By Ronald Gordon 

New York Games Week has just concluded, and while I hadn’t had the chance to fully experience everything that was planned for all of the days, I did get the chance to visit a familiar sight. Game-A-Palooza, an event dedicated to highlighting the various Indie Developers within NYC, offered up an amazing time. 

Sadly, half of the interviews I did end up getting are borderline unusable because of sound issues at the venue. It was just too loud for talking to developers. Still, I’d love to shout out the people behind Summon Island, Reaper Madness, MineKeeper, and Bullet Brain for being open about their projects. 

Here are some of the interviews I did.

Guy Blomberg – Frustration Becomes An Opportunity

I thought I would pull a repeat of what I had done last time and interview Amit Hossain of the IGDA. Instead, Amit pointed me in the direction of Guy Blomberg, Co-Founder of New York Games Week. Guy is an exuberant individual, and my talk with him led me through his journey from Australia all the way to NYC, where he thought games deserved to thrive. 

Ronald: How did NY Games Week come about? 

Guy: It’s kind of frustrating here in New York. We can get game shows in other places like PAX or DreamHACK or even industry shows like GDC or DICE and I think from an industry point of view you’re always out at the West Coast to do gaming business. Which is a bit frustrating. I’ve been living in New York for about eight years now, when I first moved over here I was frustrated because the scene felt very spread out. It’s a big city, obviously. But it didn’t feel like there was a cohesive thing that brought everyone together in the same way as some awesome singular events like Games Festival of Color or the Critics Circle Awards (the New York Game Awards) or Games for Change or PlayNYC, all these great events but none of them really sizeable enough to convince many people outside of New York to travel here to do business which I found frustrating. I’ve been involved in gaming events in many other countries. I’m from Australia originally, there was an event that I ran there as a part of PAX in Australia, and that was part of international games week, and I saw this really great opportunity to marry consumer gaming stuff with a business compartment as well. So coming into this, we were like ‘What if we actually went out to everyone, all the different groups and sensations, all the other people who do events as well around this time period, the venues like Coexist and OSNYC, Hex & Co and Wunderville, and what if we get everyone to activate around this period of time, this week?’ Also, partnering with New York Comic Con as a large show with more than one day comes into town as well. 

What if we could create a beat and a moment to try and bring the rest of the games industry, as much as possible, here in New York? So that’s the idea. Originally it was just a ‘Oh let’s see.’ We only had like a month to plan this so let’s just see if it works, let’s just see if people are interested, and I think we’re up to about 40 events that have happened throughout the week, consumer and industry stuff, launch parties, live music performances, Game-A-Palooza, Comic Con, Ad Week and it’s gone pretty well for the first year. 

Ronald: How has it been working with MOME, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment? 

Guy: Awesome! The New York City Mayor’s Office and the NYC Development Group have been incredibly supportive. I think the big thing from them is just they add legitimacy to the idea of New York Games Week as well so their support has a lot of other people in the industry and beyond looking at it and going ‘Oh, this is a thing now. This isn’t just some rag tag fun project that was thrown together.’ But beyond that, their connections and who they’ve introduced us to, and even their promotion and support, there’s promotion of New York Games Week up on LINKNYC and digital displays all around the city has been instrumental in making what we’ve started really legitimate, it also tied into the rest of the gaming infrastructure around New York City, which has been awesome. Again, it was such a short time period together, they really supported us right from the start which is great, but I’m more excited about what we could do with 12 months instead of one month to plan something. 

Ronald: What would you say is the high/low point of NY Games Week? 

Guy: We’re only halfway through it at this point; we’ll see. In terms of so much planning, you know what’s really interesting? It’s mainly been all the other people who have done the event. We’re just the umbrella that’s trying to provide people an excuse and a reason to be at a table. I’ve looked at events like GDC, and I love GDC. I go every year, it’s the main business event in North America, but there’s so many people that are in town at the same time and I think we actually saw that here. The low lights are all the last minute changes that keep coming through, or it’s people asking ‘Can you update my event with this?’ and all the curations going on with that. I think a highlight was there was a dinner that I was involved in at the beginning of the week on Monday where a lot of games industry decision makers were there from New York. The positivity and the response from them has been ‘Oh, finally! This is what we need here in the East Coast to not only support the local gaming scene but also try and get the attention of the gaming industry broadly to come here as well.’ That was really validating for me personally, and for Kristie, and Amit, and all the folks who helped with this. 

Ronald: What is your biggest takeaway from NY Games Week? 

Guy: My takeaway is that there has been a need for more East Coast game development event representation and reason and excuses for people in the games industry here to connect and celebrate, as much as there’s a need for people outside of New York to actually travel here to do business as well. I think the response has been beyond what we expect for this short time period and it’s incredibly validating. Already, the ideas and the opportunities to build this into something really significantly meaningful next year are pretty big. 

Camron Gonzalez, Fashionistas by Pineapple Staircase 

One of the first games that I saw upon entering the venue featured a bright pink title card and which had a demo video featuring two outrageously ripped men in fishnets. I simply had to sit and hear all about the development of this game, and luckily both co-creators agreed to an interview. The first was Camron who, after losing a battle to me in his own game, talked about the game’s inspirations and what it meant to develop in NYC. 

Ronald: How long have you been making games? 

Camron: We’ve been making games for about five years now/ As Pineapple Staircase, we’ve been doing it for three. 

Ronald: What got you started? 

Camron: Both myself and my co-founder Tassneen met in grad school (NYU Game Center), we worked on a couple projects together and after we graduated we were like ‘Let’s just keep working well, let’s keep the energy up.’ We specifically wanted to make games that were very against the grain, not typically what you would imagine. I think one of the first major projects we worked on was a tea making game that was more in your face. 

Ronald: How has it been developing games in NYC? 

Camron: It’s been good! I think the best thing about it is that there’s so many developers; so many sweet people here are willing to offer feedback as playtesters or just offer support in terms of software problems, and there’s lots of cool events. It’s really nice! It’s a nice community, something’s always going on so there’s always a way to expose yourself to new games but also get new games in front of people. 

Ronald: What inspired Fashionistas? 

Camron: When we started making this we wanted to make a dress up game that is also something more than just a dress up game. Both myself and Tassneen, we both really like the GameBoy Advance style aesthetic so we pulled from a lot of GameBoy Advance games. We looked at Pokémon, Fire Emblem. Character designs for our ‘Babes,’ as we call them, are drawn from the Magypsies from Mother 3. So that’s where we pulled a lot of inspiration from and, because it’s drag-inspired as well, we wanted very bright, flashy colors and things like that. 

Tassneen Bashir, Pineapple Staircase

The second half of Pineapple Staircase was Tassneen. She was just as excited as Camron was to speak about the game, mainly because she was the artist who put the buff men in fishnets in the first place. In my chat with her, I learned even more about where Fashionistas drew inspiration, and how it attempted to revolutionize femininity in games.  

Ronald: What aspects of Fashionistas have you worked on? 

Tassneen: Camron and I shared a lot of the design of the battle system and the outfit design. I made all the art myself, figured out the art direction, and it was a very fun project. 

Ronald: How long have you been creating games/art? 

Tassneen: I’ve been drawing and illustrating since I was very young. I always had an inclination towards art that was a little bit more than just still images so I dabbled in animation and a little bit of game-like systems in college. It wasn’t until grad school that I started making games full time. As Camron mentioned, we met in grad school and we started making games, so it’s been five years of Camron and me making games. 

Ronald: What inspirations other than Mother 3 came when designing Fashionistas? 

Tassneen: Fashionistas was born out of a desire and a need for more feminine games, or femme games. Games that are more accessible to a larger audience but also try to subvert this idea that girl games need their own genre. We always have to specify that girl games are girl games but every other game is a game for boys, so it was born out of that deep feeling I’ve always had for games and I want to see things that are bright, colorful and out there but in a way that everyone can enjoy. 

We got a lot of inspiration, the mood, the colors, and the energy from Drag and Queer culture, as well as those classic dress up games out there that a lot of us played growing up like Barbie, etc. There’s so many amazing dress up games from my childhood that I looked at for this, and it was really really fun to make.  

Ronald: Do you have an ideal release date? 

Tassneen: Fashionistas right now is very early in its stages so what we have right now is a proof of concept of the battle system. Our goal is to actually turn it into something larger like a roguelike, we really see this turning into a multi-level roguelike system where you fight a bunch of fashion posers on your way to the mall or something. That would probably take maybe two years, so I think two years from now we’ll be ready. 

Munro Wyman: Libryinth Is A Game About A Library

Game-A-Palooza had two floors, just as it had last time, and tucked away on the lower floor was a small table with a brightly-colored fantasy library game. It looked arcade-like and caught my eye immediately, and the developer behind it even bantered with me as I played. I got second place on the in game leaderboard, and immediately needed to know how and why this library game came to be. 

Ronald: How long have you been a developer?

Munro: I went through the Parsons program for developers for the past eight years now give or take. Been working on indie games here and there, in my professional life I work as a technical artist in the mobile game industry, and I thoroughly enjoy making games. 

Ronald: How has it been developing in NYC? 

Munro: It can be a challenge sometimes to find work definitely, I was fortunate enough to join up with Dots originally, which was a mid-sized mobile game company, so that really helped me get my start during Covid. It was a very different cycle. Now, I work fully remote but I do sometimes work for locals. 

Ronald: Where did you get your inspirations for Libryinth? 

Munro: I can describe it from a couple different angles. Originally, I had the Raycast engine, which was an old technique for making 3D/pseudo 3D games. There was a game jam coming up and I was like “I can probably fit this in there and use that engine, but what am I gonna use for wall textures? Hm, I don’t want brick walls…Books! Books are good, they’re just basically a rectangle on a wall.” And then it clicked from there, just started to make this sort of Papers, Please is the closest I would say, investigative, try and find these books, navigate this library. 

Ronald: Are you trying to challenge your players in this game?

Munro: I would describe myself as someone who loves to make game mechanics out of sometimes tedious, sometimes unusual stuff. In this case, I would say it’s the fact that you have this giant library that you have this system of organizing and navigating it that you have to follow through these step by step points. My favorite thing is watching people improve at the game and figure out time saving methods. My own inspiration is working as a librarian in college as a work study. I’m extremely dyslexic so I’m the most challenged at my own game sometimes. 

Ronald: Designing a library game as someone with dyslexia: how is that experience?

Munro: It means that I often have to sing aloud the whole entire alphabet to get somewhere, so I got better. It’s honestly a good training model. I always find stuff like that interesting in a way. I always felt when I was doing the library gig, that this is kind of a game. One of the things I really wished I added was reorganizing the library part of working the library, it’s a lot more of finding the books than placing a lot of books. 

Ronald: What’s your ideal release, if it’s not already out? 

Munro: It’s kind of in its ideal stage right now. I have it playable at the Wonderville barcade as a rolling residency every three months. I was really hoping to get it in there because it’s a Two-Player game and it’s perfect for the cabinet. (Wonderville lets devs place their games in pre-existing cabinets on site.) I’ve been thinking about maybe making a Playdate version of it, that one would be really fun, I’d love to do all sorts of stuff with the crank (that system comes with). 

Ronald Gordon is a New York Videogame Critics Circle Member and Mentor. He was the first of our writers – or any intern anywhere – to complete an internship at Rockstar Games.

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