on "queerness" & making things for yourself

since the beginning i've had immense problems with the label "queer games". i understand the reasons it's been adopted - visibility, increasing awareness, empowering others. but what are we supposed to do with it? so much of it has been about getting recognition, but it's only ever recognition given on the terms defined by the people oppressing you. once the story turns into "we all just want to be treated like you" it becomes the same old narrative of assimilation and undermines any kind of subversiveness "queer" might have been supposed to stand for in the first place.

another problem is one i witnessed at QGCon in Berkeley this past year, where no one speaking really seemed to know exactly what they meant by "queer" but they sure were all very eager to adopt it to mean whatever they felt like. i guess what i could boil it down to, if anything, was "difference". as in, how does this "queerness" offer us a fresh new perspective on this particular previously mundane, stagnant area of study? how does it provide us with the necessary techniques for dealing with a changing landscape for how we evaluate art and culture? or how we evaluate ourselves? these all presumed "queerness" to be some kind of substantive, identifiable thing they could use instead of the very vague, amorphous term it is. there was a lot of talk on why a lot of the ways we traditionally talk about things are problematic, but none on why "queer" is problematic, or why "problematic" is problematic, none on how terms often turn into meaningless panaceas easily tossed around or used to shut down any meaningful discussion from happening, none on how they're used by the more-privileged-underprivileged to define all the terms of discussion amongst themselves and shut out the less-privileged-underprivileged.

much of online social justice's image has been come to be defined by young confused people engaging in the complete contradiction of wanting to be fierce outsiders and wanting to go viral for it. several recent pieces by queer games writers like Mattie Brice, Aevee Bee, Zoya Street, Kat Haché, and Katherine Cross have called for SJ activists online to curb some of their anger and engage with others more civilly - a completely justifiable response to all the nastiness and pettiness of communities on tumblr and twitter (over the last year or so especially) and the emotional fallout it's caused in so many people actively working to make these areas better. but i can't say that i think anger's really the problem at all. there's a lot to be angry about, after all, and precious little outlets for letting it out. how we use the anger, however, is another issue entirely - and it's most often used by people who are more interested in gaining followers or visibility for themselves than engaging in any actual debate with other people, as Katherine Cross talks about in her piece.

i've supposedly been part of a "queer games scene" in the past year or whatever. ostensibly it was a community of mostly transwomen mostly living in the bay area. leading up to GDC last year we joked about a "trans hive mind" and being mistaken for each other because the public assumed that there can only be one queer trans person who makes games. things seemed to be moving so fast, and so unsurprisingly they ended so fast. a few days ago, i joked to an acquaintance that we all hate each other and don't talk anymore. that's an exaggeration, but only a little bit of one. it wouldn't exactly be a great tragedy that people moved on from this community that was having negative effects on them and did what they needed to to care for themselves, except that we never had a community in the first place. we had a social group.

and after all the talk about sisterhood and women not fighting each other, we never actually did much of anything to ensure those things happened. everyone seemed too infatuated with the idea of being a scrappy outsider infiltrating an oppressive space, more in love with the image they were coming to be seen as than anything else. because in reality - deep emotional scars, lack of trust, and bad communication broke stuff up before it could ever really begin. there was nothing ultimately sustainable there.

i'm offering that not as a cautionary tale but as one way to show why i feel ambivalent at best about the eager adaptation of these kind of labels. i don't believe in "queerness" because i don't know what that really means. i don't desire to make things "more queer". they're just words to me, words that have caused so much pointless jockeying that i really couldn't give a fuck. i desire to be more honest to myself and others. if i believed in making new year's resolutions, that would be mine.

how many people really want to be outsiders in the first place? i feel we have no meaningful way to distinguish "outsider by circumstance" with "outsider by choice" in this queer games community. the line between them, of course, is very hazy. being trans or queer or a person of color can force you into the position of outsider regardless of whether you've chosen it or not. many adopt the label "activist" because it works better for them but may only be marginally engaged in it. what does it even mean in the context of online? "activist" is another "queer", another panacea used to talk over those with less of a voice.

how much of this conversation about hot-button topics that goes on, across different blogs, on the twit-o-sphere, etc just the image of a conversation happening in just the image of a community, just different young insecure people positioning themselves for potential career advancement? how much is it that in the end, they just want to be recognized, just want to feel like they're a worthwhile human, and feel like they've done something valuable with their lives, because that's how society has taught to them evaluate their own worth? how much of it is hoping that this period of economic instability will just subside and lead to a secure, happy job doing what they want to do? these are entirely reasonable and justifiable feelings, but they have absolutely no bearing on the meaningful actions we take for others. in the end they just amount to us helping us feel better about ourselves.

we can't control much, but we can control how we treat ourselves and others. and that is, honestly, really the only thing that matters in the end.

i sense Mattie's struggle, in particular, but i worry a lot about the toll it might take on a person's sanity. sometimes you do so much just to get recognized, and then when you're passed over you feel you must have done something horribly wrong. Mattie says in her article that she spoke at 14 conferences in 3 different countries and co-founded QGCon while still living in SF on money made from game criticism. that, by absolutely no stretch of the imagination, seems like any lack of effort on her part. it actually strikes me as a little insane (not that that's always a bad thing). but so much of our culture is resistant to letting in meaningful structural change, and what gains are made get made painfully, with great sacrifice, over a long period of time. sometimes you get lucky and break through, sometimes you don't. it's not always up to you. sometimes the game is just rigged.

sites like Kotaku and Polygon are funded by empires built on advertising money. they're only interested in outsider voices insofar as it helps their public image. whether or not individual people who write for the sites stand for those ideas or not is not the point. their employers are the ones who call the shots. they might tell Mattie they love what she's doing, but it still would be too big of a "risk" for them to hire her. transwomen talking about being transwomen don't make them money. these venues have continually shown they're only interested in an appearance of openness, not doing much of anything meaningful to bring it about. the same goes for conferences like GDC or PAX, or groups like the IDGA.

so let's offer a less inherently self-destructive proposition than the "i must be recognized as soon as possible or i will not be able to survive" model. let's plan long-term. how do you continue to make things and survive in spite of the disdain or disinterest of others?

one is there are plenty of publications not funded on big money like Kotaku and Polygon are, and there are plenty of conferences not funded on big money like PAX or GDC are. several people seem to be having luck lately with Patreon as a way to crowdfund their work (p.s. i have one too!). there's still a lot of fertile ground in bringing what's happening in the progressive games community entirely outside of game spaces and into other art spaces, though no one seems entirely sure how to do that at this point.

all i can offer ultimately is this: support yourself any way you can. don't buy into the idea that success comes with money or online followers. don't feed any more time and energy into the PR cycle of places like Kotaku or Polygon or credence to the idea that being recognized by them legitimizes your existence. don't slow yourself down for the sake of others. do what you need to do for yourself. then, and only then, will it become clear how to help others.

the game may be rigged, but that doesn't have to stop you. the game goes away, but in this moment you are eternal - and you have the entire universe in front of you to explore, not just some tiny little niche community on the internet.

five of my favorite videogame soundtracks

as someone who is pretty fond of videogame music, and even participated in a community for rearranging it for many years, i tend to feel now like it usually falls pretty safely into one kind of musical cliche or another. either it's the JRPG soundtrack with the typical range of character and battle themes, or the rockin' action or racing game, or the "epic" orchestral soundtrack, or the ambient background music, or lately, "generic chiptune" - you get the idea. even older soundtracks, like many well-revered NES/SNES/Genesis soundtracks, all start sounding like the same second-rate Yellow Magic Orchestra or Yes-aping stuff to me after awhile. and even when they're not like that, there will be only one or two things going on that i find that interesting, but nothing really that makes them stand out as anything other than a work of their time, meant for a very specific purpose.

but then there are a few game soundtracks that seemed to have come out of left field, and show that there have been people who were interested in doing something different with the hardware they were given, if only out of boredom. they often languish in obscure games that are either terrible or commercially unsuccessful (often both), or are misunderstood by fans expecting the soundtracks to push the same emotional buttons most game soundtracks do (i'm thinking of the Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance soundtrack here).

i have to admit that i'm starting to become less and less fond of the idea of a traditional game soundtrack, and more into things interactive audio, that directly speak to the way the player interacts with the game, instead of awkwardly looped and sandwiched in. i'll mention a few examples of this later. really, my interest in a lot of old game music now has very little to do with "nostalgia" or any associations i had with the games, and much more to do with the way the different kinds of hardware used created interesting compromises for composers that led them making some really interesting sounds. if you can divorce the music from the game, often you will hear things or look at it in a way that you wouldn't otherwise.

now that there aren't really hardware limits on what a game composer can do anymore, the period of game music limited by its hardware is kind of an odd, unrepeatable blip in time. so i think it's important to, instead of just forgetting about that moment and moving on, go back and unearth some of the interesting things that people were doing at the time, within the limitations they had.

(i'm not including Mother 2 by Keiichi Suzuki and Hip Tanaka on this list because it's so well-known, but it is probably my favorite game soundtrack. it goes without saying that it is a work that both stands completely outside the game, and enhances it in every way.)

but anyway, without further ado:


Equinox (SNES) by Tim & Geoff Follin

Tim Follin is the well-known hyper-prolific wizard of a billion different game soundtracks on all kinds of different hardware. his music is usually pretty free-associative, heavily prog inspired stuff that contains all kinds of sound manipulation. the one big complaint that is often leveled at him and his brother's music is that it doesn't fit the games it's, and that he's just doing whatever he feels like doing (which he admits himself in this interview). still, when you're commissioned to do soundtracks for the amount of total shitty games as he was, i can see why he just chose to entertain himself instead.

Equinox is an exception, though, and what i consider the peak of him and his brother's work. his usual propensity to show off is toned way down, and the technical wizardry is channeled into establishing a consistent mood and feel. it's really a remarkable piece of work and shows how great of a composer he and his brother could really be, game music or not.

here's a link to the soundtrack (in MP3).


Animorphs (GBC) by Randy Wilson

i was pointed out to this soundtrack recently by a friend of mine. i really don't know anything about it, other than Randy Wilson was a likely collaborator with the famous japanese noise group The Boredoms, which goes a long way in explaining the sound of the music in this game. there's really no adequate way to explain the sound, but there's nothing really like it. you'll have to take a listen to the link above (which is one of the most subdued tracks in the game, really) to see for yourself.

the really peculiar thing is that when i was looking up gameplay videos on youtube, i found that the music plays at half-speed of the GBS rip i had, throughout the game. this really changes the feel of music and lessens its bludgeoning impact drastically. i thought whoever ripped it from the game on zophar's domain must have made a mistake, but i found a different rip in a different place and the music was the same speed. my only guess is that it was intended to be that way (given the Boredoms association), but upon implementation the game developer freaked and slowed it down to half speed so it wouldn't be so grating to the target audience of young kids playing the game.

here's the rip of the soundtrack on zophar (you will need some kind of plugin to play .gbs files).


Dune (Amiga/DOS) by Stéphane Picq

i discovered Stéphane Picq's work through seeing gameplay footage of the amiga game Extase. i was really blown away by what i saw of that game, but the audio in particular is wonderful. the only reason i didn't include it here is because it's apparently fully interactive within the context of the game, in the vein of  David Kanaga's recent work.

Picq worked on a lot of game soundtracks through the late 80's and 90's, and i have to admit i'm still not terribly familiar with most of them. from what i've heard, though, he has a great ear for sound design, even when his music is full of cheesy cliches. the limited set of sounds on the DOS version of Dune mitigates a lot of the datedness and is definitely the best and most interesting use of the adlib soundcard i've ever heard (which btw, i've found that a lot of game composers who did really interesting things with limited sets of sounds tended to pick pretty boring, awful sounds when they were given the choice to choose whatever sound they wanted to)  but it's also missing a lot of the range and charm of the original Amiga version. there was also an enhanced soundtrack released of the Amiga version, but i prefer the sound of the original better.

my favorite version i've heard by far, though, is the one featured in the video i embedded above, that uses the reverb feature on the not-so successful adlib gold soundcard. it really brings the adlib sounds out in the best way possible. you can download all of that soundtrack here (scroll about halfway down the page).


Recca (NES) by Nobuyuki Shioda

Recca is an (apparently) mega-hard bullet hell game made late in the NES's lifetime that takes a lot of advantage of the hardware, both in the hyper-fast visuals and the extremely agressive sound.

Nobuyuki Shioda is a composer i really know nothing about. he composed a few different, fairly conventional game soundtracks in the early 90's, but he apparently found his voice emulating the popular club techno music of the time on the NES soundchip. while the music is very much in the club vein, it really doesn't sound like anything else. the limits of the soundchip really bring it out in a way i couldn't describe. if you don't like repetitive music you probably won't like this, but the really interesting and unique sound more than makes it worthy to include here.

you can download the NSF rip of the soundtrack here. the game's music was also released separately, but i can't find any of the mp3s anywhere.


Last Bible 3 (SFC) by Hiroyuki Yanada

Last Bible 3's music is very much in the vein of a traditional JRPG soundtrack (for a game released only on the Super Famicom, that has still yet to be translated to english) and as such covers all of the different cliche JRPG range of moods and settings you'd come to expect from a game soundtrack like this. these days, those kinds of soundtracks are only the mildest curiosity to me, but this one stands out for me. what makes it unique, i suppose, is how personal and warm it feels. the sound of it is i guess what people often call "quirky" - likely inspired by Earthbound (especially because i can hear one or two Beatles references), but it's still kind of its own thing. it's not the feat of sound design of the other games i listed, but the use of sounds is generally very good and this is an obscure game soundtrack that really deserves more recognition.

you can download the SPC rip of the soundtrack here.

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as i mentioned in a previous post, check out my tumblr SOUNDS FROM THE ABYSS for much more strange/unusual/unique/interesting game music.

SOUNDS FROM THE ABYSS

i made a tumblr as a companion piece to lost worlds for strange (thought not just strange, but unique and interesting) videogame music. i HIGHLY recommend that you check it out.

the puzzle world

it's a gross understatement to say that i've spent a lot of time thinking about my sexuality.

i've had a lot of major revelations about my life in the past few years that have led to intense periods of isolation and self-discovery. sexuality has always been at the center of this. i usually settle on the fact that i'm interested in women, and leave it at that. by default, that makes me "queer" or "a lesbian". i won't deny those labels because they have some way of communicating to the rest of the universe what my interests are and i don't want to be an asshole.

then i'll go on okcupid and find basically every profile i look at strange and alienating in one way or another. part of it might be that i find the format of aggregating a bunch of headshots of people i'm supposed to be interested in objectifying by its nature, but it also says something about how people feel they have to present themselves to get a date. and there's definitely a pretty consistent language people use to describe themselves. depending on where you live or who you're interested in, it's different, but it's always there.

then i've had sad moments of realization when i see all of my personal heroes identify as straight or some variant of bisexual/pansexual. i couldn't think of any lesbian heroes i have off the top of my head (i believe very strongly that anyone who biologically essentializes against transwomen must have other substantial flaws in their thinking), though i'm sure there are a few. sometimes it seems kind of ridiculous that i would even give it this weight, because i understand that "non-gay" people are a vast majority of the population. but knowing that the identity i have is supposed to make me different from them in some way makes me feel pretty bad about whoever i am.

and then i'll feel inspired by something someone male-identified has done or said, or guy friends will express interest in me, and because i feel very alienated with my own identity, i'll try to let that in. and then i go over in my head many many times how maybe i'm something else, like pansexual, because that would make me more open to the world and less focused on what "lesbian" or "queer" means i can and can't do. and then i think about how girls that i feel attracted to could just be some projection of how i see myself, or a desire for the sort of strong female support i didn't have early in life. or that negative feelings i have towards male figures early in my life are obscuring feelings i might have for men.

but i realize that's just easy. it's just me, out of frustration, trying to indulge in what norms and past abuse have tried to make me believe. in better moments, basically everything feels in sync and these feelings aren't exerting any sway over me. in weaker moments, though, it is incredibly hard for me, without the support of others, to be able to separate parts of myself out and understand who i am and that i'm not some kind of freak or monster for being who i am.

going my own path and stumbling my way through all this doubt and confusion has instilled in me a very strong need for autonomy. in order to not be a victim to all of this expectation, i've found it completely vital to understand why these norms exist, who's enforcing them, and what their motivation for doing so is.

askhole, volume 1

it's been a whole three fucking months since i've posted anything in this blog! i apologize. i have no good excuse for not updating more frequently, other than being stuck in my own head and endlessly second guessing myself

about a week ago i started a tumblr for strange videogame screenshots. just today i decided to add one of those "ask me anything" things to it to see what sort of questions i'd get. i only have three so far, but in an effort to get myself to actually post things, here they are:


One of the qualities of your music that I try to emulate is a feeling that the music is part of something much larger. Not that it feels incomplete, but that the track is just one element in a larger universe. Is this intentional? Or did you read that and think, "what is he talking about?" -Ben Prunty

i guess i have a belief that music, like all art, is there to capture a particular feeling, thought, or idea that already exists somewhere in the universe. whether or not i've done this intentionally, i think i have always approached it this way.

it is impossible, though, to get around the fact that the music i've made at each point of my life has been very reflective of the emotional place i was in at the time.

in high school (the OCR music i did) it was a kind of happiness that i had some sort of musical tools to express myself in and a naive faith that things were going to be great as soon as i got out of ohio and into the world

in college (the unidentified flavors stuff i did) it was much more shattered and incomplete because of how alienated i felt from the people around me.

from then on (basically just the Dys4ia soundtrack so far) it's been very overwhelmed but still trying to find a place of peace and happiness to operate within in the world.

i had a more involved answer but i think this best explains everything.

good job on the FTL soundtrack, btw!

(edit): i might as well include the additional stuff i cut out of the original answer
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when i was starting out i think i was mostly motivated by having some sort of textural balance - not too many smooth or sharp sounds, etc. sometimes i'd just make pick random sounds i liked and tried to relentlessly hammer them into the mold somehow.

i was also terrified of the idea of repetition, because i was sequencing everything out by mouse alone. if i just repeated some part that was mathematically exactly the same (no volume variation or anything) as a previous part then i'd just be making a machine, and not something that was human. i won't say this is the best way or even a good way to approach it, because it's really came from a fear of the process that had nothing to do with the end result. mostly what it did was make the process of music-making a much more laborious, and less fun/give-and-take-style exercise.

despite the setbacks to the old approach, i always felt like if i were making something, i'd have to at least be a friend to the sounds i'm using and do justice to them. i wanted to let them have their day, like they're little creatures. i wanted to (and still do want to) have some sort of faith in them. in some ways it was admirable, but in other ways it was very naive.

now my approach is somewhat different. i try to find sounds that are interesting and work with the sorts of timbres and weirdnesses they have, instead of trying to relentlessly shape them into something. with the Dys4ia soundtrack i left all the background chatter very exposed because i wanted it to have that dry, uncomfortable, unsexy feeling that untreated audio recordings do (since it's a game about feeling uncomfortable with oneself). i do still think about the music i do as having some sort of narrative, though not always in a linear way. with BGM, the music invariably has to repeat, so you can't put the same sort of linear narrative arc there. instead it's more like a musical snapshot of a particular sort of feeling, which is what i tried to do with the Dys4ia music.


pizzapuke asked you: 
thanks for including skyroads on your blog, it was one of my favorite games as a kid (i've paraphrased this cause i lost the exact message)

no problem! i'm sort of surprised i never played it, given that i grew up with DOS games


animatedscreenshots asked you:
Not a question but the source link for Metamoqester contains the phrase "In a hilarious reversal of normal events, the baby rapes you!" :\

that's what i get for trying to link to things other than wikipedia =/