It's almost the end of November 2023, and sadly, I don't have a National Game Design Month project to share this year. It was a good run, but I needed to take this November to focus on other things. It's been a busy semester, but a good one. I helped run the Symposium on Games this month, and I'm the chair of the search committee that is looking to hire a new colleague to help with our games curriculum. I am also currently working on a grant from the Indiana Space Grant Consortium to make a game that helps teach middle school youth about paths to college. We demonstrated our work at the Symposium and received positive feedback, and now the team is making plans for the next steps. In fact, I will have a course release next semester to focus on this project, but since I didn't have one this semester, it was like teaching an extra class to try to keep the project running. I also have a group study of game AI that has been interesting, and those students will be presenting their work in next week's department colloquium.
So, to make a long story short, no NaGaDeMon this year, but plenty of game design (and game design adjacent) work happening. I am currently in the process of setting up Ball State to host Global Game Jam again in January, and that's the next major jam event on my radar.
