Hana, Local Trans Pat Witch🏳️‍⚧️

As you probably know, Cohost is unfortunately closing its doors in a few weeks.

When I picked the name "Indie Games of Cohost" for this gimmick account, I did so for two reasons:

1. The focus was to share the work and posts of game devs who use Cohost, to make it easier for users to find people to follow and forge a community on here.

2. I told myself that the day when Cohost dies...I would let this whole thing die with it. I will not be trying to migrate, re-brand, and continue this on a different site in the short-term.

I really enjoyed doing short interviews with game developers. I imagine for many, it was the first time they've been interviewed about their creative work. Over the course of this year, the pace of interviews I posted slowed down. The reason for that was that I was trying to hold myself to a higher standard, wanting to ask more and more insightful questions about their individual projects. This kind of "increased the workload" for me, leading the interviews to come more slowly.

Today, I've sent out a final shotgun blast of emails to a few devs I was going to get to on my list, with "mini interviews" that all have the same questions.

Read below for more info on IGOC ending and sharing your work in the comments

GamePrompt had put me out of a job. I used to be a game designer. Now it is possible for anyone to speak a prompt into their phone, and in minutes be playing a fully AAA quality game of that prompt on their phone, with ads of course. AAA still owned the IPs and so while AI built games were now the norm, it was now my job to go into the generated game and "clean up" broken functionality and gameplay. I spent most of my time pleading for certain keywords to be put into the generation prompts to make my life easier (Endian One seemed to make things work better). I would spend hours going through thousands of lines of machine generated code, which often ended nowhere and with many functions completely blank. Having remembered the days of human authored game code, it didn't seem much different.

Since it's one of the things people keep bringing up: American corporate law has no good options for cooperatives. There is no defined corporate model for such, with the result that 100% of small formal cooperatives are organized as one of three types of corporations: An LLC (limited liability corporation), an s-corp or a 501 non-profit. There are no other useful options; larger co-operatives are typically stuck as a c-corp, which is simply a traditional corporation, which can create a lot of difficulty for the co-op in terms of how legal ownership applies and how the co-op is protected from malicious members, but has somewhat less risk exposure in that sense than a large LLC.

An LLC and an s-corp are both "passthrough" entities - tax and ownership convey directly to the members or "shareholders" - so they don't create a completely independent entity like a c-corp. This is really important in terms of governance and allows the worker-owners to be 1-1 legal owners as well.

501s, non-profits, are strictly constrained in the type of operations they can pursue and the corporate structuring, such that it is extremely hard for a cooperative to be organized as a 501 and still have the worker-owners also be legal owners. It's a hard row to hoe and if your main operations are products or business services (in the broad sense) it's basically not feasible to organize as a 501.

Capitalism is rigged and it's rigged in small and large ways, and one of those ways is specifically preventing businesses from organizing on a democratic or co-operative model.

I am reading a book of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West’s love letters and it is very good. Some of my favorite bits so far:

• The part where Virginia refers to Vita as a “pronounced Sapphist”
• The numerous letters where Vita writes to her husband “I just want you to know I’m NOT in love with Virginia, I’m just obsessed with her PLATONICALLY, also we had sex”, followed by another letter to her husband like “Why won’t you believe me that I’m not in love with her!! I told you about the sex!!! Should that prove I’m honest”, and then two weeks later her letters to Virginia start being like “Darling I am in love with you, I feel my heart has been ripped out when we’re apart”
• The part where Vita writes in a letter to Virginia “P.S. Please call me honey”, then Virginia immediately starts all her letters with “Dearest Honey”, “Sweet Honey,” etc.
• The part where Vita is stressed about being seated next to a guy at a dinner party bc she had sex and then eloped with his wife 7 years earlier

I've got about 80 pages left of letters to go, and they continue to be an absolute delight. Some more favorite bits:

• When Virginia writes a letter to Vita like "I always come up with petnames for you, you never do the same for me, also I am taking the time to write to you even though you are not writing to me, I am just putting in a lot of effort here that's not being reciprocated. Anyway I need to buy makeup what should I buy I don't know anything about this"
• Anytime Virginia says "I will do X as a treat". I.e. "I think, for a treat, I shall let myself dash [Orlando] in for a week", or "I shall now have my little treat of writing to Vita"
• Vita really likes these cute lil' primates named Pottos (see above) so Virginia has not only adopted this as her nickname, but has developed an entire alter ego called "Potto", who is kind of petulant. Vita is into it. At one point, Vita sends Virginia a gift and Virginia responds with "Potto does not like gifts. Please do not send Potto anymore presents"
• Just the entire Orlando situation. It is well known that Orlando is about Vita, and it figures prominently in the letters. Imo, the letters provide essential context that make the book, which is very funny and very queer (and one of my favorites), even funnier. Like, why is the narrator so obsessed with Orlando's legs? Because Virginia was obsessed with Vita's legs IRL!
• This quote from Vita after she reads Orlando: "You have invented a new form of Narcissism...I am in love with Orlando - this is a complication I had not foreseen"
• This quote from Virgina, writing to Vita: "A woman writes that she has to stop and kiss the page when she reads O[rlando]...The percentage of Lesbians is rising in the States, all because of you".

I am sad to report that I am finished with this volume of love letters. My wife picked this up for me as a special gift in a queer bookstore while they were studying abroad in London this summer and I'm so happy that they did, because it was consistently one of the most delightful things I've read all year. Thank you @milktea

There were plenty more favorite bits in the last 1/3 of these letters:

• When Vita is in the US for a few months, Virginia is like "I am so jealous of all those other women you are sleeping with I cannot take it. Please write me a letter about how I am so wonderful and how you love me best after your husband and sons"
• Virginia continues to be very jealous of Vita's other affairs and yet despite that starts to write letters to Vita being like "Well I had sex with X the other day and here's what it was like"
• This is from a footnote but at one point, Vita's mother went off on a rant at family dinner to Vita's son, Ben, about his parents' "morals" because they slept with other people and were both not-heterosexual. Ben, who respected Virginia greatly, told Virginia about it and when he was done she responded with "the old woman ought to be shot"
• Vita to Virginia when Virginia is unwell: "Dear Mrs. Woolf...I regret that you have been in bed, though not with me"
• Vita continues to sign letters with "Your Orlando"
• Virginia was friends with Ethel Smythe, a much older composer and lesbian, who was in love with her. When WWII broke out, Ethel Smythe began talking to her next door neighbor, who she had avoided up to that point, and then the two of them fell in love. Very happy for these 84-year-old lesbians

In general the last section of letters were also especially affecting because of WWII and Europe's general political situation. There is so much discussion of rationing, fears of war, the effects of the German bombings, family losses during the Spanish Civil War and fear of more during WWII, and Virginia and Vita worrying about each other and the anxiety of never knowing if they'll be able to see each other again. And the ending is, as expected, heartbreaking

Anyways again, I love these women and I loved their love letters very much. They are consistently delightful and I highly recommend them