Those who go to the website www.MattieBrice.com can have the chance to play Mainichi.
The game allows the user to step into the world of a trans person, making the same kind of decisions that may seem small but are, in fact, surprising in their significance. People can also encounter the aggression and phobia that can profoundly affect a trans person's life. It's one easy download that can communicate a real-world understanding that has thus far often been elusive to the media and people outside of the trans-community.
On March 29, the game's developer, Mattie Brice, sat down with Dr. Kortney Ryan Ziegler and participants at Trans*H4CK Chicago for a frank discussion about her life, work and the state of LGBTQ inclusion in the games industry. Ziegler said that he discovered Brice's work a year ago when he played Mainichi himself. "I was fascinated with that game and became an instant fan," he acknowledged.
Brice is a celebrated writer, game designer, speaker and critic. She co-founded the "queerness and games" ( GQCon ) conference which unites game developers in panels and sessions designed to explore the inclusion of LGBT issues in video games. Brice's relentless push for diversity in the games industry helped garner her the title of "activist"although she told Ziegler, it wasn't a moniker that she originally set out to gain.
She grew up in South Florida as the child of Caribbean immigrants. Her father was a computer programmer and exposed her to technology and a Nintendo ( NES ) at a young age. In school, she studied creative writing and English literature and even had aspirations to become a food critic. A sociology class about gender and the media spurred her into further research on depictions of race and gender in games. "I went and didn't find too much," she recalled. "There was one game that I was interested in that had a trans character and no one had written about it."
She began a blog in 2011 about gender and queerness in games. "I kind of accidentally became an activist," Brice said with a laugh. "I think that's how it works. Someone calls you an activist before you do. In social media, if you are a person who is of a minority group you must take on that banner and say things or even if you are just venting about your life, you must be an activist. I don't mind that. I think simply existing in space is very often activism."
After she published a piece of writing on the gamer guide site kotaku.com, Brice received a great deal of abuse."It was a lot of death threats, rape threats," she said. "But because the conversation has not gone away, the tide is now changing. I receive less harassment and I am brought to engagements where I speak to developers and fans directly and that's always a different experience."
Brice said that she feels a sense of responsibility to represent and protect the trans and genderqueer communities. "There are certain things that I find are not worth saying," she stated. "I feel like anger and the justification of anger is used to excuse away abuse and toxic behavior that can hurt the people you're trying to protect."
Ziegler pointed out thatin playing Mainichibecause Brice placed herself and her life in her game he felt a personal connection to someone he had never met. "We've learned in life to be guarded," Brice said. "I want to make myself vulnerable and I can put very embarrassing things of myself in my writing, my Twitter and my games. I hope that helps other people relate more to my work."
Brice also noted a growing DIY movement that has provided toolssuch as RPG ( role-playing game ) makerfor people to design games without knowing how to write lines of code. "Now that a technical background is not required, all of a sudden you are going to see a very diverse group of people who have a different way of looking at things," she said."Now there is attention to the idea that all works are personal. We are starting to get really interesting viewpoints."
Ziegler wondered if this could lead to a more mainstream representation of trans people in games, that could even be downloaded onto phones. "It depends on the media," Brice replied. "Right now they do not write about these games. What I do see are projects like Free Indie Games. They are basically accessible, free games and very often you'll find queer or non white people and artists making them."
Offstage, Brice told Windy City Times that she presents herself as "made non-normative" in the sense that she believes people are more fluid than the binary gender roles given to them by society. "I didn't identify as a gender as a child," she said. "After I finished my degree, I presented myself in the way I preferred to present and understood the politics of that. My identity today goes along with how much more aware of activism I am. I just chart my trajectory around it."