Deeds, or, Hofmeier Destroys Everything
When I met Richard Hofmeier at Indiecade East in February, literally the first thing he asked me was whether I had a Sharpie on me. Given my shabbiness, the seven piercings distributed around my ears, and the haze in my eyes, I was the most logical candidate, but unfortunately, I hadn’t planned on doing any graffiti that day.
I asked him what he needed the Sharpie for and he pointed to the little sign that the Indiecade people had set up. The branding of all of the Indiecade materials was in this weird, garish, glitchy rainbow color scheme, which seemed to fit perfectly for what Indiecade East was–a gathering of New York Hipsters into games, a convention wonderfully, delightfully, olfactorily free of the awful geeks and nerds that populated PAX East when I accidentally went to it last year. Surrounding Cart Life by Richard Hofmeier was a border of the rainbow stuff. “I wanted to black it out,” he said. “I thought it would match the game better.”
Cart Life is, itself, a carcinogenic greyscale. It’s a gorgeous game, but Georgetown is a city of ash. Hofmeier himself was wearing a grey and black suit–I’ve seen his look described as “drunken 1930s reporter”, perhaps cosplaying as his own cameo in his game.
Cart Life pulled three wins at this year’s Independent Games Festival, bringing Hofmeier and Cart Life to many peoples’ attention. Almost overnight, Hofmeier turned into an indie game celebrity; if Indie Game: The Movie were in preproduction, Hofmeier would certainly be shortlisted for inclusion. (If Hofmeier were in Indie Game: The Movie, maybe it would have been interesting. That’s another article.) But Hofmeier overshadowed his own win by following through on his desire for vandalism: After winning, he decided to refuse further publicity and essentially torpedoed his own booth, changing the demo computer to play the game Howling Dogs by “Porpentine” and spraypainting over his own sign–in black, of course.
As would be hoped, this has sparked conversation about and interest in Howling Dogs and in Porpentine’s other work; it has also not hurt Hofmeier’s image any. Hofmeier is a deeply strange man. In public he presents as extremely anxious. When on stage for the Q&A after Nick Fortugno’s Well Played session on Cart Life at Indiecade, Hofmeier clutched at the microphone. He hid in the shadows until someone suggested he and Fortugno sat down, an option Hofmeier all but ran to take. His awkwardness, when accepting his IGF awards, was much commented about on Twitter. His quirks have almost universally been seen as endearing. It was in the cards that Hofmeier would eventually become a famous figure in the world of indie games; that he is genuinely humble and genuinely cares about people–that’s just icing on the cake.
Hofmeier’s last word, during the Q&A, was a wish for more female designers–for more diversity in gaming. And so his decision to choose Porpentine’s game is a little more significant than simply giving some airtime to a game he liked which otherwise would have gotten little attention. Porpentine is a somewhat controversial figure in the world of indie games, to say the least, if only for her strong opinions about the visibility of outsiders in gaming culture–her writing is often particularly concerned with the visibility of queer women–and the equally strong rhetoric that she uses to make her points. The quote bandied about Twitter, from Porpentine’s GDC talk, was “DESTROY EVERYTHING”. Hofmeier apparently took her exhortation seriously.
In 1913, a British suffragette named Emily Davison went to the Epsom Derby, entered the racetrack, stepped into the path of an oncoming horse owned by King George V, and died four days later as a result of her injuries.
While her motivations and purpose are unclear–some people believe that she had merely intended to tie a feminist flag or slogan to the horse’s tail, and others suggest she may have mistakenly believed all of the horses had already passed and was crossing the track for some other reason–history sees her as a martyr to the feminist cause. That she had a well-documented history of militantly violent/self-destructive behavior in the name of feminism–arson, hunger strikes, etc–seems to lend credence to the theory that she was performing a de facto act of self-immolation.
I think about this and I think about Richard Hofmeier. Asher Vollmer, commenting on the incident, called Hofmeier’s act an “uncouth move”; his objection was to what seems to be a perception that it’s somehow a slap in the face to the IGF. Vollmer’s comment is stupid–and yet the IGF did select Cart Life. The IGF did publicize their event as containing Cart Life. The IGF did set up space for him–and gave him $38,000 in prizes. It’s not quite an insulting act, and Hofmeier’s motivations are genuine and are correct ones…
…but they’re also extremely and wonderfully destructive.
Hofmeier is taking Porpentine’s command and applying it to his own game. To see no violence in his act is to miss the point of it entirely. I don’t know how such things work, but I’d be surprised if Hofmeier’s next game would win an award, because if the award people are at all savvy about anything, they’ll know that Hofmeier’s next logical step is to, on stage, publicly turn the award down in favor of whatever other game has caught his eye. The intensity of this act is much greater than it first appears to be. Hofmeier has sacrificed his position of privilege in order to put something greater than himself in the spotlight.
It has traditionally been the technique of minority voices in the gaming scene to meekly and patiently explain why Kotaku should be really really nice and be really great and swell guys who should be really nice and please let us in because we have these things we should tell and let me tell you a personal story about something which happened to me which was really bad and made me really sad and that would be really good if you would let us into the community because this community belongs to all of us and how dare you not let me in and that’s very sad and i can’t believe that people aren’t ready for my type of writing and I wish that would be the case but that’s not and it’s horrible how no one wants what I’m making and okay let’s just retreat back here because no one has handed me my career and things are hard. I am sick to death of the major mode of personal discourse in this community being self-pitying, self-absorbed, narcissistic, disingenuous, solipsistic, closed-minded bullshit that has passed for critical thought in the videogame scene because it accomplishes nothing but a cult of personality focused upon pitying the writer.
Hofmeier has made one of the most salient blows for feminist and queer visibility in the gaming scene in a long time. I wasn’t there. I don’t know if he and Porpentine acted together or independently or what–it doesn’t really matter. Their words and actions, in concert, have done more than a hundred confessional screeds self-martyring over saying “rape” in an online game. Destroy everything? I hope they will.
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