Showing posts with label gdc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gdc. Show all posts

Saturday, March 16, 2019

GDC 2019 plans

I'm already exhausted, just from looking at this picture
Here's some of my GDC 2019 plans.

The usual GDC disclaimers apply: GDC is mostly a business event, and it's boring unless you have any business to do, or if you have some weird public profile to maintain. Anyway, don't feel bad about not going. You saved yourself a lot of money!

On Tuesday, I'll probably be spending a lot of the day at the Level Design Workshop mini-track. My days of breathlessly live-tweeting talks are over, but I'll probably do at least a brief summary for most of the sessions.

For Wednesday afternoon, I'm holding some "open office hours" at the NYU Game Center booth on the expo floor. If you'd like to meet me or ask for advice or discuss something, I'll be there. Later that night, however, I actually won't be participating in the Delete GDC party anymore -- you can read our statement here. Instead, I might spend a quiet night somewhere else, or maybe I'll check out the Gay Game Professionals (GGP) party; last year there was even free gourmet pizza if you arrived early. The gays know how to eat.

On Thursday afternoon, I'll probably hangout at Lost Levels in Yerba Buena Gardens for a little while; if you don't have a GDC pass and I don't already know you, then that's probably your best chance of randomly talking with me. Afterward, I'm giving a sexy game design micro-talk at 5:30pm on the Advocacy track, which means anyone at any GDC pass tier can attend. Then to celebrate the end of my obligations, I'll probably attend the GDC speaker party / open bar, where I'll try to drink as much fancy Japanese whiskey as I can.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

DELETE GDC 2019: March 20th, 8PM - 1AM at Venue 550 in San Francisco


This year during GDC, I'm happy to be participating in DELETE GDC, a big party where you can play a bunch of new never-before-seen games... that will be deleted by the end of the night.

At past DELETE events, that ephemeral quality has meant a lot of unique performance-type experimental games, like a drinking game where the designer/performer gets blackout drunk for the first time in his life, thus "deleting" his memory / life... or a game about offering your secrets to an altar before ritually burning them.

This is the first DELETE being held outside of Australia, and I'm excited to be working with Louie Roots and the rest of the artist lineup: Natalie Lawhead, Ramsey Nasser, Leura Smith, Zachariah Chandler, and Kaho Abe.

As for my contribution, my first thought was a game about literally deleting GDC from existence -- erasing every trace of UBM and Moscone Center from the universe -- but then it felt too depressing to see that deletion get deleted and undone at the end of the night. Also I felt it was important to go with the golden rule of game jams: never go with your first idea. So now I'm aiming for something different and more communal: a fairly involved installation piece about game development and labor, a sort of "human game engine" thing. Hopefully I'll figure it out over the next two months.

GDC veterans will note that this event falls on the same night as, traditionally, That.Party... but don't worry, you're allowed to attend more than one party in one night. In fact, it's probably best practice.

Delete GDC runs 8 PM - 1 AM on Wednesday, March 20th, 2019 at Venue 550 in San Francisco. Tickets are $30 USD.

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Level Design Workshop at GDC 2019: submissions due November 2

GDC season is coming up soon. If you have any interest in level design and you have something to say about it, then please submit a proposal to the Level Design Workshop mini-track at GDC 2019.

Although it is supervised by AAA developers with a level design background, like Clint Hocking or Joel Burgess or Lisa Brown, you don't have to be a AAA developer -- hell, they even let me give a couple talks in past years, and I'm just some kind of vaguely-leftist pseudo-academic weirdo? Again: indie, modder, altgames, etc. folks of all backgrounds are all welcome and encouraged to submit, as long as there's some relevance to environmental world design for any game genre. I don't look at the submissions, but I know the committee truly does want to highlight any new voices and new approaches to level design.

(Also: this is a really great alternate way to attend GDC without going through the main submission process. The applicant pool here is smaller, the mentoring process is more cozy, and we often do some kind of group level design dinner that week.)

Submit a proposal within the next two weeks, by November 2nd. Good luck!

Full blurb is below:

Friday, March 30, 2018

GDC 2018: How To Light A Level, slides and transcript


This post is aimed at beginner / intermediate designers. It's a summary of the talk I gave at the GDC 2018 Level Design Workshop with David Shaver (Naughty Dog) for the "Invisible Intuition" double-feature session.

David's slides on blockmesh / layout are here (PDF) with case studies from The Last of Us / Uncharted. You can also get my full slide deck PDF here, and my speaker notes PDF here... but I don't know when GDC will upload the talk to YouTube, sorry.


A very brief and simple history of light starts with the sun. Then let's not forget about fire, controlled burning in gas lamps, incandescent light bulbs with a filament... and these days, there’s a stronger focus on more energy-efficient fluorescent lights, and LED lighting is also becoming more common.

It’s tempting to think of this as a story about technology and progress and older light sources becoming obsolete... but the light bulb did not make the sun obsolete, and the LED does not make fire obsolete! We still use fire as a light source all the time -- in our birthday candles, in our campfires, in our romantic candle-lit dinners -- in fact, I hate those little fake flickering LED candles, because a real flame has a unique quality to it, you know?

Fire hasn’t disappeared from the world, but rather our culture around fire has changed. That is, fire used to be a common and practical tasklight in Shakespeare's time, but now it feels more like special decoration for a special occasion. As a designer, you need to sensitize yourself to how light feels and conveys these ideas, because this is how you communicate those moods to the player.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Dispatches from GDC 2018

In keeping with a tradition I've done for GDC 2012 and GDC 2015, I like to try to condense general moods and topics at GDC. What happened there?...

Post-indiepocalyptic. In past years, I've remarked on the tension between AAA developers vs commercial indie devs vs non-commercial "artists" -- that tension isn't gone, but it's certainly not as big of an issue anymore. Everything everywhere is kind of terrible for everyone. So many people are making so little money that it's hard to distinguish their precarity from another precarity. Besides, a massive political shift is now underway in the form of...

Unionization. I was one of maybe 150 people who attended the unionization roundtable session. My live tweet thread is here if you want my version of what happened. Throughout GDC I heard so many stories that made me realize working conditions are worse than I imagined, and there's a shocking sense of resignation when I spoke to one AAA dev who predicted they were going to burnout with their next 100 hour workweek / 6 month crunch, like it was just this inevitable natural disaster that was definitely going to happen... As someone who trains students in game development, I guess I'm extremely concerned about throwing my students into this giant machine that will mercilessly devour them! (For what it's worth, the IGDA moderator Jen MacLean seems to have walked-back some of her anti-worker positions as a result of the roundtable.)

Generations. I don't know how a lot of other "established" indies feel, but this year when I went to a party or looked out into a crowd, I didn't recognize as many faces as I thought I would. Maybe this is just what happens in every industry, as more people burnout or find something better or in some cases even die. I spent a good amount of my GDC trying to meet new people, and that was utterly exhausting, but I'm still glad I made the effort, because this year felt...

Gayer? I met so many queer and trans people at GDC this year. And one night when I asked someone whether they were going to "the gay party", they asked me to clarify my question: "which gay party?" (!)... As always, I'm reluctant to praise diversity efforts because that implies diversity has been achieved and no more work is needed, but I did feel like there were generally more LGBTQ people everywhere at GDC, or at least more than before, and it was kind of nice.

Overall. Everyone was tired, but there was a sense that maybe it was worth staying.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Tips for talking to Robert Yang at GDC


Everyone's doing a bunch of GDC advice for first-time GDC attendees on Twitter, so I thought I'd chime in with a few tips of my own. Here's a helpful tutorial for how to have a successful social interaction with me, assuming you'd ever want to:
  1. Do you see me? I look like this. Or try to sneak a peek at the name on the badge. It should say "Robert Yang" on it.
  2. Are you sure that person isn't Brendon Chung? Brendon looks more like this; we're about the same height, but he's a bit more handsome and has a deep voice, and I have larger lips and generally sound louder and shriller.
  3. If we met at some past event or party one time, and I don't regularly interact with you in-person or on Twitter, then there's a good chance I won't remember you or your name. (I'm sorry in advance.) If you want to remind me that I should've remembered your name, you can briefly mention something like "we met at GDC last year" -- but don't mention a specific number of months, days, or hours, because then it'll seem like you've been pedantically tracking our non-relationship.
  4. (For advanced users only:) I don't respond well to praise or compliments, unless you deliver the compliment in a tone that borders on sarcastic / flippant while still remaining essentially earnest. Your goal is to perform a chipper yet world-weary knowingness.
  5. If we're talking but you don't want to talk to me anymore, then just say something like "well it was nice talking to you" and walk away. If we're in a group or cluster of people, then just let the conversation naturally die down, and then turn to someone else and subtly emote that you're not paying attention to me anymore.
  6. Whatever you do, don't tell me that you read this guide.
If you're looking for a more genuinely useful primer for going to GDC, see "GDC Advice for young first-time attendees, 2017 edition"

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Watch and/or Read "GDC 2015: Level Design Histories and Futures"


GDC finally uploaded my talk from 2015 on level design history and futures... and already, the conservative gamer-gestapo is whining about how I have the gall to talk mention racism and sexism in a design history talk.

This prompted me to review my slides and notes from 2015, and I was surprised -- usually I hate whatever I write, but this time I was surprised by how the material mostly holds up. (I was also surprised by how much I anticipated the whiners' critiques and put disclaimers everywhere.) Really, the only thing I have to work on is, um, the frequency that I say "um", but you know, I'm working on it.

Personally, I dislike watching videos and vastly prefer reading talks, so for your convenience I've also uploaded my complete slides in a double-length PDF. The first half of the PDF has the talk slides, and the second half of the PDF has my speaking notes as well... here's also one last reminder, that I've edited / condensed this stuff into a shorter talk called "local level design."

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

"Level Design Workshop: How to Light a Level" at GDC 2018

Hey there. I'll be returning to GDC in 2018 with a talk called "How to Light a Level"... Here's the blurb:
Lighting is traditionally one of the most computationally expensive parts of game rendering, as well as one of the most crucial design tools for setting mood and readability in a game world. And yet, level designers and environment artists often lack the language and theory to collaborate effectively on lighting design. What does light do for games, and how can developers use lighting to facilitate certain experience goals for games? This session begins with a brief cultural history of lighting, before moving on to an overview of practical lighting design theory as well as various case studies.
I'll be presenting alongside many other amazing folks as part of the Level Design Workshop, run by Joel Burgess, Matthias Worch, Clint Hocking, and Lisa Brown.

This year, the roster includes:
We're basically a "tutorial" mini-track that, I believe, will run all-day on Tuesday. Traditionally, we also do portfolio reviews during the lunch break. If you'll be around, come check us out. (And if you won't be at GDC this year: it's fun, but don't worry, you really aren't missing that much.)

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Radiator -- Spring 2018 US & European Tour

I'm trying to get all my traveling arrangements for next spring -- and it turns out I'm going to be visiting Europe quite a bit! Here's my tentative traveling schedule for next year. Feel free to attend / hang out / say hello if you see me at these events...
  • January 21, 2018 @ Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London, England
    London Short Film Festival, panel discussion of Tearoom (2007)
    I'm going to be on a fancy panel with much smarter people, talking about William E Jones' work Tearoom (2007), which my game The Tearoom (2017) takes heavy inspiration from. It won't be a game-literate audience, but I think part of the work of reforming game culture involves growing these partnerships and connections with other fields.
  • March 19-23, 2018 @ Moscone Center in San Francisco, California
    Game Developer Conference (GDC)
    I'll be giving a short talk -- well, probably? I don't think the session has been published or announced on the official schedule yet, so I'm not supposed to say much more than that... But hopefully, eventually, I imagine I'll be presenting alongside many other great folks too, so look out for more info on that.
  • April 13-16, 2018 in Copenhagen, Denmark
    Nordic Game Jam
    I will be speaking during the "conference" portion of the Nordic Game Jam -- which is apparently the biggest game jam in the world / the original inspiration for what is now the Global Game Jam. I don't really know what I'll be talking about yet, but I think it's supposed to be inspiring for teenagers and stuff! Maybe I'll even make a little game for the jam.
  • April 25-29, 2018 @ Urban Spree in Berlin, Germany
    A MAZE Berlin
    Uhhh I don't really know what I'll be doing at A MAZE, yet, if anything, but I'm still planning on attending! Maybe I'll just hang out? I'm sure Thorsten will give me something to do. But when I attended back in 2016, I basically had the worst burrito I've ever had in my life -- as well as the best doner I've ever had in my life -- so I guess Berlin just has that certain, you know, das gewisse etwas.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Call for submissions: Level Design In A Day at GDC 2018, due November 6th

Steve Gaynor (before he changed his hair!!!) presenting on Gone Home at Level Design In A Day 2015.
If you have something to say about level design, the folks who run GDC's "Level Design In A Day" (a level design track of sessions that runs throughout the entire day) would love for you to submit a session proposal.

Historically, many of the presenters have been game industry level designers -- but there have also been architects, indie designers, procedural level designers, programmers, artists, and more -- and the directors are committed towards a diverse and inclusive idea of level design. They even let ME give a talk once! Wow what were they thinking?!

The most common type of session here is a case study, where a speaker talks about specific levels in a game and analyzes some facet of the design or production, what went right and what went wrong, etc. There have also been broader talks about level design as a discipline, questioning how we generally think about level design or how we practice it. And sometimes there's talks that try to translate a "different" field, like architecture or writing, to level design. (This isn't to say your talk must fall into one of those buckets, but those are just the most common buckets.)

To submit your proposal for consideration, please use this web form. (Don't use the official GDC submission procedures.) You must submit by November 6th (in ~2.5 weeks) to be considered. Good luck!

(Addendum: traveling to GDC is expensive. Traditionally, GDC does not pay any travel grants or stipends to most speakers. If you work in the game industry, your employer is supposed to pay your way; if you're a student, your school or government hopefully has travel grants for you to participate. As a last resort, you may also want to try a GoFundMe to raise the funds.)

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Recent developments in queer game studies, Summer 2017

Here's a few recent updates in the """discourse""" within the exciting world of QUEER GAME STUDIES!!!

First, there's a new call for papers in the long-running Game Studies journal -- this time the focus is on "queerness and video games."  The full CFP is here. If you're a student or academic (or anyone with a perverse tolerance for academic citation styles) then you should consider sending-in some original scholarship and/or maybe trim your thesis into a submission; full articles of 6500-8000 words are due by December 31st, 2017. Good luck!

Next, Miguel Sicart wrote a piece about "Queering the [Game] Controller." Sicart, as far as I know, doesn't identify as queer, so some may argue he thus cannot really "queer" anything -- so please allow me, a certified gay person, to try to unpack some of his ideas here:

Friday, February 24, 2017

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:

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

"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.)

Sunday, March 13, 2016

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.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Local level design, and a history / future of level design

Right-side modified from “Unscaping the Goat” (Ed Byrne, Level Design in a Day @ GDC 2011)
This is adapted from my GDC 2015 talk "Level Design Histories and Futures" and resembles a similar but much shorter talk I gave at Different Games 2015. By "level" it means "level in a 3D character-based game", which is what the industry means by the word.

The "level designer" is a AAA game industry invention, an artificial separation between "form" (game design) and "content" (level design). The idea is that your game is so big, and has so much stuff, that you need a dedicated person to think about the "content" like that, and pump it all out. This made level designers upset, since they were a chokepoint in the game production process and everyone blamed them if the game was shit. To try to bypass this scapegoating, level design has changed over the past decade or two, from something vague / loosely defined, to something fairly specific / hyperspecialized.

What is the shape of this level design, what did it used to be, and what else could it be in the future?

But first, let's talk about chairs.

Monday, March 9, 2015

GDC 2015 dispatches / minutiae

Here are some thoughts I thought during GDC 2015.
  • Virtual reality: I didn't get to try Valve's fancy new thing that requires everyone to clear out a mini-holodeck in their apartment, but I was pleasantly surprised by Google Cardboard. I tried it once before, and disliked it, but I tried it again and now I think it's not bad as a VR solution. I appreciate the transparency and "honesty of materials" -- it is basically a cardboard box that holds a phone to your face, it doesn't try to pretend to be something else, while still delivering on the all-important affordance of VR headset as elaborate blindfold.
  • Phony war: The big technical news of free engine access for Unity 5, Unreal 4, and Source 2 were inflated non-announcements. They've been practically giving away Unity and Unreal for a while now; 90% of Unity feature-set is free, and Unreal only required you to subscribe for a month and then you could cancel it and keep it... and the details and workflow for Source 2 aren't public yet, other than a requirement to offer first look rights to Valve or something? So again I think there's no real story here, other than positioning these engines as the new "big three" versus Unreal, CryEngine, and idTech trinities of yore. 
  • Generations: This year, quite a few NYU students attended GDC for the first time, and I felt some modicum of responsibility. For better or worse, a lot of young people invest GDC week with a lot of emotions, and it's really important that community elders (ugh, am I one of those? let's hope not) are there to help nurture their spirits. Things like the annual Wild Rumpus party or Lost Levels or Richard Lemarchand's GDC Feet tour are about articulating and performing considerate attitudes toward games and play, to imagine this culture as something shared and owned by everyone. A lot of teaching game development is about emotional education -- to deal with people saying difficult things about your work, the ability to absorb success or absorb your disappointment and not let it crush you... so please, I beg you, think of the children!
  • Biz-culture: In contrast to what I just said in the previous bullet, I also sensed an increasingly fractured community. There's a steadily widening gulf between a games space deeply concerned with sales figures and how to negotiate with platform holders, and a games space striving to reject the existing market system and formulate alternatives. We are increasingly talking past each other, so I think a lot of "indie love" politics is about plastering over these divides and avoiding difficult arguments that we probably can't avoid forever. Films like GameLoading are about doing the work of uniting disparate artistic approaches and communities as a movement, but sometimes it smells more like a possibly empty "Radio for Change" gesture, and I wonder when the coalitions will start dissolving and we all realize we actually don't have much in common. But maybe being a family means pretending everything is going to be ok? Let's do it for the kids.

Saturday, February 28, 2015

GDC 2015 dance card

Hello. Here's some of my GDC plans. See you blog readers at some of them! Don't be afraid to say hey.
  • MONDAY: I fly-in and arrive in San Francisco.
  • TUESDAY: Level Design In a Day track. I'll be on-duty in the panel all day, then I'm presenting my talk at the very end of the track at 5 PM
  • WEDNESDAY: I'll be spending much of my time at #LostLevels, and then hanging out at the annual Wild Rumpus party. This is pretty much the only time at GDC where I dance; everywhere else, the music is undanceable or the nerds refuse to dance.
  • THURSDAY: I'll probably visit Alcatraz; there's an Ai Weiwei exhibition currently going on. I'm also looking forward to the Adventure Design minitalks later that night.
  • FRIDAY: I'll go to a talk or two maybe? Also might flee Moscone and just take a nice walk around Land's End / Sutro Baths. I guess I'll see what I feel like.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Upcoming talk: "Level Design Histories and Futures" at Level Design In A Day, GDC 2015


I'll be presenting a talk on "Level Design Histories and Futures" at the Level Design In A Day track at GDC 2015, alongside other stuff by Clint Hocking, Joel Burgess, Steve Gaynor, David Pittman, Forrest Dowling, Nels Anderson, Jake Rodkin, Kate Craig, Brendon Chung, and Liz England. It's a huge honor to be associated with these people.

My talk is about level editor histories, the level designer as an industry role, level design as modernist formalism, and what a postmodern sustainable level design practice might look like. I'm kind of serving as the theory-heavy talk this year, right at the end of Tuesday at 5 PM, so I'm going to try to synthesize a lot of the previous talks together and propose some frameworks to digest them... and um I hope I'll see some blog readers there / I hope you'll still be awake at that hour!

If you can't make it to GDC, I'll try to put up the slides afterward, and I'm sure it'll be streamed or recorded or something.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Radiator, US tour Spring 2015 ("May the Reign of Terror Begin")

I'm attending two three games events this season. Hangout with me! Here's my schedule currently:
  • Indiecade East 2015, Feb 13-15 in New York City. I'm giving a talk about dominant workflow patterns in game development, and how new (and often experimental) tools can shake-up our workflow and help us re-think our processes and possibly result in new kinds of games. I intend to live-demo most of these tools. Hopefully I won't fuck it up!
  • Game Developer Conference 2015, Mar 2-6 in San Francisco. I'm giving a talk about contemporary level design in relation to modern and postmodern architecture theory. I feel like a lot of level designers know they should pay lip service to architecture but when was the last time they actually looked at a real-life building with a critical eye? How was that building made? This is a discipline that's been around since the beginning of recorded history, I think it might have a thing or two to teach us, call it a hunch.
  • Different Games 2015, Apr 3-4 in New York City. A fantastic diversity-focused games conference. I'm part of the NEA artist grant disbursed last year, so I'll be presenting on my triad of sexy gay games: Hurt Me Plenty, Cheek to Cheek, and Succulent.
I'm also waiting to hear back from a few other things. Watch this space for updates! Or don't, that's cool too! PS: have people been playing The Talos Principle lately? I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. Might write a post about it.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

I'm nicer in person, honest

There's a profile of Harry Lee / Lost Levels in Polygon, and I'm quoted heavily, but kinda as more of the crass anti-corporate provocateur foil to Harry's deeper philosophical positions.

(Which is obviously just a writerly device because hey, I work for NYU, considered by some to be one of the most destructive forces against public education and local communities ever imagined. I'm a fucking sellout! Though I guess I was asking to be cast that way, especially when I gave that soundbite that the Ken Levine talk was boring. But it's okay if it was boring, because the purpose of booking Ken Levine was to sell tickets and introduce people to basic questions in procedural narrative. Does that make it a good talk? Roger Ebert would've said yes, because it did what it was trying to do; I would say no, because we should always make higher demands of discourse.)

(Anyway.) I think I'm okay with playing that role in the article, because it gets the point across that there's more than one agenda and Lost Levels isn't one particular thing. I just wish more agendas got more represented in the article: like Harry tweeted, Mattie Brice, Toni Pizza, and Ian Snyder, are Lost Levels co-facilitators who deserve credit for their valuable work, and it's as much their stories (and everyone who came to the event!) as ours.

Also, I think much of my criticism on GDC in the piece (e.g. it's expensive and the expensive talks are rarely good) orbited around one main point that got only paraphrased briefly in it: