Opening question from Rich: why are the people in charge of running this world so terrible at running it, and at endangering marginalized people? “Yes, it’s a shitshow, but we have opportunities to spread hope.”
First up @michelle_clough saying the game industry is overdue for a 50 Shades of Grey—not the bad parts, but an acknowledgement that hey, women and queer people like sex too. We could be exploring new potential at the juncture of erotica+gameplay. 
Porn may be about the act of sex, but erotica is about pleasure across senses, and game design is very much about shaping pleasure. How about using the cycle of tension and release erotically?
In interactive erotica, both participants, NPC or human, can be engaged in making decisions, consenting, setting pace, having *reasons* for why they find passion and pleasure.
The challenge: this needs to be as mainstream as 50 shades, and inclusive of more bodies, sexualities, etc. But there are censorship barriers on the App Store, Twitch, etc that keep erotic games from reaching bigger audiences
Next, @JarrydHuntley thinking about something dangerous he did in game development. Who’s tweaked a game build right before or during an expo? He has with Art Club Challenge. Very risky, but why?
After all, he knows better and counsels students not to. Why did he keep taking this risk? Expos represented two things for him: a fixed development goal to hit, and focusing solely on the role of game dev (since he’s also a father, husband, professor, etc)
An expo deadline forced him to get things done, and also let him do live playtesting... since his build time was under a minute! He was redeploying in between expo players sessions! But he doesn’t recommend it as the next big thing.
You learn from taking risks and failing, but this wasn’t sustainable. Relying on expo pressure for development is too expensive! (Travel, data costs, etc.) And the same methods don’t work for everyone.
Third talk, @JennSandercock of edible game design fame. She was told, when she used to bake cakes for her officemates, that she was jeopardizing her career. So the talk: Ignoring Good Advice
Some advice may be good in general, but not for you! Cake is important. Studying hard is good too, but maybe less important for a game career than spending time making. Don’t share your ideas with others? Maybe for startups, but too valuable in games community.
Lots of advice she’s ignored deliberately about edible games: take food away, be mean to players! No, this is exactly the opposite of the kind of game she wants to do.
Do you need to stick around to get a game launch on your resume? Not if the studio environment is toxic. Here are two conflicting pieces of advice that have to be evaluated case-by-case: sometimes it’s worth it.
Instead of just taking advice, she suggests working out your own core values, what’s important to you, to evaluate advice.
Next, @Ekanaut talking about being a kid and not fitting in, in his case as an immigrant in Maryland from Sri Lanka. He “kept quiet and stayed out of trouble” to try and blend.
As a kid, he was exposed mostly to white main characters. In games, Dhalsim was the closest to his own experience, and stereotypes like Apu or the (brownface) scientist from Short Circuit.
He’s mostly worked with white people and watched them be allowed to succeed as individuals while people of color were always seen as representative of “their group.”
But an increasing diversity of game creators and protagonists has given him hope, drove home the importance of mentorship and is working on multiple ideas with fellow S.Asian dev @betterthemask. They need funding for this amazing idea:
Next @thatJaneNg : it used to be that stylization was not a choice, it was a technical necessity. In this era, high fidelity details are easy, affordable... unless you’re making hundreds of square miles of it in an open world!
Have we lost sight of a fundamental art lesson in the arms race for hifi worlds? Fidelity is not a replacement for aesthetics. She shows two paintings to show that the feeling of a place does not depend on detail.
Players remember a well-crafted moment even if it’s made of few polygons or cubes, far more than the detail of a particular asset. Lots of great examples (Quadrilateral Cowboy, Virginia, Journey, Shadow of the Colossus). Invest in a few unforgettable moments.
She’s not hating on massively detailed worlds, just pointing out that it takes a LOT: budget, team with a ton of institutional knowledge, structural support, etc.
We know that more words doesn’t make a good better! More frames per second doesn’t make a movie better. Instead of “more is better” artists must be mindful and shoot for an aesthetic that supports creative goals, carrying out “controlled burns” when necessary.
Now it’s @lizardengland , recently expelled from the Eiffel Tower for carrying a flintlock. Now: her story of failure during Scribblenauts development and launch.
Talking about an early Kotaku review where the writer failed 16 times at finishing a Scribblenauts level, in part due to the very open-ended nature of the game. But this was not just bad chaos: it’s a dramatic and entertaining house of cards.
Memorable moments, flashbulb memories that stick with us, can arise from failures too! We can’t just focus on trying to create memorable success. Funny or spectacular failures on the edges of systems are not a design problem! They can result from player experimentation.
We shouldn’t design those moments and possibilities out, but you also can’t insist on “scripting that spectacular failure so it happens to every player,” as was suggested to her once. It has to be emergent.
Her tips: design for three ways a system could go spectacularly wrong. Let players build their own house of cards step by step, warning them but not propping it up!
Next, @bobbateswriter on fires that sustain you creatively, short and long term. A new idea can be a spark, but to be creative that spark has to fall on tinder: you must be ready.
To be ready the spark has to attach to other ideas: references, other people’s works, things you’ve read, your explorations in the woods, visiting places you’ve never been, ideas that don’t have to be perfect but can collide beautifully with each other.
The flame of idea is fragile, if it’s attacked too early it can be extinguished. Once it’s big enough you can have others blow on it to make it bigger. Creativity, like a real bonfire, must have a structure and be prepared a step at a time.
But the fire can’t burn out of control, a game or your work can’t be your whole life. Crunch drives 50% of game developers out in under five years. Take time to renew your fire’s fuels, don’t throw water on yourself with self-defeat or impostor syndrome.
Lastly, the fire of your creativity over a long time can be a beacon to look back on late in life! (And ed. a beacon for others too!)
Hey now it’s @ellaguro talking about Chris Crawford’s “Dragon Speech” 25 years ago at GDC, leaving the industry because he got feedback that his game was too much art, not enough fun
And this has been happening ever since: Crawford knew that this criticism was due to catering to a particularly-defined market, and that means the same kinds of people will keep succeeding
“lately it seems like this industry is scared of the people it’s marketing games too, and that’s a little like being scared of your own child—maybe because you realize how much you’ve screwed them up!”
We’ve been making games as military propaganda for years. The ESA is fighting the preservation of online games! Supposed leaders are opposing unionization, crunch is still a constant. We can’t pretend there’s nothing that can be done.
Blaming gamers is an easy scapegoat: she says we need to address the very serious problems in the industry that stem from the pursuit of profit. Otherwise, we’ll just get more toxicity.
Final talk, @cypheroftyr on how she ended up doing #INeedDiverseGames first as a tag and now as a non-profit.
Look at who’s playing games vs who’s in the industry: players are far more diverse. We’ve got to stop having the exact same discussions of inclusion, got to move past 101 to more nuance.
Privilege and fear of losing its benefits means that we get stuck at “why all the talk of diversity, forced SJW agenda” over and over, every single time this comes up. Now she’s found a way to have voice on Twitch.
Twitch doesn’t even keep race and gender demographics (wtf?). But Tanya has some links for you: gamedevsofcolorexpo.com blackgamedevs.com and recommends IGDA SIGs for devs of color!
