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.

Apply to NYU Game Center 2018 Summer Incubator

Applications for the 2018 NYU Game Center summer incubator are now open! If you have a solid game prototype or a half-finished game, but you don't know how to finish it or how to do all that "indie biz" stuff, then this incubator might be a good fit to help you move toward release and financial sustainability.

The incubator is a 3 month period in the summer that also pays you a living stipend to come live / work in New York City, where you get mentored by faculty (such as the notorious Bennett Foddy???) as well as other local devs. In 2017, there was also a comprehensive series of workshops on how to negotiate, how to do market research, how to register as a business, and the devs even visited Kickstarter and other local partners around NYC for advice and feedback. You also get to meet a bunch of other indie devs, co-work in a friendly environment, and make new friends. (For more details, see "Incubator Curriculum")

The catch is that if you make more than $10,000 in a year from the game, then you pay 10% of the rest of your revenue back into the incubator to fund future projects. If you don't end up making money, then you don't pay anything. You still maintain ownership of your game and IP, and you can also negotiate these terms if you want -- but compared to a lot of funding deals, this is already pretty generous.

Here's some more info and rough math to help you decide whether it's a good fit for you:

CFP: last week for submissions to Queerness and Games Conference 2018

Just a quick note / reminder to people: there's about one week left to submit your session and panel proposals to the 2018 Queerness and Games Conference, in Montreal this September 29-30. I've attended in past years and might attend this year, and I recommend it as a pretty inclusive conference for students, professionals, designers, and academics alike. Money for travel and free accommodations are also available on request. Maybe see you there!

Submit your impossible demands to #ManifestoJam by February 13

Just a brief note that a bunch of folks are doing a "Manifesto Jam" (which is maybe possibly inspired by my survey of manifestos in games blog post from last year) and there's about 1-2 days left to participate.

I even participated myself, writing a short screed called "KILL UNITY; WE ARE ENGINES." It was fun to try to figure out a specific aspect of games that I cared about, and to try to distill that into entertaining hyperbole. Remember: no nuance, no relativity, just pure belief! Go ahead and let your flag fly, and perch it on the swollen corpse of the old world order!

Here's the inspiring blurb, copy and pasted from the itch.io page:

THIS JAM IS FOR COLLECTIVELY UNCORKING OUR UTOPIAN ENERGY IN 2018

In times of crisis, uncertainty, conservatism and even just standard personal disappointment people overwhelmingly retreat to saying “be practical!” This doesn’t necessarily imply a way that is meaningfully better than any other but instead coerces you to chirpily go along with the way others are already comfortable doing it, or comfortable with you doing it, and keep and alternatives or resentments on priv.

Manifestos are important precisely because they are impractical. Whether positive or negative, whether embracing potential worlds or outright rejecting the one you’re in. They are visionary, they demand, they refuse. Manifestoes can be of any scale, defining your personal aesthetic or how to fix the entire world, but they cannot be satisfied.

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."

On wikipedia-ing games culture and history

damn pic.twitter.com/kzGGyOLof3

— Robert Yang / Roberto Yanga (@radiatoryang) January 10, 2018

The other day, someone wrote to me but confessed they didn't know much about me, and that they had only played my games Intimate, Infinite and The Tearoom.

This felt like a really strange pairing of games to me. The Tearoom is a recent game that got a lot of press coverage, while Intimate Infinite is a much older, somewhat obscure game of mine that's mostly remembered only by some literary art game folks. What the heck is going on?

My suspicions were confirmed when I found out that I had a Wikipedia page as of July 2017, and that this page highlighted those two games with their own subsections. It made me realize that (a) people google me, and that (b) Wikipedia might be their first or second impressions of me. And yet, that page is still missing so much information about me; my dabbling in level design, my love of sandwiches, and so on.

When I whined on Twitter about having a Wikipedia page, boy genius game designer Michael Brough confessed his envy. I was shocked. How can Michael "Broughlike" Brough not have a Wikipedia page? I immediately sought to correct this injustice, and began writing a Wikipedia entry for Mr. Brough.

CFP: Queerness and Games Conference 2018 at Concordia University in Montréal

photo of Tanya DePass speaking at QGCon 2017

The Queerness and Games Conference (or QGCon) is running again in 2018, this time in beautifully affordable Montréal. Here's the call for papers, panels, and talk submissions, copy and pasted from the website, emphasis added by me:

The Queerness and Games Conference is now accepting submissions for presentations at its fifth annual conference, which will be held on September 29-30, 2018 at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada! Proposals for conference talks and other sessions are due March 1st, 2018 (details and instructions below).

QGCon is an annual event that brings together developers, academics, educators, and activists to explore the intersection of LGBTQ issues and video games. Proposals for talks, pre-constituted panels, workshops, roundtables, and post mortems are welcome. Speakers from all backgrounds are encouraged to submit. Because QGCon is a community-oriented event that seeks to foster dialogue across areas of expertise, we especially value sessions that engage a broad and diverse audience. Please note that, since QGCon attendees come from across academia, industry, and beyond, different speakers may bring different ideas about what constitutes a “talk” or a “panel.” QGCon values these differences and kindly requests that, as per the submission guidelines below, prospective speakers describe the approach they hope to take to their proposed session.

LEVEL WITH ME, Winter / Spring 2018 schedule: Tuesdays 2 PM EST

I've completed my winter hibernation and I'm gearing up for a new season of Level With Me, my livestream show where I play video games and talk about what I think the level design is doing.

Since I work as a teacher and I get a different schedule each semester, I have to change my broadcasting schedule every few months. Now for this first half of 2018, the new time will be Tuesdays, at around 1 or 2 PM EST (GMT-5). (Sometimes I start late.)

If you can't make it for the live broadcasts, then you can always check out the YouTube archive over here.

Before the hiatus last year, we were a few hours into BioShock 1. In the game, we had just gotten a shiny new camera, and we were taking fun photos of bloodthirsty monsters. My current plans are to try to get as far as Fort Frolic at least, and then re-assess my interest in continuing. See you soon!

Resolutions, 2018

In keeping with tradition, here's some resolutions that I resolve to uphold for this new year...

• Keep blogging for 2018, at about the same rate as 2017?
• Don't die from all the travelling I'll be doing in 2018.
• Finish and release three projects: Radiator 3, MachoCam, and Medusa.
• Update some of my technical dev skills: get proficient with Unreal Engine 4, learn about compute shaders
• Update some of my game art skills: do some more sculpting, get better with Substance Painter and Substance Designer

Sure, the new year is an arbitrary passage of time that has no real significance -- but that doesn't mean it's not fun to re-assess and wonder about where you're at.

"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:

• "Designing for Non-Linear Story Discovery in 'Tacoma'" with Steve Gaynor and Nina Freeman (Fullbright Company)
• "The Holy Grail of Multiplayer Level Design: Maps for Casual and Competitive Play" with Andrew Yoder (Hi-Rez Studios)
• "Invisible Intuition: Player Guidance from Blockmesh to Final Level Design" with David Shaver (Naughty Dog)
• "Procedural Regeneration: Matching the World to the Player" with Heather Robertson (Heather Flowers)
• "Reimagining Level Design for 'God of War'" with Rob Davis (Sony)

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.)

LEVEL WITH ME will return in January 2018

Hey viewers -- sorry if you're waiting for the next installment of Level With Me. You're going to have to wait for a while, since I'm on holiday / traveling, and lugging around my streaming setup is going to be impractical. But we'll be returning in January 2018 on a new day and time, so watch out for that.

In the meantime, I encourage you to check out the entire Level With Me archive on YouTube if you still need your regular dose of lighting complaints and texturing nitpicks.

Be good, and see you next year!

Radiator Blog: Eighth (8th!) Year Anniversary

As is the holiday tradition in December, teenagers throughout the world have gathered around their radiators to critique environment textures and be wantonly gay, in flamboyant celebration of the anniversary of the Radiator Blog's founding. This year, the blog turns 8 years old!

For 2017, I resolved to blog more... and I ended up with 72 posts, which is double the amount of 2016's posts (a mere 36). Compared to social media like Twitter, I've always thought of blogging as a more "formal", slower platform. But to keep up the pace this year, I had to relax my attitudes and write more freely, which I think was ultimately a positive thing.

(You can check out past years' anniversary round-ups here.)

Now let us gather around the radiator, and review the past year's "greatest hits" along with some commentary...

"Tag: Proposals on Queer Play and the Ways Forward" at ICA Philadelphia, February 2 - August 12, 2018

A bunch of my gay sex games will be appearing as part of an exhibition "Tag: Proposals on Queer Play and the Ways Forward" at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia next year, a show about "queer play" curated by artist Nayland Blake.

I'll hopefully make it out for the opening in February too. They also might be using my game screenshots as the basis of some branding and advertising materials, so keep a lookout for some uncanny hunks near you!

Here's the blurb from the ICA website:

Organized by guest curator and artist Nayland Blake, Tag: Proposals On Queer Play and the Ways Forward explores how the expanding influence of digital and online technologies, fandom subcultures, and artistic discourse has created new possibilities for queer identification, changing how personal roles and forms of expressions are defined in contemporary society. Based on the premise that the cultures of role play, sexual play, and digital play have all flourished beyond the boundaries of art structures, this exhibition provides a gathering place and platform for the exploration of queer play created by individuals and groups from the worlds of game design and theory, performance, kink, and activism. Tag: Proposals on Queer Play and the Ways Forward will be on view on view February 2 through August 12, 2018.

For the exhibition, Blake illuminates these new and evolving forms of representation and examines the implications these developments have had on art and social action through a curatorial approach that draws on his own preoccupation with themes of interracial desire, same-sex love, and racial and sexual bigotry. Artists include A.K. Burns, Clifford Hengst, Arnold Kemp, Savannah Knoop, Dusty Shoulders, and Robert Yang, among others.

Admission is free and open to the public, and it runs February 2nd - August 12th, 2018.
118 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-3289. (215) 898-7108. ADA accessible.

For all our US-based readers

Net neutrality is an issue that would heavily affect this blog and its proprietor. As someone whose "controversial" work regularly gets banned from platforms like Twitch, I'm really worried about the future of open and equal access on the internet when universally-reviled ISPs are allowed to further control who sees what / and at what additional costs.

If you're a US citizen and you like all the shit I post, then please ensure your continued access to my shit, and send some e-mails or make some calls to your local congressperson.

Below, I've copy and pasted from this post on why net neutrality matters, and what is happening now, and what action you can take:

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.

ART GAMES DEMOS, call for submissions -- 16 December 2017, in Lyon, France

Ever wanted to exhibit your experimental glitch machinima in France? Well, now's your chance! The curator Isabelle Arvers sends over this call for machinima (!) as well as videos / games / installation submissions on the theme of borders and migration:

As part of the Nuage Numérique Festival in connection with the presentation of TALOS, a show by Arkadi Zaides, on December 16, 2017 at the Subsistances in Lyon, Art Games Demos launches a new call for projects dedicated to the theme of borders and migration.

We are looking for creations in the following categories: video creation; 2D, 3D, 4D, VR; machinima; glitch, hacks, alternative controllers; independant/experimental/under development videogames; installations; prototypes; performances; music.

Send your proposals to: iarvers@gmail.com; chloe.desmoineaux@live.fr; residence@labo-nrv.io

Sounds like a good time, and France is (probably) lovely this time of year.

No Quarter 2017, RSVPs open! + mini-interviews with Droqen and Auriea

poster art by Sophia Foster-Dimino

As you may know, I curate the No Quarter exhibition run by NYU Game Center. Each year, we commission new games from 4 artists and debut their work at a big fun party in New York City.

This year, for the 8th exhibition, we've commissioned Kitty Horrorshow, Pietro Righi Riva, Auriea Harvey, and Droqen -- and we're doing it all on the night of November 3rd. 2017 in Bushwick, Brooklyn. That's in only a few weeks!!

To whet your appetite, we've also been running brief interviews with the artists. Check out my short chat with Droqen and chat with Auriea to hear about what they're making, with more previews soon!

If you live near New York City, or can afford to travel over for the weekend, then you may want to attend... and our RSVPs are now open! Keep in mind that space is kind of limited, so to ensure you're allowed in, you may want to sign-up now. It's free and open to the public.

new re-release: Radiator 2 Anniversary Edition

I just finished a re-remaster of my game Radiator 2. This "anniversary edition" is now live on Steam and itch.io, so feel free to check it out, and/or look at the new screenshots for five seconds before closing the tab immediately. The new changes mostly consist of improved stability, more supported languages, fancier graphics + skin shaders, and a very high polygon cupcake in the menu screen.

This is the 3rd time I've remade these games, and I think I like remastering games, it's kind of fun. You get to dive back into your awful code base full of terrible mistakes, but that addictive feeling of progress is still pretty fast and tangible because you already have a working game!

I think I'm going to keep remastering and re-releasing my games every few years, which oddly enough, is a common AAA practice but is very rare in the indie world.

Let's take it back, and remaster the shit out of our work! Remaster your games 2 times, 5 times, 10 times, 100 times... let every game become an infinite game, an eternal game that never ends...

"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)