Gay By Design: Interview With Game Designer Jeb Havens

I sat down with game designer Jeb Havens, who worked as a designer on Playboy: The Mansion and was lead designer on that game’s Private Party expansion pack. Jeb’s currently working at 1st Playable Productions on an undisclosed project, and 1st Playable’s Puzzle Quest comes out for the DS on March 20, 2007.

Here at GDC, Jeb has also been leading the LGBT roundtable and group gatherings, on which I’ll be updating you soon, laws of spacetime and human endurance permitting. Meanwhile, I picked Jeb’s brain and asked him a few questions concerning what it’s like to be a gay game designer, and to share his insights into the future of gay content in gaming. It doesn’t hurt, as you might have noticed, that he’s a cutie. (Does it ever?)

How did you get started in the industry?
My path was different from most people’s: I got really lucky by being at the right place at the right time. The summer after I graduated from Brown, I was looking for a job in the Western Massachusetts area, possibly teaching in private schools – but at one point I saw an ad in the local newspaper seeking junior game designers. I contacted them; they hired me. That’s the unexciting story.

I didn’t have video game experience, but I had playwriting, my academic background as a major in both cognitive and computer sciences. I focused on human perception, cognitively, and with computer science I focused on neural networks and complex systems. I think a lot of those experiences, especially learning about complex systems, is really important in game design. The last few years at Brown I focused on doing studies with ant colonies and understanding complex chaos systems. It’s really, really applicable.

Have you run in to much homophobia within the industry?
I have not. I’ve been lucky in that the companies I‘ve worked at have been terrific. Cyberlore was in Northwestern Mass, which I think must have the highest per-capita lesbian population in the world, so I was out from day one.

Now I work at 1st Playable Productions, which is a very young studio, and a lot of the people who work there simply don’t have issues with it. It’s a very open atmosphere.

The only thing that I can point to would be some experiences at conferences: but that’s not blatant homophobia so much as a kind of frat-boy, male-bonding thing. People I’ve just met who have no reason to know that I’m gay, who create what might feel like a hostile environment for some gay men or women. A lot of people may not have the confidence to stand up alone and confront a group of men about (or joke about) the situation.

Make the jump for more of Jeb!

Would you say homophobia in the gaming industry comes more from game designers or from the players?
I think it comes more from the perception of the players: a lot of what I’ve heard in talking to a lot of people who work in the industry, typically once some sort of hostile environment is confronted directly in a healthy way it simply diffuses.

There is this perception of the typical gamer as really immature, straight, and male. And looking at the types of advertisements out there – you can open any developer or consumer magazine and look at an ad and immediately know what demographic is being targeted and what the people making those ads think of those people. It’s almost condescending in a way, that reinforcement of the idea that gamers are immature and prejudiced.

Do you think games support negative gay stereotypes?
A little. I think the way that they do so is similar to the way that games often assign a negative reaction or value to anything that doesn’t support the traditionally masculine ideal. It’s less about stereotypes and more of a gender thing: anything that confronts standard masculinity is either a joke or an enemy – an “Other.” In-game, you may fight a boss, like in Godhand, who is this flaming guy, and whether he’s gay or not, it sends a message.

Have you ever pushed for gay content in any of the games you've worked on?
Yes, I have. I worked on Playboy: The Mansion, which included women-on-women content, and I was lead designer on the expansion pack for that game. We couldn’t change the fundamental system, but there were certain things we could do to allow more choice for the player. You could have gay parties, for instance. The direction we chose was to give the player more freedom for customizing parties. If you happened to invite only guys and had them dress up in only their bathing suits and added a volleyball net, it would be a gay party.

We didn’t have the animations to include male-male interactions, so we couldn’t add that: the animations were gender-specific. It was mostly a technological thing, because philosophically it would have been a fit with the license and for our company. But I did push for living a larger variety of fantasies. We set up a dance floor, and although we didn’t have animations to make men dance together, they could dance by themselves - facing each other.

I'm sure some straight developers might feel uncomfortable working on gay content; did you feel uncomfortable working on the Playboy games?
No, not at all. I think that largely had to do with the office atmosphere; the working culture at Cyberlore was really healthy and open. We knew that it could have been a touchy subject, so we put a lot of effort into having people talk about it openly. It was hilarious, really; a lot of our conversations were about sex positions, and of course Brenda Brathwaite was lead designer. She knew more about Playboy than any guy in the office. At one point she and I added some guy posters to the Playboy pinups on the wall. Treating the subject with humor was helpful. And when starting the project, any employees who were uncomfortable work in that milieu had the option to work on something else instead.

Speaking of Brenda Brathwaite, what was it like working with her? I’ve just met her the other day, and I’m already in love with her. She’s a goddess, isn’t she?
She’s fantastic. She’s an amazing person, working with her was a phenomenal experience; it was my first game as a designer, and she really took the time to be a mentor. She was largely responsible for making working on the Playboy project fun for everybody. It was a wonderful experience, and even though we went into crunch time and worked long hours, we never got punchy or started infighting. She is a goddess, yes.

That’s just working with her; she’s also very outspoken when it comes to what she beleves in and not being afraid to stand up against anything that she thinks is wrong. She’ll bust right in and say it. She hits right to the core.

Do you think awareness of the gay gaming community has improved since you started in the industry?
Yes, definitely. Visibility of gay people both making and playing games has improved. If for nothing else than the fact that the IGDA would accept to do an LGBT roundtable discussion here at GDC. Also a lot of the gay gaming groups are being recognized in both in the gaming press and gay press. That’s important because until you’re really aware that something exists it’s easy to simply not acknowledge it. It’s similar to the coming out process in some ways.

What do you think is the possibility of seeing a gay lead character in a mainstream game anytime soon?
Anytime soon? I think it’s likely to happen… maybe not in the most mainstream game, perhaps something that’s more than just a web game, something you can buy on the shelf – maybe within the next five years. That’s hedging my bets a little bit. There is an audience, and a lot of the technology that’s been created for marketing, developing and selling games is very helpful: you can make and target a game for a specific group of people.

How do you feel about the current depictions of gay characters in games?
I feel that for the most part any depiction is better than none. Obviously there are exceptions, but I disagree with the idea that we should be making sure that the gay characters in games show all sides of the gay community fairly or only show gays in a positive light; not because that’s undesirable but because I don’t think that’s a valuable restriction to put on gay characters and it’s not one we’d put on other characters. I’d rather have a well-thought-out, flawed gay character than one who’s thrown in as a sterilized example of a good clean gay person - that’s just another, shallower stereotype.

What is your opinion on the whole Bully kissing thing? A step forward? A step backward? Or just Rockstar trying to stir the pot?
Step forward. I think it’s great and I’m happy with the reaction it has gotten. It’s a great example of putting in something that doesn’t exclude your gay audience but also doesn’t make a big stir. It shows that just by including a gay audience you don’t have to make a giant statement. I played that video from YouTube so many times for my coworkers, and they loved it. It’s hysterical. You can tell that the prime motivation was to make a good game and have this really funny experience that fit perfectly into the world. It was wonderfully over the top in this very cheesy way that completely fits the mood of the game.

Do you think the gay gaming community is large enough to make a difference in the kind of gay content we will see in future games?
It will take a while before we see a real impact in how mainstream games are made, but I think that there is a large enough gay audience that eventually someone will tap into it. Similar to the movie industry: there’s a whole spectrum of movies that are wholeheartedly targeted to the gay audience. They’re usually crappy but we watch them anyway, because they tell our stories. Some of those stories bleed over into mainstream movies - so it will have an effect, even if it’s a minor one. It’s important that we eventually see that same spectrum in games. There may be gay-targeted games that aren’t that good, but we’ll play them; and then you’ll see similar issues taken up by the mainstream.

What is your opinion on the current console wars?
I like the Wii the best. I remember thinking, before it launched, that I really believed in what the Wii was trying to do, and how it really made sense along so many variables. Instead of continuing the arms race in one direction, to instead stop and take a look at people instead of hardware, and take a look at why we play games in the first place - what will bring people together. It fit with the whole business theory of “disruptive innovation,” which means that you’re acknowledging that an audience is being over-served: they don’t need as much of what they’re being sold. To come in with a product that’s less expensive, has a simpler way to jump in and have fun, that’s disruptively innovative; first it grabs a new audience at the “low end” of the mainstream and works its way up, stealing people away from what was traditionally the only path to making games. We’ve seen hardcore gamers realize that they could have this whole other set of experiences that was fun for them, it wasn’t too cheap or too flimsy.

Tell us about your board game, Mother Sheep.
It’s a family strategy board game that I designed; it will be coming out on shelves at the end of April. It’s being dual-marketed as both a kid’s game, because the mechanics are relatively easy, and as a hardcore board game, because it can become very ruthless. It will come with ten little plastic sheep, and I would recommend if people do get it and don’t want to play with little sheep, replace the sheep pawns with your favorite little figurines and customize your play experience! It will also be available at FunAgain.com.

Can you tell us anything about your upcoming DS game, Puzzle Quest?
It is a mix between a puzzle game and a traditional RPG adventure game – you go through cycles: in order to battle a monster you play a competitive Bejeweled-style puzzle game. If you defeat the monster you get experience points and advance the storyline, and as you level up your character you gain spells and different abilities and stat boosts that let you do more damage and do more with the board. It’s extremely addictive in both an RPG level-grind way as well as a Bejeweled way. It’s coming out on dual platforms, and we developed the DS version, which I think works really well for the game because of the stylus interaction. In the single-player storyline you get to pick your gender – and if you do play as a female you still fall in love with the king’s daughter! You progress through a huge storyline and map, but you can also play in a two player mode through ad-hoc or Wi-Fi.

I showed it to my brother on a plane and he didn’t give the DS back until it ran out of batteries. It’s very, very addictive.