Thoughts on Winning the New Media Writing Prize

This week, I found out I won the New Media Writing Prize for 2024 with SEXTUPLE L. I’m feeling many things about it. All of them good. But I needed to sit down and really puzzle out what they are.

How I found out about it was a story in itself. I’d been given an invite to the award show months ago, on account of submitting, and I’d submit to so many by this point I’d entirely forgotten which one this was. At the same time it would be airing, I’d be in Germany for A MAZE., and I saw little chance of getting five minutes to join. One of my friends, who’d been nominated, very kindly said they’d update me if anything came up as they watched. I’m figuring out the logistics of tomorrow, open my phone, and see they’ve sent me a screenshot of SEXTUPLE L winning the grand prize.

So I looked at it, and thought: okay. Cool. Then went about the rest of my trip.

This was because I thought it wasn’t the grand prize. Or any prize. That’s half of why I didn’t put time aside to watch it while I was away. I immediately defaulted to thinking this was some kind of shoutout, or runner up. Because, of course, I couldn’t be in the running to win. They’d put the tranny in the honourable mentions as a pittance gift then slip a cheque to whichever cis guy has the most Twitter followers.

My friend, blatantly saying “congratulations on winning”, and sending a screenshot where my game was being shown as the winner, and saying how proud they were of me for winning, did not register to me that I’d won.

Of course, you can chalk that up to some minor jetlag or focusing on the trip in front of me. The feeling did not leave once I returned home. I watched the VOD and did not believe that I’d won. I checked the website and did not trust it was telling me the truth. As I received the fucking prize money, I was convinced this wasn’t real. Something had gone wrong, and they’d gone to me by accident. Something had gone so wrong that they’d reached the point of paypaling me and now we’re going to have to do a whole refund kerfuffle.

On the surface this looks like imposter syndrome or a lack of confidence. Which it isn’t. I’d already put myself through the interactive fiction gauntlet, deliberately, by submitting SEXTUPLE L to IFComp 2024 knowing it would piss off the majority of the people who would play it. This is the opposite of imposter syndrome. I shoved it in there, knowing most people would hate it, because I was convinced that enough people who needed to see it would.

It’s this thing, you see, of being entirely confident in your skills and artistic voice, whilst also being fully convinced that nothing good will ever happen to you. That no one who “mattered” (translated: those with money enough to let you live off this fulltime) would ever respect what you did. It didn’t matter how much your community supported and uplifted you, or how much your fans might scream and shout on social media, or how much tangible evidence you’ve collected that proves your work is important. Nothing good will happen to you.

I’ve been rejected by over ninety roles in games since the layoffs at Supermassive. Four hundred were outside of games, because being a game dev makes you unemployable. I’ve so thoroughly given up on ever getting a role “in industry”, even as I keep applying to everything I more than qualify for, that I go into every single one expecting to be ghosted. I have a hair trigger reaction to seeing an email start with “Unfortunately,” nuking it from my inbox on-sight. I don’t even know who it’s from. I don’t even track who I’ve applied to, anymore.

One of them (of ninety, by the way) offered feedback. Most of it was standard, but the final point stood out to me. It recommended of SEXTUPLE L, the game placed 11th in IFComp 2024, the game that won the Banana of Discord, the game that was by far my most recognisable work, to remove it from my portfolio. Some studios wouldn’t like it, you see, with a hurried note that he was fine with it. Just, you know, don’t make your transness any more unpalatable.

So to that guy, who definitely isn’t reading this, who I thanked over email before actually reading your points: go fuck yourself.¹

The point, is that I fully expected no recognition even slightly close to the mainstream games current. This was what I would get for making work that was violently myself. I truly believed it was important, and I would not shy away from dedicating myself to it, and this was the price I’d pay. The weirdos and freaks would adore me, and everyone else loves the solo dev until they ask for a living wage.

This week, at GaMaYo, I spoke to several publishers about the state of publishing. Really, I wanted to watch them squirm when I told them I’d been ghosted by 9 publishers with no feedback. One of them tried to offer insights into why this might be the case, thinking me a green little dev with big dreams, that publishers do love to see a build before putting faith in someone new. Just to see what they can do, you know?

“No, actually,” I said. “We’ve had a vertical slice for months.”

They hemmed and hawed at this counter. So then they gave the other standard answer, that publishers wanted prestige. They needed assurance the team could make something (even though they would never fund the first), just to be sure something would get out the door.

“No, actually,” I said. “This is the 15th game I’ve made.”

They hemmed and hawed once again. But, then they realised their next goal post move, and smiled once they said commercial. Jam games don’t really contribute to that confidence, you see, trying every way in the dictionary to not say “real game”. This is an entirely different development cycle, you see!

“No, actually,” I said. “This is my 3rd game on Steam.”

And at this I saw their face crack, then the shift, from absolute defeat to another slimy exit to never reflect on how exploitative the model they uphold is. Suddenly, they could no longer make grand sweeping statements about the state of the industry, and could only speak to what they were looking for. I was welcome to pitch (get thrown into an email inbox no-one checks), would receive feedback as soon as they could (get served an automated response that has less flavour than water), and they were excited to see my game (just tell me to kill myself and be done with it).

In a similar manner to being alive as a trans man, where your existence is a wedge in the idea that anti-trans belief is ground in any sort of logic,² my career is a complete shut-down of the “standard path” of becoming a commercial indie dev. I’ve done everything a publisher demands. I’ve worked in AAA.³ I’ve made a fuckload of games. I’ve guided a team on a commercial project and shipped. I know how to get something on Steam. I’m doing this almost alone; I’m cheap. And now, I’m award-winning. There is no magical line you can cross that suddenly means you’re respected as a creative and potential cash cow. They just fucking hate you.⁴

It would be nice to not be a wedge issue, you know, and maybe get my ridiculous demand of 36k for one year of development, but I digress.

Back to the point of the post, I guess there’s something… gratifying, about this? Maybe it’s relief. Freeing, that the publishing charade is a fucking charade, and fundamentally broken, and there’s nothing I can do to win. Other people who “matter” understand what I’m doing, and can give me a thumbs up and a boost for everything else. That 1k prize is going to fund COH’s first act.

“Matter” is and always will be subjective, of course. It’s not that I feel like my artistic output and its value is tied to any sort of recognition. I’ve managed to decouple that notion from my work early on in my career. But, you know, knowing something I’ve made is getting archived in the British Library, and receiving an award that has a whole Wikipedia page, and knowing that I’m going in that Winners of the Main Prize section eventually, and that people I know and respect are also on there… It feels nice. I’m allowed to say it feels nice. But it’s also weird, suddenly being recognised as “real”, while also being the exact same writer I was last week, and knowing I’m going to be doing the exact same thing for the foreseeable future. 

Most everything else I’m feeling are things I’ve already gone into in the game’s postmortem. SEXTUPLE L’s just crossed 12,500 views and 5,000 plays. So, once more, thank you.

I guess what’s next is working on getting a Wikipedia page longer than my dad’s.⁵ If any journalists still have a job by the end of the week, and want to help make a media case for me, do feel free to get in touch.