"Gay Science" at NYU Game Center, September 28, 2017 @ 7 PM

if you look very closely, you'll notice Nietzsche's moustache / hair / ears are actually made of tiny gay people writhing around, having a bunch of hot writhing techno-sex? poster by James Harvey

In about 10 days, I'm giving a talk about games at NYU Game Center called "Gay Science." Here's the blurb:

Robert Yang is a game designer and teacher who is the most recent addition to the Game Center’s full-time faculty. For the past few years Robert has been doing groundbreaking work as an indie developer who appropriates the tools and techniques of mainstream big budget videogames to make work that is personal, idiosyncratic, and highly experimental. His recent games exploring queer sexuality are powerful and sometimes scandalous interventions in gaming culture and he has developed a creative practice that crosses wires between the world of avant-garde media art and mainstream youtube streamers.

In addition to his creative work Robert has developed a large audience for his work as a game critic and thinker across a wide range of topics including an especially deep exploration into the formal and expressive dimensions of 3D level design.

Join us to hear Robert talk about his work and share his unique approach to games, art, and life.

Free and open to the public.

I'm also sharing this Fall 2017 Lecture Series schedule with designer of "Everything" / artist David O'Reilly (on October 26) as well as industry veteran / Campo Santo artist for "Firewatch" Jane Ng (on November 30).

If you'll be around New York City, come on down! Please RSVP here so we know how many chairs to setup.

StoryCode August 2017 Forum at Film Society, Lincoln Center, NYC

Next week on August 22nd, I'll be giving a presentation for StoryCode, a local community group focused on immersive media and storytelling technology. As one of the few game designers invited to present in their lecture series, I thought I'd try to explain how video games conceptualize narrative, interaction, and expression, to an audience that maybe doesn't play that many video games -- or at least, they don't play what we consider to be the state-of-the-art narrative games.

I'm also being required to talk about my games and present them as case studies, even though my games don't fit neatly into the "narrative game" genre. I think I'll probably just open my actual project scenes in the Unity editor and mess with my scene setup and code, which usually entertains people well-enough? It'll also be a short primer in foundational ideas like immersive fallacy / procedural rhetoric / platform studies, and the idea that production value and paratext amount to their own kind of "story."

The presentation is free and open to the public, but I believe you're encouraged to sign-up and RSVP via this Meetup page or something.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017 @ 7:00 PM
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center @ Film Society of Lincoln Center
144 West 65th Street, New York, NY (map)

announcing: No Quarter 2017 on November 3rd in Brooklyn

poster by Sophia Foster-Dimino

A short while ago we announced the date and lineup for No Quarter 2017: it's on November 3rd at the Starr Space Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, featuring new commissioned work by Auriea Harvey (of Tale of Tales), Droqen, Pietro Righi Riva (of Santa Ragione), and Kitty Horrorshow. We'll be flying out all four artists for the show, so if you attend, you'll be able to meet them and talk with them at the event.

For more info, check out this NYU Game Center page for the event. I'd like to copy and paste my short curator's statement here though --

For 8 years now, the No Quarter Exhibition has been paying game designers to make the games they want to make, and then throwing them a big fun party to celebrate and amplify their unique voices. We claim no ownership over the resulting work — we just want these artists to speak their mind, and so we give them space and support to do that. We think it’s a pretty great deal for them, but we also get a lot out of it: their act of creation, and our shared acts of play, help strengthen our communities.

Now, we do all this at a time when many people think we should isolate ourselves from the rest of the world — but we know that’s a very destructive attitude. It’s so destructive that, for the first time in the history of No Quarter, we are temporarily suppressing our vocal and insufferable belief in our city’s exceptionalism: this year, we are commissioning only artists based outside of New York City. We believe a wider diversity of backgrounds and identities can only enrich our understanding of art and community… oh, and it helps us make better games too.

Also happening right after No Quarter -- game convention GaymerX East in NYC runs Saturday / Sunday. Sounds like a cool fun weekend to me! Not to mention that flights and hotels are cheaper in November too, it's off-peak... just sayin'...

Games-related NYC end of year student shows, Spring 2017

If you're around NYC this month, a bunch of games-related university programs are running their end of year shows. It's always very rewarding to see the fruits of so many students' sweat and tears (a lot of tears), and it also doubles as a fun social event where you often run into old friends or Twitter acquaintances.

Here's a rough schedule (in chronological order) and some brief commentary about what to expect from each show. Hope to see you there:

Theorizing local games cultures in a post-TIGSource era

Colin Northway tweeted this about a week ago:

This GDC I strongly felt there's a large movement of young indies that I know nothing about.

Is there a cultural nexus I can visit?

— ColinNorthway (@ColinNorthway) March 8, 2017

As Colin implies, I suspect there is actually no real equivalent of a central "cultural nexus" like TIGSource today. In fact, I've been in on the ground floor of several attempts to make new TIGSource-likes, such as Super Friendship Club and Makega.me, and both of them eventually petered-out in the end for one reason or another. I'm still not sure why, but maybe it's possible that internet forums are a poor fit for what we need these days?

The indie games moment arrived, and has now stabilized into a satellite commercial industry of the game industry. We don't need a central place like TIGSource to imagine it or to advocate for indies to exist. Commercially indie showcase events like Day of the Devs, The MIX, and Indie Megabooth have been been running for a while and will probably keep running.

Today, what would be a public game organization's "mission" now? Everyone has so many different needs and concerns. It's kind of absurd that we even imagined one global "public" that TIGSource was supposed to serve? Local games community problems here in New York City are very different from local problems in, say, Pittsburgh or Capetown or Teheran or Shanghai. One single internet place cannot hope to address all of that.

Many local communities and friend groups have Slacks and chatrooms, but most of these are private and unlisted -- they don't have the "public" face that TIGSource provides / provided. What, are you going to invite Colin Northway to your Slack now? Even if he accepted the invitation, he likely wouldn't stay very long, because Slack requires constant (hourly? minute-by-minute?) engagement and labor to function as a community -- and it'd still be difficult for Colin to understand the tone of your Slack, or what it's really about.

To me, a public games culture should serve two functions: (1) help a local community cohere together, and (2) articulate that community's voice(s) and concerns to the rest of the world.

"Queer Utopian VR" for MVR 2.2 in Brooklyn, 7 March 2017

Next week I'm participating in MVR, an arts-technology presentation series by Pioneer Works and Nancy Nowacek. This particular installment, MVR 2.2, is hosted in conjunction with A/D/O in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as part of their "Utopia vs Dystopia" series. (Wow so many event series!)

I'll be doing some standard artist talk stuff for an audience largely unfamiliar with my work, but I'll also be trying to speak to the theme a little -- "virtual reality" as a historically utopian project that is quickly descending into dystopia on all fronts. I will connect this to José Esteban Muñoz's idea of queerness as a utopia itself, where we can perhaps use the "horizon" of queer performance to preserve / salvage pockets of utopia in VR.

The other presenters are Jacob Gaboury, Laura Juo-Hsin Chen, and Rachel White, also presenting on their particular practices with art and technology... Jacob Gaboury does cool research with the history of computer graphics and queer computing. Laura Juo-Hsin Chen does playful VR that engages with materiality, like "toilet VR" and physical VR masks. Rachel White explores the fuzzy intersection between internet bots and an internet of cuteness.

It should be a fun night. See you there.

Free / open to public, RSVP requested
Tuesday, March 7, 2017 @ 7 PM
at: A/D/O
29 Norman Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11222
(subway: G at Nassau)

GDC Advice for young first-time attendees, 2017 edition

I remember when I was totally bewildered and disappointed at my first GDC. Since everyone is doing little advice columns / threads on Twitter, I thought I'd chime in with my own shit. This is a bit of advice and info primarily for young people (ages 15-30?) going to GDC for their first time:

• If you are a man, assume every woman you meet is a developer. Never ever ask a woman whether she is "in games" -- don't be so fucking basic, of course she works in games, she's at GDC! Women at GDC are not your mom and they are most definitely not your girlfriend: women are your colleagues. The secret is to understand women as skilled experienced professionals. Instead, you could ask:
• "What are you working on? What's your current project? What was your last project?"
• "What do you think about [area of expertise]? What are your thoughts on [related game]? Did you go to [related GDC session]?"
• "Go to any good talks? See any cool stuff? Go to any cool parties last night?"
• This is a business conference. If you're not here to "do business" or sign some deals or have meetings, then the conference is going to be kind of boring, and it'll be up to you to entertain yourself. On the other hand, if you do have something to show, this is a great time to try to talk to a publisher about a deal / getting a console devkit / getting some VR money.
• When requesting business meetings / making appointments / approaching people, err on the side of doing it. Awkward first meetings are expected at GDC. Assume that you and your project are worth their time. If the meeting isn't a good fit, then let them decide -- they will quickly wrap it up, they're used to it... but also, use your judgment and don't annoy people if they don't look receptive.
• Business cards exist to end conversations politely. If you ever want to leave a conversation, just make an excuse, offer your card, and then leave. Everyone knows this is bullshit, but the effort you put into this bullshit ironically indicates that you do give a shit.
• If you ever have to choose between going to a talk vs. hanging out with people, you should usually choose to hang out with people. All sessions are recorded, you can always just watch it later or read a summary. (Personally, I've never regretted missing a talk.)
• Stay aware of how tired you are, take short naps in the Mild Rumpus area or the park, and remember to eat enough. If you're hungover, you'll probably just have to drink a bunch of immune boosters and coffee, and try to hold it together until Friday.
• If you are manning an IGF or Alt.Ctrl booth, it is totally OK for you to put up a "back in 30 minutes" sign and take a break, or maybe ask a friend to cover for you. Some people even just setup a looping video trailer and leave. The drawback is that you might miss some possible press coverage and interview opportunities.
• Lunch recommendations near Moscone:

Call for games / installations: Now Play This 2017 in London, England

I highly encourage any designers and developers reading this to submit their games and things for Now Play This:

Now Play This is a festival of experimental game design, showcasing some of the most interesting games and playful work being made around the UK and the world. It will run for the third time at Somerset House in London from 7-9 April, 2017, as part of the London Games Festival. There’ll be an exhibition of games running throughout, plus special events including a board games afternoon, a strange controllers showcase, and, on Friday, a day for discussion between practitioners. Tickets will be available from February 2017.

It is a curated show, but they're also open to submissions and contributions. There's "a small honorarium of £75 for work [... they] also cover limited travel and production costs." Here's the basic brief, which seems to encompass, "basically anything interesting":

We’re interested in everything you can play: videogames, boardgames, street games, performances, paintings or drawings that invite you to play while you look, responsive sculptures, artist-designed toys, interactive installations, games for one person, games for twenty, things that probably aren’t technically games but never mind, strange contraptions, unreleased work, old favourites. Our 2015 and 2016 lineups given an idea of what Now Play This is like, but for 2017 we’re particularly interested in:

• Games that look at landscape in an interesting way
• Games that experiment with duration – very short games, games that build up gradually over time, games that are different depending on when you play them
• Games that were never made: thought experiments, doomed proposals, prototypes that never received a public release
• Play objects: things – digital or physical – that invite players to invent their own games or decipher the rules of the object and its interactions
• Games around embodiment which consciously consider the physical existence of the person playing
• Games with strange controllers
• Games that can take place in the outdoor areas of Somerset House

We’re also particularly interested in work that uses paper in interesting ways, or that’s fun to play as well as watch, or which can accommodate a large number of players (whether through short play sessions or many simultaneous players).

Last year, they featured my dick pic game Cobra Club HD in their exhibition, and I'm told lots of giggling moms hogged the kiosk and kept shooing their kids away. Sounds really fun! If you're in London, make sure you don't miss it!

Games exhibitions and talks in NYC and Vancouver, Oct 28 - Nov 2

My new year's resolution for 2016 was to do fewer events and focus more on finishing my projects... so I guess that's why I'm doing 4 different events across 2 different cities over the next week or so:

On Friday night (October 28), we're running the 7th annual No Quarter exhibition, NYU Game Center's free video game party that I curate. The RSVP list just got a few more open slots added, but if you don't register in time, you can always arrive on the tail-end (at like 10-11pm) and hopefully it'll clear up by then. (Free, RSVP required.)

On Saturday night (October 29) the night after, I'll be doing a quick casual artist talk at ArtCade Con, an independent game festival around the East Village in NYC. There'll be lots of cool great games there, some of them fresh from a tour at Fantastic Arcade, so it should be a pretty exciting night. ($5-$16, use promo code 'PANELS' to get 2 for $20)

Then the week after, I fly to Vancouver for, like, one and a half days. It's a very brief whirlwind visit, unfortunately.

That Wednesday (November 2nd) I'll be giving a talk "You Can Have Gay Sex in Video Games And Eat It Too" as part of the UBC Noted Scholars Lecture Series hosted by the Social Justice Institute. I'll be talking about how I view the problem / question of "sex games" in relation to wider video game culture -- like, in a sense, Overwatch is probably the most popular sex game ever made? What does that mean for how games approach sexuality? (Free, RSVP recommended.)

Later that same night, I'll be hanging out at cool hip Vancouver pop-up alt-arcade Heart Projector run by some fantastic alt-games folks, where I've curated a selection of games about "first person drifting". I'll also be on-hand to readily complain about Civilization 6, so I hope to see my Vancouver readers there? (To be honest, I'm not actually sure where the exhibition is, but I guess you should sign-up for their newsletter to find out where and when the show is!)

Phew. Busy busy busy. I'll make time for this urinal game after this week, I promise.

No Quarter 2016, October 28th in New York City

I currently curate No Quarter, an annual games exhibition sponsored by NYU Game Center. We basically pay 4 game designers to make whatever they want (and they keep ownership over whatever they make) and then fly them to New York City for a big fun party.

This year the party is in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the current street art capital of the city, and we've commissioned Brendon Chung, Holly Gramazio, Catt Small, and Stephen Clark to make awesome games for us.

It's going to be a fun night, I hope you can join us. Entry is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required.

Radiator World* Tour, Fall 2016 Schedule

This upcoming year I'm trying to attend more events and to go places where I haven't before. I'll sadly be missing IndieCade West and also probably GDC 2017! But in exchange, I'm mixing up my usual routine a bit.

Here's my current schedule for this season:

• Living Room Light Exchange, September 13 in Brooklyn, NY. I'll be speaking at this contemporary pop-up salon series, which totally takes place in actual real living rooms around the city. It's been long popular in the Bay Area, but this will be its first time in New York City, and I'm honored to help launch it. (Free, RSVP required)
• Weird Reality: Head-Mounted Art && Code, October 6-9 in Pittsburgh, PA. Me and a bunch of other people are cautiously optimistic about virtual reality -- well, as long as capitalism doesn't fuck it all up -- and I'll be presenting some of my work at this CMU conference as well as mingling with fellow weirdos. (Not free, tickets required. Some travel scholarships and subsidized tickets available, ask me about them if you're interested.)
• Steam Dev Days, October 12-13 in Seattle, WA. I don't really know why I'm going to this, to be honest, considering how uncommercial my games are?... but I hear good things about the signal-to-noise ratio here (no press are allowed and all convos are understood to be off-record) and I'm curious to know what Valve's VR plans are. (Not free, developers only.)
• No Quarter 2016, October __ in Brooklyn, NY. I curate NYU Game Center's long-running annual tradition where we commission original new "public games" from rising and veteran developers, and then throw them a big fun party. We haven't actually announced the date yet, but stay tuned for more specifics soon. (Free, RSVP required)
• Noted Scholars Lecture Series, November 2 in Vancouver, BC. The Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia kindly invited me to speak as part of their lecture series. I'm a bit intimidated because I don't consider myself a hardcore theorist academic. I'm probably less well-read than most of their undergraduate students! But anyway, my talk is tentatively titled "You Can Have Gay Sex in Video Games and Eat It Too", and I'll try to be more sex theory oriented vs game design oriented. (Free, RSVP required)

If you'll be at one or more of these events, feel free to say hey to me.

* this season, "World Tour" means "North America Tour" I guess? but hey at least I leave the USA at some point, doesn't that count for something

Report from the field: A MAZE 2016

I was told to look out for things that are stereotypically representative of Berlin -- a poster for a "party against racism", a nearby music venue called "Suicide", a group of children walking a large dog on a rope. Berlin seems a bit like the nostalgic ideal of San Francisco or New York City that 30-40-somethings routinely mourn to any nearby insolent millenials -- because Berlin is relatively cheap, young, and raw. It's basically the place for young creative people to be right now.

A MAZE 2016 began with festival director Thorsten Storno decrying the business-ification of indie games and dominance of commercial attitudes in festivals, and arguing for the necessity of non-commercial spaces in games. Then, literally, flamethrowers began shooting up pillars of fire behind him.

This is a very different tone from most US games festivals, which often try to accommodate monetization-types and commercial indies alongside non-commercial artists and students. There is no such pretense here. Here, there are no posh "meet with Sony" events, no chicken caesar wraps sponsored by Microsoft, not even any bored attendees clutching their Nintendo DS -- instead, that kind of stuff is at "Quo Vadis", a nearby industry-oriented conference that's named after the final dungeon in a Final Fantasy game.

So there's a funny "purity" to A MAZE. It knows what it wants to be, and it has the space and resources to actually be that thing. And apparently that thing is a bunch of artists and game makers huddled around a garbage can fire, clutching tepid 3 dollar beers as the distinct smell of ambient-disco-trance wafts through the air at 3 AM...

I think I kinda miss it already.

"Why I Am Good At Bad Sex (... in games! IN GAMES!!!)" at A MAZE 2016 in Berlin, April 21 at 10:00 AM

My blog posts lately have been mostly talk announcements or transcripts... sorry. I think that's probably the downside of getting noticed and getting invited to do talks -- I end up having less time to write posts (I don't know how Emily Short manages to do it!) but I also end up "saving my ideas" for talks instead of posting about them.

That said, here's another talk announcement -- I'll be speaking at A MAZE 2016 in Berlin, Germany, on April 21st. I'm kind of anxious about it because the last time I gave a talk in Germany was GDC Europe 2012, and I fundamentally mis-read who my audience was going to be, and the talk didn't go very well. I'll try hard not to fuck it up this time, especially since I'm basically the first talk of the whole conference! Ahhhhh!

Here's the talk description from the A MAZE program:

If you always win a game as fast as possible, then you are probably very good at games... but if you always have sex as fast as possible, then you are probably bad at sex. (Why did no one ever tell you???) So what does it mean to be good at a sex game, and anyway, what is a good sex game? In this talk, I will talk about all the gay sex games I've been making, as well as many other sex games I've been enjoying, even some of the straight sex games. But it's also OK if you never play any of these games -- because it's even hotter when you watch.

Content warning: this talk contains sexual content

Basically, I want to (usefully) conflate notions of skill / quality / value / "goodness" with regard to sex and sex games, and I'm going to try to connect the past 3-4 "big ideas" I've written about... Ideas about how sex functions in games, about games and intimacy, and about how playing a game is now ancillary to witnessing a game.

Again, hopefully I don't fuck it up.

If you'll be around, feel free to say hello, I'll be around for most of the festival.

"Let's Get Lit: How to Light Your Game Like a Strip Club" @ 6 PM, April 30 at IndieCade East 2016, New York City

I'll be speaking at IndieCade East this year about video game lighting -- but to spice it up, I'm also going to talk about hunky dudes taking their clothes off in the seminal beefcake stripper movie Magic Mike (2012). The director, Steven Soderbergh, intentionally went for naturalistic "bad lighting" reminiscent of a strip club. Look at the shot above -- most of the men are in shadow! That's actually a pretty radical aesthetic for something that's supposedly a few steps away from commercial pornography. Plus, lighting can often be a bit of a dry topic, so I felt it was important to pair it with some sweaty studs to help the medicine go down. It'll be fun for the whole family.

IndieCade East 2016 runs April 29 - May 1 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, and thank god it's no longer in the dead of winter.

"The game industry needs to get laid and just chill already" @ GDC 2016

This is a lightly edited transcript of the 5 minute microtalk I delivered as part of a panel at GDC 2016. Thanks to Bennett Foddy and Richard Lemarchand for their advice and assistance.

CONTENT WARNING: I'll be showing and discussing some sexual content.

I’m an indie developer, and I make small experimental games about sex and intimacy. Games about spanking, about sucking, about dick pics in your mom’s bathroom, about showering... you know, things we all enjoy. I also try way too hard on my graphics. My shower game Rinse and Repeat is the most technologically advanced male shower sim on the market -- I waste so many draw calls on physically simulated refracting water particles BUT I DON’T CARE, it’s clearly worth it.

I kinda feel like I have to make these games because few people do. By and large, even AAA games you might associate with gay sex -- they aren’t really about gay sex. I firmly believe we can all do better in the future. (To learn more about sex games, see my sex games talk.)

GDC Microtalks 2016: "Everybody Loves to Play", March 17 at 4 PM in Room 135, North Hall

It's GDC season again.

I'm going to be delivering a 5 minute microtalk on Thursday as part of MC Richard Lemarchand's impressive lineup, alongside Jenn Frank, Bennett Foddy, Steve Gaynor, Mathew Kumar, Christina Norman, Henrike Lode, Brian Allgeier, and Aleissia Laidacker. If you're busy around that time, don't worry, I'll probably put my slides up at some point, and you can also check out the video recording later too. For more info, see the GDC session scheduler -- "GDC Microtalks 2016: Everyone Loves to Play"

I'll also be around at various places / parties, so feel free to say hey.

Radiator World Tour, spring 2016

Here are my current games event plans for the upcoming 2016 games event season. It's pretty packed. If you'll be around too, feel free to say hey if you see me.

• GDC 2016 in San Francisco, California (March 16-18)
  Originally I wasn't planning on going (I've attended GDC for the last 4 years straight!) but then I got invited to give a microtalk, so I couldn't pass that up. My micro talk will be entitled, "Are Games Art?" The answer may surprise you!!!!!!
• Different Games in Brooklyn, New York (April 8-9)
  I've always liked the eclectic mix of artists, community activists, and academics here, it's like the east coast version of the Queerness and Games Conference in Berkeley. I'll also always be grateful for the arts grant they gave me, which more or less jumpstarted my current gay sex games streak.
• AMAZE in Berlin, Germany (April 20-23)
  I'll be presenting my recent work and research on gay sex games... I think? I've never been to Amaze, or even Berlin, before, but I hear many good things about both, so it'll be nice to finally see what all the fuss is about.
• IndieCade East in New York City (April 29-May 1)
  I put in a talk submission, about video game lighting and Magic Mike / male strippers, which I think many people will enjoy on multiple levels. Even if I don't get in, it'll be nice to just float around with no responsibilities. I usually try to make it for Night Games, at the very least.
• Games for Change in New York City (June 23-24)
  I put in a talk submission to G4C as well, a more basic primer to video games and sex games, a bit like my talk at GaymerX3 but shorter and with less assumptions of the audience -- traditionally, tech industry types and "social innovation" entrepreneurs... we should give them at least one last chance, right?

Two 2016 NYC games conferences to submit talks to, like, right now

What kind of games conference do you run after an IndieCade conference co-chair confesses that games conferences aren't "working"? Well, uh... let's do a bunch of conferences to try to figure it out!

Different Games is a diversity-focused games conference in the beginning of April, run by organizers based in Brooklyn and Atlanta. DG, in particular, holds a special place in my heart for administering the original arts grant that began my current track of gay sex games, so you could say they were kind of on the bleeding edge of indie sustainability. This year, Different Games 2016 (April 8-9) has several different tracks / themes:

• Affective Play (i.e. feelings, emotions, bodies)
• Video Games in Latin America
• Video Games and Indigenous Culture
• Accessible Game Design (i.e. making the field more accessible to new designers)
• Participatory Game Design (i.e. game design as a workshop process, Freire?)
• Race and Culture in Games
• Player Agency, Mods, and Glitches

DG 2016 session submissions close on January 22nd. They also accept more traditional academic paper submissions, and game submissions for their arcade as well. (Huh, turns out they were all closed already, and only game submissions are open now? That was fast!)

IndieCade East, held in the sinister shadow of the academic-ish NYC games scene, has always been the slightly less chill / more intense of the twin IndieCades. (More ideas! More e-sports! More beer!) Its relatively young age also means that it's more open to experimentation. This year, IndieCade East 2016 (April 29 - May 1) is trying out some very interesting changes with their format:

• It's now in the middle of Spring instead of the middle of Winter. (Yay!)
• The conference chairs are Jennie and Henry Faber, developers and community leaders from Toronto (!) which is in Canada (!!) and NOT in the United States (!!!)
• The three conference tracks recognize a post-indiepocalypse world: (a) design lessons from fields outside of games, (b) economic sustainability for games, (c) future tools and technology.

Of course, you aren't necessarily limited to those themes, and the only real criteria is that you can say interesting things about games -- either way, session submissions close on February 3rd.

* * *

Hopefully you, dear reader, will be at one (or both) of those events? See you in April!

"That One Time I Repeatedly Gave Birth to Fully Grown Wolves, and Other Gay Sex Games That We Deserve" at GX3 on December 12 in San Jose, California

I'll be in San Jose next week for GX3, a video game expo, to deliver a talk entitled "That One Time I Repeatedly Gave Birth to Fully Grown Wolves, and Other Gay Sex Games That We Deserve" about my recent gay sex video games as well as many other peoples' gay sex games.

The talk is motivated a lot by my experience as an independent game developer who sees countless players plead for more diversity from the triple-A game industry. Mainstream representation is important, but why limit your support only to the mainstream? Also, my industrial peers are good at many things, but gayness is definitely not one of those things, so why should people look to them for artistic leadership on this? Answer: they shouldn't, but they might because they're not aware there's an alternative...

You don't have to beg for gay scraps. You don't even have to settle for a game with a gay side dish, with some token gays sprinkled on top -- real people are already making real games where gayness is the center-stage MAIN ATTRACTION, and these games exist right now in the present, not in some distant future dream utopia.

In my talk, I'll be talking about 20+ different games that think about sexuality outside of a standard cis-hetero-monogamous-missionary paradigm. If you follow me or my peers, you'll probably be familiar with some of them -- but I'm betting I'll discuss at least a few hidden gems you'll have never seen before -- and to the majority of the GX3 audience, I'm guessing a lot of these games will be mind-blowing.

See you there, and feel free to say hey.

NO QUARTER, 9 October 2015 in Brooklyn, NY

this amazing poster is by the incomparable Eleanor Davis

No Quarter is an annual games exhibition in NYC that commissions original works from designers. This year, I am stepping up as curator, and we will be featuring some exciting new games by Nina Freeman, Ramsey Nasser, Loren Schmidt, and Leah Gilliam.

Come join us on October 9th from 7-11 PM in DUMBO, Brooklyn at The Dumbo Loft, 155 Water Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

If you'll be around New York at that time, please RSVP so I can get NYU to buy us even more beer. Thanks and see you there!