The NYU Game Center is proud to present the Seventh Annual No Quarter Exhibition, featuring new original work by established and emerging independent game designers. Please join us on October 28th at the Starr Space Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to celebrate and play these unique brand-new specially-commissioned games before anyone else in the world!
Free and open to the public.
NOTE FROM THE CURATOR, ROBERT YANG
When we commission artists, the brief is basically, “make a game for the public.” What does that even mean? Perhaps it means a game simple enough for anyone to learn, or entertaining for spectators to watch. Or maybe it acts as a mandate for depth, and a public game should have a high skill ceiling, to develop and sustain a player community around it.
Those are all noble pursuits, but let me offer an additional interpretation: a public game itself is less important than the ritual of gathering together to play it. A public game treats play as a freely available public good that everyone deserves, like air and water. Public games care whether players feel included, and train players to care about each other — to challenge toxic trolls who would weaken our trust, and to stop demagogues who would watch the world burn.
When we play in public, we must practice and perform the type of public we wish to see, and we do this for a very good reason: so that the public can exist at all.
THE 2016 NO QUARTER ARTISTS
Brendon Chung
Brendon is a designer, artist, and programmer based in Culver City. After years of working at Pandemic Studios, he founded Blendo Games, a one-person independent game studio. Blendo Games has since become known for creating rich worlds in works such as Thirty Flights of Loving, Gravity Bone, Atom Zombie Smasher, and Flotilla. His most recent release is Quadrilateral Cowboy, a 20th century cyberpunk heist game.
Catt Small
Catt is a product designer, game maker, and front-end web developer. She makes awesome things at Etsy. She has done design work for companies of all sizes including SoundCloud, Bedrocket, and Nasdaq. She started coding at the age of 10, designing at the age of 15, graduated from SVA with a BFA in Graphic Design in 2011, and graduated from NYU with an MS in Integrated Digital Media in 2016. Catt also makes video games with Brooklyn Gamery; teaches game development with The Code Liberation Foundation; and draws comics.
Holly Gramazio
Holly is one half of Matheson Marcault, which makes games (and other things) for events, parks, museums and public spaces. Since opening in June 2015 they’ve made work ranging from the Scientific Village Fete, a set of games for New Scientist Live, to One Easy Step, an installation and research project into public play. Holly was previously lead game designer at Hide&Seek, and she directs Now Play This, a festival of games and play at Somerset House in London.
Stephen Lawrence Clark
Stephen is a videogames artist, curator, and educator living in New York City. He is a co-owner of Babycastles Gallery, the first gallery dedicated to contemporary independent videogames, and holds an MFA in Game Design from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His completed master’s thesis, a collection of five climate-fiction vignette games titled ‘Rooftop Cop’, went on to garner two IGF Nominations (Best Student Game, and the NUOVO Award).
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