In 2010, Jordan Magnuson did something special: He set out on a crazy adventure to travel Asia and make short computer games (and notgames) about the things that impacted him along the way. After 236 days of travel through five Asian countries (Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia), Jordan's adventure of "gametrekking" was completed, as well as 10 games made during and about this journey and the people and places he visited.
I contacted Jordan and asked him a few questions about travel, games and notgames.
VGT: Coincidentally, you and me have some things in common: we both travelled in Asia at the same time, for a similar amount of time. Contrary to me, you had a "mission" - to make games as well as travel. How did that work out? Did you find it difficult to combine the movement of travel with the sedentary business of making games?
Jordan: Overall, the gametrekking journey was incredibly rewarding: as I’ve said in my retrospective, I wouldn’t trade my experiences hitchhiking down the east coast of Taiwan, couchsurfing in the Mekong delta, or visiting the Killing Fields of Cambodia for anything. I love traveling purely for its own sake, but at the same time I’ve done a lot of traveling, so I enjoyed having a particular “mission”, as you put it, on this occasion: I like uncertainty and challenge, and Gametrekking provided me with plenty of both. Even after it was successfully funded, the project was somewhat unprecedented, and a big unknown in a lot of ways, which made things exciting.