I am a game designer,
I think my most relevant qualifications would be that I worked on Sleeping Dogs as a mission designer, and have been modding TES since Morrowind, and even hacked a bit of Daggerfall. I mostly end up downloading mods from others and changing them to suit myself. Although I have ended up doing some player homes, towns, and overall world geometry/ dialog/ quest mods for myself just to change the game to my liking as I play the various Bethesda games.
I am currently involved in academic research into modding and modder communities in terms of participatory production as gameplay using an autoethnographic approach. So this project would be great for looking at mod community contexts more formally. Have also been teaching game design and level design for many years. There is a high chance that some people on this project are my former students, and it would be great to reconnect with them randomly in this context.
I think I would be most useful to edit/ test world spaces and quests. But any sort of gameplay/ UX/ balancing/ engagement aspects; any game design would be something I would be comfortable handling. I would offer to handle some project management but at the current time I don't feel like I could offer enough hours per week to be effective in that capacity. I feel like I have a lot of experience to offer, but would like to start out small, just tell me what needs done, and I'll see to it.
Bumping for landscaping dpt.
Would quest bug fixing interest you? most of the scripts are written and mainly comes down to broken aliases from build iteration. Landscaping can always use a hand as well but they'd need to see some sample images or .esp files probably, just to confirm. Balance wise we're still waiting on some individuals to get foundational elements finished up before delving deeply into that.
Also, can you unpack what "autoethnographic" means? I'm curious. thanks!
Auto-ethnography is a method of social research whose defining characteristic is that the author links personal experience and autobiography with social, political, and cultural concepts. Its difference from ethnography is the high degree of subjectivity that is introduced to the study, and the fact that the perspective of the author shows personal involvement with the subject much more than participant observation invites.
From the 1970s onwards, auto-ethnography has been gaining impact and is being used more and more. However, it still constitutes an issue of controversy and is, sometimes, criticized because of its individualistic and subjective nature, which is seen as potentially undermining of its scientific credibility. That is, the author’s personal involvement with the events and society he/she describes and analyzes is sometimes considered as something that clouds his/her objectivity. It remains, however, questionable whether auto-ethnography should be judged on the same terms as traditional ethnography, as one may argue that they have different purposes altogether, and that a subjective point of view is advantageous and what auto-ethnography has to add to traditional methods.
Tadaaaa