Gamasutra article by Katherine Cross: In praise of Tacoma's character Sareh Hasmadi [September 6, 2017]
Era Thread by Hey Please: LTTP : TACOMA Temporal Voyeurism [July 13, 2019]
From Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor:
Other articles:
Thread by TheMoon: TACOMA |OT| These Ghosts Can't Go Home Again + cats
[...] But it therefore seems as good a time as any to analyze a videogame character who, with the effortlessness of zero-G drift, rises above all this to show us how it's done. Tacoma's Sareh Hasmadi, the resident doctor aboard the eponymous space station, cut me quite deeply. As I played through the game a second time to hoover up the remaining achievements, the emotional aftershocks from my inaugural run came. You see, after having sat with my feelings from my initial play through, it dawned on me that Dr. Hasmadi was largely their author. For in a game peopled by rich characters whose failings and struggles were central to the story, Sareh Hasmadi stood out as exceptionally nuanced, and human, in a medium where the latter is too often a rare achievement--especially where non-white women are concerned. [...]
Era Thread by Hey Please: LTTP : TACOMA Temporal Voyeurism [July 13, 2019]
[...] As a final note, in a time where diversity can often be seen as "political" when it comes to Playable Character (and NO, including custom character creator does not solve the core issue) with non-white women being almost non-existent in story driven games, TACOMA feels like a breath of fresh air. The only other games I can name from memory that feature the same are Beyond Good & Evil, Remember Me, ACIII: Liberation, AC: Chronicles China and Portal 1 & 2. I do not even know whether it accounts for a drop in an ocean of named protagonists in gaming. [Incidental Note: The character mentioned by Katherine Cross above -- Sareh Hasmadi -- is not the protagonist/player character. The player character is Amitjyoti "Amy" Ferrier.]
From Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor:
Steve Gaynor: "[...] We did research on a few different vectors. We researched accounts of living in orbit on the ISS, and of living in extremely remote facilities such as research bases in Antarctica, to understand the dynamics and details of people confined to these kinds of places for long periods of time. We read books such as An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by the astronaut Chris Hadfield, and various blogs and accounts by other astronauts and researchers. We also went back to a number of AI-themed science fiction novels and films, such as 2001, Moon, Alien, and even classic texts like Asimov's I, Robot for inspiration and reference points [...]"
"[...] As far as talking to individuals, probably the most direct interview research we did was with people in our circles who grew up in the Muslim faith. We wanted to get our depiction of Sareh right, so we talked to folks we knew when conceiving her character, and then had them play through a build of the game once her scenes were built and her bunk set up to see if we'd missed anything. Luckily it seems that with their help we were able to represent Sareh in an authentic way! [...]"
Other articles:
Daily Emerald (University of Oregon): "[...] Identity and authenticity are central to Fullbright's games, so the team goes to great lengths to ensure that everything is properly represented. Gone Home, for example, deals with LGBT themes and riot grrrl music culture, so interviews were conducted with people who could help the team craft true-to-life stories and characters within those frameworks.
"For instance, with Sareh [Hasmadi] in Tacoma, she's a Muslim character," Gaynor said, referring to the group's second game. "That is outside the personal lived experience of people on our dev team." A Muslim friend of the team showed Fullbright the items inside her parent's home: tapestries bearing passages from the Quran and plaques with engraved scriptures. In the final game, a directly recreated version of one of the plaques in that friend's house can be found.
"That particular plaque was in Sareh's room. We had a playtester who played it who was like, 'It was cool seeing that plaque, but you put it on the middle shelf of her bookshelf. Anything like that, with a passage from the Quran, should be on the highest shelf," Gaynor said. That attention to cultural and personal detail resulted in a duology of games that stand as some of the most accurate and loving representations of marginalized groups within the industry today. It also helped bring the conversation of representation in games to the mainstream. [...]
Carolyn Petit at Feminist Frequency: "[...] Tacoma features a black woman, a Muslim woman, and a queer Asian man, among others, and the humanity of every character is incidental, fully assumed and fully granted by each of the others; the game is full of conflict but none of that conflict is rooted in the specifics of anyone's gender, race, or sexuality. [...]"
Holly Green at Paste Magazine: "[...] Tacoma is a great game, intriguing and thoughtful all at once. I loved every heartbreaking minute. Among its more distinctive features is its diversity, offering up a cast of characters that are widely varied in their racial, religious and sexual identities. Nat and Bert, a married lesbian couple who both found work aboard the orbital unit central to the events of Tacoma, are an example of the game's commitment to offering a broad range of perspectives. I cite them specifically because it's due to their part in the story that I had a unique experience I've yet to have in a videogame. [...] In general, it's not often you see a casual reference to the sex life of a videogame character meant to denote a level of intimacy, rather than be presented to the player for titillation. [...]
Lewis Gordon at The Nation: "[...] Other independent games from the time incorporated economic disenfranchisement into their narratives. Kentucky Route Zero (2013) focused on the plight of blue-collar workers, while The Stanley Parable tasked players with escaping white-collar drudgery. Four years later, the sci-fi drama Tacoma imagined an Orbital Workers Union, while Night in the Woods presented a postindustrial American town through the eyes of a teenager struggling with depression. [...] Game Workers Unite's emergence in 2018 was the outcome of these long-standing [real-world] grievances. The politics of titles such as such as Cart Life and Tacoma played their part, too, bridging the gap between on-screen alienation and real-life labor while the media wised up to industry exploitation. In 2015, a GDC panel headed by Western University's Johanna Weststar and Marie-Jose Legault detailed increasing support for workplace unions and even an industry-wide video game union. [...]
Abigail Nussbaum at Lawyers, Guns, & Money: "[...] In this installment of A Political History of the Future, our series about how science fiction constructs its political and economic futures, we discuss indie developer Fullbright's most recent game, Tacoma, and how it imagines a corporatized future in space. [...] What there is, however, is a refreshingly human scale of storytelling, which allows the game to explore how people live in the maw of capitalism—nervously, defiantly, sometimes buying into the system, sometimes blissfully unaware of it, and always focused just as much on their own hopes, dreams, and loved ones as they are on the bigger picture. [...]"
Thread by TheMoon: TACOMA |OT| These Ghosts Can't Go Home Again + cats
developer: fullbright
publisher: fullbright
genre: vhs simulator
official game site: tacoma.game
platforms: |||| ps4 |||| xbox one |||| pc/mac/lin ||||
release: |||| may 8th, 2018 (ps4) |||| august 2nd, 2017 (xbox one/pc/mac/lin) ||||
ps4 pro enhanced: yes, 4k toggle
xbox one x enhanced: yes, 4k/30fps or 1080p/60fps toggle
what is new: 2 hours of developer commentary (added to all versions), with checklist menu so you can't miss anything
cats: yes, all the cats
ghosts: maybe this time?
acquire: |||| { -[psn]- } |||| { -[steam]- } |||| { -[itch.io]- } |||| { -[gog]- } |||| { -[humble]- } |||| { -[xbox]- } ||||
[...]
Interviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmFF033I9E (video version of text summary above)https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/steve-gaynor-part-1 Designer Notes interview with Steve Part 1 (general talk)https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/steve-gaynor-part-2 Designer Notes interview with Steve Part 2 (covers why they made Tacoma)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N0qNhOHjWw Making Ofhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr23iLln8Bo The Reinvention of Tacoma
Gameplay with devs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hCQb13zbUs Kinda Funny plays Tacoma w/ Steve Gaynorhttps://www.twitch.tv/videos/165729220 Gamasutra plays Tacoma with level designer Nina Freemanhttps://www.twitch.tv/videos/173250292 Let's Intelliplay: Tacoma w/ Steve Gaynor and Nina Freeman!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2YdecRTCTw Giant Bomb plays the game with Steve and Karla Zimonja
Article Stuff/Criticism:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/08/tacoma-in-capitalism-no-one-can-hear-you-scream.htmlhttps://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...topia-of-tacoma-labor-politics-are-still-hell (critical piece on labor politics in the Tacoma universe)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVxVaX0GqyQ Tacoma: The Little Details (Writing on Games)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGkfMTlDl1A Errant Signal on Tacoma (and Gone Home)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAyJ866xGLs Let's Study Tacoma (Ian Bryce Jones)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U_rfYXXdOY SOMA vs Tacoma (Noah Caldwell-Gervais)
