Merritt k explained

merritt k
Other Names:Merritt Kopas
Birth Date:October 1
Birth Place:Hamilton, Ontario, Canada[1] [2]
Occupation:game designer, author

merritt k,[3] formerly Merritt Kopas, is a Canadian writer, editor, and video game designer.

k is known for her games LIM, HUGPUNX, and Consensual Torture Simulator. She said that the theme of her games is "the capacity of digital games to convey care relationships; either to provide a sense of care to the player or to invest her in the project of caring for another."[4] Much of her early work is no longer available, k said those works "felt personal in a way that I was uncomfortable with", and that post-Gamergate, "being personal online was a much more dangerous proposition...for a lot of people."[5]

k is the author of Internet fiction and zines such as Dear Pauline and These Were Free on my Blog.[6] [7] k is the editor of the Twine game print anthology Videogames for Humans and co-author of the poetry collection Total Mood Killer and the comics-poetry hybrid text Internet Murder Revenge Fantasy. In 2024, she published LAN Party, a photo book revisiting the early 2000s heyday of the LAN party.[8] From 2019 to 2023, she was an editor at Fanbyte.[9]

Career

k grew up with games and the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, though her academic background was in sociology. Her first game to attract wider attention was LIM, released on her website for free in 2012. LIM was made in Construct 2, and is a maze game about navigating public spaces and the perception of others. It was made during her first summer publicly presenting as a queer woman, and was an expression of that experience.[10] [11] [12]

Also in 2012, she discovered the interactive fiction tool Twine. Though Twine as first released in 2009, k credits Anna Anthropy's 2012 work, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, for bringing it to a wider audience. k authored works using Twine, and was grouped into a 'queer games scene' which featured other trans women creatives such as Anthropy, Mattie Brice, and Porpentine, the presence of which lead k to declare in Lambda Literary that "hypertext and digital games are totally trans genres".[12] [10] [13] In 2015, k published Videogames for Humans, a collection of conversations between Twine authors and critics.[13] [14] [15] [16]

On her personal website, k has published such games as Minkomora, Obeissance, and Take Care – the last one described as a game in which the player reaches through the ether to offer comfort to a distressed person.[6] Some of her smaller pieces, such as the game Super Consent, deal with the complexities of issues like consent and why and how they should be dealt with in culture.

In September 2016, the NYU Game Center announced k as its first-ever artist in residence.[17]

(ASMR) Vin Diesel DMing a Game of D&D Just For You

(ASMR) Vin Diesel DMing a Game of D&D Just For You was designed by k in 2015. The Twine game features American actor Vin Diesel providing a "quick game" of the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to help the player feel better about themselves. Diesel is also a big fan of D&D.[18] The game involves pictures of the actor as well as text introducing the game to the player. The autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) aspect of the game is in the gameplay rather than as audio.

Podcasts

k hosts her own podcast called Woodland Secrets, where she interviews primarily women, people of color, and queer people.[19] On June 19, 2016, she began hosting Dadfeelings, a podcast about fictional dads and the feelings associated with them. k also guest starred on the Polygon podcast CoolGames Inc. for an episode.[20]

Games

Notes and References

  1. 73: Cory Silverberg . Woodland Secrets . merritt k . September 11, 2016 . 1:50 . 20 November 2022 .
  2. Episode 26: Ev O'Driscoll . The K-Hole . . merritt k . June 23, 2021 . 5:40 . 20 November 2022 .
  3. k . merritt . merrittk . 854047158277988353 . April 17, 2017 . my full name is merritt k. all other renditions are deprecated . April 17, 2017 . https://web.archive.org/web/20170422110939if_/https://twitter.com/merrittk/status/854047158277988353 . April 22, 2017 . dead.
  4. Web site: merritt kopas. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  5. Web site: Conversation: merritt k on changing your path. Amy Rose Spiegel. The Creative Independent. 2017-03-28. 2024-09-10.
  6. Web site: merritt kopas. itch.io. October 26, 2015.
  7. Web site: These Were Free On My Blog. itch.io. March 29, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160428104913/https://a-dire-fawn.itch.io/these-were-free. 2016-04-28. dead.
  8. Web site: Inside the world of 90s gamers and LAN Party culture. Günseli Yalcinkaya. Dazed. 2024-01-18. 2024-07-27.
  9. Web site: So Long, and Thanks For All the Games. merritt k. Fanbyte. 2023-05-31. 2024-07-27.
  10. Web site: Just making things and being alive about it: The queer games scene. Keogh. Brendan. Polygon. 2013-05-23. 2024-09-14.
  11. Book: Creativity in the Digital Age Springer Series on Cultural Computing. Nelson. Zagalo. Pedro. Branco. Springer. 63. 2015. 978-1-447-16681-8.
  12. Web site: Trans Women & The New Hypertext. k. merritt. Lambda Literary. 2014-07-08. 2024-09-14. https://web.archive.org/web/20140818055113/http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/07/08/trans-women-the-new-hypertext/. 2014-08-18.
  13. Web site: 'If You Stop and Look, You Will Literally Die': An Interview with Merritt Kopas – Hazlitt. Chris Randle. Hazlitt. May 25, 2015. October 26, 2015.
  14. What's a Twine Game? Let Videogames for Humans Show You. Daniel. Joseph. VICE Motherboard. May 4, 2015. April 27, 2017.
  15. Videogames For Humans edited by Merritt Kopas. Javy. Gwaltney. Paste Magazine. May 29, 2015. October 26, 2015.
  16. Book: The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries. Kate. Oakley. Justin. O'Connor. Routledge. 159. 2015. 978-1-317-53398-6.
  17. Web site: Announcing Artist in Residence merritt k. NYU Game Center. September 15, 2016. August 28, 2017.
  18. Web site: Ben. Kuchera. Let Vin Diesel be your Dungeon Master in this relaxing, comforting game. Polygon. Vox Media. May 27, 2015. April 15, 2017.
  19. Web site: Woodland Secrets. Woodlandsecrets.co. March 4, 2016.
  20. Web site: CoolGames Inc. Episode 8: Austin Powers (feat. Merritt Kopas). soundcloud.com. January 2, 2017.
  21. Web site: TERF War. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  22. Web site: Leszkiewicz . Anna . The McDonalds sim and September 12: what does it mean for a videogame to be political?. New Statesman. February 19, 2013. 2016-08-22.
  23. Web site: Lim. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  24. Web site: Princess Queen. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  25. Web site: Sugarcane. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015. dead. https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20130704195741/http://mkopas.net/files/Brace/Brace.html. 2013-07-04.
  26. Web site: Sugarcane. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  27. Web site: Jonah. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  28. Web site: Jonah. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  29. Web site: OCTOPY. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  30. Web site: HUGPUNX. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.
  31. Web site: Consensual Torture Simulator: Is game violence meaningful enough?. Leigh Alexander. Gamasutra. December 12, 2013. 2016-08-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20180805054941/http://gamasutra.com/view/news/206722/Consensual_Torture_Simulator_Is_game_violence_meaningful_enough.php. 2018-08-05.
  32. Web site: Consensual Torture Simulator. Gumroad. October 26, 2015. October 25, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20151025162920/https://gumroad.com/l/consensualtorturesimulator. dead.
  33. Web site: TAKE CARE. mkopas.net. October 26, 2015.

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