Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
Let me say this at the front end: I’m not an avid gamer in the traditional sense. I don’t need to pick up a Playstation controller every night. I could give a damn about earning trophies. I have absolutely zero interest in what Kotaku and IGN have to say about most games. But here’s the thing: I love great games. And when I find a truly fantastic, enchanting and smart game - I am obnoxious about it.
And so all of that pre-cursor had to be said because I am going to take this opportunity to say that people like me who have never played COD or God of War or anything of the tentpole games that eat up all the media’s attention need to start talking about truly wonderful games more. Why? Because honestly, gaming is an art form and it’s getting a bad rap.
Perfect example: Child of Light.
I went on a slight hunt to find the reviews of Child of Light and as I expected, the commentary on the quality of the game were middling at best. It’s humorous to me that as soon as a game shows any amount of artistic integrity or dares to stick to a narrative style - it becomes trite or too childish. Somehow, Madden games which seemingly never change and come out every year to my udder befuddlement manage to score near perfect reviews. It’s a strange dichotomy that I hate and that often causes me to just ignore gaming media altogether:
Standard issue games (shooters, sporting titles) that show any amount of technical or artistic prowess = INCREDIBLE GAME CHANGERSSSSSSS.
Versus:
Games driven by art and technique (Hohokum, Child of Light) that attempt to gamify emotion = Disappointing borefests that are super pretty, though.
I was sitting in a meeting the other day with a bunch of parents who were absolutely villainizing gaming. It’s too violent. It’s too addictive. It’s too grown up. It’s making our kids fat. It’s making our kid uncreative. I got fed up. It may have been unfair of me, but I told them quite plainly: you’re buying the wrong damn games for your kids. There are pockets of the industry that are doing beautiful things - but they aren’t the pockets with crazy advertising budgets. They aren’t buying billboards or commercials during Sunday Night Football. People, especially kids, are going to want to game in this culture. So make your kid the coolest damn kid and buy them the raddest games on the market. And guess what? Most of that shit NEEDS your support because it’s indie, indie, indie:
Similarly, if you are sitting around playing the same damn game over and over again (I see you Destiny. Don’t tell me you’re not Mass Effect, Jr.) - then maybe take the chance on the weird $9.99 game and then report back. I promise you’ll come out of some of these indie games more inspired and more excited by gaming than you have in a long time.
And let me just say this: if you want more games like this to be made, support them on Kickstarter, check out that Indie section on Steam and download the bundles, buy a great indie game for a friend. Maybe we can change the conversation about gaming, one beautiful art bomb of a game at a time.
Platformers are sort of this weird thing in gaming. It’s like a super niche band that people like enough to sport the vintage throw back tee, but don’t actually listen to all that often. I can’t get enough of platformers, though, and I especially like when they reinvent some element of game play to make them fresh.
Here’s three I suggest you try if for no other reason than they aren’t the simple platformers you’re used to:
Bit.Trip’s Runner 2:
Why It’s Awesome: Well, running shouldn’t be this fun. I’m serious. The speed and difficulty of the Runner games always accelerates so quickly that you honestly wonder how you managed to complete each level immediately after you completed it. Like some kind of platform amnesia. This sense of accomplishment is addictive, so keep running!
What’s New About It: So Runner is all about running, but the thing that’s new is the additional moves beyond jumping which up the difficulty. The dive feature is something we’ve seen in other platformers, but the ability to extend the dive position for long periods of time is totally new. It also serves as an attack of sorts, which is rad.
Thomas Was Alone
Why It’s Awesome: It’s super rare for me to feel like…deeply depressed about a game about blocks to be over. I mean, this may be because there are so few games about blocks. But, you get my drift. The story is weirdly heartening and the game play is so well-integrated that you start to feel for these various colored shapes.
What’s New About It: Part of the challenge and fun of this game is that each of the named shapes have different skills. Individually, they can’t do much, but together, every level can be tackled. Instead of leveling up to get new skills, you essentially level up to acquire new characters with new skills. This creates a certain amount of favoritism (Sarah is the best.) - but it also keeps you engaged in the story. Also, it’s now available on Android, so you should probably get on that.
Ibb and Obb
Why It’s Awesome: Let’s talk about gravity. It’s not nearly well-examined enough in any game of any kind. Pretty much, it exists and all games obey it. That seems short sighted. Thank goodness Ibb and Obb came around.
What’s New About It: Ibb and Obb takes our universal concept of gravity and says: eh, enough of that. The most important element of the game experience is that you can play both on the top and the bottom of the platforms. Sometimes, it’s to avoid enemies or blockades and other times it’s simply to get rewards. Either way, I don’t know why we haven’t always been able to run on the bottom of platforms.
Weird how gaming can teach you so much about love. It’s a partnership to stay alive. May I be so bold as to suggest that this statement is applicable to both gaming and life? I think I will be.
Playing video games taught me a thing or two about relationships over the years:
1. Both players should be given a chance to take the lead.
2. Sometimes you must embrace being player 2, even if it does mean following your partner around for hours.
3. Saving the other player may present direct risk to oneself. The key is knowing when it’s worth it.
4. It’s rare for people to “level up” at the same time. Managing these evolving highs and lows is the key to winning.
5. Never turn your sword on your partner. Always remember who the real enemy is.
6. Trust is paramount. Sure, player 1 may be three screens ahead, but you’ll catch up eventually.
7. Rewards should be celebrated together, not independently. It’s a tandem victory and both players contributed to the outcome along the way.
8. It’s OK to screw around every once in a while. Taking your time to peruse a level is the equivalent of stopping and smelling the roses in life.
9. But don’t forget what your mutual goal is. Winning life isn’t everything… nope, I take that back. Winning life is everything.
10. If player 1 screws up, you must forgive. You’d want the same in return.
Meet Nina Rivera, a budding web-developer and artist whose work combines interactive installations with creative inspirations. Her most recent project is Messier 4 or M4, for short. It can be seen in the video below, but it’s “inspired by falling dreams, constellations, ball pits, and a really great song,” and uses a Kinect to give humans the ability to manipulate objects in a gallery. It’s currently on display at the Union Depot in St. Paul, Minnesota for Northern Spark 2013, if you want to see it up close. All this at a young age too. Rivera is currently completing her senior year at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Rivera’s fascinated with technology, space, and the deep sea, and her work “has roots in the respective philosophies of object-oriented ontology, phenomenology, and ludology.” (We’ve hyperlinked those definitions for you.) Want a behind-the-scenes look her artist process, and maybe a few extra cat photos on your Instagram feed? Follow Rivera at @ninapipita.
Although she’s as busy as a bee finishing up her academic career, Being Geek Chic caught up with this Lady Geek to chat a bit about her life, loves, and post-grad plans. Read on! For it’s not every day you meet a lady who discovered her passion on Neopets.
Q: What has led you to your passion?
A: I remember being really young (maybe 3 or 4) and sitting with my dad on one of our first computers. The screen was just monochrome and we played some weird form of dominoes with bones. I have no idea what that game was, but that is probably my earliest memory with a computer. For Christmas in 2000, my mom got me a Gateway computer, and really all I did with that thing was play games online and use AIM. Even before then, I had that huge brick of a grey GameBoy, my brothers had a SNES, and eventually I had an N64. Needless to say, I was privileged to constantly be surrounded by and have so much time to spend with technology and video games in general.
Some of my interest in coding came from spending so much time on Neopets and on various chat / sci-fi roleplay forums (I know, big dork over here) that had you write bizarre markup to style your text. I got really good at that - to the point where I sold custom font stylings for X amounts of Neopoints or items or whatever. Those roleplay forums, though, were all about HTML tables. I, in turn, became all about HTML tables. You could say I had an interest in making “cool” and “good looking” stuff online.
It wasn’t actually until the summer before I left for college that I figured out what I wanted to do, and I remember the epiphany so well, mostly because I felt pretty stupid afterwards. A lot of my friends from high school were entering college declared and following what I can only presume to be a long-held ideal or dream for their future. (You know - the “I want to be a doctor / lawyer / etc” kids.) Anyway, that summer I realized that I should take my life-long love for video games and turn it into a career. I’m not exactly where I thought I would be now, but then again back then I had no idea what I was doing, but that’s not to say I don’t like where I’m at.
Q: You’ve accomplished so much, before you’ve even graduated college! We have to ask: what do you have up your sleeve post-graduation?
A: I KNOW IT’S WEIRD AND I’M NOT QUITE SURE HOW TO HANDLE ALL OF IT. Success is really intimidating and sort of bizarre for me, though. Anyway, post-graduation. Thinking about that might be just as intimidating! I know for sure I’m going to pursue another internship - this time in a web design / dev firm. Where, I don’t know. I’ve been talking about moving west a lot lately, and Canada has been thrown around a bit. (That probably means I should do some traveling first, huh?) I really just want to continue making neat stuff, playing around and developing for new tech, or maybe I’ll go and do something web-related with a video game studio. (Is this the part where I plug for how badly I want to work for Bioware?)
Q: You can choose one superpower. What is it?
A: Every time I’m asked this question, my answer changes. For a while it was flight, and then it was Professor X style telepathy (which, it still is occasionally). My oddest answer was being an Animorph, but that was when I was ten. Currently, I think it’d be pretty neat to be able to breathe underwater. Exploring the deep sea is probably the closest I’ll get to being in space and encountering alien life forms.
Q: If you could take any fictional character out for a drink, whom would you choose and what would you drink?
A: Garrus Vakarian from the Mass Effect trilogy. Disregarding my hard bromances/romances with my respective man and femsheps, he is a character that I resonate with. Calibration life, baby. What would we drink? Shots. Shots all night.
Q: What would you tell your 13-year-old self?
A: Treat your mom better. She’s awesome. That, and to be more proactive with my 13y/o interests. You know - go learn more code. Read more about video games - get to know the industry. Don’t be a mindless consumer. Just, you know - pay more attention. (And get a better taste in music!)
Emma Bauer is a Being Geek Chic Contributor. Clearly, she’s got great taste. She is a PR enthusiast, history scholar, tea drinker, fashion devotee, and of course, aspires to Be Geek Chic.
Follow her on twitter: @emmalynnbauer
