MYERS @paularthurmyers - Tumblr Blog

Bedsider at NYU hosted a Sex-Positive Game Jam on 11/11/17. The goal was to promote sex positivity through play, to normalize sexuality, and to consider the ways in which games traditionally view sex as a reward. The particular challenge of this game jam was to consider “contraception beyond the condom”. The event ran 13 hours from start to finish and had enough participants that seven groups were formed to create games from scratch.

My group decided that, while contraception is important, several forms of birth control are also useful as sexual protection - from undesired pregnancy but also from STI’s. Focusing on sexual protection instead of contraception moved away from the challenge, but it allowed more room to explore queer and anatomy-removed sexual concepts. Two of us (one group member and myself) had coding experience, so we set to work in Unity while the rest of the group worked on the presentation, art assets, and copy.

Below is a section of the mind map we created when coming up with ideas for this game.

Premise

Talking about sex is hard - especially when app-mediated. Navigating your partner’s comfort talking about sex is important for satisfying and safe sexual relationships. We captured that complexity by providing three main topics of conversation: STI’s, Protection Methods, and Sexual Interests. You, as the player, navigate talking to a computer-controlled partner by pressing buttons to respond to their talk points. The partner randomly generates one of four STI statuses (HIV undetectable, being treated for asymptomatic gonnorhea, oral herpes in remission, or no STI’s), one of four sexual interests (only oral, role play, power play, or toys), and one of five protection methods (never use protection, always use protection, mostly use external condoms, mostly use internal condoms, always use dental dams), and the player’s responses differ for each of those qualities. Some responses lead to further responses by the partner player, in which case you get to respond again - but ultimately, the conversation about the particular topic ends, and you get to discuss other topics.

Game Goals

The objective of the game is to have the best sex! Your responses to the partner will increase or decrease intimacy. Intimacy is reflected by the brightness of the background colors during gameplay. Talking about topics in the right order increases intimacy because you are keyed into your partner’s comfort. Agreeing with your partner or being supportive increases intimacy. Being rude or disagreeing with your partner decreases intimacy.

Tension

We wanted players to feel pressure to talk about things naturally, but swiftly. The game thus took the form of “chicken”, where to players are on a path toward each other, and the player that pulls away first to avoid a crash loses. Instead of “losing”, pulling away means the player removed consent, and sex did not happen.

The game has two circles moving toward each other at a steady rate. Within a short period of time, the player has to discuss complex sexual topics, decide whether to respond based upon their own real-world interests or what they think the partner character would want them to say, and then wait for sex to happen. The player can gauge their compatibility with the computer-generated partner by the brightness of the background. This is shown below.

The choice of circles removes players from any sort of sexual identity or anatomy-based decisions. They are free to explore sexual interest or protection outside of gender or within their own identities. The cycling colors in the background represent the order of topics in which the partner wanted to discuss sex - talking in the right order would increase intimacy, but talking in the wrong order would decrease it. In a final build, the buttons for conversation would be color-coded to match the backgrounds as well.

No matter the correctness of order, the partner would want to discuss their stance on each topic, which gives the player more chances to increase or decrease intimacy. This shift in intimacy is shown in the video by the background getting brighter or darker.

End-game

Ultimately, the game rewards players for playing it no matter what decisions were made. When the two dots crash in the center of the screen, an end-screen would appear with educational content and the option to play again.

An important part of the design of this game for us was to not shame the player for making unsafe decisions, or for making any decisions. If the computer-generated partner randomly generated undetectable HIV and never used protection, and you as the player were supportive and decided that you were comfortable having unprotected sex (increasing the intimacy), we wanted to allow that scenario to occur. In the end-screen, resources on HIV, how to be supportive for friends or partners with HIV in non-stigmatizing ways, and resources on sexual protection would appear. Similarly, if the partner generated no STI’s, always used dental dams, and was into power play... but you as the player never got to talking about power play before the timer ran out... the end-screen would discuss the importance of being tested regardless of the presence of symptoms and resources on dental dams. Additionally, the end-screen would tell the player that they didn’t discuss power play until the middle of sex, and while it went well, talking about sexual interests in advance allows you to find comfort zones, be more present during sex, and establish safe words.

Sex is not inevitable in real life, even with a single monogamous partner or with a regular or new hook up partner. As such, the computer-generated partner also randomly generates an intimacy threshold. If the intimacy drops below that threshold, the partner ends the game, and the end-screen explains that you weren’t a match - and that’s okay. If you said something to offend the other player (ridiculing their safety preference, making fun of their sexual interests, or shaming them for their STI or lack-thereof), the end-screen would present you with more polite ways to phrase sexual discussions, and it would still provide resources for the topics discussed before the partner called it off.

Similarly, at any point, the player can choose to remove consent and end the game early. If that happens, the end-game congratulates you for removing consent. Prior consent does not imply current consent, and people should not feel bad about rejecting sexual advances whether there is compatability or not with the potential partner.

Final result

We didn’t make a game, but we had a strong presentation filled with chicken-related puns, our design process, and our goals and desires for the full version of the game. We demoed the working code we had and did a live-action version of the conversation simulation portion of the game.

Half our group had to leave early, and our game required a lot of text, formulae, and coding know-how that were hard to achieve with a smaller group. The portions of the game that were not completed were the generation of buttons with different text options and an end-game screen that generated content depending on your responses, but the background color cycling, player movement, and random partner characteristic all worked perfectly, and all the copy was written.

Below are some examples of the way conversation was handled, moving from brainstorming to MonoDevelop (click on images to zoom in).

Finally, how is this relevant to QuHere?

It’s tangential in that we wanted to create a game that did not privilege heterosexual activity over other forms of sexual activity that allowed users to explore different ways of discussion sexual issues in safe ways. Players are allowed to be rude, allowed to mess up, allowed to stick to their own personal beliefs, or allowed to role play with decisions they would never make in real life. In the end, the game does not shame players, but it provides resources to learn more about safer sex regardless of what they choose to do.

Creating a queer-friendly sex game itself is relevant to QuHere as both are different forms of digital experiences used to empower the often-marginalized queer community. Additionally, this game allows players to explore sexual safety, whereas QuHere allows players to explore non-sexual safety and ways to generate it in the real world (by considering the real world in new ways or by entering the virtual safe space of QuHere whenever necessary).

Experiencing Requeerium

Requeerium was the major inspiration for my senior project, quHere. It was a mixed-media experience using motion capture technology that create an immersive, interactive environment in which users explored queer narratives.

At the exhibition I attended, Requeerium was set up in a large, square room with white walls. Projections cast the environment onto three of the walls, with the fourth serving as a glass door to enter and exit the environment. Peoples’ voices could be heard sharing their experiences with harm, love, and life as queer people. The background changed over time to match the themes of the recorded, spoken narratives, but the background was also manipulated by the environment’s inhabitant’s use of “totems”. The floor was littered with objects relevant to the spoken narratives that were taped with motion sensors, and as users of Requeerium moved while holding the totems, the scene reacted. Sounds, lights, and even entire 3D models warped, became more prominent, or totally disappeared depending on where the totems were. There were moments where the cameras could not read the totems’ sensors, but the technical issues were often short-lived.

I entered Requeerium with a friend, both of us possessing identities traditionally encompassed when using the word “queer”. It was an emotional experience for them, but I struggled to feel much emotion at all. I could only understand it as an interesting motion capture experience, but I did not consider it as very relevant to me. My friend told me that it was okay if I didn’t feel anything, but they were glad I was in the space with them because we, and the other users, were building the space without us. In their words, the space wouldn’t exist if not for my experiences as a queer person - it was a space for me.

I’m not sure what happened, but hearing that, I cried harder than I had in years. As cliche as it sounds, when I opened up to the intent of the experience, I embraced my queerness in a way I had never let myself before.

As someone who has lived through physical, sexual, and emotional trauma because of my queerness - and someone who has made treasured friendships and felt love because of my queerness - Requeerium very suddenly meant a lot to me. I felt flooded with emotion, and I wanted to try everything to explore the environment to its fullest. I wanted to use all the totems, and I became frustrated if the signal cut out while trying to use them. It was my space, and I wanted to know it in a rich, thorough way.

Ultimately, users were asked to leave the space to allow others to try it. I left feeling somewhat uncomfortable, but I felt energized and at peace. I was considering my needs for control over my self-expression and my queerness, and I was considering how my queerness has shaped my life and potentially other environments in which I’ve lived. This was significant because it meant I was considering my queerness at all outside of intimate relationships.

Requeerium has since been updated to a virtual reality experience to bring its stories and metaphor to a wider audience. While I have not yet experienced it in VR, I hope to have the chance to see it at a future exhibit and to work with one of the developers (a peer from my program at NYU) in the future.

I’ve taken more ownership of my queerness since entering Requeerium. I want to provide to others the sense of ownership over space that Requeerium offered to me, and I want to build an environment in which users can both feel pride in creating something and comfort in being in a space designed for their safety.

quHere is less focused on narrative than Requeerium is. It is not meant to be situated in physical space, and it is not meant to be a social experience. But without Requeerium, I would not have thought nearly as hard about my needs or my life as a queer person.

Experience using Daily Life VR - Poop

“Daily Life VR - Poop" (”Poop”) was a frustrating and interesting experience exploring companionship in traditionally solitary spaces.

Users are prompted to enter their name while at the splash page for the project, and upon doing so, enter 3D-modeled bathroom with instructions for interacting with the scene along the walls. A meditative voice explains the scene before the camera shifts, and users fall backward through a flesh-colored tube and land on top of a large toilet bowl under a starry sky surrounded by rolls of toilet paper. Looking directly up allows users to see a board with writing on it that details how many people are currently also using “Poop”, how many poops the user has produced, and how many people have ever entered the VR space. There is also an exit sign that allows the user to be pulled back through a flesh colored tube and into the starting bathroom environment.

I will be analyzing this scene through game designer Steve Swink’s concept of a “Game Garden”, or six interrelated pieces that work together to create “gamefeel”, or the experience of playing a game. VR scenes like “Daily Life VR - Poop” are not games, but I believe the framework holds.

The six components of a “Game Garden” are:

Input -- Response -- Context -- Polish -- Metaphor -- Rules

Input refers to the physical interaction with a controller or a device to prompt the mechanics that allow the system to work. Response is the way the system interprets the input. Context is the environment in which the response happens and the way the environment reacts to the response. Polish is the level of detail used to give a sense of physicality to the environment. Metaphor is the way the way the system produces and uses emotion and players’ prior knowledge to impart meaning to the experience. Rules are the set of constraints that limit the scope of the user’s experience.

The strength of this VR experience is its use of metaphor. “Poop” forced me to reconsider my private, solitary, and usually mundane routine of pooping within a social context. Sitting on the familiar and private object of a toilet bowl while in the exposed environment of a dark, starry sky forced me to consider my need for privacy and to process shame I feel for being watched while pooping. The experience looped until I chose to exit it, and in the second loop, I paid more attention to the audio. It took me on a guided meditation of pooping, feeling the sensation of movement within my body and ultimately the feeling of poop leaving my body (ending with a quiet splash and a sigh of relief from the narrating voice). Focusing on the narrator’s voice pulled me out of my own head and made me imagine that everyone else in the scene also was pooping and going through the same bodily feelings I was going through.

I knew this couldn’t be true - I wasn’t actually pooping, and there wasn’t anyone else in the VR scene. But the second loop, in which I interpreted the presence of others as a shared experience and not a vulnerable or shameful one, was far more productive than the first. I found I wished I could see the other users of the experience.

That ties into ways I was frustrated with “Poop”, and these are not faults of the designer’s.

Firstly, “Poop” is a social experience with assets dedicated to telling users how many people are pooping with them and how many people have used the space before them. “Poop” also debuted in May of 2016, so the frequency of its use has substantially lowered. That was disappointing for me as a designer, though as a designer, it makes me consider the sustainability and lifespan of my virtual reality spaces.

Secondly, “Poop” was a VR experience that required input of touch or arrow keys to move around and to interact with the environment. Google Cardboard allows for neither of those to happen, yet headsets that use a smartphone as the screen like Google Carboard are the only ones that allows users to enter this experience while pooping because of its lack of cords and reliance upon a computer. Because I used Google Cardboard, I could not “poop” (by touching the screen or clicking the left mouse button), I could not walk around (by holding the screen down or using the arrow keys), and I could not exit the scene. This made me consider how I could create meaningful and complex interactions while relying upon limited input in Google Cardboard.

Thirdly, despite being incredibly low-poly, the environment ran much slower on my phone than it did on my laptop. This made pooping (by taking off my headset and tapping my phone) unrealistically slow. It took nearly a full minute for the cartoon poops to fall from the origin of the camera to the bottom of the bowl, something that took only a second while testing “Poop” on my laptop later.

I enjoyed the experience and its aesthetic. It reminded me that scenes I build do not need to be complex or totally filled with 3D assets for users to understand the space or to find meaning in the space. Trying the experience prompted three major questions for the development of my project, quHere:

- How do I improve the longevity of quHere? How can I make it useful to users even when the frequency of use lowers over time?

- What forms of interaction feel the best and make the most sense while using Google Cardboard?

- What is the right balance of fidelity and performance to make an environment that runs smoothly on any smartphone?

Who is Paul Arthur Myers?

I’m glad you asked!