Gender and cultural representation in games

00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:14,000|| Daniela: Hello everybody. Thank you for joining our panel on gender and cultural representation in games. I'm Daniela, I will be chairing this panel today.## 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:22,000|| Daniela: I'm a lecturer at the University of Bath and Co-Director of Echo Games. We have an amazing group of panelists today and they're going to share their experience.## 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:41,000|| Phoenix: Hi, I'm Phoenix Perry, Dr. Phoenix Perry and I'm a Reader at the University of Arts London in Creative Computing where I focus on the intersection of games and disability studies and play, as well as creative immersive technologies and playful environments.## 00:00:41,000 --> 00:01:03,000|| Mer: I am Mercedes Grazzini, I go by Mer and I am a game developer from Argentina. I am a game designer and a 2D artist and I'm also a teacher. I teach game design to kids and I'm co-founder of the first Argentinian workers co-op, cooperative.## 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:17,000|| Mer: And we make serious games or art games, which are games that focus on social issues or gender issues or mental health, environmental problems and stuff like that.## 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:25,000|| A.M: Hi, my name is A.M. Darke. My pronouns are she and he. I am a media artist, so I make games and other interactive works.## 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:37,000|| A.M: I'm also an Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Department of Performance, Play and Design, which is a combination of theatre arts, dance and game design, where I teach.## 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:56,000|| A.M: I'm also the founder of the Open Source Afro Hair Library, which is a free database archive of black hair textures and styles to address the lack of representation, or the poor representation, of not just black hair, but also black bodies and black culture in games in 3D.## 00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:11,000|| A.M: And my research focus is more and more so black virtuality. For me, the key has always been specificity. I started my career out making small, like weird feminist art games in school.## 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:41,000|| A.M: And one of the things that I found and that I teach my own students is that to make something really impactful, you don't need to sort of speak to everyone, you need to speak to your own specific experience or a specific experience that you are familiar with, in community with, and that's how you actually find things that are more broadly relatable because they're more real, right? And they're more immersive, you know, they bring people in.## 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:53,000|| A.M: So I'll use hair as an example since that's been obviously a focus of my research for the last five years. This question always comes up with like, how is black hair still you know, how are we getting it wrong?## 00:02:53,000 --> 00:03:02,000|| A.M: Even when there are resources put into this, like games that are highly resourced, AAA, millions of dollars in the budget still messing this up.## 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:39,000|| A.M: And one of the issues is that black hairstyles are not – there's a pretty narrow window for what is accurate, for what is culturally authentic. So while there's a huge diversity of like styles and textures and techniques, if you don't understand what texture requires what technique, if you don't understand what aspects of the hairstyle are able to, sort of have like more creative interpretation and which ones are more, sort of like standard features, then what happens is you end up in this uncanny valley territory.## 00:03:39,000 --> 00:04:06,000|| A.M: And a great example of this was actually with the Miles Morales Spider-Man games, right? The first time that we saw Miles Morales and Spider-Man, compared to the other kind of 1970s disco afros that we saw in games, like in fighting games and other things like that, where you see these big afro caricatures, Miles’ hair, I'm sure to the developers, felt pretty like, yeah, this is on point, as we say, right?## 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:21,000|| A.M: He had a natural hair texture of a medium length, wasn't a caricature, and yet the black community, the black players were very clear like, okay, so he has the haircut, but what's going on with his hairline?## 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:35,000|| A.M: Because if you're going to, as a black person, have your hair styled in this way, this masculine character, you're going to a barber shop and they're not, no black barber shop anywhere is going to send you out of that shop without giving you an edge up,## 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:52,000|| A.M: without making sure that your sideburns have been shaved and shaped, making sure that your hairline is crispy. And it's more than just aesthetics, it's like, as a black person, I understand the reasoning for that. I understand why a hairline is important.## 00:04:52,000 --> 00:05:14,000|| A.M: I understand the history of marginalisation that has created a culture, at least for black Americans, where physical appearance, hygiene, being as sharp, as fresh, as fly as you can be, is a way to indicate that someone cares for you and that you care for yourself, even when the world around you doesn't.## 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:29,000|| A.M: And so that's what I mean about specificity, really understanding a person's unique experience will help you make better choices around who you represent. Yeah, so I'll pause there because I can go on and on about this, but yeah.## 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:40,000|| Daniela: There was some interesting connection also with Mer’s work and what you were talking about, the specificity of different people from their dress or their language in different cultures.## 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:56,000|| A.M: Yeah, expressiveness. I think we were talking about how gestures, this is another one where like gestures can communicate so much about a culture and a person, but then you also need to actually, you don't want to just throw any gesture, right, to represent any culture. So, Mer, do you want to speak more to that?## 00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:57,000|| Mer: Yeah, definitely.## 00:05:57,000 --> 00:06:13,000|| Mer: I love this topic about hair because I'm interested in cultural representation and Latin American representation, which is something that is also not very common, especially when we were younger.## 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:26,000|| Mer: And it's something that we talk about a lot, like what is Latin America and what are the things that connect us as the big motherland, as we call it? And what are the specific things of each country and of each region?## 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:33,000|| Mer: It's a lot about, like details, like the hair, you know, like gestures, like something that we do.## 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:44,000|| Mer: I'm going to show on camera, but it's not going to get recorded. You know, the Italian gesture, you know, that the fingers put together and you're moving like this, it's something very Italian and very Argentinian as well.## 00:06:44,000 --> 00:07:01,000|| Mer: And it's like a very funny thing that if you put it on a character, it's going to relate. A lot of people will say like, ‘oh, yes, we do that’. And the other people would say like, ‘oh, look at what they do’. And it's a lot about that.## 00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:23,000|| Mer: And also like accents, you know, games like Highland Song and Blasphemous have a very specific accent in the voice lines. So it's not just English or just Spanish, it's, I think it's Scottish English and Andalusian Spanish, so it's a very specific accent.## 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:35,000|| Mer: I think it's important that you talk about what you know, like Darke said, because it's really interesting, and people tend to think that what they have around is not interesting enough.## 00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:46,000|| Mer: And this is something very Latin American. Like, no, we're not interesting. We don't have cool dragons, we don't have cool mythology, we don't have anything, you know, we don't have Samurai.## 00:07:46,000 --> 00:08:07,000|| Mer: And there is this thing like self-deprecation, you know, like, ‘oh, no, I'm not very interesting’, and you are. And it's very, you can be very exotic and you don't really know what is exotic about your own life unless you tell those stories.## 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:26,000|| Mer: Most Argentinian cities are very planned, you know, structured. And I come to Europe – I am in Spain right now – and I get lost all the time because the old towns in Europe tend to be messy and organic and beautiful.## 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:31,000|| Mer: And I go like, no, my cities are boring, you know, and they are not.## 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:48,000|| Mer: And some people like, I've heard stories of Europeans coming to my city and getting lost because the city, like the streets are all, you know, like the angles are all the same, so I don't know when to turn if all the streets are the same.## 00:08:48,000 --> 00:09:00,000|| Mer: And there are like very small experiences like that, that can be super rich and I think it's nice that you can tell your own stories like that.## 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:14,000|| A.M: Just talking about like the small everyday experiences that maybe we take for granted. So Venba, you know, I feel like completely like this game, this is what makes this game so successful and rich, you know, thinking about cooking with family.## 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:19,000|| A.M: Like that's such an everyday, like you would not even consider, you know, necessarily like, let's make a game out of that.## 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:34,000|| A.M: Like how many, you know, thousands of times in your life have you just done that same activity, but the culture, the textures, the food, it's all expressed through these interactions, through the family connection.## 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:43,000|| A.M: And I just thought that that was such a great example – and of course it just recently like swept the IGF awards you know — and it's brilliant. It's such a great example of that, right? Like cooking with your family.## 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:50,000|| A.M: We also have others, you know, Angela Washko recently released a game about her experience being a mother during the pandemic, right?## 00:09:50,000 --> 00:10:03,000|| A.M: Like that's so interesting and rich because of that, you know, that's an experience that millions of people have and we're not seeing. Like I haven't heard that story before in a game format.## 00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:14,000|| A.M: So yeah, I just wanted to further highlight, like we're seeing games that do these things and they do them well because of just exactly what you're saying, right? Looking at that thing that you take for granted.## 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:42,000|| Mer: Yeah, and also Alba from Ustwo Games, we invited one of the creators of the game to come to like an expo in Argentina, and he was talking about how Alba is based on a very specific Spanish problem: how people like burn natural environments to build like hotels and factories and stuff there.## 00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:53,000|| Mer: And they had to make a law to not allow that and et cetera. And it's a very specific, you know, legal thing about Spain but we had the same problem in Argentina.## 00:10:53,000 --> 00:11:08,000|| Mer: And he was very surprised because we were talking about it. And he was like, I made this game about a very, very specific thing, but now you are relating because you are going through exactly the same thing on the other side of the ocean.## 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:31,000|| Mer: So that's a very interesting thing. Like what's exotic about yourself, but also what is alike? Like someone can connect with a story like this story about being a mother, like it's a very specific story and probably it's very personal, but I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that.## 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:42,000|| Daniela: Yeah, I think it's, again, when there is an experience that can be transferred, I can generalise then, you know, you have an emotional human experience you can relate to, even if it's a different culture.## 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:56,000|| Daniela: And it's interesting when you say, you know, you focus on the specific – on the distinctive experience – and then you can still connect with so many people. Talk about things you are familiar with, you know, and don't feel like what you know is not relevant.## 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:13,000|| Daniela: But something I was thinking when you're trying to do a diverse game for example – let's say that you're trying to show different people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, different countries, different ages, that, you know, just some of them relate to you, you will know about them.## 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:22,000|| Daniela: Are you going to interview people from different groups? How can you generalise? Because what is true again for one person can be different for another.## 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:28,000|| A.M: So I have two points that I'd love to make about that because I have seen examples where diversity feels forced.## 00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:39,000|| A.M: My neighbourhood and my friend group is quite diverse. And at least in the States, statistically speaking, people of colour tend to have more diverse friend groups than like white Americans.## 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:56,000|| A.M: And so what if you don't have a diverse friend group? I'd like to just, you know, speak and say, if you don't see this diversity in your own life, that should be point one, really. Like you should go out into the world and have different experiences because it makes you a better artist. It just makes you a better creator.## 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:05,000|| A.M: And then from there, right, I, you know, sometimes I'm tasked with like, you know, portraying a culture that I'm not super familiar with.## 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:12,000|| A.M: And so I will go and read and I will go, you know, do the top level, like, okay, well, what can I understand about this culture, this religion, this et cetera?## 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:25,000|| A.M: But then I will go dive deep into like – once again – this is from specificity, I'll dive into like Reddit threads or weird obscure message boards for a very small community to try to really understand different like personal experiences.## 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:36,000|| A.M: And this is, you know, for me, as an artist, I feel like as an artist, you can make anything, but it's your responsibility to be able to justify. When someone asks you why you did that, you need to have an answer, right?## 00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:46,000|| A.M: And so what I think about this, like, so I'll give an example of when I've seen this done sort of poorly or the more forced diversity, right?## 00:13:46,000 --> 00:14:01,000|| A.M: I was looking at some characters and one character that this, you know, this group had made, it was like, okay, we want to have a woman of colour who is a second generation immigrant who lives still with like her parents or her grandparents or something like that.## 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:12,000|| A.M: And she goes to community college and she has a job because she's caring for her family. I'm like, okay, like I get that still, you know, intergenerational like family living together, that makes sense, that's on point, sure.## 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:19,000|| A.M: But then she's also openly bisexual and also she really wants to find a man, like find a husband.## 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:32,000|| A.M: And I was like, at some point, this feels like checkboxes because first of all, I'm super queer. I live in the Bay area. I don't know any openly bisexual people who are looking to find a husband. I just don't, that's kind of against type.## 00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:37,000|| A.M: And then, you know, so the reason I bring up that sort of example is it just felt like a lot of checkboxes.## 00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:55,000|| A.M: Okay, I want to have a woman of colour, who's also an immigrant, who also is like working a job, taking care of family, also openly bisexual, also, you know, wants to find a husband and settle down and get married. And I thought, well, I couldn't reconcile the why of those choices.## 00:14:55,000 --> 00:15:08,000|| A.M: I couldn't reconcile the being openly bisexual with the hint that her immigrant family was somewhat conservative, but she was very freely openly bisexual, but still concerned about what her family thought, but also wanted to find a husband.## 00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:18,000|| A.M: I'm like, those things don't, I could not find the motivation of that character. It did not feel authentic because there were too many things that just felt thrown on without any reasoning, right?## 00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:27,000|| A.M: So that's the big thing, is if you are going to represent another person, as we've been saying, like these are still human experiences.## 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:35,000|| A.M: All humans have motivations. All humans have experiences in their life that shape the choices that they make and the reason for their being.## 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:47,000|| A.M: And so if you just do a little bit more reflection and asking, okay, well, why does this, why is she even openly bisexual, right? What is the backstory there?## 00:15:47,000 --> 00:16:03,000|| A.M: How do you reconcile that with a close family? How did this close family become very supportive in this context of being immigrants and already needing to assimilate into a culture that is not fully supportive of queer lifestyle?## 00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:19,000|| A.M: So all of those questions need to be asked if you're going to go through that level of specificity. You don't wanna just sort of collect diversity traits and put them all together. So yeah, I'm sure many people have other things to say about that, so I'll stop there.## 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:32,000|| Mer: I had a writing exercise about that. I used to work as a writer on the newspaper, like doing comics. I wrote the comic on the last page of my local newspaper.## 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:49,000|| Mer: And when we presented the story, like we pitched the story that we were gonna write, the editor of the newspaper started asking me questions about the character. And I was like, oh yeah, he's a journalist. He lives these adventures. And like, I was just talking about the plot.## 00:16:49,000 --> 00:17:07,000|| Mer: And he was like, no, no, no, don't tell me the story. I want to know what kind of books does he read? What is his family? Does he get along with his parents? Does he want to have kids? Has he had many partners? Is he gay? Is he not? Is he hetero?## 00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:18,000|| Mer: What are, I don't know, like what kind of music does he listen to? Does he despise the new young people music, or is he into pop?## 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:25,000|| Mer: Like those questions, I thought they were not that important and they definitely were.## 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:40,000|| Mer: And I started doing, like asking these questions as if it were someone that I knew, like a friend. And also thinking about people that I knew, like what you said about going outside and meeting different people.## 00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:56,000|| Mer: I met a lot of people and coincidentally in my team, we're all like very social people. We're teachers and we are artists, so we hear stories all the time. And that is a great inspiration to build characters.## 00:17:56,000 --> 00:18:06,000|| Mer: Like, oh, yes, I met this person who was like, had like a similar experience like this character that I want to write. So maybe I can put some gesture of this person here.## 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:21,000|| Mer: And that was super good in the newspaper experience, because once I had like my character and I knew him as a ‘real person’, you know – in quotes – it was super easy to write him.## 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:32,000|| Mer: Like I would just put the environment and the setting and like, okay, this is gonna happen in this chapter. And I would just put the character there and the character would just act. I didn't have to really think a lot.## 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:52,000|| Mer: Like, of course he's gonna say this. And of course he's gonna act this way because he's like this. He has gone through these things in his backstory. So yeah, it's also like a very, like a tip, you know, like a trick to make your work easier as well.## 00:18:52,000 --> 00:19:01,000|| Daniela: It feels like that to be a good designer, game designer or developer, you need a lot of curiosity and to develop your observation skills, your research skills.## 00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:14,000|| Daniela: So I'm a teacher and a lot of students, they love games and they know a lot of games. They know how to develop them. But then they're lacking the research part, the observation part. So that's a very good point, right?## 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:25,000|| Daniela: You need to start looking around. You need diverse friends, create a community, right? And this is a skill that is not often taught. And you know, you all have experience teaching.## 00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:37,000|| Daniela: I was wondering if you had some suggestions of what kind of resources, you know, like for example, the hair library, it's a good resource, but you know, any other like places where you often go and look for.## 00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:51,000|| Daniela: So you say your friends, your surroundings, games that are properly made and have good representations. Are there other resources that you look for when you are researching for your game?## 00:19:51,000 --> 00:20:04,000|| Phoenix: Maybe play games, like wild notion, and go to games festivals. Like, I know we're amongst game designers here, so I don't wanna like blow anyone's mind, but you can play games!## 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:14,000|| Phoenix: I know as a games designer, we're the world's worst about not playing titles, but it's good to, I think, encourage your students to really dive into the better games.## 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:29,000|| Phoenix: But other than that, going to games festivals, going to game jams, going and participating in the larger community, like, you know, go to that like … meetup, go to like, you know, cute and fun things.## 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:34,000|| Phoenix: And also just go see some art, like get some culture in your brain.## 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:45,000|| A.M: Yeah, I can add to that. Just from a different angle – When I was making games, I was always pulling from, like I wasn't pulling from other games.## 00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:54,000|| A.M: And that's actually something I try to tell my students. Like stop taking your inspiration from other games, because like, this is a problem within games to me.## 00:20:54,000 --> 00:21:01,000|| A.M: Like, I even talked about this in a recent interview, again, related to hair. Like, why is the Killmonger style the only now black hairstyle?## 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:08,000|| A.M: And it's because, well, that was taken from film, that was the one source, I guess, where like major game developers are pulling from.## 00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:23,000|| A.M: And if you know anything about what's happening like in film and television and black representation, well, there are black actors and actresses constantly talking about how no one knows how to do their hair. And so they don't get to have their hair done on set, they have to like, you know, do it themselves.## 00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:37,000|| A.M: And so the point I was making with that was that, when I went and saw Black Panther, I'm like, when's the last time I saw a black hairstyle on film that looked good, or iconic, or interesting? There's the one. And so now we just have that one in games.## 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:51,000|| A.M: And so I feel like it's really important to diversify, like, you know, go out, yeah, go out to an art museum, go out to your local drink and draw – if you have one in your city – go out and like see local galleries, listen to music.## 00:21:51,000 --> 00:22:00,000|| A.M: I mean, just start pulling from a broader swath of resources. And games are still new. And so it's also kind of like a hack. It's like a cheat code.## 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:12,000|| A.M: If you're drawing from something that's not a game to make a game, then you're gonna already inherently be making something more interesting, more new, just pulling inspiration from much broader sources.## 00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:19,000|| A.M: And this is actually why I'm excited about like, this department that I mentioned that I'm in a new department, combining games and theatre.## 00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:35,000|| A.M: And like, I think about that because I'm like, theatre is also a rich place to get inspiration for games because so many people think games come from like film, like that's the lineage, but I'm like, ‘hey, like go to some plays, do you know what, like play is in the word also…’.## 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:49,000|| A.M: You've got a script, you've got people performing, you've got different stylistic choices. There's a lot of overlap and parallels there with designing games, right? So yeah, once again, get outside and get in the world.## 00:22:49,000 --> 00:23:02,000|| A.M: The first game that I completed was a card game and it was, it's called Objective and it was looking at colourism, race, attractiveness, and it was like a social party game.## 00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:13,000|| A.M: And I just drove – I was living in LA at the time and going to school in Los Angeles – I drove to Oakland, which is a black city. And I just sat at the bar and I drew faces.## 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:25,000|| A.M: I drew like a hundred faces just looking at the people in the community with a diverse set of features and like, oh my gosh, wow, I've never seen that particular hair colour and eye colour combined with skin tone.## 00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:35,000|| A.M: Oh my God, like the world is a rich resource for you. You gotta go outside and see it and be amongst people, when it's safe, right?## 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:49,000|| Mer: Yeah, I super agree with that. I always tell my students, like when we start a new class, I ask them what is their favourite game, but also what is their non-game thing they are passionate about?## 00:23:49,000 --> 00:24:00,000|| Mer: Like what do they do? Like do they play music? Do they cook? Do they have, I don't know, maybe they have a bunch of cats and they are very passionate about their pets. Some people swim.## 00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:22,000|| Mer: I don't know, people do things in life. And I think it's important to get, use your outside of game passions to put them in games. The other thing that I do is ask for help when I am researching. I just don't think that you can do everything on your own.## 00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:37,000|| Mer: Like it's great to read books and watch films and do all of that research, but also just ask for help. Like, hey, Internet, I'm doing this, can you recommend me films about this topic?## 00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:46,000|| Mer: Or can you recommend me this thing? Or if you know someone or someone can get a contact of someone that is, I don't know, from a specific community.## 00:24:46,000 --> 00:25:04,000|| Mer: I made, we made a game with my team about where there were Mapuche indigenous people as characters. So I read a lot and I watched a lot of things and I went to a museum and I did all of that. But we also just call people from the community.## 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:20,000|| Mer: We got a contact, we started like, you know, calling people until we could get two translators to read the script and not only translate the game to Mapuzugun, which is their language, but also like give us feedback.## 00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:27,000|| Mer: Like, okay, this is like this. And I like how you portrayed this because this is important for our culture, et cetera.## 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:35,000|| Mer: Yeah, just ask for help, you know? Like, if you don't know where to find, just ask ‘Hey, give me examples’.## 00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:58,000|| Daniela: So much of what you all say resonates with me because, you know, I really feel motivated and my kind of creative energy juice is really refreshed every time I go, for example, in a museum or I go in a new city that I never visited before, because it just gives me so many ideas. The art I see, if it's an art or history museum, even science museums, they give me so much, you know, inspiration.## 00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:12,000|| Daniela: Sometimes I just go around and sketch people as well. And one thing also works very well is, you know, if I do a game, to have the right music in the background while I make the art. And do not be afraid to ask. The worst that can happen is nobody replies to you.## 00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:31,000|| Daniela: But, you know, you can always go to forums or even search online for experts in the field. You know, recently, one of my students was making a game about grief. And I told him, there are a lot of research centres about grief, contact them, ask them questions, right? What theories you can use? Ask them to check your game.## 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:40,000|| Daniela: And, you know, the worst that can happen again, they're not going to reply to you. But if they do, you can get some very valuable information, right?## 00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:49,000|| A.M: There was one thing that you mentioned, like in terms of representing a people and some folks being upset, like, oh, that doesn't, that only represents some.## 00:26:49,000 --> 00:27:01,000|| A.M: And I think there's two points of that, like as artists, we know, like, I do think artists have a responsibility to be sensitive and respectful because you are capitalising, you're building work off of, you know, some culture, some story.## 00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:13,000|| A.M: And so, you know, you should respect that, right? And at the same time, we can't make everyone happy. What we should do is hold ourselves – our job should not be to make everyone happy.## 00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:26,000|| A.M: Our job should be to, again, be accountable for the choices we make. And that brings me back to, if you're telling a specific story about a specific person from a specific group, no group is a monolith, right?## 00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:38,000|| A.M: So once again, if you go back to that, why did that particular person who, you know, is representative of one person in a certain community, why did they make those choices that maybe other people in that community would not have made?## 00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:49,000|| A.M: Ask yourself that question because we do make different choices, right? Like the choices I make are not going to be representative of every queer and non-binary black person in America, right?## 00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:56,000|| A.M: But if you know more about my story and you understand why I made those choices, then it's honest, it's authentic.## 00:27:56,000 --> 00:28:05,000|| A.M: And your defence, right, when someone asks is already built in. So again, ask the why, don't just try to make it a stand-in for, you know, the whole group.## 00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:16,000|| Daniela: This is interesting because yeah, the motivation - the “Why?” - Once you have a well-defined character and you know their motivation, you know that character, even if it's not so familiar to you, but you know this character.## 00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:29,000|| Daniela: You know why, for example, they wear something, they look a way, they have the style, why they are in a specific city, how they eat something, why they move in a specific way, why they speak, then everything clicks, right?## 00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:41,000|| Daniela: I was talking with someone that was implementing a board game and they were sharing some images of women, the classic sexy, like, you know, half naked women and they ask for feedback and I ask, okay, who is this character?## 00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:54,000|| Daniela: Why is dressed like that? And they say “Well, she wants to be cute”. Okay. Depends what is their idea of cute. If you're trying to make a meaningful and authentic game, think about character and their motivations to be wearing something.## 00:28:54,000 --> 00:29:04,000|| Daniela: Because sexy is different in different cultures. It’s different for different women and different genders, you know, in different cultures, like the way I feel cute or, you know,## 00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:13,000|| Daniela: maybe I feel sexy when I'm cute, or when I feel confident because I'm wearing something that really reflects my character and my identity, right?## 00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:23,000|| A.M: It also helps if it's not a set in a snowstorm, you know, that sexy bikini. There's all sorts of practical questions to ask. Yeah.## 00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:24,000|| Daniela: Yeah.## 00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:37,000|| Daniela: I think I was reading something about armour, right? And how armours are represented according to gender, how women in armour are basically half naked and how the choice of armour, how that is motivated.## 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:46,000|| Daniela: And what about when you're trying to do basically figures that are not, that are androgynous, for example, do not have a specific gender, right? Do you just use the classic armour?## 00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:53,000|| Daniela: You know, there is something that is familiar, so it's easy to recognize. As if you try to steer away from that, maybe it's not so recognisable anymore.## 00:29:53,000 --> 00:30:08,000|| Phoenix: One of my favourite side notes on that is that the cleft – I had a friend of mine who's like a combat expert – and the cleft in between boobs, if that was in real armour and someone got hit to the chest, it would kill you.## 00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:25,000|| Phoenix: And I was like, ah, there's a good reason to argue to have that removed in any art you're in, other than the fact that it's just terrible. But like, I thought it was interesting to find out that that is actually a lethal design. And I was like, well, that's hilarious.## 00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:29,000|| Phoenix: Cause you know, I don't play those kinds of games ever, but it did crack me up.## 00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:48,000|| Mer: Yeah, I like the, also like the sun… the snowstorm example, like different environments require different kinds of, you know, cuteness. You know, it's not the same, you can be … I mean, people can be sexy in very different ways.## 00:30:48,000 --> 00:31:02,000|| Mer: So it's not about just making them ugly. It's like, oh no, I, this character, it's a, I don't know. Yeah, I want my knight girl to be sexy and armour is not sexy, you know?## 00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:13,000|| Mer: But it could be, it could be without being naked. I don't know, we could have details if you have, I don't know, use the imagination.## 00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:37,000|| Mer: And also with real life clothing, like you can be sexy in a formal party in a different way then you can be cute in, I don't know, if you go dancing, or if you go to, I don't know, an art gallery or a comic convention and you were something, you were different things.## 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:50,000|| Mer: And you are always trying to look nice, but you look nice in different ways, trying to think about, okay, where is this character going? Yeah, what kind of levels would they traverse?## 00:31:50,000 --> 00:32:02,000|| Daniela: Yeah, I think, you know, because I implement mostly serious games, so educational games, right?! And you spend a lot of time at the beginning discussing the motivations, your characters, having a proper narrative.## 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:06,000|| Daniela: And also think about a clear message, a clear aim that your game has.## 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:19,000|| Daniela: Because once this is clear, when you know exactly what is the goal of your game, what your character is trying to achieve, then also you know what kind of cultural and gender representation are appropriate to match.## 00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:27,000|| Daniela: It is not a checkbox, it’s not just, you know, trying to have everything there to be there, so you checkbox, it's not. It needs to be relevant then to your message and your aim.## 00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:38,000|| Daniela: For example, for our games, it takes six, eight months to discuss everything and put together this design brief where we have all the clear aims and the character, the main message that you are trying to broadcast through the game.## 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:49,000|| Daniela: Because a lot of us are so passionate about games, what I used to do is I would start to just implement in something because it was beautiful, but then I had to work back and kind of do all the thinking afterwards.## 00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:53,000|| Daniela: And it's something I learned more and more while doing games is doing that thinking at the beginning.## 00:32:53,000 --> 00:33:05,000|| A.M: I mean, I will dive into this topic of beauty. Beauty is a very diverse concept. Like what's considered hot or sexy in a queer space is like different than if you just like have this fictional idea –## 00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:17,000|| A.M: – and I say fictional because like for years there's been the justification of like, well, we need just a woman in there as a prop, as a sexy prop to like the presumed right, like some teenage boy.## 00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:26,000|| A.M: And I'm like, but I don't even think – I mean, I asked my students this cause I still teach them, you know, there's still quite more men in my like games program.## 00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:41,000|| A.M: And so I've asked this question, ‘this is done to cater to you, how do you feel about that’? Is this what you want out of your games? And I'll tell you that doesn't seem to be how they categorize like what beauty is.## 00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:54,000|| A.M: Like again, like being in the real world with real people, there's all sorts of ways to be sexy. The fact that cute is thought of as sexy is already something to unpack because like to me that's different.## 00:33:54,000 --> 00:34:08,000|| A.M: There's a character who will be cute that maybe I want to save, that maybe has childlike features. And then there's sexy. The fact that we don't look more at what sexy means, like what a grown woman, for example, would what it would mean to be sexy.## 00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:13,000|| A.M: You know, I want to see the sexy character who, sure, they're using their sexuality and they're kicking ass.## 00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:27,000|| A.M: Because that's what, you know, that confidence, like, you know, when women are out in the traditional, what we think of, you know, at least the way it's portrayed in games, the sexy woman, those women exist out in the world and they are aware of their sexiness.## 00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:37,000|| A.M: Like, this is a critique that in a reflection that I really appreciate where game characters often, they're sexy, but it's like they don't know it. So it's this innocent childlike, I'm a child, but I'm like, you know, half naked.## 00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:47,000|| A.M: It's like, if I'm going down the street half naked, I know what I'm doing and that also is going to inform my character. You know, it's not just I'm a prop, you know, in an environment.## 00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:57,000|| A.M: So what we'll have in games is we'll have characters that seemingly didn't pick out their own clothes, didn't know, didn't make the choice to say, I'm going to wear this, you know, latex body suit.## 00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:09,000|| A.M: And so like, again, I know people who wear latex body suits and they're fully aware of that choice and the way that they walk around in the world and the way that they dominate other people in the world is not what I see in games.## 00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:13,000|| A.M: Although maybe Bayonetta can be an example, but you know… so again, it's like, I feel like we should also cut to the quick in terms of saying like, well, we know why the sort of sexy traditional games archetype is there at least for women.## 00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:37,000|| A.M: And it's because women have frequently been there just as a prop to look at, not as an agential character, right? There hasn't been a lot of care or thought around like, what is this person's backstory or motivation? It's, well, they need to be eye candy first.## 00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:51,000|| A.M: And then here's some sort of backwards justification for why, again, they have no clothes on in a completely inappropriate context that would otherwise get them killed within the narrative and the environmental context of the story.## 00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:57,000|| A.M: So like we could start there and that would change a lot of things, right? And I would say that for all other characters as well.## 00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:09,000|| A.M: Like if you think about the character as a full person first and then you make your choices around that, then, you know, you won't have to sort of shoehorn in like these ridiculous justifications.## 00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:21,000|| Daniela: There are more and more women and diverse audience that play games, right? But these kinds of diversity of players that possibly want to see themselves represented, right? To have a more meaningful experience, this is not as much in work.## 00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:35,000|| Daniela: People that work in the industry, I mean, it's getting better but still sometimes we get freelancers for my company and it's very hard to find freelance women developers or in general, queer people as developers and also my students here, there are not as many women.## 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:47,000|| Phoenix: I've made multiple programs. I've taught at four universities on three continents. So I have a lot of experience working in the space of design curriculum.## 00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:59,000|| Phoenix: I have had tremendous success getting women to make games, thousands and thousands and thousands! The appetite is there!## 00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:13,000|| Phoenix: But the new degree I created at the Creative Computing Institute has perhaps been the most successful in this so far. I decided to do this and the big reason is I thought I could take what I was doing with games and make it very appealing.## 00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:27,000|| Phoenix: And year-on-year, we have more than half of our students are women. And every year I'd say 30 to 40 percent of the cohort makes games and a large, large percentage of those are women.## 00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:40,000|| Phoenix: And I think just because we're not seeing women in games courses, doesn't mean that they're not making games in creative technology programs at places like ITP, at places like Parsons, at places like SVA.## 00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:52,000|| Phoenix: I think you're seeing games happen in every art school in the world.It's just game specific programs are marketing themselves and deciding to appeal to a specific demographic.## 00:37:52,000 --> 00:38:01,000|| Phoenix: And I have a lot of thoughts about who sits in marketing to make those calls and where they think they should go get their students from. But that's my thoughts.## 00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:14,000|| Daniela: I'm wondering, do you think that there is a disparity and because again, more women go to arts maybe and creative program, is this allowing more divide between the people that know how to develop, for example,## 00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:18,000|| Daniela: because they will learn less programming, I am guessing, in those programs. They will have to learn by themselves, right?## 00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:22,000|| Phoenix: No, you're good. You're hilarious. That's cute. No, not on my program.## 00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:37,000|| Phoenix: I have a master's in Engineering, a PhD in Comp Sci. They are better developers. They get skilled up in machine learning. They get skilled up in like hardcore algorithms. And like, it's not a joke. I don't mess around.## 00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:51,000|| Phoenix: My students, they have to work for it. I actually think games programs are just significantly less overhead than a lot of the arts programs that are running these days, because you have to learn yourself. And that's the only skill you need when you go into the industry.## 00:38:51,000 --> 00:39:02,000|| Phoenix: You have to know how to learn new languages. And honestly, I think that a lot of the Creative Technology programs that have been popping up are just … they're making incredible developers.## 00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:20,000|| Phoenix: And honestly, games is a massive field and the title-based games that go to IGF, like those are just a fraction of the industry. There is like VR experiences. There's immersive stuff. There's stuff like Mooff that are now multimillion dollar industries.## 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:30,000|| Phoenix: The field is huge. And I think that we have to really hold into our mind that bigger space in which we can operate. And actually it's a lot more powerful.## 00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:40,000|| Phoenix: Frankly, game developers and AAA companies get treated like crap and get paid for crap. Why would you sign up for that when you can make so much more money doing something you actually care about?## 00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:51,000|| Phoenix: Like running a serious game studio, for example. So I don't know. I had a lot of feelings in Gamergate, as you might imagine.## 00:39:51,000 --> 00:40:04,000|| Phoenix: For those of you who don't know me on this call, I created a nonprofit with several other folks called Code Liberation Foundation, which taught several thousand women to program video games for free in the state of New York.## 00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:13,000|| Phoenix: And I saw the women that I encouraged into the industry become targets of international hype campaigns.## 00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:26,000|| Phoenix: And that gave me a lot of feels on the industry and whether or not I think it's worth bothering with. I think games are worth bothering with. Do I necessarily care about the industry anymore? No.## 00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:35,000|| Phoenix: Yeah, I mean, honestly, if I was talking to people who are interested in making games now, I wouldn't send them to like a computer science department. I would send them to an art school.## 00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:46,000|| Phoenix: Like honestly, go find an art school that has one of these weird hybrid programs. Like more interesting games came out of the creators of ITP than almost like anywhere else, you know?## 00:40:46 ,000 --> 00:40:55,000|| Phoenix: And Game Center started up from ITP. And this NYU specific, but that's my reference from my own personal experience.## 00:40:55,000 --> 00:41:11,000|| Phoenix: I think that there's a huge, huge number of creative, games are creative art, you know? And computer science latching onto them in the way they have is I think a money grab.## 00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:21,000|| A.M: I mean, the industry is terrible, which is why I make weird art games that don't require me selling them and I have always been independent.## 00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:33,000|| A.M: I mean, when I was a student, I looked for an art school. I only applied to art schools and I was like, oh, well, I'm gonna make games. I'll just figure out how to shoehorn games into whatever like they're teaching me. And I'm glad I did that.## 00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:43,000|| A.M: And I wish that more programs did that because like, again, when I say, ‘hey, stop just looking at games’, I'm like, you need to understand line. You need to understand colour theory. You need to understand storytelling.## 00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:52,000|| A.M: You need to understand the world to make things that are good. And that's what I care about. And I still like, I do play AAA games.## 00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:55,000|| A.M: Like one of my favourite games is The Witcher. I've just been revisiting it.## 00:41:55,000 --> 00:42:09,000|| A.M: Like, and one of the reasons I love The Witcher, – so I'll say this, I feel like there's some games that like end up being made that are these AAA games that the like, sort of bros that I don't like – who would harass and attack me – love because they missed the point.## 00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:23,000|| A.M: I'm like, The Witcher is just a Harlequin romance novel. Like it is just cake. It is not like, I actually love Geralt. I'm like, he's clearly a bisexual, like a pansexual who's been like having sex with everybody, every kind of creature, like for hundreds of years.## 00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:39,000|| A.M: Like I love those sort of like gratuitous, like nudity of The Witcher. I love that like there's so many sex workers in The Witcher and it's like, this is like an important thing. Like I love that game for so many reasons.## 00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:51,000|| A.M: I feel like I love the game for reasons that like, the folks who think they're hardcore don't even like, aren't even picking up on. So I feel like to make really good work in the industry is almost like an accident.## 00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:58,000|| A.M: It's something, it's like a Trojan horse. You have to get in there with some like BS and then like, oh wow, there's a decent, fun, silly game here.## 00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:13,000|| A.M: But yeah, I mean, I really, I agree with what Phoenix is saying. I think that games are arts. One of the things I teach in my – I used to teach a history of digital games course – and I try to say like, play is inherently anti-capitalist.## 00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:26,000|| A.M: First of all, it's a time-wasting event – games are not, games can be products – but games were developed, they have a radical history. Games were developed out of military technology to waste million dollar computers on something trivial and silly.## 00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:44,000|| A.M: And I think that that should be the through-line driving for us to continue to make games, especially in our current society – to continue to use the technology to make something that is a silly time-waster or a heartfelt story or something that just, to use it in a way that is not what it was initially designed for.## 00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:50,000|| A.M: So yeah, that's what I have to say about it. Mer, take us home.## 00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:51,000|| Mer: Oh my God.## 00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:53,000|| Daniela: No pressure!## 00:43:53,000 --> 00:44:04,000|| Mer: No pressure. Errr… I'm not sure what I think about industry because I feel like our situation is kind of different. We don't have AAA in Argentina, for example.## 00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:24,000|| Mer: So it's not the same, like the idea of going into a meat grinder of, I don't know, a big enterprise with millions, not millions, but hundreds of people working, like that just doesn't exist here.## 00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:35,000|| Mer: We do have a lot of companies. We do have big companies, but they are still small in comparison with, you know, Nintendo or whatever.## 00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:52,000|| Mer: And many of them still do kind of indie games. Maybe not the ones that are like doing mobile and doing like money-making work, but many of the big studios are making just indie games.## 00:44:52,000 --> 00:45:14,000|| Mer: So I don't know, like the idea of going to work in one of those industries, one of those studios, it's still kind of indie. And I respect the idea of just having a salary and going full indie is scary. It's really scary because you don't have funding.## 00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:21,000|| Mer: Getting your game on Steam is like a hundred dollars, I think, which is a lot of money for our currency.## 00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:35,000|| Mer: So just putting your game on Steam is an inversion, just that, not even considering all of the rest and having attention and that nobody cares about the games we do here. So you're not gonna get global coverage.## 00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:48,000|| Mer: So I understand that it's really hard to go full indie and just getting a salary at a company is like, okay, you have to eat, you know, it's irrespective. I've done it.## 00:45:48,000 --> 00:46:05,000|| Mer: I’ve worked in many companies as well. We have a big scene of resistance and kind of punk scene of people making games. I am not sure exactly what historically what made it, but I think it has to do with our own history.## 00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:13,000|| Mer: I wouldn't know what are the specific difference between, I don't know, Chile, for example, which is so close and we have a similar history.## 00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:26,000|| Mer: In Argentina, we had a dictatorship, then we had an economical crisis, then we had a big, big crisis in 2001 and we did a massive, massive riot and we took the president away.## 00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:44,000|| Mer: All of that creates an atmosphere of building it yourself. We have a big handmade cultural scene, not just in games. This also applies to music, applies to comics, applies to independent cinema and theater. Like we have a lot of that.## 00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:57,000|| Mer: And it's only natural that games are taking the same format. Anna Anthropy wrote this book, which is called Zinesters (“Rise of the Videogame Zinesters”), talking about - you know - queer people making their own games as if they were zinesters.## 00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:18,000|| Mer: And we have that a lot, like a comic convention, not Comic Con, you know … the kind of conventions that we do that it's just someone rents a place and people put some plastic tables and people go with photocopied fanzines and they sell them and this very punk theme.## 00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:34,000|| Mer: Maybe there's a band playing in the background. That is what we do with games. And there is this experience of feeling that we are left behind by the world. So it's like, we're so far away. We are at the bottom South end of the world.## 00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:45,000|| Mer: So we have to build our own stuff. Like we cannot wait for Nintendo to come and put an office here. We will just make our own machine.## 00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:53,000|| Mer: There is a big scene of alt.ctrl and arcade, handmade arcades of people just grabbing old machines.## 00:47:53,000 --> 00:48:09,000|| Mer: I'm going to go, I'm going back to Argentina next week and I'm going to go to a ‘cybercirujas’ party and they grab old machines from the trash and they give them a new life and they make games with that.## 00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:32,000|| Mer: So yeah, I think it's very integrated in our culture. This underground culture. So I think it's only natural that games are taking this shape. I don't know how underground culture works, for example, in Chile. So I wouldn't know how that would, because you don't know those things.## 00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:47,000|| Mer: What you get from the other countries around you are more mainstream things or more tidy things. Ah, someone made this cute game and released it on Steam. Awesome. Or on Itch.io maybe.## 00:48:47,000 --> 00:49:01,000|| Mer: You don't get to know the punk scene unless you actually go there. So it's hard to get to know those things. And I think to get more diverse stuff like that is just making more spaces.## 00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:17,000|| Mer: Because like I said, you don't need Comic Con. You just need to grab a bunch of friends together. Okay, we can rent this place, or maybe we can ask for local government for a place ‘Oh yes, there's this cultural centre that you can have for a weekend’.## 00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:29,000|| Mer: And you can put there and you can ask for, ‘Oh yes, I have a bunch of tables at my home’, ‘Oh yes, I can lend you my chairs’. And I think that's how you make a scene anywhere.## 00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:39,000|| Mer: And that's how you get people to get together, which is really important. We have a big network of local communities and they are a lot like that.## 00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:45,000|| Daniela: Thank you everybody for joining us. It was such a lovely conversation, thank you so much for your time.##