If you’ve made it this far…
You can undoubtedly tell, my name is Phil Cork. I am a Data Science in Public Policy graduate from the McCourt School for Public Policy at Georgetown University and work as a Data Scientist at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center.
I live in Washington, DC with my wonderful wife and our senior rescue pup.
My hobbies largely include playing video games, running an ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign, rooting for (and commiserating over) the New Orleans Saints, and playing board games.
You can find more details about a few of these endeavors below.
Video Game Hours, 2015-2020
As you can see, an almost absurd majority of the time I spend playing video games goes towards exploring the sci-fi/fantasy world of Bungie’s Destiny franchise. While I love pretty much every aspect of the game, the world building, writing, and world design are truly second to none and collectively serve as the primary reason for my ongoing fascination with the game and what secrets are yet to be unraveled in the ever-evolving world.
Though not technically a video game, Roll20 serves as the primary medium through which my friends and I play Dungeons & Dragon. Having recently surpassed 1,000 hours in the platform, this figure also does not include the numerous hours spent worldbuilding, writing, and brainstorming away from the table. One would have to assume if these figures were included, D&D might be the singular hobby to compete and likely overtake Destiny’s lead in terms of hours played.
Though a distant third in hours since 2015, Rocket League is quickly rising as a go-to form of entertainment after a day’s work as it provides an easier, more light-hearted way to interact with friends. At the same time, it is also a hobby I can practice on my own time and actively sense myself improving in. As a game emblematic of the ‘easy to learn, difficult to master’ paradigm, Rocket League is easily one of the best $20 I’ve spent.
World Building, Total Words Per Month, 2019-2020
Using World Anvil to keep track of all of my campaign notes and world building projects, I’m able to clearly see the volume of content I am able to produce in a given month as well as observe some interesting seasonality in my productivity. As alluded to above, I prepared for the GRE in the fall of 2019, which resulted in my writing braking to a halt. In contrast, I produced more writing and world building during the early summer of 2020 than any other time in the last two years, resulting in just over 100,000 words for the entire year. Some of the other peaks and valleys can be attributed to the schedules of the other players involved as well as natural flow of campaigns starting and finishing with periods of relative inactivity between them.
One of my favorite aspects of worldbuilding is creating in-world documents and records for my players to discover. Whether providing clues to an unfolding plot, adding depth to an NPC’s character, or providing a vignette into the history or the world, these pieces of lore have evolved to become a unique and driving aspect within the campaigns we play through and interconnected narratives woven between them.
Lore Writing Samples
Comics Read, Per Character Appearance, 2014-2020
I actually found myself surprised by the large majority of time I’ve spent reading Spider-Man comics (especially when one aggregates the three different representations of the hero) in comparison to other characters. While clearly I am a huge fan of the web-slinging hero, I was unaware of the discrepancy between him and other heroes.
Friends would also raise an eyebrow at Thor appearing a modest fourth on the list, given my well documented adoration of the Jason Aaron’s run on the character, but frankly, the last few years of Thor comics have set such a high water mark for me, I’ve not yet explored older iterations of the character and instead have found myself rereading Aaron’s work instead. Further, I was a bit surprised how frequently two different characters shared the exact same number of comics read, but realized this is likely attributed to the release schedule and typical lengths of the story arcs for those characters.