Game Center Live, Sept 19 2019

>> Hey, is this working? Okay.

I think I see my mic on.

Okay.

Cool.

Hello! This is Game Center Live.

This is a new talk show that we are startingup here at NYU Game Center.

NYU Game Center is right here in this coolbuilding right here.

Why did you take a picture? It's okay.

So today we have a bunch of special gueststhat we're gonna talk to and hang out with.

We are also gonna be going over some importantgame news, as well as mundane school announcements, if there are any students watching.

So feel free to hang out for the next houror two as I just make a huge fool of myself, and try to be a TV host.

We'll see how it goes.

First off, we'll start with some announcements.

So if you haven't heard, NYU Game Center hasmoved to a new building at 370 Jay Street.

If you've lived in the New York area and you'vevisited us before at 2 Metrotech, 370 Jay Street is a few blocks away.

We're still under construction.

It doesn't quite look like this yet.

But don't worry.

Soon it will.

Next.

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Other events that are going on here.

We have Playtest Thursday.

Playtest Thursday is something we run everyweek, if you're not familiar.

It's Thursday, 5:30 pm, 370 Jay Street, 6thfloor.

We have free pizza, and we encourage everyone– not just students, but also everyone in the whole New York City games community — tobring their games and playtest them.

Eat pizza.

Everyone wins.

It's win-win.

This week, we are also hosting Marie Foulston, right after the Playtest Thursday at 7:00 pm.

That's tonight.

If you haven't RSVP'd yet, make sure you definitelyRSVP if you're planning on coming.

Don't RSVP if you're not going to attend.

That doesn't make sense.

But definitely RSVP.

Because the room is a little bit on the smallerside.

So make sure you go to our website.

Gamecenter.

NYU.

edu.

And sign up for that.

Should be a fantastic talk.

And who knows.

Maybe you'll get a preview of Marie Foulstonlater on in this broadcast.

Who knows? I know.

I know, actually.

Okay.

Other local events.

The Wonderbundle — or Wonderville is a localNYC-area bar in Bushwick.

Or Ridgewood, depending on who you ask.

But anyway, they're running a big event tomorrow.

I believe it starts at 8:00 pm.

They are launching their Wonderbundle, whichis what they did their whole Kickstarter around.

Full disclosure.

I also contributed a game to this bundle.

But if you're 21 or older, feel free to goto this party tomorrow.

It should be a really fun time.

Other events going on at Babycastles, ourfavorite DIY punk video game gallery, over here in New York City, and Babycastles — theyare running a new exhibition starting next Friday, I believe.

Let me double check.

Starting next Friday.

That's the 27th.

It's called the Year of the Pig.

And it is celebrating Chinese — mainlandChinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong game developers.

And they all have games premiering here.

Games and installations.

And it should be really fun.

And the tickets are pretty low cost.

$5 to $15 on a sliding scale, depending onyour ability to pay.

And it should be really fun.

It's right off the Union Square stop, or the6th Ave L stop.

Make sure you go to Babycastles next week.

It should be really fun.

Other announcements.

GDC Summit submissions are actually closingpretty soon.

At the end of this month.

So if you want to get some kind of GDC submissionin, this is kind of your last chance in the next two weeks.

If you're not familiar, the GDC Summits arelike mini-conference tracks.

They're separate from the main tracks.

So there's, like, ones like AI, there's stufffor graphics, or my favorite is level design.

Or there's plenty of different tracks.

There's over 20 different summits.

So if you want to submit something to GDC, make sure you actually start now, too.

Because the form is like super long.

It's like thousands of words.

So if you want to submit to GDC, do it now.

Another call for submissions.

QGCon is a queerness and games conference.

They're about diversity and inclusion in games, and they are running up at Concordia University, Montreal.

Not too far from New York City.

And QGCon is actually looking for submissions.

And I believe the submissions are open untilOctober 15th.

So make sure you take advantage of that.

If you want to submit, whether it's like atalk or a workshop idea, visit QGCon.

com and make your submissions.

Then just some last few student announcementsthat are really important.

Helpdesks, specifically code helpdesks, havebeen expanded every weekday, 1 to 5 pm.

So if you need help with GameMaker stuff orUnity stuff, make sure you go to this helpdesk, so that you can get the help you need.

You don't have to suffer in silence.

Just go to the helpdesk, sit down, and there'llbe a very qualified, excellent person who can be there to help you with your GameMakeror Unity projects.

Some can even help you with your JavaScriptstuff, and some even know some Shader stuff.

So definitely check that out.

Other school stuff going on.

If you haven't heard, the Global Climate Strikeis happening next week.

Or actually, no.

Starting tomorrow.

It's not next week.

I mean, it's going on more next week.

But starting tomorrow, the Global ClimateStrike is starting.

If you're a student and you intend to participatein the strike, make sure you talk to your instructor and make alternate arrangements.

Maybe you can get your absence excused, sothat you can participate in the strike.

As we all know, climate change and the climatecrisis are really important issues of our time.

So it's totally okay if you want to participate, but make sure you communicate with everyone first about it.

I believe it's starting at Foley Square inthe morning in lower Manhattan, and then they're marching up through Manhattan and ending atBryant Park around the early afternoon, where climate activist Greta Thunberg will be givinga speech.

If you like really crowded spaces where you'restuck on the street and can't pee and just have to stand there, it's really, really fun.

Go to a protest march in NYC.

It's super fun.

Other stuff? What is he doing? Other stuff going on is: Anything But Games.

Anything But Games is a proud Game Centertradition going on tomorrow, at, I believe, 5 pm in room 626.

Anything But Games is where different membersof the Game Center community hang out and talk about basically anything other than games.

And if you mention games, it's really fun.

Everyone gets to go.

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Boo! Games! So it's super fun.

Make sure you attend.

And hang out with the rest of your classmatesand teachers and everyone.

Another important announcement for Game Centerstudents.

Elections or — I should say nominations forstudent reps are open.

So please make sure you nominate — whetherit's yourself or a friend you know, who would be super qualified to be a student rep — makesure you nominate them.

Because student reps are an important partof the whole governance system here at NYU Game Center.

The student rep is the main person who voicesstudent concerns or complaints or compliments.

Student compliments are nice too.

To the rest of the department and faculty.

So it's partly how you hold the faculty andthe staff kind of accountable to what the student body wants and needs.

So make sure you take this student rep stuffpretty seriously.

Because it's how you get stuff.

And then lastly, just to end our announcements, make sure you follow us on our website.

On Facebook, on Twitter, we're @NYUGameCenteron Twitter, and on YouTube, we're NYUGameCenter.

Our YouTube is a pretty cool and in my opinionunderutilized resource, where we have over a hundred talks by famous, important, influentialgame industry thinkers and developers.

So make sure you check out our YouTube.

We have a lot of good stuff on there.

Okay.

That's all the announcements.

How long did that take? That took like ten minutes, right? Okay.

Next, let's move on to news.

So joining me for news will be my amazingco-host, Naomi Clark.

>> I'm behind.

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ROBERT: Oh, no.

Let me change this.

That's our Twitch screen.

Let me change that too.

That's weird.

So.

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Something I thought would be fun is if wealso covered, like, typical game industry news or important game industry news goingon.

And then offer our snide, snarky commentary.

To company that news.

So that you know what to think.

Because you should think whatever we tellyou to think.

NAOMI: Yeah, that's what professors are for, right? We just sort of indoctrinate you.

ROBERT: Yes, definitely.

Although usually we keep it on the down low, right? We don't usually say that out loud.

But first off is a very interesting studentopinion section on the New York Times.

And the New York Times is asking: Are videogames bad? What do you think, Naomi? Are video games bad? NAOMI: That's a really complicated subject.

Like anything, there may be bad and good.

I'm interested that the New York Times isstill kind of on this tip.

That if you talk to people who write aboutgames for a living or think about games, of course, they'll say.

.

.

Yeah.

This is a funny question to ask.

Of course, some of them are bad and some ofthem are good.

The New York Times is still stuck in an erawhere they feel like probably most of their readership is thinking.

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Games are awful.

And so it's interesting for them to put upan Op Ed.

And let's be clear.

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So this thing we're showing on the screenis a student curriculum with a set of questions.

Do you think games are bad? About an Op Ed that was published on Sundayby Eve Peyser.

And I guess when reading this, my impressionwas.

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This is like the Op Ed version of that LanaDel Rey song about video games, where video games are sort of a prop in a lifestyle setting.

Right? It's like.

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Oh my boyfriend plays so many video games.

Maybe I could play them with him! What would happen if I did that? Right? And so it's a story about a couple that decidesto play video games.

And they're playing like Earth Defense Forceand GTA.

Oh, they're so violent and gory! Kind of missing from this picture is the ideathat there are any other types of video games that maybe both people would want to playequally and maybe women would want to play video games and they're playing differentgames from their partners, but how do you find a game you want to play with your partner? It is a challenge that game designers haveas well.

But this particular Op Ed is all about.

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Well, there's one non-gamer, and obviouslyit's the woman, in the heterosexual relationship.

It's like a straights problem, kind of thing.

How do you find games you want to play withyour partner? ROBERT: I'm just so glad I have a husbandso I can play video games.

If you don't have a boyfriend, you can't playvideo games.

NAOMI: Both of you like every game, becauseyou're both guys.

In my relationship, we don't play any gamesat all, because we're both women and we both hate games.

ROBERT: Of course.

It's really great that the New York Timescould help us clear all this up.

It really makes me feel good about the future.

NAOMI: But there's a happy ending.

Eve Peyser, the writer, discovers.

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Oh, actually, it's really fun to shoot giantbugs in Earth Defense Force or play an amoral version of herself in GTA.

So I guess the lesson is everyone can likeamoral video games.

ROBERT: Even me! Even you! NAOMI: What?! Let's go to the next news article.

Oh, Indiecade.

So Indiecade has announced its nominees.

We're really excited here at NYU, becausethere's a bunch of games that were worked on at NYU that are in the mix.

A couple from MFA students who just graduated, including a game called Hell Couch, where you summon a demon with your butt, by sittingon an actual couch.

So it's got to be somewhere in there, right? There's also another game from.

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Some of the same designers, called Chroma, an abstract board game.

And a puzzle game called Montcage, which isabout perspective and seeing things from a different point of view.

And has.

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Yeah, some really tricky puzzle elements thatare all about lining the camera up correctly.

ROBERT: I can't find them.

NAOMI: They might not all be on the page we'relooking at, but I promise you, these are all nominated.

There's Montcage.

A thesis game from a couple years ago, ora collection of games about intimacy.

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That are roleplaying games for two to fourpeople.

Some of them are live action.

That intimacy collection is also gonna befeatured in Indiecade.

That's by MFA graduate Allison Kyran Cole.

Go on to the next one? Ooh, Apple Arcade.

Yes, that is launching.

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Is it launching today? Is it the 19th? Yes, today is Apple Arcade launch day.

So you would think this would be some sortof enormous event in the game industry, but I'm honestly not sure it is.

What's your take on Apple Arcade? ROBERT: I have a lot of friends and I knowpeople launching a whole bunch of games.

But yeah.

I don't know what the actual word on the streetis.

Right? We might have to add a segment to this programwhere we go out on the street somehow.

And just ask random New Yorkers.

NAOMI: We just ask them.

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So have you signed up for Apple Arcade? ROBERT: No.

NAOMI: They don't know what Apple Arcade is.

So we can sort of just simulate that.

That's kind of the question on everyone'smind.

Who is actually gonna sign up for Apple Arcade? No one seems to know.

Game industry pundits aren't sure.

We actually have some colleagues here at theGame Center — they have a game called Dear Reader.

It's launching today.

If you pay the subscription price.

And there's a bunch of other pretty big names.

The creators of Monument Valley, the studioby a former Final Fantasy Square Enix creative head.

Mistwalker Studio.

Sayonara Wild Hearts, that's from Simogo, the creators of Device 6.

This is Mini Motorways from the creators ofMini Metro.

So Apple is trying to get recognizable gamesand faces, both to people who play JRPGs, as well as mobile game hits.

But who are they trying to target? It's not quite certain who is gonna pay $5a month for this.

Do you have subscriptions to game serviceslike this? ROBERT: We got Apple Arcade, but mostly justbecause we were making games for Apple Arcade.

That's why.

We got an Apple TV so we could make gamesfor the Apple TV.

NAOMI: How about for platforms you don't developfor? ROBERT: For platforms I don't develop for? I guess we got the PS4 subscription.

NAOMI: Do you have Nintendo Switch Online? There are a couple of categories.

The console online subscriptions — I'm gonnasay people mostly have them so they can play multiplayer online games.

And then you get some games as an extra bonus.

Do you ever play any of the games that areavailable temporarily for free from the Playstation Online Service? ROBERT: It's permanent, I think.

NAOMI: You just get them? ROBERT: Yeah.

Please sponsor us, Sony! You get one or two games for free.

But they're usually old games that are wayin their long tail and Sony signs a deal with them to pay them pennies per copy.

NAOMI: I have this service.

I didn't know you could get them permanently, or I would have been downloading them.

So we know people subscribe to that.

So they can play with other people online.

There are other services that are not doingso well.

Twitch just canceled theirs, I think.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Not Twitch.

It's Discord.

That's the one that just shut down.

They had a subscribe and get games kind ofservice.

But it's not clear that these things are gonnawork.

There's this fantasy that some people havethat.

.

.

What if I could have a Netflix for games? Where I don't have to decide what to buy.

I just sign on and there are just all thesegames there for free.

What do you think? Is that ever gonna work? ROBERT: No.

I don't think I like the idea of Google Stadiaand stuff like that.

I don't know if it's gonna work.

NAOMI: Do we even know how Google Stadia isworking? Is it a subscription service? ROBERT: I think no.

NAOMI: It's coming in November, a month anda half away, but we still don't know how that is gonna work, and Apple has tried to getout in the gate in front of them.

People are talking about this stuff all overthe industry, but so far the conventional wisdom is.

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This really benefits people who are gettingin on the ground floor.

We're really happy and excite for all thedevelopers in Apple Arcade, because all those die hard Apple fans who jump on everythingthat Apple ever does, they're all gonna be like.

.

.

I'm paying $5! And they're gonna play those games and it'sgonna be exciting.

Plus here's some inside scoop.

I'm probably violating some kind of NDA herebut I didn't sign anything, so I don't care.

All of the developers in this initial poolof 50 — there's a pot of money that Apple has already set aside for them.

And depending on how.

.

.

I think it's depending on how many peopleplay their game, they are gonna get just a chunk of that pot.

So how much their game is played does matter.

But it's not actually coming from the $5 subscriptionrevenue.

Apple has already set it aside.

So the lesson for this, students and everyoneelse, and who knows — I might actually have that wrong.

So just come at me, Apple lawyers.

It's fine.

I'm a professor.

We're here to do this kind of thing.

The lesson is: Get in as one of the launchtitles.

You'll make money.

Everyone after you? Out of luck.

Okay.

ROBERT: Let's move on.

I can intro this one.

Okay, so some other news.

This is a piece over at the Verge, about howtwo big streamers, Ninja and Tfue, have gone off Twitch for whatever reason.

Ninja just got off Twitch.

Tfue needed a break for some reason.

But when you have a cult of personality aroundthese games, it affects the bottom line around Twitch rankings and Twitch trackers and whatpeople are playing.

So it's just interesting to me about how thesepeople gravitate around these figures, and follow them, in a way.

Or how these games are tied to people andpeople are tied to games as well.

NAOMI: Does this mean Fortnite is making lessmoney, because Ninja and Tfue aren't streaming it? ROBERT: Maybe.

NAOMI: That would be huge.

The conventional wisdom around online gamesis that they're sticky.

People get sucked into them.

But if it's really much more driven from momentto moment, day to day, by streamers, that would be a massive change.

ROBERT: Definitely.

We have to move on with the news stuff.

Because our next guest is getting antsy.

So other stuff going on.

This is from RPS.

Rock Paper Shotgun.

And this is an article about how Rockstaris launching their own launcher.

And to launch their own launcher, they'regiving you one of the older Grand Theft Autos, San Andreas, for free.

That's probably one of the better ones, actually.

So they're launching their thing, and therumor on the street is that this is to set up their own Steam alternative for when theylaunch their cowboy game sequel.

NAOMI: Red Dead Redemption online? ROBERT: They haven't launched it for PC, Ibelieve.

NAOMI: This is a PC game launcher.

This is another salvo in the ongoing war againstSteam.

Everybody is cropping up.

Google is soon gonna be joining the fray withStadia.

So everyone is chipping away at the almost-monopolythat Steam has.

Have you seen people furious about anotherlauncher popping up? Or is it too soon? ROBERT: It might be too soon to tell yet.

Partly because they give you a free game, I guess.

But word on the street for this launcher isthat it does actually offer features on the Epic Game Store.

It has cloud saving and stuff like that.

So it does maybe improve your gaming experience.

NAOMI: Because that's what people really wantin their game experience.

Good launcher features.

Around here, I think our opinion of theselaunchers is driven by.

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Is it good for developers, especially smalldevelopers, or not? If I had to bet, probably having more launchersout there in an environment where they're competing against each other is slightly betterfor developers than an environment that is totally dominated by Steam.

I've been noticing with fascination how manyplayers are mad about this.

Bennett was a little bit mad, even.

He's really attached to his Steam collection.

I'm one of these people.

.

.

I do not get it.

I don't carry what launcher I'm launchingmy game from.

But some people are really attached to it.

This is why I think a Netflix of games won'twork.

Can you imagine subscribing to a launcher, and then you can only play the games that are in that launcher? The people who are mad about having to downloada store to buy a game.

.

.

How much more mad will they be if they'relike.

.

.

Oh, can I get the latest such and such game? And it's not in their subscription service? They have to subscribe to a different one? That's what you have to do with TV shows.

Those people's brains would melt if they hadto do that with games.

ROBERT: One other hot take on this.

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As a solo indie developer, it's annoying tonegotiate all these contracts and deals with all of these things.

So if we see a wider range of stores, it'sgood for competition, but it will also mean in the indie sector you're gonna see a lotmore people group up into mini-studios or get more publishers, just because the overheadof getting your game any distribution will require you to talk to ten different platformsin the future maybe.

Right? NAOMI: Yeah.

That's a huge pain in the neck.

Including with Apple and mobile platformstoo.

Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

The looming question behind all of this is:Who has the bargaining power in this situation? Should we wrap up news? What do you think? ROBERT: We had a bunch of news items.

I think we should just cut those short.

Maybe bring in our guest.

NAOMI: All right.

This is me signing off.

Naomi Clark.

Maybe I'll return for news in the future.

ROBERT: Yes, please.

Thanks, Naomi! Bye! Okay.

And now we have a new guest coming in.

So every week, in our broadcast, we also wantto make sure that we, like, highlight our local Game Center community.

So every week, we want to do some kind ofstudent profile, ideally.

So our first student profile is here! >> Hello! Hi, Robert! ROBERT: Hey! >> Thank you for having me! ROBERT: No problem! Do you want to introduce yourself and talkabout yourself a little? EMILY: Sure! I'm Emily Koontz, I'm a senior in game design.

This is my last semester, because I'm graduatingearly.

I've been in this program since I was a freshmanand I've primarily focused on studying the type of play and games that are like folkgames and what circumstances and conditions are conducive to making house rules and alot of community play.

But I've also made a lot of digital games.

All over the place.

Trying everything this program has to offerout.

So it's been fun.

So yeah, I'm excited to be here.

ROBERT: Cool.

Do you have any favorite classes that youlike? Or any favorite assignments or projects? Just to give the viewers at home a littletaste of what it would be like to be a student here at Game Center? EMILY: Well, I think the most useful classI've taken was definitely tackling representation in games with Mattie Bryce, which is excellent.

It's essentially how to design ethically.

Because it's like.

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How does what you're representing in yourgames and your systems — how does it reflect the world? What effect does it have on people and culture? So that was definitely the most formativeof my practice.

Because I had never thought about those thingsbefore.

I came in to this program being like.

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Oh, I just want to make something fun! And then I learned that it was much deeperthan that.

ROBERT: That's good too! EMILY: It is good too.

And you can do both at the same time, whichis something I've learned, and I hope that I continue to get better at, because I definitelyhave, since I started coming here.

My favorite project or my favorite moment.

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I was in narrative design with Clara.

And we did an assignment in class where wemade a LARP, and it took us like 20 minutes.

And our class decided that everyone was goingto be a different bird.

And the LARP was that you had to find yourbird soul mate.

So we ran around the Game Center and everyonehad a different bird and bird call.

And you had to flap your wings and do yourbird call and find your other bird soul mate.

And we got in a lot of trouble from the floormanager.

We interrupted a lot of classes.

But it was really fun.

And it was a pretty fun LARP! I want to go play it at a park.

It's wild on this floor.

It's a good time.

ROBERT: Yeah.

I mean.

.

.

It's always good to be a bird.

Bring out your inner bird.

And you know.

.

.

Well, it's not that okay to get the departmentin trouble with the floor.

But you know what? It's okay.

You're a student.

Students can try new things.

EMILY: We're pushing boundaries.

Innovation.

Innovation.

ROBERT: Innovation.

That's the I word we're gonna be using here.

Okay.

So up on the screen here, or up on this screenhere, I have one of your games.

Do you want to intro it? While I play a little bit? EMILY: Sure.

So this game was made for a class we havecalled Pixel Prototype, which is currently taught by Bennett Foddy, and we use PICO-8to make games.

So this week, the theme was Crowds.

So this is Keg Beg.

And it's essentially about being at a fratparty and trying to get everyone's.

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.

Oh, no! It ran away.

So basically the idea behind this prototypewas I wanted to explore.

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Because I like attention.

A lot of people like attention, and I wantedto see the mechanics of being in a group of people and trying to get everyone to listento you tell a story or talk, and how when you lose your social graces, in this game, which is representative of stuttering by running into one of the various Ums or Ers, then everyoneruns away from you, and you lose all that attention.

It's pretty hard to keep everyone's attention, it turns out! So I wanted to see what the mechanics areof losing your social graces.

And trying to maintain this unsustainableresource of other people's undivided time and attention.

And so this game is about running around andtrying to do just that.

ROBERT: Do you want to show me how it's done? What high score have you gotten on this game? EMILY: Not very high.

Since they're going back and forth on thisscreen, you kind of want to acquire people to your right and left, rather than up anddown.

And then you'll have a better chance of notrunning into anything.

But it's pretty hard.

Because once you've gotten enough attention, you just keep getting more.

ROBERT: This is just like real life.

This is extremely realistic.

EMILY: This is my experience with every keggerI've been to at a frat party, which.

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NYU.

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.

ROBERT: Yeah, how many keggers.

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Does NYU.

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EMILY: NYU has frats.

I went to one frat party.

They're like clubs.

And they're all way too crowded.

But you go out to the.

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.

I'm from the Midwest.

So the frat parties in the Midwest are a littledifferent than the frat parties at NYU.

ROBERT: Yeah.

More of like a campus feeling, right? More of a Greek Row.

Wait.

The party is over.

Only 0 people can stand you.

Uh-oh.

We didn't do too hot, did we? You know, it's hard to get the boys.

Right? EMILY: Yeah, it is hard to get the boys.

Especially at the NYU frat parties.

ROBERT: We love you, NYU frats.

Let's try some more of your games.

How about that? EMILY: All right.

I've got one in mind for you to play, Robert.

ROBERT: I'm just gonna go to your Itch page.

EMILY: Sounds good.

Go to Pivot.

Yes.

I've been working on this, and I posted iton Itch so you can play it.

Make it full screen.

There.

So the orientation is because I want thisto eventually be a mobile game.

This is something I've started working on, on my own, outside of a class.

ROBERT: Oh my God.

EMILY: Yeah, so once you get the hang of it.

.

.

It's just right and left.

So this is the first game I ever.

.

.

You can just press and continue.

The first game I ever made outside of a class– digital game I ever made outside of a class — just for fun.

And it turns out a lot of people.

.

.

There's a lot of reactions to this game.

You're doing pretty well.

ROBERT: Talk me through the reactions.

Oh my God! EMILY: So some people.

.

.

It's really hard for them to get.

.

.

Because you're rotating.

You press right and left and you rotate whateverdirection you press.

So that's a really hard thing for some peopleto get the feeling of.

For whatever reason.

Some people have told me it's like ridinga bicycle, the more they do it.

But a lot of people who play this game willget really determined to beat it and will just start memorizing exactly what to press.

ROBERT: I'll try one more time.

EMILY: You can try as much as you want.

ROBERT: Argh! Can you show me how it's done? Can the master teach the pupil? Okay.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Sorry it's in the way.

EMILY: There's a pole in the way.

I'm really good at this game, I swear.

ROBERT: Yeah, Emily is really good at herown game.

It's because I have all this lighting equipmentin front of the screen.

Oh my God.

You're so good.

Okay.

EMILY: So good.

Keep going? ROBERT: Yes, please.

EMILY: I can definitely get past this level.

The next level, I've only beaten once.

ROBERT: Oh my God! EMILY: When I develop the levels, I obviouslybeat them once to make sure they're beautiful.

The people who are really good at this likethe hard levels, and people who don't pick it up right away really think I should stopafter the first three.

But it's just.

.

.

ROBERT: I love the arcade feel of this.

This could totally work on a phone.

Right? EMILY: That's why it's in this orientation.

I want it to be a mobile game.

Because it's one that you want to keep playingand keep going until you perfect it.

ROBERT: It's all about the portrait orientation, right? EMILY: The portrait orientation.

ROBERT: No landscape.

Boo, landscape.

EMILY: I hate landscape.

ROBERT: It's all about portrait.

EMILY: On the subway, portrait is preferable.

I really have to say.

ROBERT: Oh, you can go the other way.

EMILY: You can go different ways.

I've been debating about if I want to keepit.

.

.

So you can diverge like this.

But I think it helps you from getting burnedout.

Both ways are pretty equal in difficulty, in my opinion.

Some people think that one would be more thanthe other.

Should we play one more? ROBERT: Do you have more games? EMILY: I have one more that I'm ready foryou to play.

ROBERT: We did get pretty far, though.

EMILY: We did get pretty far.

There's one more level, if anyone wants totry it at any point.

ROBERT: That's called Pivot, right? EMILY: Pivot.

Now go to The Child.

So this game was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Which I know you have a lot of experience.

.

.

You've lectured on Nietzsche.

You've read a lot of Nietzsche.

So.

.

.

Yes.

I guess.

So you can go ahead.

ROBERT: So walk us through this, while I play.

EMILY: So this was inspired by Nietzsche'sUbermensch.

Oh, you're pretty good at it.

So in the Ubermensch, or the Overman, in Englishtranslation, Nietzsche talks about the three stages of being people can accomplish.

The first is the camel.

Which was the previous stage, which Robertbeat pretty quickly.

This is the stage of the lion.

And once you beat the lion, there's a finalstage.

ROBERT: How do I beat the lion? EMILY: That's the question.

ROBERT: So walk me through.

.

.

What does the lion mean? EMILY: In this passage, the way I interpretit, at least, the camel is what is.

.

.

Is the stage of life that we all are borninto, and we grow up and we're told all these things we have to do.

We're told the way we should see the world.

We're told what success means.

How we should be living.

And most people.

.

.

To Nietzsche, 99% of people remain in thecamel phase their whole life.

They do things for the sake of what societytells them and not for the sake of themselves.

So eventually, if you start critiquing theseforces that are telling you what to do.

.

.

ROBERT: How do I stop climbing? EMILY: Oh, you're still climbing.

You're still climbing.

Oh! ROBERT: So I escaped the lion.

And now what's this stage? EMILY: Now you are the child.

The last stage.

So yeah, essentially.

.

.

We're camels, and then eventually we realizeall these forces upon us.

And when we realize them, we start sayingno to them.

So we turn into the lion and we say no toeverything we're supposed to do, and doing things for the sake of what people tell usto do.

And we stop doing everything that societytells us we must.

But then eventually, because after sayingno to all these things, you have to start to say yes to something.

So once you start doing that, and you startdoing things for the sake of yourself, you turn into the child.

ROBERT: And the child just does things thatthey.

.

.

I'm trying to learn Nietzsche strained throughthis game, strained through you, repeating it.

.

.

So.

.

.

The child does what they want? Is that it? EMILY: Yeah.

The child.

.

.

Has this wonder about them, where they'reinterested and curious in all these things for the sake of themselves.

So the child does do what they want.

So essentially this game is about not followingthe directions I give you, and the visual symbols I'm trying to make you.

.

.

Manipulate you by doing.

So the first stage, if you want to play itagain.

.

.

ROBERT: I didn't know I was speeding throughit.

EMILY: You did it really fast.

Some people do.

Some people don't.

So you see the instructions? If you follow the instructions.

.

.

Try.

You have to stay on the ladder.

You slowly inch your way up the ladder.

ROBERT: That's hard.

EMILY: Yeah, it's really hard.

ROBERT: Wait, how did I beat it? EMILY: Do you remember how you beat it? See if you can beat it again.

ROBERT: Oh, wait, didn't I just press up? EMILY: Yes! So the first stage is about saying no to whateveryone tells you to do.

Saying no to this mechanic of climbing andclimbing to the moon in this case.

And we've got our little camel in the cornerto remind you of that.

And then you're the lion.

So you said no to this.

And it says stop climbing, but you keep climbingno matter what you do.

So you'll climb and climb, until you'll eventuallydecide to go a different direction, where you become the child.

ROBERT: I think we're making Nietzsche proud.

EMILY: Yeah.

We're making games.

ROBERT: We're also making Charles Pratt proudby invoking Nietzsche's name, I think.

EMILY: Good.

I'm glad.

I am minoring in philosophy, so I had to throwa little philosophy into some of my games.

ROBERT: Great! Do you have more games to show, or do youthink we're good? EMILY: I think we're pretty good.

ROBERT: Okay.

Well, I don't see our special guest yet.

So do you want to hang out a little bit longer? EMILY: Yeah, sure.

ROBERT: So I think what we'll do now is we'regonna back to some of the news items that we didn't catch before, and you can offersome of your commentary, maybe.

EMILY: Exciting! ROBERT: Okay.

Let me see.

What's this one? What's this one? Oh, okay.

So.

.

.

This is a story in Kotaku, where apparentlyall across the internet, Nintendo made a new cartoon bird and everyone was looking at thiscartoon bird and just collectively lost their shit about this cartoon bird.

EMILY: Birds are important.

We've already established that.

Birds are.

.

.

You've got to be a bird sometimes.

ROBERT: But, like, are we really a bird? When we're the Pokemon trainer, we're notthe bird.

We're, like, trapping this bird inside thisball.

EMILY: Mystery Dungeon.

Then we could be the bird.

ROBERT: True enough.

Yeah.

I mean, Mystery Dungeon is good.

But if we scroll down, you can see that peopleare trying to meme about this bird a lot.

People are really thirsty for this bird too, it also seems.

EMILY: Wow.

ROBERT: Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe some of this isn't appropriate for Twitch.

We might get banned for some of these images.

Not even wearing clothes.

Right? It's a naked bird.

Oof.

EMILY: A leaf shield.

ROBERT: Do you play a lot of Pokemon? EMILY: Yeah, Farfetch'd, I played a lot whenI was younger.

So I'm way more familiar with the earliergenerations.

The first and second generation, actually, my brother has a ton of Pokemon figures, so me and my cousins used to play with the figuresa ton, almost more than the actual games.

And Farfetch'd was one of the figures I insistedon having every time.

So seeing this little Farfetch'd baby, Sirfetch'd.

.

.

ROBERT: It's bringing you back.

EMILY: It's bringing me back.

Farfetch'd was so dear to me.

But Sirfetch'd seems so big! Looking at those pictures.

So Farfetch'd might lose his crown.

I can sympathize with the internet right now.

ROBERT: I'm sure your brother will recover.

Okay.

Good.

Let's cover some other news articles I wasseeing around.

So.

.

.

Let's see.

This one.

This is a new report from GameDaily.

biz, whichI've actually never heard of.

But this was the source I found.

They have an exclusive source that E3 2020– if you're not familiar, E3 is a big video game industry media event that happens inLA over the summer.

E3 2020 is proposing an overhaul of how they'redoing things, where instead of doing stuff about, like, catering more to developers andstuff, they're gonna also rebrand as specifically an influencer festival.

EMILY: Whoa.

ROBERT: So they're gonna be bringing out.

.

.

EMILY: Fyre Fest! Fyre Fest! ROBERT: They're gonna bring.

.

.

EMILY: Fyre Fest 2, E3.

Let's all go to an island.

ROBERT: And what did they do? They ate, like, bread.

EMILY: They didn't have any water or food.

There was a picture of the worst sandwichin the world and that's all they had for two days.

They kept giving them free drinks, though.

That was the one thing they did have, wasalcohol.

ROBERT: So we can all just go to E3 and notdrink water.

EMILY: Just get drunk and talk about Sirfetch'd.

That's the dream, right? ROBERT: You know, I think that actually isthe plan.

And look at all these inclusive secret blueprintsor whatever that we're not supposed to see.

Oh my God.

Look at this leak.

And here's someone offering a hot take onTwitter that Gamescom, the biggest kind of PR games event over in Germany.

.

.

That's one of the biggest ones in the world, and that has, like, more than 370, 000 viewers, that says.

Or attendees.

But E3 only has like 66, 000 attendees now.

So what do you think? Are you gonna go to E3? EMILY: If it's anything like Fyre Fest, I'llbe there.

I'll be ready.

ROBERT: Fyre Fest was also really expensive, right? EMILY: I think that was the whole thing, wasthat these people paid so much money to go on this beautiful vacation, and then it turnedout to be like.

.

.

People were dehydrated and fighting for foodand beds.

ROBERT: It's hilarious.

But I mean.

.

.

Yeah.

I'm all for watching YouTubers suffer on camera.

That would be.

.

.

EMILY: At E3.

.

.

Suffering at E3 is a whole different typeof suffering than at Fyre Fest.

It could be a game changer.

ROBERT: I think Nietzsche would have a lotto say about E3, right? EMILY: I think he would.

ROBERT: Let's move on to some more news items.

Is our guest out there? No.

Let's move on to some more news items.

Let's see.

Oh.

So this is a news item that I picked out.

It's kind of going around European indie Twitterright now.

This is from Games Wirtschaft.

And it says A MAZE Festival 2020.

If you're not familiar, it's one of the bestgames festivals around.

Are you familiar with it? EMILY: No, but my roommate went to it lastyear and he loved it.

ROBERT: What was so cool about it? EMILY: It was a lot chiller.

It wasn't as networky as some other festivalshe's been to.

So he really enjoyed it.

ROBERT: Right.

A MAZE is like the opposite of E3, kind of.

It happens in Berlin.

Berlin is super cool.

It's like the new New York.

New York sucks, you know.

It's all about Berlin now.

Although I hear Berlin is over too.

But some really serious news happening isthat.

.

.

According to Games Wirtschaft.

.

.

Let's see if my German is okay.

The Berlin cultural counsel or congress orsenate or whatever.

.

.

Has denied additional funding to A MAZE 2020, which means it might not happen anymore.

EMILY: That's pretty disappointing! I wanted to go at one point.

That's such a shame, though.

It seems like everyone who goes really lovesit.

Marie, who is here with us, went to A MAZEwhen she went to Berlin and was saying how amazing it was, and how it was one of thehighlights of her time in Berlin.

It seems like the community there really lovesit and depends on it.

It's really bad news.

ROBERT: It's kind of messed up, too.

What was the Berlin cultural senate.

.

.

Senatsverwaltung.

.

.

What were they thinking, right? EMILY: People just don't value games the waythey used to, I guess.

ROBERT: Whippersnapper.

EMILY: Back in the day, when I was young.

ROBERT: Although it is an interesting contrastto the US landscape, where the prospect of the city funding games is actually very rare.

At least they could apply for money.

Here in the US, it's actually really hardto apply for money from, like, any kind of city or municipal thing.

Because they'll be like.

.

.

Video games? Why do you need money for that? EMILY: Yeah.

I've never tried to apply to my city for moneyfor a game.

Because I didn't even know that was somethingthat can happen.

That's a cool resource that I wish was morewidespread, because you would probably get cooler games, because my whole big thing iscommunity involvement.

Communities of people could engage with theirfriends and their family in a public space, which would be super cool.

But.

.

.

ROBERT: Yeah.

It's a huge shame.

I wish I knew a very fitting German expressionto express anguish and shame.

But I don't.

If you have any, just suggest some in thechat and I'll gladly try to pronounce it.

Some more news items.

.

.

Is Marie out there? So.

.

.

Oh, this is kind of interesting.

So this is a report from Rock Paper Shotgun.

It's talking about how in the UK parliament, they have made a suggestion to the game industry that the game industry needs to start takingproblem gaming more seriously.

And problem gaming.

.

.

I guess they define as kind of all the lootbox stuff going on, all the slot machine stuff going on.

Where a lot of game mechanics and monetizationstuff looks kind of similar to, like, gambling.

And then we're marketing these games towardschildren, and also these children watch their favorite YouTube personalities or favoriteTwitch personalities.

.

.

You know.

.

Gamble and have so much fun with loot boxes, and it makes children want to play with loot boxes too.

So this is trying to unpack loot box legislation or how do we legalize or think about this stuff.

What are your thoughts about loot boxes orgambling or money in games? EMILY: Well, ideally, we would have designerswho understand how these systems affect the people who are engaging with them.

And would design with that in mind.

Which is not to perpetuate problematic thingslike.

.

.

Gambling addiction or intrigue.

Gambling intrigue, as we all.

.

.

Because our next segment, Robert and I aregonna play some poker! ROBERT: I mean, why not? EMILY: But that would be the ideal situation.

That we're all as designers educated to howthese things affect people.

Because the people creating these things iswhat it comes down to.

But since games are an economy, out of thein-game economy, and in the real-world economy, I think there's a lot of other intentionsof designers, when designing these things, trying to get money out of vulnerable people, and so I always hesitate to promote regulation of any kind, because it can be limiting, andsometimes I think it can have adverse effects.

But that's the capitalist systems that aremaking these games.

Maybe.

.

.

I'm not sure.

How do you feel? ROBERT: I think that's totally right.

I think it's really important that we studythese things.

And take them seriously.

Because games do, like, affect us.

Right? That's one central premise behind making awhole game design department.

Right? That games are important to culture and media, and they're worth funding, they're worth supporting.

So we shouldn't just say games don't affectpeople this other way.

Games never do anything bad.

Right? That's kind of naive and silly.

If we say games do so much good in the worldand games are so important to us, and we can play games with our boyfriends and stuff, right? We should also say.

.

.

No, games can also corrupt our boyfriendstoo.

And stuff like that.

EMILY: Media Studies 101 with Robert Yang.

ROBERT: So our special guest is here, so I'mgonna boot you out, unfortunately.

EMILY: Hi! Thanks for having me, again! ROBERT: Thanks for coming, Emily! Okay.

Our next guest is someone who you'll be seeingshortly at our lecture series.

And someone who I hinted might appear duringour announcements.

And that is Marie Foulston.

Hello! How are you? MARIE: I'm good.

I feel like I'm a bit in at the deep end.

ROBERT: What do you mean, deep end? MARIE: Straight in to camera.

ROBERT: That's how we do it.

We're all New York.

We're in your face.

We're also low budget.

We're kind of flying on this broadcast bythe seat of our pants, trying to put things together.

So thanks a lot for humoring me and comingalong.

MARIE: Thanks for having me.

I was slightly upset — I saw you put thisgreen screen up in your office and I expected to be up there, because I had never done greenscreen before, but instead I like this BBC News Setup where we can see students in thebackground.

ROBERT: Yeah.

I like this setup.

Look at all the scholarship and hard workgoing on back there.

Gosh, they're just so smart and talented.

Wait.

Why are they all.

.

.

A bunch of them are seated away outside thecamera view.

I guess they don't want to be on camera.

Which is fine.

It's understandable.

It's okay.

But anyway.

.

.

Now they're looking at me, because they'rewatching the stream as I point at them.

Anyway.

.

.

Okay.

So, Marie, you're giving us a lovely lectureseries talk tonight about all your work, all the important stuff you do.

So.

.

.

Tell us first I guess a little bit about gamecuration.

What does game curation mean to you? MARIE: What does it mean to me? Oh, I can hold the mic.

So I work as a play curator, and predominantlywhat that means for me is being someone who thinks about what it means to put video gamesand game design into a public context.

I think curation can have a whole host ofdifferent meanings.

We can think in terms of collections curators, archivists, historians, but this aspect I focus on is exhibition and display and interpretation.

Yeah.

ROBERT: You can interview me now.

Define interpretation.

What do you mean by interpretation here? Is that big? Is that a big thing? MARIE: No, that's not a big thing.

All of this is a big question.

What does curation mean to me? I'm somebody who at the moment is in the middleof a research fellowship and trying to really.

.

.

As someone who doesn't come from a formalbackground of curation, that I've gone through.

.

.

I guess I don't consider myself having comefrom a formal background.

I feel like I've always gone in at the deepend, sort of gone in to things back to front, where now is a period of time where afterworking on a V and A exhibition and working as part of Old Rumpus, I'm working on an exhibitionthat is trying to embed my understanding of games theory into practice and finding outhow other people approach it.

My brain has exploded a bit and I'm tryingto pull the pieces back together.

But in terms of what game interpretation means.

.

.

Thinking about the way you communicate orwhat narrative or story you're presenting about a specific object or work within a publicspace.

When you're bringing a game in, it's thinking.

.

.

Normally we think of interpretation as beingsort of quite reduced down to the text that you you might have alongside an object.

The reason I've got Robert Yang on displayis all encapsulated in this little interpretation label that's gonna sort of explain it.

Whereas interpretation can be much broaderthan that.

It can be the way an object is displayed, the way an object manifests in a space.

So yeah, interpretation is sort of how you'recommunicating why you're exhibiting or what it is that you're looking to present abouta work.

Put some background or context to it.

ROBERT: You mentioned stuff with Wild Rumpusand stuff.

We actually have this stuff on screen a littlebit.

MARIE: There's a photograph.

ROBERT: Tell us about that photograph.

What are people seeing? Big Leaf? MARIE: So this is a photograph of.

.

.

Is this the photo that's up at the moment? Or is it that one? There we go.

So yeah, the practice or the space or thecuration work I was doing during my time at the V and A was when I was part of an LA collectivecalled Wild Rumpus, which was six people.

It was born out of a desire to create differentplayful spaces to exhibit alternative video game design.

This particular picture is of an event thatwe do at GDC, which is called Mild Rumpus.

ROBERT: Mild Rumpus.

MARIE: Mild can be nice and sort of relaxing.

Not depressing.

ROBERT: Wild? MARIE: Mild.

Yeah, anyway, we're very smart in that werealized if we turned the W upside down, it made another word.

We talked about Child Rumpus, primarily forchildren, Tiled Rumpus, which would wipe clean very easily.

.

.

But anyway, the picture we're looking at isWild Rumpus.

This is a space where we showcase alternative.

.

.

And independent works at GDC each year, andit's supposed to be sort of a contrast to the sort of mood or tone of the convention, and just.

.

.

As we term it sometimes.

.

.

Being the acceptable place to nap at GDC.

But this particular picture as well has apicture of.

.

.

You could see a group of developers sat ina giant heart-shaped metal leaf in the middle.

Which was a story in itself of.

.

.

Oh, God.

And the way they designed it.

I don't know if we have time to talk abouthow hard it was to get that leaf on the floor, because there were no doors going from theloading bay to the front of the Moscone, to fit the leaf through, so it had to come downthis giant escalator with 30 staff marching it down, and we're all observing it, prayingthat they didn't drop it and kill a load of people.

But they didn't.

And it survived.

Yeah.

So that's that picture.

ROBERT: Okay.

And.

.

.

Enough about the leaf.

Let's move on.

MARIE: That's a book.

ROBERT: Tell us about what we're seeing.

What is this lovely amazing book we're lookingat? MARIE: So this publication is.

.

.

The exhibition catalog for the exhibitionthat I curated at the V and A last year.

A lovely exhibition catalog.

It has a variety of essays by authors andgame designers.

Yours truly included.

So it's a publication that — we're bringingtogether a series of articles and writings from different authors, focusing on gamesthat were in the exhibition and people sort of talking about them and presenting them, from the perspective of how we viewed them within the exhibition.

The publication design was art directed bythe wonderful Darren Wall and designed by the wonderful Rachel Dalton.

Darren Wall does Read Only Memory, some wonderfulvideo game publications.

So if you're interested in video game publicationsthat are beautifully designed, you should definitely look at Read Only Memory and theirwork.

I know.

Robert asked me to send a series of images, so I bundled them together.

There's a whole range of images that are gonnacome up in a random order.

This is gonna be like a pot luck.

ROBERT: Yeah, it's like a fun game.

MARIE: Oh, it's an exhibition but it's fromhalfway through the exhibition.

ROBERT: Do you want me to scroll through? MARIE: Yeah, this is a photograph of the exhibition.

That's something that was not at the exhibition.

It's an inspiration for the exhibition.

ROBERT: Do you want me to try to find it? So that the exhibition mode is in order? MARIE: We can just skip ahead a few.

Da-da-da.

That's a good picture of the exhibition.

Look.

It's some people installing the exhibitionat V and A.

I took this photograph and I was really pleased with the lighting in this photograph.

ROBERT: I can talk a little bit so you canhave some time to relax.

Yeah, so.

.

.

If you didn't catch from all this conversation, Marie was lead curator at Victoria and Albert Video Games Exhibition.

Did I say that right? And as lead curator, Marie put together alot of this.

.

.

All these amazing materials.

Unfortunately, the exhibition is, like, closed.

And gone right now.

Right? MARIE: Temporarily.

So it ran at the Victoria and Albert Museumfrom February 2018 to 2019.

And then a week or so ago, it was at V andA Dundee.

Now it's closed and traveling to somewhereelse in the world which will be revealed within time.

It's not dead and buried.

It's just in transit.

ROBERT: Oh, so it's a surprise announcement.

We'll find out soon.

Oh my God.

So.

.

.

One thing that I was really struck by, whenI visited the exhibition, was just.

.

.

Yeah.

The whole exhibition design here was justso, like, masterfully done.

Can you talk a little bit about how you approacheddesigning the kiosks and the walls and stuff? MARIE: Ooh, yeah.

So the exhibition design was.

.

.

We worked with a host of different designersfor the exhibition.

So sometimes you would work with a 3D designeror an architect, and it's their responsibility to really think about the architecture orthe sort of.

.

.

The physical makeup of the space.

We also worked with a company called SquintOpera, who focus on audio-visual design, but also interactive design.

Those were the digital components of the exhibition.

We had Julia, who focused on graphics, two-dimensionaldesign, and Coda to Coda, who were sound designers.

So it's really a collaborative sort of teamthat you have to have.

So many different sort of disciplines cominginto exhibitions.

But it's like designing a video game! It was actually something that.

.

.

One of the images that our 2D designers usedin the presentation.

.

.

It's a picture of a cat on the street witha single light shining on it, and the caption said: If video games have taught me anything, I know this cat has a mission for me.

So it was something for them as 2D designersand thinking about the signage and the wayfinding through the exhibition that there were someconsiderations that.

.

.

Hang on a minute.

Video game and level design know how to directpeople's attention.

So that in turn sort of resulted in why someof our exhibition signage was illuminated, because of that cat.

ROBERT: Let's go back! MARIE: So yeah, you can see some of the signsthat we had, that were illuminating the exhibition.

But I think it's something interesting thatis specifically.

.

.

Well, not just specific to video games, butsomething about digital design is that unlike a lot of traditional sort of exhibitions, where you're dealing with sort of traditional standard sort of static material objects, when you're looking to design an exhibition space to sort of house and exhibit those, you're looking to create the environment that those will sit within.

But when it comes to digital objects, actuallyyou need sort of designers and you need to be working with designers.

You need to be working with architects toeven understand how those objects will manifest within a space.

So I think when it comes to digital designand when it comes to video game design, the design of an exhibition space and the designof the objects actually is something which is much more collaborative, and you have towork as a curator in a much more collaborative sense.

For us, for myself and Christian Waltz, theresearch curator, we worked on the exhibition for a year or so before we had the exhibitiondesigners come in.

It's normally quite standard for an exhibition.

You'll spend a lot of time in research, you'llcome out and have a big list of objects, you'll know the dimensions of the objects and knowhow you want them exhibited, but for this subject, we don't really know how to manifesta lot of the stuff in this space.

You need to work more collaboratively.

Because it feels like part of the curatorialteam is missing.

'til you have people to work with to havedifferent ways of showcasing digital objects.

ROBERT: Yeah, and I think all that work reallypaid off, because I was super impressed with the care taken with all the different objects.

Is there a photo with some of the objectson days play? MARIE: Maybe.

Let's go through and see.

Those are some of the objects.

The slide just before that? Or this one.

You can stop at this one.

Actually.

.

.

No.

Brackets.

That's me! Yeah.

The Nintendo one.

There we go.

This showcases just some of the artifacts.

And objects that we brought into the exhibition.

The exhibition consisted of three differentsort of exhibition spaces.

All of which had different motivations orwere trying to look at games through different lenses.

This is a snapshot of some of our conservatorsand exhibition managers installing a display for Splatoon.

We were looking at the materiality of gamedesign.

Whereas the second section that we saw beforewith the big illuminated cubes.

.

.

This was the second section, where we wantedto look at the social and political conversations being had about video games.

And this was the most complex one.

Because how do you know how to exhibit a conversationor a discussion in a public space? And the last two spaces, which I've not seena photo of, although the one with my big earrings.

.

.

ROBERT: It's a great photo.

MARIE: Yeah, for the opening I bought theseearrings which I called the Big Buns, which were these fluffy bunny rabbit heads.

Nobody took a decent picture of me duringthe exhibition opening, but thankfully a week or two later, someone from the New York Timeswas like.

.

.

We want to photograph you for the article.

I'm like.

.

.

I want to wear the earrings, because if Ididn't get any pictures of myself during the opening, I'm gonna be cemented in historyduring this New York Times article.

And that's why I put this picture into a lotof presentations that I give.

It's to get my money's worth out of the earrings.

But the exhibition.

That's the point we were making.

The last two spaces of the exhibition werelooking at video games from the perspective of the player.

So there was a big massive sort of space whichwas showcasing sort of a video of different player communities and different ways of interactingwith games.

And the very last space, which is here, wasmuch more of a DIY arcade of looking at niche DIY video game communities and games thatare sort of spectacle and performance.

ROBERT: So one thing I would like to connecthere is: In this last room, there's actually a lot of stuff from Babycastles in there.

And Babycastles, again, if you're not familiar, is a local DIY punk video game style performance/music space, that is pretty much.

.

.

That is very near here.

So if you're a student here at Game Center, you should definitely be checking out Babycastles, so you can check out the stuff before therest of the word discovers it and curates it.

You'll be on the bleeding edge of stuff andthen you'll go to a big museum exhibition.

You'll be like.

.

.

I saw that when it was.

.

.

MARIE: Before it was boring and stuffy ina museum! ROBERT: Or.

.

.

I mean, I saw it before it was cool.

No, Babycastles is very cool all the time, though.

Right? MARIE: Yeah, and there's Wonderville as welland Death By Audio and other spaces in New York as well.

ROBERT: Yeah, there's so many New York spaces.

It's important to check out these spaces andsupport them.

Because you can also get involved with themas well and then your work will be curated in a giant museum and people will take reallyawesome photos of you with your awesome earrings.

You know? Do we want to talk about anything else here? Oh, it's repeating.

Okay.

Wait.

So what is this one? MARIE: Yeah, this is not the exhibition.

This is me just sending some random picturesto Robert and being like.

.

.

What are we gonna talk about? I'll probably talk about this a little bitmore this evening, when I'm giving a lecture here at NYU at 7:00 pm.

ROBERT: Don't spoil it for the viewers! MARIE: This is not a spoiler.

This is just sort of like a teaser.

A lot of this is stuff that I'm gonna sortof be coming back to.

But this is an installation or a work by theartist Harun Farocki, and it's his series Parallels 1 to 4.

And for me, it's an installation that I findquite inspiring, in terms of the way that it opens up video game design within a publicspace.

That I think traditionally one of the thingsthat we say that we sort of sought to do with the video game exhibition was to identifyand experiment with new curatorial languages and different curatorial languages for videogames.

And I say that sort of in contrast to thefact that a lot of exhibitions tend to focus on sort of the playable object as being thesort of central artifact or the key thing that you will exhibit.

But this display is something that I saw atthe Whitechapel Gallery a few years ago, and it's a display where you aren't playing anyof these games.

You're sitting and watching a series of differentplaythroughs and different sort of videos that he's created, to sort of.

.

.

Just sort of show some of the different playstyles that he took with those games.

And there's four different sort of screenshere and four different installations.

But for some of those, some of the thingsthat he's doing is, say, playing a game like LA Noir, but he's playing it in this veryintentional way, where he's pushing the NPCs' behavior in a certain way, or trying to travelin a certain direction but pushing up the invisible boundaries that the games have putin place to prevent him from traveling in one direction.

It's very intentional.

Very directed play style of those games.

And for me, in terms of what that does asan exhibition, to me, that communicated game design and showed the materiality of thosegames in a way that actually many exhibitions where they give you the chance to get handson with those works have not managed to do.

For me, the thing I love about this work, and it's something I think about a lot with curation and thinking about what it meansto try and bring or to try and interpret game design or video games in public spaces isthinking actually: We need to think beyond just the playable object.

We need to think of different styles and differentways of approaching it.

While this is obviously the work of an artist, for me, this is an area that I'm interested in exploring as a curator, with really directedsort of play styles and how that can open up the materiality of games as an object.

ROBERT: So this is super interesting to me.

Because I think what's happening a lot ingames right now is a lot of focus on performance.

Right? A lot of stuff going on in Twitch.

Hello.

But also stuff like.

.

.

The GTA Deer Cam, or Ian Chang.

There's a lot of stuff about procedure andperformance, and trying to, like, expose how a performer or something moves through thespace.

So this seems like a really interesting, like, parallel to a lot of the stuff going on outside of games or outside of the art world.

Right? MARIE: Yeah.

And this is sort of — not wanting to talktoo much about what I'll talk about this evening, but this is sort of where my brain is beginningto sort of explode a little bit.

It'll become a little bit.

.

.

Sometimes a little bit untethered, becausefor me, with a lot of the research that I've been doing, it has sort of really pushed meto step back from video games and also step back from exhibitions and sort of try to stripaway my assumptions and my impressions of what these actually are.

What our assumptions are of these spaces, of different works.

And think.

.

.

Actually, what actually is a video game asan object? And one of the things that I'm really interestedin exploring is this idea of video games as performance.

That we focus so much on the materiality andthe variables of video games as an object, and in curation, a lot of the conversationsat the moment from larger institutions are focused on this emulation and preservationof a video game as a playable work.

But I think the thing that that sometimeshas the ability to undermine or to perhaps sort of ignore is thinking.

.

.

That no two people will play a video gamein the same way.

No two people will experience that game asthe same design artifact or the same design object.

It actually.

.

.

A video game is not sort of.

.

.

And there is not just one performance of avideo game.

There's always infinite performances thatyou can take with that object.

And so when we're thinking about preservinga game, we're thinking about preserving that sort of.

.

.

Perhaps slightly tangible artifact.

.

.

Actually, what else is it that we should beconsidering, when we're considering the variables of the object but we need to think of thevariables of the players and the time within which you're playing and the context withinwhich you're playing.

That's what this really gets at, is thinkingof game as performance.

This is a capture of one single performance, a very intentional performance, that shows one aspect of that game.

That potentially having your hands on a controllermight not.

It's stuff that people like Brenda Laurelthink about.

This idea of computers as theater.

And how does that apply to games? And also as curators, how does that potentiallybegin to open up our perspective of what it is that we're actually focusing on exhibitingand how we might exhibit them? ROBERT: Oh my God, so many questions.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Okay.

I won't keep pushing you to spoil your talkor tease your talk too much.

So maybe now is a good time to move on toanother thing that we want to do here.

At Game Center Live.

In addition to hosting special guests andstuff, we also want to bring it back to general Twitch Let's Play culture and stuff.

So one fun thing that I thought.

.

.

Or at least I thought it would be fun.

.

.

Was if every special guest could choose agame that they would like to play on stream, and then we can, like, hang out and play it, so they're not under pressure to explain their career and research and stuff.

MARIE: I'm just at a point where I'm openingup my whole sort of area of thinking about.

.

.

What does game curation mean? Being asked that question, I feel like I justwant to stare at the camera for half an hour and have a bit of a breakdown.

But yeah, playing is much better.

ROBERT: You did that without the breakdownand it was lovely and extremely lucid, and I'm sure our students got a lot of out ofit.

But do you want to intro what this game is? While I switch over to it? MARIE: I didn't prepare an intro.

ROBERT: Just talk about it.

MARIE: This is a video game by Richard Hoggand Ricky Haggett.

From Hollow Ponds.

And this is a game of storing things and organizingthings.

This is Wilmot's Warehouse, in which we playas a small white cube.

.

.

There are some logos coming up on the screen.

We play as a small white cube and we're gonnaput things into a warehouse.

Every now and again, people are gonna comeinto that warehouse and they're gonna want to get things from us.

So we're going to organize the warehouse tobe able to bring those objects to those people.

One of the things that I really like aboutthis game is obviously I'm very good friends with Richard Hogg and Ricky Haggett, and theyare both people who are part of Wild Rumpus, the games collective that I'm in.

And you had an article on the screen aboutParliament before, that was written by Alice O'Connor, who is also another member of WildRumpus.

I'm glad we've got good representation ofdifferent Rumpus people today.

ROBERT: Good cross-Atlantic relations, right? MARIE: Yeah, so these are two good friendsfrom Wild Rumpus who collaborated to make this game, and one of the things I like aboutthis is Wilmot's face, the two little eyes and the nose and the mouth, which is the ASCIIface that.

.

.

If you ever put a little ASCII face into atext, that's what he would put in.

So I'm like.

.

.

Oh, look.

It's like getting a text message from Dick.

Oh, look! Thank you.

Warehouse training.

Move the banana to the banana square.

What is the banana square? ROBERT: You can't see my cursor.

Hold on.

MARIE: He's just doing it invisibly.

ROBERT: Did you want to play it? Or did you want to talk about it, commenting? MARIE: I was hoping we would be able to playit co-op.

ROBERT: But then who is holding the mic? MARIE: We would have to play co-op down here? ROBERT: I have a controller.

You can play second player.

We can play co-op if you want.

MARIE: I've not had a chance to play co-op.

So I was hoping we would get a chance to.

And that will give us a chance to — insteadof just seeing Wilmot, we'll see his pal, Wally, his co-op assistant, which.

.

.

Richard confirmed on Twitter the other daythat his name is Wally.

Stalling whilst Robert unwinds the lengthof.

.

.

I've been playing this on Switch as well.

So I feel very comfortable with that interface.

I'm used to using the Switch to do it.

So either way.

.

.

Yeah, that's fine.

See what the button do.

Oh, tea break.

Nice big tea caddy.

Who is that with the round nose? Yes, I'm moving.

ROBERT: I'll hold the mic.

I don't think there's any way to prop this.

Maybe I can just be kind of useless.

And dance around you, while you do all thework.

MARIE: Hey! ROBERT: We have to get the.

.

.

Wait, can we co-op together to grab thesehorseshoes? I try to grab this.

.

.

Oh, no.

MARIE: This is what happens when Robert doesn'tpull his weight.

Look how much work I'm trying to do here tomove these horseshoes.

They're made out of metal.

They're very heavy.

ROBERT: I'll block your way.

Does this help? MARIE: That was a big help, thanks.

ROBERT: You can push me out of the way, though.

MARIE: Yeah.

See, what happens if.

.

.

Yeah, no.

Excuse me, sorry.

ROBERT: Rotate it.

MARIE: We need to wait a little bit beforewe've got that ability.

ROBERT: You're the master here.

I haven't played much.

MARIE: Yeah.

Hats.

We're gonna put hats up here.

Three little fezzes.

ROBERT: I think I'm doing okay.

MARIE: Yeah.

ROBERT: I think these are winter objects, right? MARIE: I would say, if I was going to.

.

.

Yeah.

The igloo looks like it could take the shapeof a hat if you wanted it to, but conventionally, I would file that under winter, yeah.

I keep trying to rotate these, even thoughI know I can't rotate these yet.

I did all my work, so I'm gonna just sit here.

ROBERT: Wait, I can't fit! Marie, help! What do I do? MARIE: I'll just shift this guy away.

ROBERT: And then you can.

.

.

Oh, okay.

MARIE: Just shove it.

ROBERT: Wait.

Wait.

Those are both winter and hats.

MARIE: What a dilemma.

Well.

.

.

I'll select all the hats.

Wear this hat.

I think we should also.

.

.

Let's just put this in winter as well.

ROBERT: That's good.

To hedge our bets a little bit.

MARIE: I don't know if this is good filingtechniques, in terms of splitting.

.

.

What's the Dewey Decimal System for objectsin this warehouse? ROBERT: I think we'll have to invent it, immediately.

MARIE: Bloop! ROBERT: Look, I'm helping, I'm helping.

Wait.

You just took that.

Oh my God! MARIE: Fine, do it yourself.

ROBERT: Let me help! Let me help! I'm a child.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

There.

Agh! MARIE: We've not even gotten out of the tutorialyet.

ROBERT: We're doing good.

Our characters are smiling.

MARIE: Yeah.

Happy workers.

ROBERT: Oh, it's split screen.

Oh.

What's that? MARIE: We're getting a delivery.

The warehouse — I think a guy who's got aplug for a head.

We've got some trains.

ROBERT: Is that the northern rail icon? MARIE: Yes.

Does that not mean train to you? I've never seen these before.

I've had those in my warehouse before.

Never had cups of tea.

I had these shapes.

Now, this is where it's.

.

.

ROBERT: So we need to unpack these, right? We need to put these where we can find them.

MARIE: And this is where I'm curious to seehow co-op goes.

ROBERT: Oh, I can double click them? Oh my God.

That's so useful.

MARIE: Having two people's decisions aboutwhat and how to have different filing techniques.

I do have very specific ideas about what constitutesgood filing.

ROBERT: I like putting this orange thing nextto this orange thing.

MARIE: That's red.

ROBERT: That's not red.

It's orange.

MARIE: It's Reddy-orange.

ROBERT: The bomb? It's orange! MARIE: Reddy-orange.

ROBERT: But it's similar.

We're fighting.

Oh my gosh.

MARIE: We've got 20 seconds left.

ROBERT: We're grabbing our inventory.

.

.

MARIE: This is the game I played most duringthe summer.

Trying to take a lot of philosophical lifelessons from.

.

.

ROBERT: Oh, gosh.

Tea is cozy.

Are those boots or socks? MARIE: They look like wellington boots.

Those are wellies.

You can put them next to the cups of tea.

ROBERT: So they're for rain, right? So cozy.

MARIE: Look at this mess, though.

If someone is gonna come in and ask for tea.

.

.

All these wellington boots blocking the way.

.

.

Let's put them up here.

There we go.

In the game that I was playing, the firsttime I was playing this, I had very specific ideas about the way that I developed thissort of system of the warehouse.

And that was all fine.

Until online there was a lot of people sharingthe different sorting systems that they created for their warehouses.

Oh, God.

Look at the mess you're making! ROBERT: Why is that bad? It's yellow.

It's soap.

MARIE: Yeah, soap dispenser.

But how are we gonna get to the thing behindit, if anybody wants it? ROBERT: What do they want? MARIE: Thanks.

Thanks.

ROBERT: So we need tea.

A file.

Where do I get files? I'll get this one.

MARIE: I keep hitting the wrong button.

I'm getting everything at the moment.

ROBERT: You can get everything all at once? MARIE: Here we go.

He only wanted one cricket.

Sorry.

ROBERT: That's the majority of the stars.

That's not bad.

MARIE: There we go.

ROBERT: So now what do we do? MARIE: We've got a new delivery.

Some new product lines being added to thewarehouse.

We've got that.

A nice pattern.

Another nice pattern.

Red, blue, white.

Thermometer.

And what's that? ROBERT: Upside down shark fin? MARIE: Upside down shark.

Aquatic.

Back to work.

But the issue.

.

.

The problem or the mistake that I made wasthat I looked at different people's filing techniques, and realized that other peoplehad.

.

.

Oh, where am I going? I have to just watch the delivery come in.

ROBERT: Oh my God.

MARIE: That I didn't have as good a filingtechnique as other people.

And so I foolishly tried to rework my warehouseto copy some of these other people, who had different techniques, and it completely messedup my game, because I think so much about the way that you organize your warehouse isso connected to your own decisions about the way in which you connect different objects.

I just felt this huge anxiety of seeing otherpeople and seeing the way that other people work and realizing that.

.

.

Wait, I'm not good enough.

And other people are better and I need tocopy them.

But in trying to copy people, I messed upmy own warehouse and I just created more problems for myself long-term, so the big life lessonI took away from that is that sometimes you're gonna do things different from other people, and that's okay.

You should just embrace your way of doingthings, because there's more than one way of doing things.

But when we're doing co-op and I'm doing thingscorrectly and you're doing things wrong.

.

.

ROBERT: I'm not doing it wrong! I put the files next to the files.

MARIE: Move that soap.

ROBERT: Look.

Wait, what's wrong? MARIE: There we go.

When they come and ask for it.

.

.

ROBERT: How do you know they're gonna askfor it, though? MARIE: They might do at some point.

I don't know, but I'm anticipating that thatmight be a request in the future.

ROBERT: I'm gonna try to get more stuff.

I'm gonna be helpful.

I'm gonna get these sharks.

MARIE: Seven seconds.

I'm just reorganizing things.

This is not.

.

.

This is not me at my most efficient.

Ready.

Not ready.

Quick! Two thermometers.

Two star things.

Two horseshoes.

Bloop bloop! ROBERT: I'll get the thermometer.

MARIE: I'll get the cups of tea.

Two stars.

Bloop! ROBERT: They wanted two thermometers?! MARIE: Greedy.

ROBERT: Okay.

Do we clock out here? MARIE: Yeah.

Wahey! We've got more stars.

ROBERT: So what do stars do? MARIE: Stars are.

.

.

You get little upgrades with the stars.

And also it's just nice to earn a gold staror a white star.

ROBERT: Well, I rarely give out positive feedbackin my classes, so I wouldn't know that feeling.

MARIE: You don't give out little sticky stars? ROBERT: Give out little gold stars in my classes? Maybe.

MARIE: Oh, what's coming in this one? Magnets.

ROBERT: Magnets.

That's.

.

.

That's a menu button on an iPhone.

MARIE: Yeah.

We're gonna turn the phone off by swipingit.

ROBERT: Yeah, right? That's the little swipey.

.

.

Oh.

Do one more round? MARIE: I'm slightly anxious at the fact thatthere is no.

.

.

At least for me there's no discernible orderin the warehouse at the moment.

Everything is just put everywhere.

Which is just chaos.

It's like a messy bedroom.

ROBERT: But you just told me to follow myheart and organize it however the way I can.

However way my soul.

.

.

MARIE: Which is fine when you're playing singleplayer, but when we're playing co-op, you have to do it exactly the way.

.

.

ROBERT: Okay.

Tell me what to do.

MARIE: Just keep shoving this stuff aroundin a mad, frenzied panic.

Where am I? We can start a little nautical section.

Or have you been putting boats elsewhere? Upside down sharks — where have they beengoing? ROBERT: I don't remember.

MARIE: They're gonna go up here by the flippers.

Whee! Oh, excuse me.

What's this? I don't know what that is.

I don't care anymore.

Sweating a bit.

Oh! Excuse me.

Okay.

Bloop bloop bloop.

ROBERT: I'm like.

.

.

How the face turns to see my mouse cursor.

It's really cute.

MARIE: Looking at what he's doing.

He's paying attention.

ROBERT: Where should magnets go? Next to the horseshoe? MARIE: Yeah, metal things.

That sounds good.

ROBERT: Wait.

Where are the horseshoes? MARIE: Did we give all the horseshoes away? You're a vertical storer, whereas I'm doingthis horizontally.

Maybe that's where.

.

.

Well, I've got a horseshoe here.

So.

.

.

This vertical sorting.

.

.

Where do we put these? Bloop.

Bloop.

I'm just gonna shove it over there like that.

ROBERT: We're putting boots here.

Okay.

MARIE: Fins, star.

.

.

Uh-oh.

Can we not click on.

.

.

What happens if you're not ready? It's like we just sit here forever.

Sorry, guys.

ROBERT: Just bringing it back to center.

Are we ready? MARIE: We're ready.

Just dump all this stuff.

ROBERT: They want northern rails.

.

.

MARIE: I'll get the trains.

Where did we put the third one? ROBERT: The shark fins are over here.

I'll get this one.

They wanted three shark fins.

MARIE: Okay.

We've got a lot of those.

Did we even shelve the milk? Did you bring it out? ROBERT: I didn't even see any milk! MARIE: It reminds me of working in a bookshop.

You look in the system and it says no, you'vegot two copies.

ROBERT: I'll get the cricket.

MARIE: Just gonna check the goods.

This is a health and safety hazard.

Look at this.

ROBERT: Oh! Phew.

That was really hectic.

Let's see what prizes we get.

We didn't get any presents? Wait, what? MARIE: It's a stock take.

This is a good place to end it.

The thing we can now purchase is the abilityto rotate blocks, and now we get a stock take, which is one of my favorite bits of Wilmot'sWarehouse, which is the calm between each of the levels.

Of the different deliveries.

We've just got time to just take it easy.

And just organize things.

ROBERT: Is it just infinite time? So we can just hang out now? No time.

.

.

MARIE: Yeah, just sort the warehouse out.

We can fiddle about with it.

And get really pedantic with the way you wantthings organized.

ROBERT: Oh, dear.

MARIE: It's a nice sort of breathing spaceto organize your thoughts.

ROBERT: It's so unusual for a game to be aboutbeing really fast and on the ball and then it slows down and says.

.

.

Okay.

Now sit and have some tea and stock take.

MARIE: Yeah.

Just have a little.

.

.

Organize.

.

.

Get yourself in order.

And don't worry.

We're not gonna time you on that.

I think the main thing I can see that's happeninghere is I and my warehouses have always sorted things horizontally.

So I normally sort of bring things right tothe top.

And have lines coming out.

And just use this main thoroughfare to sortof bring big loads up to the delivery hatch.

Whereas you seem to be doing it vertically.

Which I wonder.

.

.

ROBERT: I blame the aspect ratio of our splitscreen.

That's making me think more vertically.

MARIE: I'm open to that.

I've seen some people's warehouses where they'vebeen doing that sort of storage.

Maybe that's more efficient.

Maybe that's better.

So.

.

.

Yeah.

ROBERT: Oh, gosh.

Okay.

So.

.

.

How good am I at this game? MARIE: You've been doing well playing one-handed.

So congratulations.

ROBERT: Do I get a good star? MARIE: You get 14 gold stars.

Maybe we should split them if we're coworkers.

Like we're splitting our tips.

So you get 7 stars.

I get 7.

ROBERT: 50/50? Are you sure? You don't want more stars? It felt like you were doing more of the work.

MARIE: I've got two hands and I think I'vebeen playing this more than you.

ROBERT: Fair enough.

Okay.

That's Wilmot's Warehouse.

You should definitely play it.

If you haven't played it.

Really fun couples game.

You know.

Play it with a significant other and argue.

MARIE: Argue about how you might tidy yourvirtual warehouse! Or understand that this is a way for you tolearn how to come to a consensus and to compromise in a relationship.

You too could take deep life lessons awayfrom this game, much as I did, which was.

.

.

Yeah.

It's fine.

Find your own path.

Find your own way of organizing the warehouse.

And sometimes you can look at the way thatother people do things, and you can adapt it and change it and learn from that.

But don't feel like you have to change whoyou fundamentally are.

You keep your warehouse the way you want to.

ROBERT: We're learning so much on this stream.

Isn't this wonderful? We're right about near the end of the stream, I think.

No, I mean, we'll boot them out, I think.

We'll stay here.

But I think we might boot them out.

So normally we do a bunch of stuff near theend of this stream.

But our streaming computer actually brokedown and we had to really jury-rig this whole setup.

So we're not gonna do that this week.

But next week, stay tuned for all this coolstuff that we'll have planned, and hopefully our computer won't melt down and hopefullywe'll do stuff, and hopefully I'll be better at Wilmot's Warehouse as well.

Last word, Marie? MARIE: Goodbye? ROBERT: Goodbye.

Thanks for watching, and again, if you'rein the New York area, hopefully we'll see you around at Playtest Thursday, which is5:30 to 7:00 tonight, or if you want to catch Marie, at her lecture series talk, that's7:00 pm onwards.

At 370 Jay Street on the 12th floor.

Make sure you RSVP on our website, though, at gamecenter.

nyu.

edu first, so you ensure you get a seat.

It would be sad if you came all this way todowntown Brooklyn and forgot to RSVP and then we don't have any room for you.

That would be very sad indeed.

Oh, gosh.

Okay.

So anyway, thanks for tuning in, and pleasetune in next week! Bye! MARIE: Bye! Thanks for having me!.