't last: due to the over-expansion and unsustainable business practices of the industry, the latter half of my studies had a dark cloud of constant mass layoffs looming over it, which have yet to stop.[1] Along with the rise of NFT's and generative AI, my original dream of working in games was shattered. I had seen the man behind the curtain, and it was a hypercapitalist pig.
I still remember the exact moment I decided to apply for XPUB: A few months before graduating, the company I had interned at the year prior was forced to fire all of its employees.
During a networking event a few days later I voiced my doubts to some of them about entering the games job market and if I should continue studying instead. The office/hiring manager told me, "If you can stay a student for a few years longer, do it. Wait out the waves of layoffs. Things will hopefully get better once Grand Theft Auto VI releases."
Of course, waiting out the release of GTA 6 is a pretty shallow reason to pursue a master's degree, my motivations behind applying to XPUB had been bubbling for a while. My artistic practice had grown to become more experimental, political, critical of technology, and research-based over time, and I found it difficult to find a space for that within the rigid boxes of the games industry.
.✦ TRIMESTER 1
Radio Show 1: Art > Profits
During the first radio show I participated in, I played an excerpt from Le Guin's 2014 speech in which she criticizes capitalist publishing systems and argues profit incentives are inherently against making art. I first heard this speech a year prior and it has stuck with me ever since.
"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words." - Ursula K. Le Guin
A story in a story in a story
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A Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Python
Graphviz
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Prototyping: Raspberry Pi & Pen Plotters
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Radio Show 2: Cyberfeminism
Women as Technology exhibition
Eliza & Chatbots/AI
Cyberfeminism
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.✦ TRIMESTER 2
Datacenters
Game industry entanglements with big tech
Permacomputing
Laptop maintenance
Comp(h)osting guest class by Marie Verdeil
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Workshop "Our Digital Home"
Instead of the technical side, I focused more on the pedagogical aspects of this workshop.
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.✦ EXTRACURRICULARS
Webgardener
What if a website were a bit like a garden? Putting effort in making & maintaining connections/community, planting and caring for just like you would for a garden. It takes effort, time and patience, but you get something beautiful for it in return.
Webgardener was made as part of the 1Bit Game Jam together with Dion Peek. The jam theme was "offering".
It was my first time making pixel art, and it felt very freeing. Our goal with this game jam was to keep the scope small and build something that felt polished and fun. We were inspired by bitsy games, the indie web and digital gardening.
Something that has stuck with me since is using game design to plant the seed of an idea inside someone's mind. Instead of literally explaining what the indie web is and teaching how to make a website, I kept it simple and instead just introduced the concept of caring for a web community through the metaphor of gardening.
Suncatcher
Inspired by the SI29 datacenter tour, Suncatcher is an interactive narrative with make-over game mechanics. You play as a hacker in a cyberpunk city trying to evade facial detection algorithms by crafting different kinds of masks. Your goal is to infiltrate and set fire to a hyperscale datacenter.
It was made in collaboration with Dion Peek and Max Kuilman as part of the Global Game Jam 2026 with the theme "mask".