Queer and feminist critiques of games often rely on high level conceptual approaches to games -- that is, analyzing games as cultural products or media objects. The hegemony's response is to go technical and go low-level, to argue that their game engine could not support playable women characters, or to argue production schedules allowed no time to support queer content, etc. Ignoring temporarily how those are bullsh*t reasons, what if we chased them into the matrix? Perhaps we could disclose the politics inherent in game engine architectures, rendering APIs, and technical know-how. If we learn about (and *practice*) actual game development, then we can articulate alternative accounts of game development at a low level, and achieve more comprehensive critiques of games.

1. Queering Game
Development
Robert Yang (@radiatoryang)
Parsons the New School for Design MFADT
NYU Game Center
Queerness and Games Conference
UC Berkeley
27 October 2013

4. First person modding as
political practice
- mods aren't “real games”?
- modder inferiority complex
- modding as path to “break in” AAA
- distribution? How to play a mod?
- who REALLY owns your work?
- who is “allowed” to mod?
For more info, c.f. “People's History of the FPS”

5. Paratext, packaging, production value
CANDY
JOUI-F*CKING-SSANCE
BIG TOE IS SO BIG
“NVIDIA: IT'S IN THE GAME”

6. Game Design
Game Studies
Game Development

7. YES!!!
Game Studies
Game Development

8. MODDING!!!
Game Studies
Game Development

10. "... First, we want to establish
the idea that a computer
language is not just a way of
getting a computer to
perform operations but
rather that it is a novel formal
medium for expressing ideas
about methodology. Thus,
programs must be written for
people to read, and only
incidentally for machines to
execute."

11. “... programs must be written
for people to read, and
only incidentally for
machines to execute."
- one of the most influential
texts on programming

12. 10 PRINT
CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
by Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost
Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas
Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter (2012)
Criminal Code: Procedural Logic
and Rhetorical Excess
in Videogames
by Mark Sample (2013)

13. “Screen essentialism”
"… the graphical user interface is
often uncritically accepted as the
ground zero of the user’s experience”
- Matthew Kirschenbaum (2008)
in “Mechanisms: New Media and
the Forensic Imagination”

14. Dead Island

15. default_player_setup.scr:
sub Skills_Purna(){
[...]
Skill(“TeamSpirit2Purna”);
Skill(“FeministWhorePurna”);
Skill(“MeleeDurabilityPurna”);
[...]
}

16. "The line in question was
something a programmer
considered a private joke. The
skill naturally has a completely
different in-game name and the
script reference was also
changed. What is left is a part of
an obscure debug function."
- developer's response

17. default_player_setup.scr:
sub Skills_Purna(){
Skill("TeamSpirit1Purna");
Skill("SharpApprenticePurna");
Skill("BoostAura1Purna");
Skill("GLMeleeDmgPurna");
Skill("ElemetalDurationPurna");
Skill("ComboCriticalProbPurna");
Skill("ElemetalDurationPurna");
Skill("MoreCraftedAmmoPurna");
Skill("RVTiefPurna");
Skill("TSDmgIncrasedPurna");
Skill("CraftedWeaponKillFuryPointsPurna");
Skill("ChanceToFireUpEnemyPurna");
Skill("TeamSpirit2Purna");
Skill("FeministWhorePurna");
[…]
}

18. “... programs must be written
for people to read, and
only incidentally for
machines to execute."
- one of the most influential
texts on programming

19. "I found a way to alter the items
you get when choosing a chapter."
- a Dead Island modder, on the
functionality of default_player_setup.scr
2+ weeks after release / day one patch

20. “PRIVATE” TO
WHO? JUST TO
EVERY SINGLE
DEVELOPER?
"The line in question was
something a programmer
considered a private joke. The
skill naturally has a completely
different in-game name and the
script reference was also
changed. What is left is a part of
an obscure debug function."
- developer's response
“OBSCURE DEBUG” AS IN
“RUN THIS EVERY TIME A
PLAYER STARTS A NEW GAME”

21. “... programs must be written
for people to read, and
only incidentally for
machines to execute."
- one of the most influential
texts on programming

22. A BRIEF PRIMER TO READING SOME CODE:
A “comment” is a note for humans; a summary of what code below does,
or an explanation of something not obvious from the code already
// don't drink too much
Computers are good at remembering things in the form of “variables”...
Imagine your computer memory is like an attic, filled with boxes.
beersDrunk = 4 ;
The name of the variable;
the label on a storage box.
A value for the variable;
the thing inside a storage box.
There are also “types”; is it a small, long, big box?
What kind of thing is in the box?

23. SOME CODE:
myGender = true;
// from “Gender is not a Boolean”,
Kate Compton, Lost Levels 2012

24. SOME CODE:
// “true” means man?
myGender = true;

25. SOME CODE:
isMasculine = false;

26. SOME CODE:
// values from 0.0 to 1.0
// 0.0 gender means “fem”
gender = 0.3222;
femininity = 0.8215;

27. SOME CODE:
// multiple choice, discrete
enum Gender { Masculine,
Feminine,
Genderqueer,
Lasagna,
All }
myGender = Gender.Feminine;

28. SOME CODE:
// gender as 4 dim. rotation
myGender = new Quaternion
( 0.24, 0.119, -54.2, 295 );

29. “... programs must be written
for people to read, and
only incidentally for
machines to execute."
- one of the most influential
texts on programming

30. YES!!!
Queer Theory
Game Development

31. YOUR ALLIES!!!!
- digital humanities!!!!
- creative coding movements!!!
- hacker spaces, direct action!!!
- everyone in this room!!!!!
- Different Games!!!
- Transcode!!!!
- Code Liberation!!!!!
WE CAN DO IT WE CAN DO IT

32. SOME QUESTIONS YOU CAN ASK YOURSELF
OR YOUR TECHNICALLY-MINDED ALLIES:
- What sum of code and assets facilitate
this simulation / interaction?
- How was this ________ built?
- Why did they do it this way? What are
other possible implementations?
- What happens if I change ________ ?
- Cheap / expensive? Static / dynamic?
Elegant / “hack”? Stable / instable?

33. C'MON LET'S CHASE THE
F*CKERS INTO THE MATRIX
thanks for listening bye
(questions? twitter: @radiatoryang)