Kaitlin Tremblay and Shel Kahn co-hosted along with Jennie; Kellie captained the chat room. Thank you!

Our May Speaker Social was our first-ever fully online social, after more than eight years of hosting them in our space every month.

Despite our being a tech-oriented organization, going all-digital is not our natural state! DMG was formed around an intention to take up and secure physical space, and making and learning together is central to how we are together in community. The things we do together are responsive to bodies, feelings, relationships; it’s sometimes tactile and expansive, a reflection of the equitable world we want to be part of; and we are always seeking to bring in those who’ve been excluded from these kinds of spaces.

Running events online is not necessarily easier, is not always more inclusive, so we are so grateful that our organizers and board have been taking time to think critically about how we can best support our members through this hard time while ensuring we carry our values and intentions through to new ways (for us) of being together. We appreciate your patience, we’re learning!

Thanks to everyone who filled out the access survey over the last 2 weeks – we’ve gotten REALLY good information from that about how folks want to participate and what kinds of programs are useful right now and we’ll be rolling out new events with all of that feedback in mind.

We remind everyone that our code of conduct is a set of guidelines that we’ve developed together over the years, and that it applies to all events we host, online or off. If you haven’t read it lately, please take a look. It’s a living document, and we always welcome feedback and suggestions for edits and additions.

We also have a new and evolving guide to how we run events on Zoom or other video platforms.

Announcements

Remote Realities: An open commission in partnership with Trinity Square Video and supported by EQ Bank. Closes May 31. Make a game about care, play, isolation and connection.

Events:

• Textile Game Controllers Jam – Registration for this postponed jam will open early next week (May 11 or so).
• Writers Working Group a new casual hangout/write-together meetup. Registration is open now!
• RPG jam and game night – Coming up in early June. Stay tuned! June Speaker Social – always the 2nd Saturday of the month!

Other cool stuff:

• New resources site with paid opportunities, COVID-19 support, reading lists and more.
• DMG tv – we’re looking for short video tutorials for our new online tv station! submit here  – Kellie has offered to help anyone interesting filming something for this, so if you don’t have experience taping/editing video get in touch with her on Slack!
• Our food support program is still open

Presentations

Thanks to our presenters:

• Kaitlin (tips for presenting online ahead of her Narrascope talk "Writing and Designing Text-Based Horror Games about Mental Illness" later this month – slides in the #social channel!)
• Shel (on the amazing Ryuutama-based high school literacy program they ran out of DMG in February)
• Santo (sneaky peek at their new Cy83RpuNk game)
• Susan (an apartment walking-sim-in-progress instigated by a sad lack of potatoes)
• Gillian (updating a game about possession and sharing a Unity package for managing quips)
• Nate (working on a polyamory dating sim for TOJam)
• Max (spell-casting and witchy shenanigans).

Accessibility + text-based games

We also had a great chat about accessibility for creators and players of hypertext/interactive narrative games which we encourage folks to carry on in the #if-and-games-writing channel. Some tools and ideas mentioned:

• Writing Tools on DMG resources site
• Forums for hacking accessibility into Twine games
• DMG narrative/writing workshop videos (must be member to view)
• Chronicler, ChoiceScript Visual Code Editor 
• Storyspace 3 for macOS
• Celtx

Finally, Henry invites everyone to join the next Friends Play Games event on Monday, May 18, which will feature community talks on making games, and online group playing! And assures us it’s one of those “CO-ENJOYABLE” events.

See you at the next social on June 13!