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antiheroismm · 1 year

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『BAXTER'S COINING + FUN BLOG INTRODUCTION』

hey everyone, i'm baxter / pax / mallory, and this is my mogai/xenogender coining blog, with some fun activities too.

i have yet to make a rentry, so i'll compile everything here for now.

『ABOUT ME』

once again, i'm baxter, but you may also know me as pax, mallory, or other names in my upcoming pronouny.

i go by he/him, they/them, she/her and it/its pronouns, alongside other neopronouns in my upcoming pronouny.

regarding my sexuality, i am biflux, combo'd with achillean, diamoric, and sapphic. i am also aroflux and aegosexual, and also ambiamorous.

regarding my gender, i am multigender and fluidflux, and i am also a gendercollector. regarding my main genders, i am a trans male, but i also cycle between nonbinary and other non min and fingenders, cis female, xenine, and my hoard's genders of course.

i am a latino/latine/latina/latin-american. i am from chile, most specifically.

i am a minor. i am 15 yrs old most specifically. my birthday is july 28th.

my vocabulary is a mix of old internet lingo and new internet lingo. i use a lot of terms from both eras, but i do rarely use a few terms. like tone indicators, because i tend to clarify my tone in parentheses rather than using them. but, if you want me to use tone indicators at all times when talking to you, i'll do it, just ask! you can also say which tonetags you are uncomfortable with if you do have them. i also do not use certain lingo because it's not my type, examples include words like "yass" or "slay", or using a hyphen at the end of sentences (like this-).

i also speak random nonsense for fun sometimes. it doesn't really have much of a meaning, but i can provide a translation if you want.

i have a love for shitposting, and i love bastardcore (just look at my blogs' appearance), but i will coin terms of every aesthetic, theme, ect.

i am autistic and also have adhd, so i won't tolerate ableism here.

for all the systems reading this, please keep in mind that i am a singlet.

i love video games. a lot.

『BEFORE YOU FOLLOW』

i am supportive of xenogenders and neopronouns, obviously. i am also a radinclus, which means i support all identities coined in good faith. and before you complain, no. i am not one of those bad radinclus who support paraphilias and want them to become a part of the lgbtqia+ community. i am also very supportive of m-spec gays, lesbians, and nblnb individuals, alongside non-he/him lesbians and non-she/her gays.

i am also supportive of otherkin/alterhumans and non-human individuals. (i am also questioing if i am one)

i am a newbie at making flags, so if they don't match your standards, that's fine, i'll get better time by time.

i do not allow discourse of any kind in this blog.

because i think that discussion of this is stupid, and because i want everyone regardless of ideology to use the terms i coin without being considered a bigot, i am completely, and i mean completely neutral about non-traumagenic systems and self-diagnosis. if you think they're valid, that's fine. if you think they're not, that's fine too. i just want every being to use my terms regardless of what they think of to help them with their gender identity. i also promote all kinds of mogai blogs regardless of their viewpoints in this too.

regarding systems' alters requesting content and help, you can either request me to use your name and/or the system's collective name to refer to you. i'll be glad to help you!

regarding typing quirks, always provide a translation to them. although i am able to read all of them, some fellas who follow this blog can't do it, so to help them understand, please do that.

if you use titles to refer to yourself, you can ask if you want me to refer to you with them, or not use them at all, considering my blog has a "casual place where formalities don't matter here, chill all you want" vibe.

if you repost my terms, make sure to credit me. i am fine with both it being done in detail, which is crediting my name, the place where you found the term i coined (planning to promote my terms on other social media soon), and a link to the coining post, and just crediting my name. i appreciate all promotion!

『WHAT I'LL DO』

coin lgbtq+ and mogai terms

coin xenoidentities and xeniden terms (the reclaimed ones, not the original, mogaiphobic ones)

coin miscellaneous terms (like aldernic, vesil, whatever stuff like voidpunk is classified as, otherkin/alterhuman, among other terms)

make flags for already existing, or newly coined terms

fulfill requests for flags, xenoidentities, xeniden terms and misc terms.

share headcanons from others and me (my hcs can be shared only if requested with 💝 in my askbox, and it's gonna be at random)

make pride flag profile pictures, both classic and with funny text and images

『DO NOT INTERACT』

basic dni criteria (lgbtqphobic, racist, ableist, antireligious, misogynistic, bigoted, etc.)

terfs and swerfs

lgbtq+ exclus (gravity knife gay, longsword lesbian, m-spec exclusionist/battleaxe bisexual, nunchuck nonbinary, trident trans and truscum/transmedicalist)

anti-xenogenders and anti-neopronouns in general

pro-original xenoidentities (basically using and/or the mogaiphobic version of them instead of the pro-mogai, reclaimed version)

proshippers of every kind

nsfw and fetish accounts

paraphilic people who view their fetishes as pride/a part of the lgbtq+ community instead of a problem they need to address (maps/pedophiles, zoophiles, incestous, etc.), and their supporters

transids (transabled, transdisorder, transpecies, transracial, etc.)

yeah that's about it for now

『ASKBOX FUN STUFF MASTERTHINGY』

reply to me with ⭕ and i'll give you a random meme/shitpost

reply to me with 🌈 and i'll give you a random gender

reply to me with 💌 and i'll give you a random favorite/loved/liked character of mine

reply to me with 🍱 and i'll give you a random food/snack/dish/drink/ect

reply to me with 🎮 and i'll give you a random cool video game

reply to me with 🎵 and i'll give you a random song

reply to me with 🐾 and i'll give you a random goofy animal

reply to me with 📷 and i'll give you a random image from my camera roll

reply to me with 📺 and i'll give you a random video

reply to me with 💝 and i'll give you a random headcanon of mine

『TAG MASTERTHINGY』

coined terms: #💖 : baxter coined (full real)

term flag request: #🔰 : a flag for you!

headcanon request: #💗 : show em' your fun hcs!

memes/shitposts: #⭕ : ain't no way :skull:

random genders: #🌈 : baxter's gender pick (real)

random favorite/loved/liked character: #💌 : baxter's beloveds

random food/snack/dish/drink/ect: #🍱 : hey bro what do you want to eat

random cool video game: #🎮 : remember the witcherino 3? yeah me too here's a cool game

random song: #🎵 : [music genre] fans be like: yo this is fire!

random goofy animal: #🐾 : i have hired this critter to be with you

random image from my camera roll: #📷 : baxter why do you have this

random video: #📺 : i command you to watch this

random headcanon: #💝 : hey babe *tells you a cool hc*

(need help with putting them)

i hope you enjoy my stay in the mogai coining community!

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inevitably-johnlocked · 4 years

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how does one know if they're ace or aro?

Hi Lovely!!

Ahhhhh, well, sadly this is a different experience for every individual, and I can only speak for myself. I am not Aro, so I can’t give you that personal anecdote, but I am ace.

You see, I grew up in a very conservative city, and went to catholic school, so you just... don’t think of anything other than boy and girl. Except I didn’t think of ANY of that at all. I thought maybe I was just a late bloomer. I got to college and still... nothing. Just what the HELL is wrong with me?

For me, growing up, I just... never understood why everyone was so obsessed with sex, and why making out never “turned me on”. I genuinely thought I was broken, that there was something wrong with me. I like being cuddled and hugged and just having emotional intimacy, but the second someone wanted to go beyond that, I was like “NOPE”, called a prude and a bitch, and that was that. I wanted all the aspects of a relationship but not interested at all in ever having the sex part of it.

But I never brought it up to my doctors, and I’ve never been in a serious relationship because “Hey, I’m broken, no one will want me anyway”, so I focussed on my career instead. I’ve essentially shied away from relationships because I didn’t want to explain to someone that “I’m broken, I only want cuddles, and it has to move at a snail’s pace”. So yeah.

This was all made worse by a mother who constantly told me “what’s wrong with you, why haven’t you given me grandchildren, HAH AHAHAHHA the movie “40 Year Old Virgin” is about you isn’t that hilarious??”

No, mother, it wasn’t.

What clued me into possibly being ace was actually really funny. It was when I got into the Sherlock fandom and people discussed Sherlock’s sexuality, and I believe it was Brönte who mentioned something about asexual Sherlock, since she was a literature major. "Asexual” is one of those terms I’ve heard, but didn’t really know anything about outside of what it meant.

This is where my almost-4-year sexuality crisis began. It has its issues, but I started my journey by reading up everything on Asexuality.org. EVERYTHING including the forums. Then I watched asexual TED talks (there’s one by the founder of Asexuality.org and another by a young person (sorry I can’t remember their pronouns) that are really good and informative) and YouTubers like Amelia Ace and Slice of Ace (Anthony Padilla actually has an interesting “I spent a day with” video with aces that I recommend, and youtuber Ash Hardell came out with a VERY good series I watched when I was learning about myself). Suddenly everything clicked. It was LITERALLY an “Oh.” moment. Then I learned about the split attraction model, which aces use to help clarify where they are on the spectrum, and about 2 years in, I suddenly realized that “Hmm. I’ve always said I want to be with ‘some ONE’ not some man” so I had another long think, did more research, and thought yeah, you know what? I don’t care about the gender presentation of who I end up with, as long as we’re happy and we enjoy each other’s lives.” So yeah that was a bit of a surprise to me.

Then I met other asexuals at 221B con.That was what sealed it for me: their advice and help and just genuine kindness and understanding of how I feel. I’ve NEVER had anyone say “yeah, I feel that way too!”, rather than “I just don’t understand how you can’t want sex. Everyone wants sex!”.

So now, I’m 2 years “out” to my online friends, I’m glad I’m not broken anymore, but let me tell you, it’s a fucking scary thing to go through at 34.

I still am not publicly out, but I don’t make it a secret that I go to Pride week and I support LGBT causes. And I never leave home anyway, and will probably be alone the rest of my life, but I feel at peace with myself, you know? Just simply KNOWING that I’m NOT broken is a fucking weight off my shoulders.

I know the running joke in the fandom is that “Sherlock Fandom Made Me Gay”, but honestly, there is a grain of truth in it. A lot of us just... don’t KNOW until we’re around other queer people. Which I wasn’t ever UNTIL I came here AND moved to a very liberal city. Everyone was very understanding and helpful, and in turn and in thanks, I was able to also help other lovelies who, like me, didn’t know and were scared.

So yeah, Lovely, for me it was a sense of “something’s different, but I’m not sure what”. And then a lot of research. I knew I wasn’t aromantic because I do desire and crave romance probably in the same way allosexual people crave sex... I wouldn’t know, I’ve never craved it, LOL.

Personally, I encourage everyone to just have a period of their lives where they learn about different sexualities and different types of romance. You always hear these stories about someone not knowing they were homoromantic until they had a roommate they fell in love with. One of my best friends found out he was trans in his mid-thirties... He just thought he was a tomboy who just... felt different.

It’s a different experience for everyone, Rory, and one that only you can discover on your own. Read up information, watch YouTubers, go down the wikipedia rabbit hole, and talk to other people in the various communities.

But let me tell you, Rory, remember this term: Split Attraction Model. Discovering this term helped me a lot on my ace journey. Remember Asexuality and Aromanticism are both very VERY wide spectrums and very VERY different things, and it’s going to take awhile to figure out where you belong. But once you do, I think you’ll be at peace. And it’s OKAY to not “settle” on a label. Please know that. Sexuality is fluid.

Good luck Lovely, and don’t hesitate to ask if you have any other questions. <3

#steph replies #asexuality #ace awareness week #about me #my life #chatting with lovelies #hey-im-rory

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vindictar · 5 years

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WRITING WITH A TRANS MUN AND A TRANS MUSE

there is a post going around about avoiding transphobic microaggressions in rp but it's kindof out dated and written with a focus of advising cis people on writing a trans character... and since i know literally zero (0) cis people currently writing a trans muse i thought i would make a post that’s with some pointers specifically about proper and acceptable behavior when writing with a trans mun who writes a trans muse.

DO:

just be respectful!!

listen to trans people!! respect their voices and don’t speak over us! if a trans person corrects you on something it is not a personal attack on you. so often cis people will get defensive and overly apologetic when they are corrected-- which, intentional or not, makes trans people feel guilty for standing up for themselves and requesting the common decency of having the right name and pronouns used.

ask questions! if you are coming from a good place with a genuine intent to learn or clarify something that is going to come up in a thread it’s always better to ask. but, before you do be considerate and think:

is the answer listed somewhere on their blog? more often than not the information you're looking for is either in a blog's about page or their hc's! check those first before you ask!

can my question by answered with a cursory google search? trans people are not your personal dictionary and are not obligated to educate you

is this invasive? is this a question you would want asked of you or your muse? ( esp in regard to "what's in their pants?" "so no dick?" "how do they have sex?" ) unless you're writing explicit smut it's not relevant! and you don’t need to know!! please stop fixating on trans genitals it is genuinely none of your business

have and dialog with your partner!!! this is especially important if you are writing smut with a trans muse / mun!! sex usually involves genitals and explicit description of them, so if you’re going to write smut with a character ( and do! trans people can have sex just like everyone else ! ) ask the mun what words are okay to use your writing and descriptions.

value trans comfort. you don’t have to justify your existence and explain it every single day, we do and it’s exhausting.

respect a trans persons boundaries and privacy. if a mun does not want to talk about something or it makes them uncomfortable they will tell you. respect that and drop it the subject. do not continue to press the issue after they have expressed discomfort.

take no for an answer. when someone says they don’t want to write or talk about something listen to them.

pay trans mun’s for the emotional labor!!! trans people do not owe you anything, and everything we do is for your cis gender benefit to help you understand at the cost of our energy and mental health and many trans muns are in difficult financial situations and have a place somewhere on their page where they are accepting donations. if it’s not listed ask. for example: consider paying me, a transgender person struggling to pay for hormones, for making this post and educating you.

DON'T:

don’t assume every trans person’s experience is the same and every trans person is comfortable with the same things. non-binary people don’t not have the same problems as a trans woman and a trans man will not have the same problems as a trans woman, every trans experience is unique and while things overlap you cant assume its the same

don’t assume you know what terms someone will be comfortable. every trans person is comfortable with different things and it’s always best to ask, especially in regards to anatomy. so before using a term to refer to a trans muse ask first!

don’t assume your muse knows their muse is trans just because you do. you can’t tell if a person is trans by looking.

don’t assume a trans character is out to your character unless you’ve discussed it with the mun

don’t assume because a character is trans they are bottom during sex. this is especially relevant for trans men who are often fetishiszed in this way

don’t assume every trans person has physically transitioned or wants to. not every trans man has had top surgery and if they haven't touching there isn't necessarily welcome. in the same way not every trans woman has had bottom surgery. not every trans person wants to physically transition, it all depends on the person *so ask*

don’t assume every trans person experiences the same dysphoria.

don't like outright ask us what a muses deadname was! it might be something we’ve thought of but even if we talk about it in a thread or a head canon post- don't just start using it without a reason and a long conversation with the mun.

don’t use your muse to vicariously alleviate your cis guilt. like trying really hard to like over-ally and insist on their muse being super supportive of yours' trans-ness. it’s cool if that's specifically what you wanna do and establish that in a relationship but there there’s supporting someone and then there is tokenizing them

everyone is invited and encouraged to reblog this post, especially cis people! i asked around the trans rpc about other mun’s experience writing a trans character and what they thought some important points were and pet peeves they had when i made this post, with special input from @prodigil / @cardshcrp / @demonslayvr, but if you’re trans and write a trans character and have something you’d like to add to this post please do!

cis people if you have something to add: please don’t

#okay to reblog #rpc #tumblr rpc #public service announcement #trans rpc #( ooc tag. )#( psa. )

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trans-i-am · 6 years

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Can you clarify for me. I saw some posts about queer ftm and mtf not being okay anymore and I’m so confused because I use the terms for myself I’m mtf. What’s your opinion?? 😫

Of course queer can be used incorrectly and be used as a slur, but typically that’s when it is being used by a cisgender heterosexual person to hurt an LGBT+ person or to somehow imply that being part of this community is a bad thing. For the most part, it is used as a term that encompasses the LGBT+ community as a whole as being outside of the cisnormative heteronormative society most of us live in. The term is neither good nor bad, it simply implies you are in some form, part of the community. However, when used, it is important to understand its lineage and how it has been used as a tool to discriminate against us and do harm to us. So understand that some may dislike the term especially in our older community and it isn’t for everyone.

As for FTM and MTF, it can be easy to see why some may dislike the terms because of the acronym X to X implying that you were once something then became another. Of course we know that trans people have always been what they identify as, they were simply assumed to be something else based on the standards of our cisnormative society. Using the terms MTF and FTM, despite their acronyms, do not present an argument against this. Over time, their meaning has changed. Today they represent someone who is male presenting and someone who is female presenting. They are meant as a guideline for how someone would like to be treated and what pronouns they may like you to use. Of course most people who identify as MTF or FTM will also tell you what pronouns they prefer as well.

MTF and FTM are merely meant to state where they belong in our community. They aren’t really meant for our cisgender counterparts, they are more made to identify ourselves to other members of the trans and nonbinary community. To our cisgender counterparts we are simply male or female unless we decide to provide further information to them. For instance I am FTM. I identify that way so my fellow LGBT+ folks know where I stand with them. It saves the explanation that I am transgender which to me, is uncomfortable. I personally dislike referring to myself that way or stating that I am afab. To me, saying that I am FTM says that I am a man. It also says that I wasn’t always treated as such. My coworkers, classmates, strangers, acquaintances, etc. simply know me as male. Of course being on T makes this much easier, but even pre-T that was all they knew and needed to know, nobody is owed an explanation for anything. That is a choice I have made, I don’t go around identifying as FTM in the open, it is personal and nobody but who I choose needs to know.

To the cis people who clearly state “male to female” or vice versa can therefore be told “the term is actually MTF, pronounced ehm-tee-ehf, and essentially means this person is female and would like you to refer to them as female”. If you hear someone using the term as an argument against us, you can simply tell them that the acronym isn’t an accurate description but the term is a valid marker for someone who was mislabeled at birth as one thing but was actually the other.

Within the community, for clarification, the labels can help distinguish a trans individual from a nonbinary individual. There are of course other terms that can be used to describe the same thing, but these are the two most common and most widely understood. If someone wants you to use a different term to describe them, that is their choice.

As a general rule, all three of these terms are not offensive and they are not slurs. They are typically considered respectful terms as long as they are used respectfully.

One last thing! If you find a term to be uncomfortable and you would not like to be referred to in that way, you can request a different term. What you cannot do, is tell someone else that they can’t refer to themselves that way too. I personally will not refer to myself as transgender unless it absolutely warrants that explanation, and I will not refer to myself as afab. Both terms are uncomfortable for me, but I would not request others to end their use of those terms because they aren’t referring to me and it does not affect me. I hope this clears anything up on where we stand on this issue.

#anon

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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The “Radically Casual” Charm of Lost Levels

This was my first year attending the Game Developer’s Conference as press, and I spent a lot of time crawling the expo hall and sessions, looking to uncover cool new games and behind-the-scenes development stories. But on Thursday afternoon, I took a break from the crowds at Moscone Center in San Francisco to sit down in the nearby Yerba Buena Gardens public park for something completely different: the seventh annual Lost Levels.

Lost Levels is what’s called an “unconference,” an anarchistic gathering where attendees sign up spontaneously to present talks or run workshops without a centralized organizing structure. Founded in 2013 by a cadre of indie game developers as an alternative to the wildly expensive GDC, it has since become more of a folk tradition, carried on by new people every year. The “rules” of Lost Levels — if you can call them that — are simple. Attendees gather near a small plaza (referred to as a “gazebo” despite it not really looking much like one), often with their lunch in tow, and sit in a circle. Anybody can sign up, open mic-style, to give a 5-minute “microtalk” about any subject they want, often but not always related to game development.

The ideas on display at Lost Levels are as radical as its structure. Microtalks can center around experimental game design concepts, post-mortems on projects, political statements (pretty much exclusively of the left-wing variety), or personal stories. The crowd skews pretty young, but attendees come from all sides of the industry, from students to indies to major studio employees, and include GDC pass-holders, folks who hover around GDC but can’t afford a pass, and even the occasional local office worker on their lunch break.

There’s a delicious irony to Lost Levels’ enduring popularity; while GDC charges hundreds to thousands of dollars to enter its halls, there are people who will skip all that for a few hours just to sit in a park and listen to stories from their peers. Its original organizers refer to the gathering as “radically casual,” which somewhat undersells just how radical the whole enterprise is. Lost Levels provides a space for game designers to decommodify their interactions, focusing for a glorious three hours on art and community-building over business cards and the building of personal brands. It was the highlight of my GDC this year, and since I managed to take notes on most of the microtalks, I decided to write up some summaries for the many people who couldn’t make it!

The following summaries are far from complete, since there were a few talks I missed and some others I couldn’t hear very well (amplification isn’t allowed in the park). If you were one of the speakers and would like me to include your name/social media handle and pronouns (I defaulted to “they/them” for most people) or if you want me to remove the summary for privacy reasons, just send me an email at evanm AT anigamers DOT com or DM me on Twitter @VamptVo.

Naming things

Advice on how to come up with names of locations and characters in your games. The speaker suggested using words from different languages as inspiration and taking a look at color to set a mood, among other things.

Teaching inclusion and anti-oppression to white men

A white man in his 50s spoke about how inspired he is by the younger generations and the new ways that we talk about identity and oppression, and how it’s pushed him to become a coach who tries to teach other privileged people how to be better.

“Fuck the rules”

Speaker: Scott Ethington

An argument for breakable games, lamenting the rise of games that are so polished that there’s no way for people to fall off the map or break things and make their own fun. Scott solicited feedback from the audience, who pointed out that breaking games “helps people see how the craft works” and “makes you a better designer,” and “a bad game that you can break can become a good game.”

Making games to deal with anxiety

The speaker talked about their experience with anxiety after a big move and how they made a game that they described as “low-stress WarioWare.” It includes mini-games like popping bubble wrap, watering plants, and aligning a picture, and has some rules around what mini-games not to include: no body horror, and no games that make you feel bad about your real life (like cleaning a virtual room only to be faced with your real, messy room).

Go to the bathroom!

Speaker: Fisher from Sundae Month

Fisher described an awful bladder infection he had as a kid, then implored the audience to “go to the bathroom!” rather than sitting at your computer to keep playing or keep making your game. I appreciated the little dig he threw in at games that are designed to be seamless experiences, never giving you a good moment to log off.

Procedural generation

Speaker: Cass (games avaiable on Itch.io)

How procedural generation inspired Cass, as well as some discussion of what makes for good procedural generation. They shouted out Spelunky, pointing out that it “systematized level design,” ensuring proper pacing and such, compared to other procedurally generated games where everything feels the same. They ended by asking devs to explore procedural generation of things other than level design: text, art assets, and more.

Children, labor, and Mark Zuckerberg

Speaker: @tyunderwood

Tech companies are promoting coding education, and not for good reasons. The more programmers they have in the market, the less they have to pay everybody. And the education they’re promoting is technical, but doesn’t cover ethics, cultural context, or “critical play” (the idea of games that exist primarily to convey a message rather than to entertain). As the speaker argued, this lack of ethical and cultural background makes workers easier to coerce into performing potentially unethical work without questioning their superiors.

Social media and callouts

I couldn’t hear everything this person said, but at least part of their microtalk focused on them avoiding online callouts to try to build a healthier community.

5-minute game jam

A description of a scene from a movie where a woman dances through the streets and how the speaker always wanted to replicate it in a game, followed by suggestions from the audience about how to achieve it (one of them was to give the player an opposite emotion first to create contrast). Then the speaker invited everybody to skip around the park with them for the last minute of their microtalk, which a few people did!

Game jams are bad

Speaker: Andrew Yoder

An excellent poem about the deleterious effects of game jams on developers, specifically in terms of things like sleep deprivation. There was a great line in which he compared game jams to musical jams, pointing out “arriving at a song is not the point, you’re there to play.” The haunting last line: “The second morning of the jam and the students are dying to make games.”

Monsterhood and queerness

Speaker: @gendervamp

This one was also hard to hear, but thankfully the speaker responded to me on Twitter to clarify some of the points. They discussed monsters as a metaphor for queerness, the way that queer people sometimes relate to monsters because of the way society treats their bodies, and how devs should reconsider monsters as adversaries. A part that I did manage to hear was about being friends with monsters in games instead of fighting them. And a particular highlight: “The worst monsters in the world are fascists, colonists, and bigots.”

Analog spaces

I couldn’t hear much of this one but I caught some bits about looking to analog spaces and live play as inspiration for your game designs.

Mecha as dual identities

A pretty interesting short exploration of the idea of mechs as a way for characters to experience a second identity. Characters can get into mecha to augment their abilities and become a different person who’s also the same in order to live their lives. There’s definitely a connection there between the experiences of trans and disabled folks, among others. Eventually the talk turned into an impassioned tirade against capitalism and how the speaker just wants to be boring and normal and not have to constantly battle against the forces around them to survive. In keeping with the whimsical anti-capitalism of Lost Levels, they ended the talk by yelling “at the end of capitalism we are having casserole!”

Third places

The speaker lamented the loss of “third places,” spaces outside of home and work where people can connect and build communities. As it relates to games, they specifically mentioned the ability for participants in third places to customize and augment them, and pointed out that games like Minecraft and Fortnite are enabling that to some degree. One term that stuck out to me was “digital community gardens,” calling to mind a space that belongs to everyone that can be collaboratively customized. A side-note that may be relevant to our readers: anime cons effectively act as a third place for many anime fans, and feature an element of real-world customizability since they are often highly driven by organic fan culture.

Tutorials and education

A call for designers to prioritize educating their players through tutorials and other means so as to not lock people out of playing their games.

Avoiding violence

The speaker talked about their personal dislike of violent games and celebrated games that provide ways to opt out of violence, allow players to customize their experience to make violence less visceral, or simply avoid glamorizing or over-utilizing violence. Examples included Undertale, with its famous pacifist/genocide system; Samurai Gun, which has an option to replace all the blood with cherry blossoms; and Hyperlight Drifter, where the violence is contextualized within the main character’s story.

Games about revolution

A designer who worked on Revolution 1979 (a game about the Iranian Revolution) talked about games about revolutions and encouraged fellow designers to tell more of these stories. One fascinating example was Suffragetto, a 1908 board game about suffragettes fighting police officers (heck yeah).

Don’t treat players like they’re stupid

There’s a common attitude among designers that players need to have their hands held in order to figure out a game, but the speaker implored the audience to reject that stereotype, and cited The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as an example of a game that doesn’t explain much and yet is still very learnable.

GDC and Lost Levels over the years

The speaker described the changing games industry scene since 2012, including a painful account of how they attended Lost Levels while homeless a few years ago. One point they specifically criticized was the development of “cults of personality” around some people in the community.

“How I almost fucked up real bad”

An account of the speaker’s starry-eyed virtual reality project, attempting to use VR as an “empathy machine” to connect abled people with disabled people’s experiences. They wanted to make a game where you play as a person with one arm and experience phantom limb syndrome, but after talking to a person with one arm they realized they were treating the condition as a novelty rather than as a real experience of real people. So they scrapped the project.

Hobbies

This one took aim at the idea that your hobbies need to be monetized, and the speaker described their gardening hobby. Eventually it took a darker turn toward discussions of climate change.

Front doors

A criticism of games that lock their “front doors,” creating initial barriers in terms of things like difficulty or accessibility. The speaker pointed out that it can be OK to lock the door as long as you “open a window” by providing the player with some other way of entering the game.

Hackerspaces

The speaker, who is local to San Francisco, talked up hackerspaces and makerspaces like Noisebridge in the city, encouraging developers to make use of their equipment and communities and create new ones in their area if none exist.

Image descriptions on Twitter (Me!)

Mid-Lost Levels I decided to get up for a PSA about image descriptions (a.k.a. alternative text) on Twitter. I encouraged everybody to turn on the checkbox in their Twitter settings and to write descriptions for all their images in order to help blind and low-vision folks take part in the conversation.

Slurs in online games

Speaker: @regisRquoi

As you can imagine, this microtalk lamenting the prevalence of homophobic and racist slurs in online gaming went over pretty well with the Lost Levels crowd. In particular the speaker got big cheers for saying “I don’t think homophobic people deserve to play games.”

Toe Jam & Earl is a Roguelike

This was a pretty simple one, basically just making the case that Toe Jam & Earl has many of the properties of a Roguelike (typically defined as having permadeath and randomized levels). As the speaker pointed out, lots of people probably think of Spelunky as one of the earlier examples popularizing the genre — not counting the original Rogue of course) — but may not realize that they already played a Roguelike much earlier in their life.

Don’t exclude nonbinary people

I didn’t catch all of this, but generally it focused on ways that progress is being made in terms of better representation for women and other identities, but it can still be easy to accidentally exclude nonbinary folks in games.

Randomizers and constraint solvers

Two speakers got up in a row to talk about their experiences building randomizers for retro games. It was my first time hearing about these things, but apparently they mod the games to randomize things like item placement. They talked about some of the social dynamics of that community as well, specifically how when one of the people leading a Final Fantasy randomizer project turned out to have said some slurs, they forked it and started their own version. The lesson? “If the people in power aren’t listening to you, fuck ‘em, burn it down, and build your own.”

Giving gifts

Speaker: Robert Yang

Yang encouraged designers to revisit the concept of giving gifts selflessly, and to make games as gifts — for your parents, for your significant other, for yourself. He also pointed out that the games industry has managed to take gift giving and make it sinister with the advent of loot boxes and gacha. As he put it, “the game industry fucked up loot and it fucked up boxes.”

Managing a community

A short one about how sometimes people create games or communities around games and then throw their hands up and absolve themselves of responsibility for those communities and their well-being, and how they need to instead listen to the needs of the community and try to help.

“There shouldn’t be authored stories in games”

A student who hadn’t made any games yet but was excited about starting presented their ideas about game narrative, which mainly revolved around the idea that games should focus on emergent narratives that stem from the game systems themselves, rather than linear, “authored” stories. They said that people trying to make “cinematic” games should probably just be making movies. This one was kind of funny for me because I remember having some very similar ideas when I was a student, though I’ve somewhat mellowed out in recent years (cinematic games are fine by me).

Asking for help

This was one of the more raw and emotional microtalks. The speaker got up to tell the audience that they’re struggling with life in general and trying to find a job in games, and encouraged people to hang out afterwards and talk to them. Compared to the kind of cynical networking that often happens at GDC, this was clearly someone looking for some genuine human connection to help them through their life.

Get involved in activism

In response to the many microtalks that mentioned the seeming inevitability of climate change, the speaker told the audience that there are still things we can do, and pointed them to organizations doing work to fight climate change. I second this one wholeheartedly!

How to solicit user feedback

A user researcher provided some tips and tricks on how to collect feedback on your game or software. As someone who performs user research pretty regularly myself, a lot of it was quite familiar, including one big takeaway: pay attention to user problems instead of their suggested solutions. Then you can come up with the best solution to their problems.

Pokémon Go and geolocation

This one was perfectly appropriate considering that this year a big Pokémon Go-branded “Powerbank” was installed smack in the middle of the gazebo. The speaker mused about the weird digital colonization/gentrification implied by a big company making a game that designates certain locations as “culturally significant.” They encouraged designers to make games about “our own spaces,” taking back control of them from large corporations.

How lucky we are

We wrapped up on a pretty appropriate final microtalk acknowledging the privilege of those who were able to attend GDC and Lost Levels, whether because they live near San Francisco or could afford a plane ticket, and reminding people to share what they learned here with the rest of the community, including those who couldn’t make it.

That’s a wrap. Again, if you were one of the speakers let me know!

The “Radically Casual” Charm of Lost Levels originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on March 23, 2019 at 11:44 PM.

By: Evan Minto

#Anime #News #Ani-Gamers

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