I Got Paid to Party at Notch's Skrillex Show

Game developers are the most socially inept of all geeks. As such, it is only fitting that our awkward gropes toward pop cultural acceptance come at the expense of many misguided steps from both party production companies, and the heavy-handed games organizations that employ them. Because of this, the good folks just tryin' to make you some games have been the victims of uncomfortable and borderline aggressive carnival-barking marketing techniques.

While this year's Game Developer's Conference has had more than its fair share of scandals, the fact remains we are going through a late bloom puberty. Case in point: Late in this year's conference, which just wrapped up in San Francisco, I found myself in a VIP-ish booth overlooking a club full of kids, all losing their minds over the clockwork bass drops of Skrillex, the polarizing face of dubstep and electonic dance music writ large. I wore a leopard-print jacket and drank for free. It was weird.

But let's back up. The International Games Developers Association recently took a lot of shit over the IGDA party's inclusion of several scantily clad women dancers (possibly in cages or on stilts), followed by the buck passing between party producers and their clients. Chair Brenda Romero and several other key IGDA members had no choice but to resign shortly after.

Now the nature of games trade shows--and those who typically attend such expos--are probably one spreadsheet of market testing that looks like a no-brainer to folks on the outside. The ill-founded "let's assault these white dude's malnourished sexuality with booth babes" mentality, which you might come to expect from any number of otaku commerce-culture events like this, might not rear its ugly head at the next GDC. When the IGDA is being as edgy as the NoS energy drink booth outside the Moscone Center in a year when games have rapidly matured into a substantially more high brow medium, this is clearly a step backwards, a step un-redactable in the minds of conference attendees.

Which brings us to a mysterious upset. Notch--the good guy indie-ionaire perhaps best known for creating Minecraft--whipped out major fliff for a semi-private Justice Skrillex show. Game developers, myself included, were treated to an all-you-can-drink, all-you-can-dance private-ish balcony overlooking San Francisco's club kids getting down to this thing called "bass dropping." Skrillex is apparently hot shit. The kids were out in droves.

Lots of people outside our circles were there. It was an imbalanced masquerade of people who probably weren't there because they know Minecraft. The "we've arrived" vibe Mojang must have been going for quickly became "these people are paid to party with us," as some smarmy-cool photographer and his army of babes attempted to get us to take pictures with them, or some club promoter doing their job determined "this party needs more good-looking/out-going people." It is safe to assume club promoters and game dev culture do not fit into a single Venn Diagram, and that their techniques and practices are perhaps better suited for other tech industries. Better yet, no industries.

So guess what? Lots of people in the VIP section weren't game developers. I'd wager that lots of people were probably not even 21, that lots of these people had never even heard of Minecraft.

But you know what? That's concerts. Have you ever snuck into a venue, festival, or club, fake ID in tote, somewhere you're not supposed to be? Probably. Game developers apparently have not, and quickly revolted against their host. Mojang and Notch vehemently denied these allegations, as anyone whose intention was to throw an awesome party for free for their friends and colleagues would. Eventually most attendee devs let go of their inhibitions and ignored their inital reaction to the dubious party environment.

So what's the problem? In order to get to that, let's talk about something good. Indies!

Brandon Boyer's Venus Patrol teamed up with George Buckenham, Marie Foulston, Ricky Haggett, & Dick Hogg, founders of London-based Wild Rumpus, to put on a party for GDC attendees on Wednesday night. They set up some awesome games, even collaborating with Keita Takahashi on a sixteen button, two-player game called Tenya Wanya Teens about farting on skunks, finding nudey magazines, hitting baseballs shot out of an elephant's trunk, and other such malcontent teenage-y activities. It's a game about rapidly completing these tasks without confusing the two. It's hilarious to watch and nerve twitching to play.

Also in attendance were Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga's Panoramical and Robin Arnott's SoundSelf (on Kickstarter now), which together provided visual and aural experiences unlike most anything I've ever played. The frenetic and local 2D deathmatch of Samurai Gunn by Beau Blyth was there, too, as was the goofy, Wilsonian competitive/co-operative Super Space ____ by David Scamehorn and Alexander Baard. It was the best party of the conference.

Why? We were all in San Francisco for this conference because we make games. We talk about games. We play games. The reason we make these pilgrimages to conferences isn't to be wowed by whatever is being peddled, or to see an awesome concert. We go to these things because we love videogames. And you know what Wild Rumpus put at the front and center of their party? Videogames.

We aren't cool. We're not into lavishness; we're into games. And while it's hard to look a gift horse in the mouth, unfortunately the Skrillex party just wasn't for us, even though it was supposed to be. And thank you Notch for inviting and including us. Don't sweat it--we're evolving differently than this.

And what was great to see were indie devs saying, "No, we don’t want this." We reject this inheritence from the entertainment industry. We don’t want any more booth babes or any sort of uncomfortable gender-specific marketing ploys, whether they're selling tech or energy drinks or the idea that we are something we're not. We don’t want flashy parties, or super sleek productions for our events. Maybe we aren't meant to be pop culture, or maybe we'll be the ones who change it for better. Games are enough, and we’re working hard at changing all of the things we don’t like about them as a medium, and now we’re even working at changing how we come together, how we talk about games, and how we celebrate them.

Cool is dead. Long live videogames.

Colin Snyder is a videogame person who partied in a leopard print coat at Notch's party. You can follow him @scallopdelion.

More from GDC 2013:

Are You Going to San Francisco?

Kentucky Route Zero and the Theatre of Games