Where to end? When to end? How to end? Of these questions, luckily only the last needs answer today. The rest has been decided – beforehand, in my working frame.
Working Frames
One of my favourite theories of mind (yes I do have them) is Bateson’s idea of the frame. A frame is a set conventions/rules/declarations/.. which the mind can dynamically switch on, thus giving a second (usually high prioritized) meaning to the perceptions affected by this frame. This enables us to see fictional worlds on a computer screen and allows for the intriguing interplay of play and earnestness to happen.
The “One Quest A Week” project was a working frame, a context in which I voluntarily inserted myself in order to reach certain goals (becoming a better quest designer, learning to handle work better etc.). Explicit component of “One Quest A Week”-frame was the idea of continous improvement. The idea was to not only play around with one’s own knowledge while learning, but to also evaluate and adjust the frame in which the work is happening.
This is why I’ve been changing the blog’s form (e.g. which sections appear, format of the heading) every now and then: As a sign (to my mind) that I want to stay in a flexible state of mind and in order to catalyze other changes. In the end, I can only recommend this approach – I believe it was vital for the successes this project brought me (and maybe also one of you, dear readers).
Results
Half a year ago I already wrote down a good portion of the thoughts I’d repeat here. Let it suffice to say that I’m quite happy about the range and selection of topics I’ve been able to cover; in the meantime I’m not entirely content about the amount of playable quests that were produced. This is mainly due to me not committing to an engine, so I’d avice myself and any other person to do exactly that as fast as possible.
What else? Well, I realized at some point that being able to use non-scientific sources (a lot of wikipedia) and apostrophes all over the place really is freeing when you’re coming from a place where most of your writings were for school or university. ‘Tis great.
The Future
Now that I release myself from the obligation to post here, surely fewer posts will appear. But they will – writing down thoughts from the brain helps me a lot with structuring them. And I like the idea of journaling my learning process here – in fact, I always wanted to do that but always lacked the commitment to really start. Obligations, after all, aren’t purely bad. Who would’ve thunk.
Anywhoo I’ve cleaned up the posts that were imported from Blogger and made the blog page of my site a bit prettier so – I don’t know – feel free to (re-)visit what happened the last year. There are two or three posts that weren’t posted to Twitter yet, so there’s something new to explore even for any potential regular reader from over there!
Conclusion
Closing this chapter calls for some relief to be felt, ’cause – the blog did have its stressy phases (remember that one month (this one) in which I had to write 9 instead of the usual 4-5 posts to catch up?).
Hope you all have a good time! Wish you good luck with your doings and a happy new year!
Gregor Sönnichsen 