NYU - New York University
11/07/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 11/07/2024 09:04
NYU Game Center Presents “No Quarter” on Nov. 23
The NYU Game Center presents No Quarter, its annual curated exhibition spotlighting experimental games and the artists who create them, on November 23 from 7:00 to 10 p.m. at 370 Jay St. in Brooklyn. The event is playable, and free, although reservations are required.
No Quarter 2024 is curated by acclaimed designer Marie Foulston, who returns for the third consecutive year. Foulston commissioned new works from four leading artists and teams: Izzy Kestrel, Holy Wow Studio, Bahiyya Khan, and Rob Dubbin and Garrett Miller. The commissions include a six-person game about a city council addressing rising sea levels, a race with typewriters, and video games about grief and dreams. Guests will be able to play as they enjoy music, drinks, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the artists' creative processes.
This year's event is preceded by "Game Design Days," a series of 10 pop-up events organized with community partners in three New York City neighborhoods over three days, November 19-21. Supported by Empire State Development, "Game Design Days" will offer role playing games, workshops, an open studio visit, and pop-up arcades. All are free and open to the public. A map and calendar of the three-day celebration are available at this website.
"For this year's No Quarter, we're once again bringing together brilliant game creators from around New York, the nation, and the world to present a suite of never-before-seen games to the public. This year's games express a strong theme of building together and struggling to cooperate amidst mounting challenges. We're thrilled to explore the frontiers of meaningful play with these artists," says Naomi Clark, chair of the Game Center, Tisch's department of game design.
Game Design Days is an exciting opportunity to partner with members of the larger gaming community to present a range of games and opportunities to explore how they get made, Clark adds.
"Game Design Days lets us shine a spotlight on the best and brightest hubs of New York City's gaming communities," says Clark. "The NYU Game Center has long been a gathering point for local game developers, creators of board games as well as video games, and players who want to try new experiences, but we're just one of the many exciting hotspots of creative activity in this city, from digital studios to game clubs, arcades, and community spaces."
No Quarter refers to the 25-cent coin that traditionally fed arcade games. The event started in 2010 and ran annually until 2019, when the pandemic forced organizers to pause, before returning in 2022. Previous commissioned artists include Zach Gage, Kevin Cancienne, Mark Essen, and Margaret Robertson. Earlier versions launched such games as Terry Cavanagh's At A Distance and Catt Small's Breakup Squad.
For reservations to the 2024 edition, visit this website.
2024 Artists and Games
Rob Dubbin is an Emmy- and XYZZY-winning writer and developer whose work spans television, games, puzzles, bots, tooling, and procedural generation (ideally several of those at once). Co-creator of the Scripto collaborative platform, Dubbin co-hosts the Eggplant game-design podcast, and has written for both Stephen Colbert and Carmen Sandiego.
Garrett Miller has spent decades working with computers, crafting unique software,
Rob Dubbin and Garrett Miller
games, and art. His roles have spanned design, software engineering, and product leadership at companies like Mapbox, Slack, and Figma. Tide Breakers, featuring music by Nick Sylvester, is a multiplayer city-council simulator for human players and one robot.
Tower of Typing! By Holy Wow Studios
Dan and Jackie Vecchitto are the two-person Holy Wow Studios.
Holy Wow Studios is a two-person game development team of Dan and Jackie Vecchitto. Based in Brooklyn, they are the creators of the BAFTA-nominated TROMBONE CHAMP and the Icarus Proudbottom series including the ICARUS PROUDBOTTOM'S TYPING PARTY arcade cabinet at Wonderville. Tower of Typing! allows players to choose one of nine keyboards and type as fast as they can to climb the tower while racing against the other players.
Dreamscape Explorer by Izzy Kestrel
Izzy Kestrel is a trans game designer/writer/engineer who's been active for over a decade, both as a solo creative and professionally with studios like Funomena and No Goblin. In Dreamscape Explorer, players join a niche online chat room called "Pillow Talk," where one chatter has discovered a program that allegedly allows them to explore a dream network that connects everyone around the world while they sleep.
Izzy Kestrel
Bahiyya Khan
HOWL by Bahiyya Khan
Bahiyya Khan is a South African game designer, writer, filmmaker, and more recently, a special effects artist who has a record of creating stories about girls of color. HOWL is a full-motion, immersive video game about grief, voyeurism, and judgment.
About New York University's Game Center
The Game Center is the Department of Game Design in the Tisch School of the Arts. Its mission is to educate the next generation of designers, developers, entrepreneurs, and critics and to advance the field of games by creating opportunities for scholarship and innovation. It draws undergraduate and graduate students from a range of disciplines, including computer programming, visual art, animation, sound and audio, writing, architecture, and law.