Hi everyone!
Half a quarter has once again passed, so it’s time for another Currently on my art post. This time around, I have more to talk about as I have learned some things along the way.
First things first: my master’s thesis is progressing well. I missed the deadline of mid-May (as I expected) and now my truly final deadline is the end of June. As of writing, analysis is over 50% done and after that is finished I’ve only got putting my findings into a neat package as the last big part of the process before I can start finalizing the whole thesis. It’s a relief to be this close to the homestretch; I’m looking forward to having a vacation once I’ve submitted my thesis, although it will feel strange not to have to work on it anymore after a year and a half of work.
Speaking of my master’s thesis, I wound up dabbling in using ChatGPT to help with finding sources for it, which proved just how dangerous it is to take AI’s words at a face value without fact checking. First, I asked for an article or a book that defines games from the perspective of narrative. ChatGPT gave me Chris Solarski’s The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect. I immediately had a “Press X to doubt” moment but the AI was convincing enough in its explanation as to why that book would be a good source for my thesis. Since I could borrow it from the Internet Archive’s library immediately, I decided to check it out against my better judgment. Cue 1 hour wasted, at which I had to conclude that I had been bamboozled. When I asked ChatGPT to define a game and to list its sources, I actually got somewhere since it gave me good sources I had not come across yet, but I didn’t even look at the definition itself to keep potential misinformation from making its way into my brain.
My second attempt at making use of AI for my thesis came while looking for sources that use the analysis method I had selected – the formal analysis from Petri Lankoski and Staffan Björk’s Game Research Methods: An Overview. ChatGPT told me that Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals analyzed Tetris using that method. Thinking I had hit the jackpot, I looked through the book for discussions on Tetris and concluded that I was not finding anything that resembled what I was looking for. Cue going back to ChatGPT and asking if Salen and Zimmerman use that type of analysis. The response can be summarized in a single word: “No.”
I ragequit that method of searching at that point.
Lesson learned: Do not trust AI to do your research for you. It will only give you a headache.
I also gained some experience in how awful the user experience is with books that use DRM (Digital Rights Management). Last year, there was a Star Wars book bundle on Humble Bundle and I, of course, got excited, bought it and ended up missing the part about DRM until it was too late, as all the previous Humble Bundle book bundles I had paid attention to had not had it. Since I had already bought the bundle, I figured I might as well redeem it (by suffering through Kobo, which turned out to be very clunky). I wound up procrastinating downloading the books for almost a year, until this quarter, when I finally got around to doing it, initiating an infuriating chain of events:
Step 1: I download the .asc files for each of the 41 books individually.
Step 2: I conclude that Adobe Digital Editions doesn’t work properly on Linux via Wine at least right off the bat (at least the way I tried to get it working on my system) and switch to Windows.
Step 3: I do a quick anonymous authorization on ADE to get things done (and so that I don’t have to use time to dig up and potentially change my Adobe account’s password) and download the books.
Step 4: I note that most of the data, including ISBNs, is missing in the epub files once I stuck them into Calibre for safekeeping.
Step 5: I try to open some books to check their ISBNs (which I need to download the rest of the metadata on each of the books reliably in Calibre) and see ADE crash because some books are too big.
Step 6: I google the issue and learn that this is far from a new problem.
Step 7: I try an older version of ADE, screw up the authorization and suddenly need new .asc files to redownload the books.
Step 8: I run out of patience and scrape the ISBNs from Kobo by hand by looking up the books individually, for each of the 41 books separately, as the series data on each of the books is unusable to put it mildly.
Step 9: I am so done with this bundle and Kobo.
In other words, by far the worst user experience I’ve had in a long while, one that gave me an immense urge to look up how to crack the DRM on Kobo books (someone must have figured out how to do that by now, what with Kobo’s systems being so clunky and ADE being partially unusable). I resisted that urge since I don’t want to go into that rabbit hole at all – I have no wish to risk getting into trouble, legal or otherwise, because I wasted some 15 euros on books in a system with an abysmal user experience – but I would be lying if I said that I was not heavily tempted. As Valve’s Gabe Newell has said, piracy is not a pricing issue but a service issue, and my experience with this bundle certainly proves him right.
Lesson learned: DRM in books sucks even more than Denuvo in video games does and I don’t want to ever have to deal with it again. This was more than enough of that for a long, long time. Oh, and take more care with checking for DRM when considering book bundles on Humble Bundle.
In more positive news, I’m finally working on my FFM 2023 collection properly again and this time around there’s going to be something new: unlike all the previous ones, this collection will be released via Draft2Digital, which acquired Smashwords two years ago. I’m not sure how that will go; I’m very particular about the consistency of formatting, so it’s going to be an experience of some sort to see how D2D’s system handles the styling that I have perfected for Smashwords’s compiler. I’m hoping for the best but we’ll see how it goes once I’ve finished formatting the collection. I’m trying to get that collection out in June so I can then focus on FFM 2024 in full. In any case, look forward to the release announcement of that collection! By the way, worry not if you like getting my books from Smashwords; D2D will distribute the book there among other stores.
Another piece of positive news is that I’ve compiled an index of my stories so it’s easier to find where I have released my stories. It took a lot of work but I am glad that I combed through my stuff to keep track of it all. It was an intriguing look into how my focus on things has shifted when it comes to flash fiction and non-project work.
As for other news… well, not much has happened with my projects. After nearly a year (whoops), I finally got around to revising a bit of TFW again. Beyond that, progress with my two projects has been slow since I’ve dedicated more time and effort into my thesis. Both should speed up once I get that thing out of the way.
Let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 84 is still in writing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I revised and posted a chapter recently and I’m hoping to speed up that process in the coming summer.
- Off-DA projects: My master’s thesis is progressing well; analysis is over halfway done and I’m close to starting to finalize the whole thing. It should be ready for submitting by the end of the quarter.
- Lyokostar: The second part of story 7 is still waiting for alphareading, but that’s a thing for once its indefinite hiatus ends. This story is in need of massive reworking, so it’s going to take a long time to finish when I do find the time and energy to resume it. References need to be done.
- A Wandering Aura: On indefinite hiatus.
- I’ll Draw The Stars: I’m reworking to add a considerably big plot bunny into the fic and lots of smaller plot bunnies in the form of the background characters I’ve been researching for my master’s thesis. I’m currently working on chapter 15 out of 81. I’ve written 11373 words in Q2 so far
- Gaming: Habitica and Pokémon Masters EX keep on going. I’ve also played through a bunch of games: Tanuki Sunset, Arietta of Spirits, Eventide: Slavic Fable and I’ve played some Wildfire, Trine 2, Entwined and Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure (not recommended; it was a terrible game). So, quite a lot of gaming this half-quarter!
- Other stuff: I’ve resumed working on the FFM 2023 collection since the last update. I hope I’ll get it out in June. I have been reading fanfics mostly, although I also read through the kinetic novel Wander No More and the book Entangled with You: The Garden of 100 Grasses.
- Personal life: Just master’s thesis -related stuff and wragling with book DRM. Nothing much has happened.
That’s for all this update. Thanks for reading and take care!
WindySilver 