Kara Stone

Kara Stone (born 1989) is an independent Canadian video game designer, artist, and academic.

Kara Stone
Born1989 (age 31–32)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
NationalityCanadian
OccupationVideo game designer, artist, scholar

Stone has produced a number of notable independent games over the course of her career, including Medication Mediation,[1] Sext Adventure,[2] and Ritual of the Moon.[3] Her work largely focuses on the intersection of game design, disability, and gender.[1][4][5] She is also a member of the Different Games collective.[6]

Early life

Stone was born and raised in Toronto, Canada.[7] She is a graduate of Etobicoke School of the Arts and holds both a BFA in Film Production and an MA in Communication and Culture from York University. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Film & Digital Media program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.[8]

Career

Stone's earliest artworks were not in the medium of video games. One notable early work, 2012's Polaroid Panic, consisted of Polaroid photos Stone would capture of her face whenever she experienced a panic attack.[5][9] Stone's first significant games work came two years later, with Medication Meditation, published in collaboration with Dames Making Games.[10] Medication Meditation consists of an "unwinnable compilation of activities", each of which reflecting an experience associated with living with mental illness.[1] The game was well-received, and saw favorable coverage in outlets such as Kill Screen and The Atlantic.[1][11]

That same year, Stone released one of her most popular games, Sext Adventure, written by Stone and developed by Nadine Lessio. In Sext Adventure, the player has a sexual encounter with a fictional robot via text message (later expanded to web browsers), that eventually subverts and challenges traditional notions of what a "sexting" conversation looks like.[12] While the game begins like a normal sexting conversation (including real nudity) eventually the sexting robot becomes "confused" and begins to produce errors, including mistaking its own presumed gender and the gender of the player. The game concludes in one of twenty different endings.[13]

Stone's most recent game is Ritual of the Moon, which was released in 2019. Over the course of 28 real-time days, Ritual of the Moon slowly unveils the narrative of a witch who has been exiled to the moon.[8] The art style of the game is composed entirely of scanned and digitally manipulated images.[3] Many reviews focused on the unique 28-day structure of the game, including a full 28-day series on RockPaperShotgun.[14]

Works

Video games
Year Title
2014 Medication Meditation
Sext Adventure
Techo Tarot
2015 Cyclothymia
2018 the earth is a better person than me
2019 Ritual of the Moon

Selected publications

References
  1. Zack Kotzer (28 October 2013). "Mental Illness, the Video Game". The Atlantic. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  2. Megan Farokhmanesh (16 July 2014). "Sexting with a bot: Exploring tech and intimacy with dirty messages". Polygon. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  3. Samuel Horti (20 April 2019). "Ritual of the Moon is a meditative game that takes 28 days to complete, out now". PC Gamer. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  4. Stone, Kara (December 2018). "Time and Reparative Game Design: Queerness, Disability, and Affect". Game Studies. 18 (3). Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  5. "GDC 2019 Indie Soapbox". GDC. 2019. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  6. "Different Games Collective Members". Different Games. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  7. "Artist Profile". The Hand Eye Society. 24 February 2016. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  8. Colin Campbell (9 May 2018). "This gorgeous student game is designed to be played in time with the lunar cycle". Polygon. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  9. "Polaroid Panic on Vimeo". Kara Stone. 2012. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  10. "DMG Toronto - Medication Mediation, a game by Kara Stone". DMG Toronto. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  11. Zack Kotzer (22 October 2013). "MedicationMeditation transforms mental illness into mini-games". Kill Screen. Archived from the original on 23 February 2014. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
  12. Dan Van Winkle (8 July 2014). "In Sext Adventure, a Sexting Robot Doesn't Conform to Your Human Notions of Gender". The Mary Sue. Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  13. Olivia Solon (10 July 2014). "I had bot sex and it left me confused". Wired. Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  14. Alice Bell (16 April 2019). "Ritual Of The Moon diary: day two but really day three". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
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