Speaker

Mattie Brice

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Mattie Brice is a play and games critic, designer, and activist. She previously wrote at publications like Kotaku, Paste Magazine, and PopMatters about design and social justice within the games industry, and now writes independently at Alternate Ending. She also designs experimental games like EAT, Mission, and her most notable Mainichi, which was exhibited at the Museum of Design in Atlanta and an Official Selection at the International Festival of Independent Games. Mattie regularly speaks at games events such as the Game Developers Conference and Different Games, including being the international keynote at Game Connect Asia Pacific and co-founder of the Queerness and Games Conference. She is currently working on more community organizing and an analogue series of play experiences that explore issues of relationships and consent.
SF/Oakland, CA January 31, 2015
diva ex machina - a perspective on games
Discussion of harassment and sexuality

There is a clean narrative that the games industry is trying to push when it comes to diversity looks like for the medium. The same kinds of games with different people in them. Young girls learning how to code to one day join the ranks of developers on big-budget productions. More people buying products. The kinds of diversity this celebrates is just further proof of an unwillingness to change: games still need to look a certain kind of polished, people still have to make a certain amount of money, and both need to fit into a certain kind of culture. Diversity isn't just about different bodies working at corporations and starring leading roles in shooting terrorists. With her experience at being a 'bad minority' in games, Mattie Brice will describe the implications of diversity not for the games industry, but for the art-form of play itself. People outside of the system do things differently, and the way they act, create, and simply exist upsets how things are to be done. Mattie uses her experience in the games industry to explain how she and others like her act as an intervention to make way for meaningful change, often to the discomfort of the games industry.