I was recently interviewed by Moira Hamilton, who had played CTAM at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Check out the exchange below.

I’ve taken a look at your online portfolio and have played around with some of the digital playable entries, but I was first introduced to you through your display of Conspiracy Theories About Myself at the SAAM Arcade. I know that this game stems from a personal experience, but also that it was a commission-- can you tell me a little about how you were approached and how the ideas to make this game all came together? 

I was originally approached by a former peer from grad school who told me that Death By Audio Arcade, a NYC organization that builds custom arcade cabinets, was organizing an invitation-only game jam for local queer developers and that I was invited to make a game as part of this collection. They were building a custom cabinet for the games as part of their residency at The Dreamhouse, which was a local queer community center and event space (now defunct). As part of the onboarding process, participating developers were given the basic input constraints (shown below) and low-end computer specs (another constraint).

Given the tight 4-week timeline, I quickly started sketching out ideas based upon the unique two player control scheme, which revolves around a large shared button available to both players. With Josie Brechner, I started working on something fun and competitive involving a rotating platform and team swapping, which came to be called Orbtown. Most of my work is very personal and meaningful to me, so Orbtown was a bit of a departure, being more of a traditional entertainment-focused game. While it was nice to be working on something more upbeat and colorful, I still felt a need to make something more personal.

All this was happening only a few months after I came out as trans. I have a lot of social anxiety which was acute at this time. People would stare at me everywhere I would go, exacerbating my anxiety. So, all this was very present at this time and then the incident depicted in the game happened. Obsessing over this incident inspired a second game, which became CTAM. Since it was such a vivid emotional experience, I had a lot to draw from. I decided to call it Conspiracy Theories About Myself after a tweet I had seen.

As I have briefly mentioned in my first message to you, I am exploring the way that player interaction forms a part of the meaning of a game, especially by means of the controller. When you were commissioned to make this title, how familiar were you with the DreamboxXx, and how did the constraints of working to fill an already built cabinet limit (or inspire) the way that you developed your game? 

(Some of this was answered in the previous response, so I'll talk about how I worked with the constraints.)

I saw this as an opportunity to convey my experience to others in CTAM. As part of this, I wanted to convey how difficult it was to function while processing those emotions, specifically the conflict between knowing nothing bad had happened and feeling deep-seated shame, trying not to cry and feeling the intense need to cry. At the same time, looking at people staring at me was absolutely going to push me over the edge. Since there were two joysticks, I decided to represent this dissonance through controlling each eye separately as a difficult cooperative task of bringing the eyes into alignment to make it home (either as a single player or two). 

The other game I made for the DreamboxXx, Orbtown, which was a collaboration with Josie Brechner, was a bit different. In contrast to CTAM, Orbtown is a competitive game in which two players try clearing a moving platform of balls sharing their color to score points. The twist is that the shared middle button on the cabinet would swap the colors. This was designed around the middle button, which was in a shared/common position, with no one player having total control over it. This would also mean that it would have to be versatile in serving different player's interests at different moments in the game, which is what made me think of the shifting teams that went into the final game. I wanted players to (playfully) fight over the middle button, which could be used at any moment to steal away hard-earned points from the other player.

In design, constraints often present an amazing opportunity to come up with innovative solutions and I was pretty happy with the outcome. 

When I played the game at first, I attempted to play alone, but the second time I came to your table, I brought someone to play with me. The game read as following a very solitary story, so how did you come to the decision to make the game a two-player game, and what did you hope that would bring to the player experience? 

(I think I answered this in the previous response.)

When you travel with the game, or when an individual downloads it, players are using a different input system to interact with the game. How did you make some of the decisions about mapping the inputs, and do you feel like this significantly changes gameplay? 

I think it differs a lot depending on the game. In CTAM, using a controller with two analog sticks is actually better suited than the arcade controls when it comes to a single person, since the player can use their thumbs, freeing up other fingers, rather than reaching across the arcade interface for two joysticks (in which you can't use the other buttons). However, it's a huge detriment to Orbtown to play using a keyboard and/or separate controllers. Since the gameplay revolved around the presence of a large, shared button that is easily accessible to all players, it definitely creates a less flexible and ultimately less engaging experience, since you're trying to instead press the spacebar on the keyboard. Unfortunately, we weren't able to come up with a great solution for this short of making a custom controller.

As a developer, do you ever hear responses from confused players, or feel that players aren’t taking away the intended story, message, or feeling that you intend to imbed within your games? 

Definitely! At events like SAAMArcade, most players of CTAM will just try it for a couple minutes, not know what's happening in the narrative before realizing that the game is very difficult and move on. However, when the game is accompanied by an explanation, I tend to receive a lot of strongly positive feedback. I think I really nailed the stress of the whole experience, making it very unpleasant to play (I actually really hate playing it since it stresses me out). In game design, playtesting to get player feedback is extremely important. By analyzing the confusion, you can try to design better solutions, whether it's in the form of storytelling or user interface changes (such as telling the player on-screen which buttons to press). Sometimes, the feedback might require you to evaluate whether you want to make things more obvious or explicit, potentially compromising your artistic vision. Compromising that vision in this way can also lessen the impact on the players who "get it" and so, in my more personal games, I tend to shy away from this unless it concerns player input which might distract from the intended message. 

In your portfolio, I see that you work with a lot of innovative design, and many of these seem to be creating software and hardware that are intended to work together in a really specific way. As gaming moves in the direction of standardized at-home consoles, and highly specific game-cabinets become less popular, do you think we risk losing anything in the design and development of games? 

I'm very interested in novel modes of interaction and experiences, which is why I have so few projects following wholly traditional/established input paradigms. I enjoy either trying to come up with unique ways of interacting to fit my intention or trying to see what the given constraints might inspire me to invent. 

I think there will always be opportunities to innovate, but it becomes progressively more difficult as these paradigms become more deeply ingrained. Innovation can face pushback from players who don't want to learn something new that might come at the expense of immersion. I think what you see nowadays is that independent developers tend to take more risks, some of which eventually filter up to the more conservative triple-A (big budget) studios. It might be a little bit harder to dig up these interesting projects, but they're out there. In New York City, we have a much stronger indie scene than AAA and so there are lots of opportunities to be inspired at places like Wonderville and Babycastles, which host weird indie games. Events like SAAMArcade are also an opportunity to present these games to the public. I particularly liked Pre-Shave by Saam Pahlavan in which you use two mice to control your hands while trying to shave (nearly) every part of your (very hairy) body.