Welcome to the community hub built on top of the Anna Anthropy Wikipedia article. Here, you can discuss, collect, and organize anything related to Anna Anthropy.
No posts have been nominated yet. Go to talks and select post to be placed here.
No news about Anna Anthropy has been added yet.Add news
Video game design, role-playing game design, interactive fiction, notable for works like "Mighty Jill Off" and "Dys4ia", known for contributions to the queer game movement.
Key Dates and Places
Death Date: Still Alive.
Career
Current occupation: Game Designer, Author, Educator.
Current Place of Work: Independent / Freelance, various academic institutions for teaching.
Skills
Game design (Twine, GameMaker, etc.), writing (interactive fiction, essays), teaching, public speaking, pixel art, queer theory and game studies.
Languages
Languages Spoken: English.
Personality
Life Philosophy: Often explores themes of queer identity, gender, sexuality, mental health, and personal experiences in their work. Advocates for more diverse and inclusive representation in games.
Main Milestones
Birth and Early Life
1981
Anna Anthropy was born in 1981. Details of her very early life are not widely publicized, but her childhood undoubtedly influenced her later creative endeavors, shaping her perspectives on gender, societal norms, and personal identity, which are frequently explored in her games.
Entry into Game Development
Early 2000s
Anna began experimenting with game development, initially drawn to the possibilities of interactive storytelling and self-expression that the medium offered. This marked the start of her journey in creating games that would challenge conventional narratives and explore personal experiences.
Release of 'Mighty Jill Off'
2008
The release of 'Mighty Jill Off' was a pivotal moment in Anna's career. This masochistic platformer, intentionally designed to be brutally difficult, gained notoriety for its stark aesthetic and subversion of typical game tropes. It was a statement about power dynamics and player expectations, establishing Anna as a provocative and innovative voice in indie gaming.
Release of 'Dys4ia'
2012
'Dys4ia' is arguably Anna's most famous and impactful work. This autobiographical game chronicles her experiences undergoing hormone replacement therapy, portraying the physical and emotional changes through a series of interactive vignettes. 'Dys4ia' was widely praised for its honesty, vulnerability, and its ability to convey a deeply personal experience through the unique language of video games. It served as a powerful example of the potential of games to explore complex and often marginalized topics.
Publication of 'Rise of the Videogame Zinesters'
2012
Anna's book, 'Rise of the Videogame Zinesters', became an essential text for aspiring indie game developers. It advocated for a more personal and DIY approach to game creation, encouraging developers to embrace their own unique voices and perspectives, regardless of technical limitations. The book emphasized the importance of experimentation, self-expression, and creating games that reflected personal experiences and beliefs, which were contrary to the big budget gaming development industry.
Game Design Education
2013
Anna began teaching game design, sharing her knowledge and experience with aspiring developers. Through her teaching, she continued to promote the values of inclusivity, personal expression, and challenging conventional game design norms.
Continued Advocacy and Development
Ongoing
Anna continues to be a vocal advocate for inclusivity and diversity in the games industry. She consistently uses her platform to amplify marginalized voices and encourages the creation of games that reflect a wider range of experiences. She remains active in game development, exploring new creative avenues and pushing the boundaries of what games can achieve, influencing a generation of developers.
In 2010, working with Koduco, a game development company based in San Francisco, Anthropy helped develop the iPad game Pong Vaders.[5][6] In 2011, she released Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars, a homage to Midway's 1981 arcade game Wizard of Wor with a queer theme and "some fun commentary on master-slave dynamics."[7] In 2012, she released Dys4ia, an autobiographical game about her experiences with hormone replacement therapy that "[allows] the player to experience a simulation or approximation of what she went through."[8] Anthropy says her games explore the relationship between sadism and game design, and bills them as challenging players' expectations about what the developer should create and how the player should be reprimanded for errors.[9][10]Triad was included in the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 exhibition curated by Jon Cates (jonCates).[11]
Anthropy co-wrote the book A Game Design Vocabulary with Naomi Clark (game designer). Keith Stuart for The Guardian called it one of twenty books every player should read, writing that, "this excellent manual gives you an entire framework and language for thinking about how games are constructed."[12][13]
Anthropy's first book, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, was published in 2012. The book promotes the idea of "small, interesting, personal experiences by hobbyist authors ... Zinesters exists to be a kind of ambassador for that idea of what video games can be."[14] The book also deals with an analysis of the mechanics and potentialities of digital games, including the role of chance in games and that games may be more usefully compared to theater than film ("There is always a scene called World 1-2, although each performance of World 1-2 will be different").[15] Anthropy criticizes the video game industry for being run by a risk-averse corporate "elite" designing formulaic video games. Zinester calls for consumers to see video games as having "cultural and artistic value" similar to artistic media such as comic books. The video game industry does not allow for a diverse cast of voices, such as queer voices, to give their input in game development, which stifles the creative process. Anthropy writes: "I have to strain to find any game that's about a queer woman, to find any game that resembles my own experience."[16]
^Brice, Mattie (2017). "Chapter 9: Play and Be Real About It". In Ruberg, Bonnie; Shaw, Adrienne (eds.). Queer Game Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 78–79. ISBN978-1-5179-0037-3.
^Cates, Jon (November 2018). Chicago New Media, 1973-1992. University of Illinois Press. p. 9. ISBN978-0-252-08407-2.
^Anthropy, Anna (2012). Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Dropouts, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN978-1-60980-372-8.
^"Afternoon In The House Of Secrets". Auntiepixelante.com. July 30, 2007. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
This is a community hub built on top of the Anna Anthropy Wikipedia article. Here, you can discuss, collect, and organize anything related to Anna Anthropy. The purpose of the hub is to connect people, foster deeper knowledge, and help improve the root Wikipedia article.
This is a community hub built on top of the Anna Anthropy Wikipedia article. Here, you can discuss, collect, and organize anything related to Anna Anthropy. The purpose of the hub is to connect people, foster deeper knowledge, and help improve the root Wikipedia article.
