Spring is in the air, the February blues are slipping away, and Cohort 4 is two-thirds of the way through the Baby Ghosts program.

So far, the five teams have learned about actionable goals and values, coop-studio structures, collaboration and process development, decision-making and prioritization, and are now integrating all these things into their own unique studio structure.

We thought now would be a great time to start checking in and featuring these studios, starting with the resilient and thoughtful two-person studio: Ghost Orchids! 👻

(We love a Ghost name!)

In your own words, who is Ghost Orchids?

• June: A group of weirdos attempting at keeping a bonfire alive while gathering, hunting, and taking care of each other. A place to collaborate, celebrate our victories and weep through challenges together. Building stories through dance and stargazing.

• Finn: A growing band of passionate creatives trying to create things that make the world a nicer place to be in. We help each other as we learn how to do this in anti-oppressive ways. Also, lots of fun philosophy rants.

What’s your biggest takeaway from the Baby Ghosts program?

• Finn: You don’t have to figure everything out by yourself, people are genuinely excited to hear your random half-baked ideas, and it’s ok to take your time.

• June: Community and framework! While I find myself already very value-aligned with the program, the support, education and ideas to build something concrete around these values has been incredible.

Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on right now?

• Our ongoing project Inflow VR aims at inviting people to strip themselves from the apprehensions and expectations of everyday life, while reconnecting with their childlike joy and curiosity.

• We are also exploring adapting Inflow’s unique and novel gameplay in order to find potential research partnerships in the field of trauma therapy and affective neuroscience.

What’s unique about the way you make games (and work together)?

• June: I am absolutely mad, and let myself drift into creative production with joy, fun and curiosity, with the hope of being contagious to those experiencing our games. I often intuitively improvise features before reverse-engineering them to understand what makes them work. This generates very interesting conversations during our studio meetings!

• Finn: I don’t! (sorta) I do mad science, with a focus on how to use games/interactive media to benefit mental health in accessible non-pathologizing ways. I take therapy/psychology theories and try to translate those into interesting gameplay. So I do a lot of research followed by staring at a wall simulating the player experience in my mind, and then attempting to translate that into something sharable, usually with a lot of arm flailing.

• June & Finn: The clash of our processes between science towards experience and vice-versa creates very fun, interesting and passionate dynamics. Worlds meeting in the middle. “As above, so below”. A dance bridging grounded and ungrounded. We follow the flow, but are good swimmers.

What do you think we (all of us involved in game making) could do to make the video game industry better?

• Finn: Human-hearted curiosity combined with iterative design; i.e., f*ck around and find out in regard to how we support each other to do things together.

• June: Put the focus back on the human. Too many of us, especially minorities, had our dreams, creativity and mental health crushed through long work hours, internal politics, and toxic power dynamics.

June: More workers union/co-op culture is needed: We do not have to be a “family,” but we can have each other’s backs, and create intrinsic motivation by making sure individual and collective needs are met as much as possible.

If you like what we’re doing here at Baby Ghosts, check out our donation page our [send us an email](mailto: [email protected])!

Until next time!

— eileen & Jennie