Brenden Gibbons

• Role: Game and narrative designer
• Location: UK / Europe
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QRM: Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do in the games industry?

Brenden: So I'm a British/Indonesian bisexual cis man, and I'm a game and narrative designer for lack of a better term. I'm pretty much a generalist game designer, able to do stuff from systems to levels to concepts to balancing but my real love and focus is on how we use all of these tools that we have to tell stories. To me, it's about the holistic approach to create a direction and experience.

QRM: How long have you been involved in the game industry, and what projects have you worked on? What are you working on currently?

Brenden: I studied game development academically in a four year course in the Netherlands and I've been working for about two years.

I've worked on a lot of weird cool things whilst I was in university. I made live action VR films, attended and won a bunch of game jams, been part of a design residency, attended many conferences, gave talks, did client work… it was fun. It also meant that I ended up graduating about half a year late. Whoops!

The first year of proper commercial work, I spent in China at Dr. Panda Games as 'Play Concept Designer' where I worked on a whole bunch of different apps for children. My proudest work is Dr. Panda Plus: Home Designer, an augmented reality app and toy which combos up to be a great digital dollhouse experience.

The second, I was in Italy with Ovosonico where I worked on Last Day of June, which is a more traditional entertainment video game for PC and PS4, and is a short adventure game telling a story of love and loss.

With the game and my contract finished, I'm currently unemployed and looking for a new job, but I'm trying to keep my skills sharp by doing some writing work for a large Skyrim mod called Lordbound.

QRM: What inspired you to get started in the games industry?

Brenden: I started in the game industry by chance. Honestly, I didn't know it was even an option until I was 20 years old.

The story is pretty great, though. So I decided against going to university in England because they just raised the tuition fees (it was raised from £3,000 a year to £7,000 and right now, it can be up to £10,000, which is ridiculous). I went to the workforce, got a job and then became unemployed. As I was looking for a new job, my dad gave me a newspaper clipping that my grandma had given to him.

It talked about studying outside of England, in Europe. I was privileged enough that my dad was willing to pay for me and help me with any living costs and, by literal chance, I stumbled across this game development course in the Netherlands.

I went to an open day and was just gripped by everyone else's passion. I wanted to be a part of that, to be surrounded by creativity, by passion. Everyone went and did this by choice. It felt so comfortable there.

And being surrounded by others who were learning how to get the most out of this medium that they love so much just inspired me to join. I wanted in on that.

And to be brutally honest? I could only take this opportunity because I had a father who was willing to give it to me. The tuition fees was about £1,500 a year, and he gave £1,000 a month to live. He spent at least £60,000 of his own money.

I wouldn't be here without him.

(Although I think the real takeaway here is don't have kids; they're way more expensive than you think they are.)

QRM: In what ways do you feel your experiences as a queer person manifest in the games you work on, and influence the work you do?

Brenden: I think mostly, my experience as a queer person basically means that I am unwilling to let stuff pass by me that's gonna hurt someone else. I try to be hyperaware of the politics within my own work and be deliberate about what I want in, and kick out any sexist, racist, transphobic crap when I can.

When I make things by myself, I also tend to make it about queer people. Since you know, "Writing is easy; all you have to do is open a vein and bleed".

QRM: Do you have a favourite queer character—in games or media more generally? If so, what is it about them that makes them your favourite?
Question asked by @kamienw.

Brenden: I have two favourite queer characters right now.

One is Akarsha from game Butterfly Soup because she is the best Queer Garbage Baseball Baby. The writing in Butterfly Soup in general is incredibly relatable and I went through a very similar nihilistic phase when I was growing up, but I didn't quite end up being the class clown.

Two is Sanao Mokoya, from the novella The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang because Sanao is a very angry bi woman living in fantasy "silkpunk" Asia who can do cool magic.

Honestly? Both works are very clearly written from lived experience as a queer person and as an Asian person. They're whole people with their own damage and their own coping mechanisms and are presented with and compared against other queer, Asian people. Both works are just so… refreshing.

QRM: Have you ever encountered roadblocks in trying to include queer characters in games? What do you think is preventing greater diversity within games?
Question asked by @dustinalex91.

Brenden: Turns to the side, whispers to off-screen interviewer Am I allowed to just say "Mediocre White Men"? Because the real short answer is "Mediocre White Men". No? Ok, what about just the word "Capitalism"? You want more nuance? Okaaay.

[Editor’s note: Hilarious, but also I would totally accept these words and phrases as completely legitimate answers to this question. Don’t worry; we understand.]

Turns back to face camera So basically, game development is getting some part of the way there to being fully democratised. Engines are getting easier to use, which is great because fighting against your tools so they do what you want is one of the worst part of video game development.

However, there's a lot of systemic issues here both in the development side and in the audience side preventing a proliferation of queer characters, and it's about tackling the problem of the gatekeepers. Because when I hear a creative director talk about how he knows that he's sexist, but saying it jokingly, in a way that is obviously clear to me that he will never put the work towards being better than who he is now, I know that it will always be a fight to add anything inclusive with him and that as long as he is the creative lead, his studio will never come out with anything meaningful.

And I know that this creative director is not alone. Video games are supposed to be a profitable venture and inserting politics that does not fit into the status quo brings the risk of it not being a profitable venture. Some gatekeepers in development treat queer characters as a 'fad' or a phase, something to try out and when they get bashed for doing it wrong (because boy, some people are completely unable to write outside of their own lived experience and are unable to listen to others who have that lived experience) they tend to drop the idea of implementing queer characters because they didn't get their cookie for adding us queers.

Then there's the human equivalent of the Pacific Trash Vortex acting as gatekeepers in the audience side. They help the gatekeepers in development continue to act as they are because they can point to these human versions of the plastic six pack rings that are killing marine life and say, "These people don't want queer characters! We should never put them in. End of story."

And so the job falls to us queers to try to rep ourselves and each other quietly or secretly or by ourselves in an indie capacity alongside all of the other business we gotta deal with.

QRM: Why do you think it is important that queer audiences are able to see themselves represented in the games they play, and in the developers who make the games they see? What can we do to improve the industry for queer audiences and devs?

Brenden: The last question is super simple: we can collectively listen to queer audiences and devs, for once.

And It's incredibly important that queer audiences are able to see themselves represented because are you kidding me, how is it not. If you don't see yourself represented, your world view becomes narrower, and you fail to see that great potential within yourself.

Mae C. Jemison became the first African-American female astronaut because she loved Star Trek and was represented in Star Trek through Uhura. I didn't know I could become a video game developer until I realised I could, but I know other folks who realised since they were 10 that this is what they wanted to do.

We make dreams. We, who work in entertainment, make the world better by portraying a better world for those who didn't even know that the world could be better. Through the stories we tell, we infect others with our hopes about the future. Those who can make that better future happen.

QRM: Have you ever mentored somebody in your role in games, or been mentored? If so, what made these experiences worthwhile for you?
Question asked by @pepelanova.

Brenden: Oh, I know the person who asked this. Hey Meggy!

So my four years in education at NHTV was pretty much invaluable because I treated all of my teachers as my mentors and peers. Every opportunity was an opportunity for me to fail miserably without losing anyone their job or company. I also really tried to grab any kind of useful knowledge from anyone around me.

The experience has been worthwhile because of the friends I made along the way and the different perspectives and the people that I count as my peers who I can talk openly with. It's about creating a support network for yourself, I feel.

I don't feel like I've directly mentored people though, but I am totally up for it. You have some questions? Poke me on twitter! I don't tend to add [strangers] on Facebook, so don't try that way as your first way to talk to me.

QRM: In what ways can non-queer folk increase and support queer diversity present within games, as well as in the industry more broadly? How can we all work to support intersectional approaches to diversity, and why is this important?

Financially support queer game devs. I'm talking about buying their games, giving money to Patreon, supporting things like this and other initiatives (with your money).

And If you wanna be an ally, it means letting someone else be in the limelight. If you're being given an opportunity to talk and every panellist, including you, is a cis white straight dude: give that opportunity to someone else.

The way that society works to oppress different minorities is mostly by getting us to fight over each other. But we don't have to do that. We can literally work with each other and lift all of us together.

QRM: Is there a message that you would like to share with the queer game players, game studies researchers, and other interested folks who comprise the Queerly Represent Me community?

Brenden: Take care of yourself and keep on living and keep on fighting, for the sweetest revenge is to shine bright and live your true authentic self.

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You can find Brenden on Twitter.
You can check out his work on his portfolio.