Spite, and All Your Other Motivational Needs: A Conversation with Sav Ferguson

In the second Pride month interview (sorry it’s a bit late!), I spoke with Sav Ferguson, developer of That Boy is a Monstr, about how he got into game development, what queerness in games should look like, and more.

Your Geeky Gal Pal: Okay, to get us started, what originally got you into game dev?

Ferguson: Hah, shockingly I haven’t gotten used to this question yet, but it was actually mostly spite. I’d just gotten out of some terrible relationships and situations, it was the end of 2014, and gamergate was in full swing. So I remember reading about the latest gamergate development on the way to check out a tafe (community college?) and I was just like ‘fuck you! Fuck you cis dudes, you’re not going to ruin the one thing I’ve loved since I was 4! I’m gonna do it instead’ And I enrolled and started making games pretty much straight away. So, mostly spite, mostly love. It was something that had clicked in a way no other tertiary learning had, and I moved onto a double degree at uni the next year.

YGGP: That’s amazing! I feel like people don’t respect spite enough as a motivator honestly, lol.

Ferguson: I think spite is good for getting you through things but I won’t recommend it for all your motivational needs. After tafe, (it was a one year course through 2015) I was so beaten down by all the terrible teenage boys in my class (racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableism) spite was about the only thing keeping me going. But then at uni I found good people and went into the industry and found good people, and my motivation turned to so much love and passion.

YGGP: That totally makes sense., and it’s awesome that you were able to channel that negativity into positivity towards the work. Kind of along that same line, and thinking about the terrible folks you had to deal with getting started, what does queering games look like to you?

Ferguson: So, that entire year of tafe, I didn’t come out. I’d actually gone back into the closet about being trans (wild), so I just kinda kept my head down. I recently gave a talk where I mentioned that if you’ve spent your whole life self censoring, you kinda go a bit over the top once you can be yourself. My first industry meetup, I was like ‘oh I’ll see if they’re cool’ and by the end of it I was nearly shouting ‘HEY. HEY. HEY!! I’m QUEER’ and soon after ‘YO I’M TRANS YA’LL’. So, the Melbourne games dev scene is really accepting. You get your bad eggs occasionally, but they never really get far? I feel like a lot of the indie games scenes are already pretty queered. I can’t speak for AAA, but I’d love to get into some AAA studio’s writers rooms and teach them how to write an actually queer/trans character.

And as for making queer games, I do get the occasional like- ‘aren’t you just pandering?? aren’t you just doing 1 thing??? is this needed?” to which I usually say ‘yes, but not for cishet people which is why you’re annoyed, no, I have the ability to write queer/trans characters that aren’t shitty cardboard cutouts for diversity sake, and yes, absolutely, cause if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be asking.’ And especially with queer games, people judge them so much more harshly than they do cishet ones, so honestly, I’d like queering games to look more like giving people some slack for once. I don’t mean ignore problematic behavior, but if people can excuse Zelda for its problematic quests and critique around that, extend the same courtesy to queer indie devs.

Queer games are always held to such a ridiculously impossible standard of ‘must never be problematic’ but the rest of the games industry has gotten a free pass for so long. Excuse me! We’re still learning too! It’s relatively new that we get to make games about us, and crushing us at the first misstep when you would never do the same thing to AAA all cishet men game is uh….. shitty. Queering games is about more than making queer games, it’s about changing the conversation around the games too

YGGP: I’ve definitely seen what you’re talking about in regards to queer games and it sucks. How do you think we can go about changing that conversation?

Ferguson: A bunch of ways! I gave a talk on the matter, but it basically boils down to: stop stomping any queer game the second it fucks up. We’ve been letting the games industry fuck up for so long (which is not GOOD), but they’ve had time to learn. Facilitating a conversation about why something was bad instead of just instantly calling for boycotts is important. I mean, Detroit: Become Human just came out and that’s got a shit ton of problems, and is still getting favorable reviews. We need to be tougher on games for problematic behavior as a whole, rather than putting all the ire on queer/trans developers.

But also- don’t put queer games on a pedestal? People go one of two ways, which is to either attack, or vehemently defend games as ‘unable to be problematic because a queer/trans person’ wrote it. Which is bad too. I fuck up. Everyone fucks up. We’re learning. And especially queer and trans games are so new to the industry (at least that’s what we tell the cishets) that yeah, we’re still gonna be in the fucking up stage occasionally. My favourite response to ‘oh this queer dev fucked up on this’ is like ‘okay? I didn’t come out of the womb with a copy of Judith Butlers ‘gender troubles’. They’re learning. Tell them how they messed up, and they’ll learn from it. If they do it again, then we have a problem.

We need to be more ready to educate. I think people find it so impossible because we’re used to trying to yell at the brick wall known as triple A, where nothing ever changes, and no one listens to player bases, but people, individual people and dev teams are willing to learn mostly! Also, no one talks about queer games, about the actual- design and mechanics, they just talk about the queer. We’re making GAMES not character simulators, talk about more than just the queer/trans aspects!!

YGGP: I’m really glad you brought up the mechanics aspect of it, because I was just thinking about that last night. Looking through the LGBT tag on itch, there’s majority visual novels, which is great! I love visual novels and think they can bring so much to the table, but it is kind of strange to me that there aren’t more mechanics based things out there, at least on that platform. Do you think it’s because folks want to focus more on the queer narratives/that’s what audiences want?

Ferguson: It’s the same with a lot of art games honestly, very few arty or experimental games are based on mechanics over visuals. I think visual novels are great for telling stories though, and I can’t overstate how much time I spend playing visual novels. I think they’re a very accessible format for both the developer and players who may not be used to games. They’re so accessible, especially if people put in voice acting. And for our community, that’s really important, there are a lot of LGBTQIA+ spaces that overlap with disabled spaces and it’s important that we make games accessible for them. So I think it’s a mix of both ‘this is a great format for storytelling’ and ‘this is very accessible and will be able to reach a wider audiences’.

Also, I’ve had to do a few exercises in ‘make a game with an entirely new mechanic’ and let me tell you that’s so hard. Most mechanics are overused for a reason- they’re good. They work well. The reason you don’t see a lot of new mechanics is not because people aren’t trying, it’s just it’s really hard to tailor new mechanics into good game feel. I think games like Spaceport Janitor walk that line really well- changing current game mechanics to work for queer/trans games and narratives instead is really cool. But like- visual novels are my heart too.

YGGP: That makes a ton of sense, especially the accessibility aspect. I wanted to ask you a little bit about That Boy is a Monstr.

Ferguson: Go for it.

YGGP: Why did you decide to go with framing it around dating apps/dating in general?

Ferguson: One, cause the pun Monstr/Grindr was too fun not to go with. (Also, “That Boy is a Monster” is probably copyrighted to Lady Gaga) Two, I based it off my real life experiences on Grindr. We talk a lot about queer dating problems, but the narrative about trans people, especially trans men, well- I honestly don’t know any other games that talk about it. Dating men for trans dude is an exercise of being called a ‘cuntboi’ by gay dudes or having straight dudes freak the hell out on you. It’s dangerous and it’s scary, and the best way to show that is to show snippets of the culture through messages similar (edited for narrative/language) to what I received on dating sites. It’s wild when people try to tell me that trans men aren’t fetishized. I always just want to load up messages I’ve gotten on dating sites, even on Facebook from people completely unprompted.

YGGP: I feel like that’s something that definitely gets left out of the narrative. I certainly don’t hear about it nearly as much as fetishization of trans women. What was it like to share those experiences, even if they were the tamer ones, so openly?

Ferguson: I mean, fetishization of trans women is a whole different ballpark honestly. You get all this mix of misogyny in there too. Different experiences, but I try to steer clear of oppression Olympics personally cause I don’t find it useful. More stories about trans women, trans men, and NB/genderqueer people please.

It was- really cathartic? I know people say don’t make games about personal trauma cause it can bring it up, but I’m a pretty open person. My friends joke that it’d be impossible to write a callout post about me cause I just talk about literally everything that goes on, so I’d be hard pressed hiding anything. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t talked about before, but being able to frame that as a game that other people would come to me and say ‘oh I thought it was just me’ or ‘this happened to me too!’ was really relieving. I want to make games about experiences to help people where I can, so I’m happy to bare myself completely for that.

YGGP: It’s awesome that you’re able to do that! Keeping in line with how you create, what are some of the positives and challenges you’ve faced as a game dev?

Ferguson: Apart from the obvious shitty gamers who lose their minds if you make a game that they can’t relate to?

I think the most positive thing has been being able to discover myself (publicly!) and discuss it, and put it into my work openly. And then people LIKE that! They’re all about it.

A big challenge I find is the drinking culture of games developers. We’re the ‘cool’ industry, so every meeting and event is swamped in booze, and while I’m not opposed to drinking, it does get more and more dangerous the bigger the event, the more people you don’t know, the more queer you look. As queer/trans people, drunk people are a big worry. At best, they’re going to be a bit tone deaf. At worst, they’re going to beat you to death. Having to have every event with that level of concern is really tough and disheartening. It feels like no one quite understands the danger. This isn’t an isolated problem either, this is constant and consistent across every event, every con, every party I’ve been to. I’ve started running my own events (Gendeverse) now that are alcohol free, but we have a long way to go.

YGGP: That’s really good to know, in general. I’m not a games dev person, so I wasn’t aware drinking culture was so strong in those event spaces.

Ferguson: Yeah! Well, it’s also an australia problem, but it seems to be everywhere.

YGGP: Thinking about it more, I guess I’m not surprised. A lot of games media seems to lean that way too, and just kind of socializing in general, at least here in the US. But that’s definitely not something I’d thought about before. How do you think events could ease some of that anxiety without relying so heavily on alcohol?

Ferguson: I find events that encourage gameplay- ARG games, those card games where you get a card at the door with a quest to complete, board games, multiplayer games, even silly LARPs help to alleviate that barrier of ‘ah don’t talk to me!!’ really helps. We’re gamers, we connect over games, it’s what we do. I also employ a use of ‘conversation colors‘.

YGGP: I’ve never seen those before! That’s a great idea!

Ferguson: I did not come up with it! But it’s been so helpful.

Currently, Ferguson can’t talk about any of his upcoming projects, but you can follow him on Twitter to keep up on future updates! You can also find the game developer group he founded, GenDeverse, on Twitter.