Congratulations to Joyce Lin (AGPM '20) for being chosen as one of the 2019 recipients of the Koret Scholarship! With mentorship from her professor, Marcelo Viana Neto, Lin will be polishing her game Queering Spacetime for publication and release during this upcoming year. This game was originally created in ARTG 80G: Visual Communication and Interaction Design, a class taught by Viana Neto. Over the next year, Lin will conduct further research on Queerness, Critical Race Studies, and Game Design in order to expand upon her game's concepts.
The Koret Scholarship provides $1,500 to support undergraduate research and a $500 fellowship for the mentor of the project.
Lin describes her project in more detail below:
My project is Queering Spacetime, an inclusive girl-girl dating-simulation card game for 2-4 players set in a 1950’s pastel desert town and centered on whimsy, sentiment, and a bit of absurdity. I aim to publish the game by the end of Spring quarter.
Queering Spacetime aims to recognize the fact that women-loving-women romance is less thoroughly and positively represented by media compared to heterosexual romance. Thus, a main goal of this game is to incorporate positive representation of queer women, especially queer women of color, in a medium where it is sorely needed. Another main goal is introducing greater awareness of the pliability/subvert-ability of space and time, and how they relate to queerness. Especially, I want to juxtapose the inherent loneliness and incoherence of liminal spaces (think 3am at a gas station) with intimate, possibly absurd choices (Is your first kiss on the lips, cheek, or eyebrows (you miss!)?). In this way, I aim to create feelings in players of belonging and groundedness, even in a space that seems antithetical to creating such.
My research will include finding and playing similar genre games, and learning budgeting, print production, publishing, and marketing. I plan to polish the game by designing additional characters to increase diversity/representation, and revising the rules for clarity. I also aim to draft and extensively playtest a possible competition mode, suggested during many initial playtests. I plan to reach out to friends, volunteers, game designers, both intended and unintended audiences.
By publishing my game I hope to help pave the way for designers with identities like mine in the games industry, and make it a better place for them. Through representation, shared culture, and the juxtaposition of liminality and intimacy to induce wonder and laughter, I hope my game creates a sense of solidarity and belonging for players.
A trailer for the game can be viewed here:
