ABSTRACT
In a male-dominated industry, accomplishments in game design by non-men can seem easily forgotten, or be overlooked altogether. It's easy to internalize this, especially when the industry does not have the mechanisms in place to raise up game authors who lack marketing genius. This essay describes the struggle of an analog game designer (K.N. Granger) related to this challenge, from the angle of an artist whose art is all-consuming of her attentions. She describes the process of creating art and the ways it intersects with the difficulties inherent in the suffering of mental illness. In particular, Granger describes the way her game design is often the result of uncompromising compulsion, and how this 'creative compulsion' process can bring both personal joy and pain.
