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PAX Prime 2015 schedule

Here’s where I’ll be if you wanna stop by and we can wink at each other back and forth

Friday 6:30PM - 7:30PM Sasquatch Theater AppJunkies Live: The Worst Games Ever Made

Join the AppJunkies as they highlight the best of the worst games, straight from the seedy side of the app store. It's an entirely new lineup of horrible app disasters, so prepare to be amazed (and slightly stunned) at this fast-paced journey through the Land of Absurdity. Often dubbed "the MST3K of B-Grade apps," it's an hour of your life you won't get back. Audience heckling encouraged…at least for those not rendered speechless.

Saturday & Sunday: All day ACT Theater I’m an Exploding Kittens/Oatmeal booth laborer!

Sunday 10:00AM - 11:30AM Hydra Theater The 3rd Annual* PAX Rumble! N64 Wrestling, 30 Challengers, and YOU!

Against the better judgment of all involved, we're back for the 3rd Annual PAX Rumble! Except this is really our 3rd Rumble in 2 years, but we're just so dang excited! 30 incredibly talented members of the gaming community will crowd around a Nintendo 64-era wrestling game and yell at each other for your amusement. Previous PAX wrestling panels have seen a man in American flag pants power bombed through a table, bottles broken over the head of a doctor wearing a velvet tracksuit, and a Diet Coke can who died and was resurrected by magic. What barely containable chaos will unfold this time around? How much longer will Penny Arcade permit this nonsense? The next step is involving actual professional wrestlers, right? Life is strange.

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Journey

This is the story of my overwhelmingly emotional playthrough of Journey.

I played the first half of the game more or less on my own; I ran into a couple of fellow travelers, but our time together was brief.

Then, one night, I began the second half. Almost immediately upon starting, I was joined by an anonymous someone and we ended up beating the game together: slogging through the elements of the wastes, dodging the dragons, stopping and calling loudly when we got separated, waiting for one another to unlock new areas, nudging and singing to each other as we travelled.

At the very end of the game, after you collapse in the snow and enter The Afterlife or Paradise or whatever you want to call it, we goofed around together, expressing what limited exuberance we could to each other. We flew and surfed and played, but never strayed too far, and I found myself looking for their white song bubble to make sure they hadn’t continued on without me. They hadn’t.

When we were done, we landed together on the snowy platform just short of the crevice. We both knew we were about to beat the game. My friend started to run circles around me, mashing their song button — our established form of urgent communication. I had no real way to tell them goodbye, so I walked in the snow to form the shape of a heart. They walked the same path, then drew an even bigger one around it.

Then we turned and walked into the light together, and the scene faded on our two shrinking silhouettes.

(originally written Mar 30, 2012)

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“Oh, what a day… what a lovely day!”

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hey dats me

Warm-up study of a buddy of mine.

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advice

After my panel at G4C last week, I got a question via email that I wanted to share. I hope this advice was good, and I’d definitely like to hear any additional advice others might give.

Curious to hear your thoughts on a hypothetical, since you described this as a long, ongoing struggle: What would you say if a female friend came to you and said she wanted to start talking about video games publicly online? Would you encourage her to do so today? I guess I'm imagining someone who's not already "in" this world, who's not a developer or blogger or journalist or whatever. Your thoughts?

I'd tell her about my experiences, and I would give her the best advice I could: follow your passion, talk about whatever you want to talk about, and understand that the internet is going to be brutal to you no matter how awesome or charming or intelligent you are at what you do. 

I would encourage her to make content for the joy of making it and not to rely on the conversation or feedback for her validation. 

I would tell her that comments are an abyss, but I don't think I would say "don't read the comments" or "don't feed the trolls" because it puts the responsibility on her, which she doesn't deserve. 

I would tell her to be careful about her personal information online and to take measures to have a degree (or ten) of separation from her work on the internet. 

And I would tell her that her mental health is the most important thing. If the project takes a toll on her, I would tell her that she needs to understand there's no shame or defeat in stepping away from it. As I am very fond of saying: it's just fucking video games. Take care of your own mind and heart first. 

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Best email ever

Recently I spoke at PAX East with two other (amazing) ladies on the subject of user interface & experience in video games. The panel, called Heads Up, was a lot of fun and we’re hoping to do it again at PAX Prime.

Yesterday, I received a wonderful email from a young man. Here’s a part of it:

I just wanted to reach out and thank you so much for your talk at PAX. The 3 of you were fucking amazing. You all inspired me to get back into playing games and get involved with the community. What'd I'd really like to thank you for though is inspiring my girlfriend. She recently went back to school to study game design. In a world where she constantly feels discouraged, I think the three of you really inspired her. She attended the talk concerning women and games, and apparently left early because according to her she said it felt like a pity party and an incredibly negative talk. I wasn't there so I can't actually comment on it, but it left her feeling very discouraged. Afterwards she said she really wished that the 3 of you had been on the panel, and that your panel spoke way more to her as a women in gaming panel than the other. She said she hoped one day she could be just as great as you three. Not once was the panel about women in gaming, it was just about you three, answering questions like bosses and delighting the crowd with how professional and positive you were. Personally, I wish I could work with more people like all of you everyday. So I just wanted to say thank you for inspiring me and my girlfriend, and thank you for creating such an inspiring panel. Also thank you for just being awesome.

I don’t know which women-in-games panel is being referenced here, and I don’t include that passage to shame anyone who may have spoken or plans to speak on those types of panels. However, having been on one or two of those types of panels myself, I tend to now believe that the best women-in-games panels you can be on are the panels where you’re being a woman and you’re talking about your work in games, not about your gender.

I was once on a panel at ECCC about diversity in comics and games. At one point I turned to one of my copanelists after he made some excellent points about widespread reactions to black characters in comics, and I asked, “Honest question -- how do you get people more accustomed to seeing characters of color in comics and games?” and his immediate response was, “Put more characters of color in comics and games!”

It’s an attitude that’s stuck with me. Put more diversity in and people will get used to diversity. Maybe they won’t like it at first, but they’ll get used to it or they’ll go somewhere else. Just by existing in this space, you’re making a difference. You’re normalizing the previously-unusual. It is easy to be discouraged. Do not be discouraged.

Exist, and do work. The rest is but wind.

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Kate Welch wanted to talk about robots. And so we talked about robots. She also showed my favorite video in YEARS! Robot Wrestling!

1. Ketchup-pumping robots don’t quite have it together.

2. Someday we’ll watch robotic soccer, just not today.

     bonus gif

3. Honda is trying to make Asimo walk like a human… a sneaky human.

    bonus gif

4. ROBOT WRESTLING! ROBOT WRESTLING!

You can watch the whole panel for PAX East here!

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I love the character cards in Dragon Age: Inquisition so I made one for my Inquisitor, Adrielle.

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STAR WARS- EPISODE VII- Now in color!

I wanted to do a quick color pass before I get back to work on Black Widow and my various other projects. I think I’ve gotten it out of my system …for now :)

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*turn, stare, smile*

The expression “actions speak louder than words” seems less and less relevant as our society hurls itself toward a purgatory of Sisyphean debates. Words have become everything. There has been no point in human history in which we’ve so easily shared our must mundane thoughts, and this has created...

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We now have top notch artwork on display at No Goblin HQ.

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I thought I’d do a little spotlight on some amazing artists you should be following!

Alexandra Douglass (tumblr | twitter | portfolio) - creator of the webcomic The Cloud Factory. An incredible digital painter, adept at creating powerful, atmospheric pieces. She’s a constant source of personal inspiration to step up my game.

Kali Ciesemier (tumblr | twitter | portfolio) - omega-level freelance illustrator. She’s got the best colors in the business, as far as I’m concerned, with some of the most magnificently composed pieces going today.

Anne Szabla (tumblr | twitter | deviantART) - creator of Bird Boy, one of the most original-looking comics out there. With an aesthetic that’s simultaneously remote and personal, her worlds are deep, lived-in, and mythic.

You should definitely check these artists out if you haven’t already, you won’t be disappointed.

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I gave my notice at ArenaNet this week. My last day will be 9/4.

Working on an MMO has been my dream job for a long, long, long time. When I got hired at ArenaNet, I truly believed I had found my home. And for the better part of four years, it's been exactly that. The developers are my family, and we created something extraordinary together.

The opportunities I've been given at this company have floored me. I started as a web designer, became the UI Lead of the Extended Experience team, and then moved into UI for the game itself. I've represented our game and our company proudly at conventions, in interviews, and as the host of our awesome developer show, "Points of Interest". I've flown to Shanghai twice to brainstorm UI with our Chinese publisher, Kong Zhong. The list goes on.

What's next, you may wonder? I have no idea.

To my coworkers: you are crazy talented people. Keep on making incredible things.

To the Guild Wars 2 players: ArenaNet does what it does in the sincere, singular hope of absolutely delighting you. Remember that!

To Mike O'Brien: thank you for a glorious four years, a wonderful game, and a terrific company.

I'll leave you with what I posted on the Penny Arcade forums on the eve of Guild Wars 2's launch:

"I'm going to try to get some sleep, because I'm exhausted, and tomorrow is going to be a very long day. There is such a range of emotion I'm experiencing right now, but mostly I just want to say that I hope you guys love it. Love it forever, or love it and then move on to something else, but just love it, and know that three hundred of us melted down our hearts to give it to you. It's all yours soon."

- Kate

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!!!!!!!!!!!!

Commander Shepard

Fashionization 2014

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Snake Church religious pamphlets, 1960-1980