doruk's blog

2024, a year of all time

Get in loser, it’s time to reflect on our years.

This has been such a strange, beautiful, scary, exhausting year full of love and longing for me in so many ways. I moved to UK a year and a half ago, after moving 3 times in 3 years, a nomadic life where I needed to adapt constantly, jump through hoops and barriers, work a lot to form and maintain my bonds, struggling to grow any roots where I was. This year in contrast has been all about moving past my isolationary tendencies and patterns, finding joy in making, playing, learning and growing together.

Here, I want to list some highlights which stayed with me, whether it be books, games, practices, experiences, anything really.

Collage

I love collages, both as a practice, but also as a recurring theme in many aspects of my life. I love it as a practice, because it has a very low barrier to entry and allows people to play together very easily, but it also accepts as much care as you want to give it. It is inherently about appropriating things, transforming them, while being silly and finding meaning. Whatever happens, emerges in the act, and it can be a deeply social activity.

I think my first big step into The Collage Reality was in a board game retreat I went to, meeting some online friends there and having a great time. Soon after that, I started going to Riso Club quite regularly, a collage/riso printing workshop held in a historic press in the York city center. When I first went there I knew no one, but in the end this thing turned into a cherished ritual of sorts for me where I made a lot of new friends. We played around together, making collages, learning how to use a riso printer, but the fact that this form of creative play was at the center of it also allowed me to be open and silly in ways which I normally find hard to with people I just met.

A group, or a game making movement, which also uses collages in a deeply inspiring way is The Plunderludics (https://plunderludics.github.io/). They made this beautiful tool to import emulated games into Unity game engine to repurpose them, and collage games to make new games. I think it is one of the most interesting things happening in alternative game making scenes and you should definitely check it out.

Books

This year I didn’t read books as much as previous years, I think maybe doing a phd right now, reading so many papers for my work, is also making my reading hobby gain some new baggage, which is definitely something I need to work on because reading is just too valuable to lose. However,,, I did read some beautiful books this year and here are my favourites. (I am only writing fiction stuff here because I don’t want to write about my work as much here.)

Agua Viva & Passion According to G.H. (Clarice Lispector)

Lispector is a mysterious writer, impossible to pin down. Her writing is so intensely reflective and full of epiphanies to the point where some 5 page long chapters give you enough to think about more than some whole books. It is beautiful for reading slowly, taking your time with it, and especially in that weird liminal (sub)conscious state before you go to sleep.

Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolaño)

I was very skeptical of this book at first, I am not a fan of Beat style, On The Road, type of writing that much and this book very much starts like that. If you get past the first stage of the book however, it blossoms into a beautiful and solemnly haunting story about a poetry movement from the perspectives of its members, their entanglements and disentanglements, and how we are products of our lives and bonds, which are much bigger than us.

Lynda Barry

I love Lynda Barry’s work so much. It’s all about how creativity is something deeply human, and it belongs to all of us. Moving beyond evaluation of some high standards of art to find humanity in making things. This year I read almost all of their comic books I think. One Hundred Demons, What It Is and Syllabus would be great ones to start, especially if you wanted to draw, write or make things, but found it difficult to pierce its barrier, or felt it might be too late for you to start (hint: it’s definitely not! It might even be a boon!!)

Games

Most of the games I played this year were games on itch.io. I am constantly in awe of the abundance of personal, unique, silly, inventive, broken, amazing things people make in alternative game scenes. It’s a beautiful blossoming garden right now, but people who don’t make games (and Stuff) can find it hard to enter and explore because it is beyond the convenience of the mass market of games. It requires care and effort, but I promise you it also rewards it. I collect things I find inspiring in this playlist (https://itch.io/c/597239/garden), feel free to use it as a door.

I also want to make a special shout out to Domino Club, a loose collective which makes internal game jams a few times a year, and consistently puts out there strange and beautiful games. Their whole collection is a joy to explore, and I find something new I love any time I come back to dig more. (https://domino.gallery/)

Ambient(ish) Music

This year I listened to so much ambient music. I want to write more about it as a blog post later because there is so much to unpack about it for me personally. Until then however, here are some albums I loved a lot this year (not necessarily published in 2024).

Movies

Ok this post is getting long. But,, movies? They can also be long, and good. Here are some I watched and loved this year:

Miscellaneous

Our last category is misc, a random assortment of things I cherished a lot this year:

I’m also proud of the work I did this year, which felt like exploring and laying down a foundation more than anything. I read, wrote and reflected a lot on my research, which is all about player creativity, social hierarchies and game design at this point. I gave some conference talks about playing with rules (hopefully one of them will be online soon!!). I made a few games and toys and zines (available at: [https://fuzul.itch.io/) and tabled a stall at the york zine fest. Started assisting in a creative coding class. Finished my first paper, if the stars align should be published some time in the next year.

I have been meaning to start my blog for a loong time, and this reflection gave me a good reason to do it. I hope you enjoyed it and I would love to know more about things you cherished (or hated!!) too. I am really excited about 2025, see you there.