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The GGJ Podcast brings the spirit of Global Game Jam to your headphones, with people from around the world sharing how they found their way into game development. Each week, Susan Gold talks with developers, studio founders, and festival organizers about the twists, risks, and side doors that shaped their paths and communities. You will hear honest stories about creativity, collaboration, failure, and the messy, beautiful reality of making games.
The Phoenix | LatoyaPeterson
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[00:00:00] Susan Gold: This is the GGJ Podcast, a show about the games industry, the people who make them, and the communities that grow up around them. I'm Susan Gold, game education trailblazer, and one of the founders of the Global Game Jam. Each week, we will be sitting down with a new guest, highlighting their own path and journey.
[00:00:26] This is a space for honest conversation from makers about creativity, collaboration, failure, and the messy, the beautiful reality of making games. So whether you're a young dev or seasoned, an educator, a student, or someone who just loves games and the people behind them, welcome to the GGJ Podcast. Take a breath, settle in, and let's hear directly from the makers themselves.
[00:00:49] Shirley McPhaul: This episode is made possible in partnership with the Global Game Jam, the world's largest game creation event, bringing together creators from around the globe. A big thank you as well to the Global Game Jam's headline [00:01:00] sponsors, Epic Games, Games for Change, and Xsolla, for helping make this creative community a reality.
[00:01:06] To learn more and to get involved in the upcoming jams, visit globalgamejam.org.
[00:01:13]
[00:01:20] Susan Gold: Today I'm thrilled to welcome Latoya Peterson. Latoya lives at the intersection of emerging technology and culture. She is an expert narrative designer at Elsewhere Entertainment, an Activision studio. Previously, she was the co-founder and CXO of Glow-Up Games, the studio behind Insecure: The Come Up Game, which brought the world's HBO Insecure onto our phones as a narrative life sim with a rap mechanic. She is also the creator of the AI and The Trap, a collaborative art project that uses hip hop to examine artificial intelligence and predictive policy.
[00:01:57] Named one of Forbes magazine's [00:02:00] 30 Under 30 Rising Media Stars, Latoya is also known for her award-winning blog, Racialicious. Her work as deputy editor for digital innovation at ESPN's The Undefeated, and her critical commentary on race and gender and culture for outlets like The New York Times and CNN.
[00:02:19] Latoya, thank you so much for joining me.
[00:02:22] Latoya Peterson: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
[00:02:24] Susan Gold: you are doing things that I wish would've been done a decade ago. or more I should say, but, I wanna talk to you about your life. I wanna hear your story. But what I wanna hear right now, as you are living in this moment, what would you say your headline is?
[00:02:43] Latoya Peterson: Ooh, my headline. My personal headline is probably in my phoenix era. So this is one of those boom-bust cycles that I think, as I've been reading and watching every entrepreneur goes through, every creative goes through. And so I feel like one of the things that, as I enter [00:03:00] midlife is becoming more prevalent is this idea that like for every peak there's a valley.
[00:03:04] Like you're not always up, sometimes you're down. And so having come out of a big down period from creativity and blooming into this new renaissance era for myself, I have found that, yeah, this feels like a phoenix era or, um, you know,
[00:03:17] I love Gordon Bellamy so much. He's a fantastic mentor. and he was like: "What does Latoya's lemonade era looks like?" And so I'm definitely in my lemonade era of like, all right, everything I thought was true was not, and all these things had fallen apart. But, when they come back together, it becomes this like really beautiful, interesting space.
[00:03:36] So I am definitely in like a rebirthing, reborn period, which is cool.
[00:03:42] Susan Gold: I like the idea of your phoenix is rising. I, it's a beautiful metaphor, and I like it. I think it really is a snappy headline, too. "My New Phoenix."
This was not made for me
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[00:03:55] Susan Gold: When you think back to your earliest encounters with games and media, what was [00:04:00] the moment you thought, "This was not made for me in mind"?
[00:04:05] Latoya Peterson: Oh, that's easy. So I'm a big fan of fighting games. FGC to the core. I love fighters. Like I don't play as much as I used to, but lo- grew up on Tekken, started with Tekken 2, and just have been stayed loyal. Soulcalibur, Soul Blades, like all of these different games. I was just like into Smash Brothers obviously.
[00:04:23] but one of the things in early fighting game stages, which you don't have to choose from now, thank goodness, but back in the day, I was always like, "Oh, I can be a Black man or a white woman. I can't be me." Like there was just never a character option. And I would play racing games as the same way. It was kinda like if there was Black representation, it was a guy, and if it was white representation, it was a woman.
[00:04:41] And funnily enough, if you look at Black feminist literature, right? All the women are white, all the Blacks are men, but some of us are brave. And so being brave in the game space has been a continuous theme. Um, you know, we didn't necessarily have the Black female representation on screen for years and years.
[00:04:57] And now even though it's improved, I think [00:05:00] in, phew, what year was that? 2012? Was it 20- 2008? In the aughts, let's say it that way. In the aughts, I gave a talk at South by Southwest with, My friends Naomi Clark and Guy Kroll. and I just did a screen grab of all the playable Black female characters.
[00:05:16] And at that time, it was like under 25. And we're counting aliens, we're counting Viera. Like we're counting anybody that was like roughly brown-skinned, And it was only, you know, in 40 years of gaming, it was like 25. And now that number's a little higher, right? We're in like the 50s, I think now.
[00:05:32] But it has not improved, in the way that gaming has taken over culture, and one would expect to see it the way that we see it in film, the way that we see it in TV, the way we see it in books. it just keeps lagging.
[00:05:44] Susan Gold: Oh, I agree. I really like the idea that we can be anything in games, but I do feel that I gravitate towards the things that make me feel like I identify, you [00:06:00] know, like a warrior or that type of thing. I don't want to wear a bikini, So the representation of women has also changed dramatically as well.
[00:06:09] but the fact that they just added tint to the character doesn't really make the character representative of a culture.
[00:06:17] Latoya Peterson: 100%. 100%. And there, there's so many different nuances to like why that happens, why you see anything on screen, why you see anything on a video game is just hundreds and hundreds of hours of work behind the scenes to try to make that real. So even something like plus size representation, right?
[00:06:32] Which is a default in our society, right? The average American woman is what, a 16 now? Maybe an 18. so you know, that representation is there and it's in the world, it's in the streets. Why is it so difficult to see that in a game? Why is everybody type slender? And so there feels like there's this big nefarious,solution where it's oh, like we just don't wanna see that type of representation.
[00:06:50] But the practical matter of it when we started building the game, like "The Come Up Game", was that to do a plus size body model really increased scope and cost and things like that in a way that it [00:07:00] doesn't on a film set, the way that it doesn't when you write a character in a book. And a lot of, I think, the transition from being
[00:07:05] Uh, a creator and a critic in the game space and then coming into actually making games is realizing how much is coming down to like dollars, cents, pixels, and process, right? that's ultimately what a lot is there. It doesn't mean to exclude things, but it does mean that if we're advocating for change in these spaces, we have to be a lot more mindful that there's a ton more happening under the hood than is necessarily seen.
From Gamer to Critic to Game Maker
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[00:07:28] Susan Gold: Yeah. So for listeners who may know you first as a writer and a critic, which is how I know you, can you give us a short version of how you went from analyzing games and culture and media to actually making games?
[00:07:44] Latoya Peterson: Absolutely. this was not a path I expected, so I should mention that was not the plan actually. but I also wasn't planning to be a writer either, so I guess it all worked out in the end. so yes. So I started, I've been a player since I was six years old. I've loved video games.
[00:07:58] was just, a huge fan and a huge [00:08:00] fan of it as an art form, in a time where people did not think video games could be art. Roger Ebert very famously was, very anti this idea of video games being art back when he was still alive. he was awesome,rest his soul. But there was this idea that these things were, away from culture, away from mass culture.
[00:08:18] This is before video games became ma- mass culture, before, a blockbuster video game release was competing with box office numbers, like before all this happened. And so there were all these questions about what could this actually mean? Is this an art form? It's so limited, it's, it plays so different.
[00:08:32] It's such a different beast. It's a different thing. And so I was like, okay, this is fascinating. So I've always just been a writer and I've loved to write. I started blogging. A lot of people were like, "Oh, we like listening to what she says. We like her opinions." And so that led to a nice career as a writer.
[00:08:46] I ended up writing for more than like 50 outlets, so I'm all over the place, right? and then I became a television producer somewhat from that writing. I was a commentator on, Al Jazeera's "The Stream," which was the international version at the time. and they were like, "Hey, would you wanna come over and be a [00:09:00] digital producer for us and help shape our coverage?"
[00:09:02] Absolutely. So that started my career in TV. And so I was there, and then I went to ABC and Univision's joint venture called Fusion, which is around like looking at diverse voices in media and like what does an op-ed look like in an era of Vine and video games and different stuff. So pioneering around that.
[00:09:17] And then I went to The Undefeated and became the deputy editor over digital innovation. There, I did a lot of esports work 'cause esports was still huge back then, and so they had a lot of questions about what was happening with the esports space and video games and why do people care about this and da.
[00:09:31] And did a lot of work there and was happy with being around the space and critiquing it. Over the years, I'd made a bunch of friends who were game developers and, I'd gone to GDC a few times, particularly when I did the Knight Fellowship at Stanford. It was my first GDC in 2012. And so I was familiar and I was known in the space, but I didn't really think too much of it.
[00:09:50] And then, one of the friends I had in the industry was "Oh, hey, we should start a studio. Why don't you think about it?" And I was like, "Oh, I don't know. it sounds like a cool idea. Let's try it." and then we kinda got a [00:10:00] call out of the blue to see if we wanted to pitch for Issa Rae's Insecure.
[00:10:04] And so that's kinda like the galvanizing event that started the studio, and from there it was like trying to learn game design while, while flying that plane
[00:10:13] This is very normal for me to be like, "Oh, I'm here now. Okay, it's time to guess I should figure it out." And that has progressed in the industry. So I came from a critique background of here's what I want to see in video games, and then suddenly the opportunity appeared. It's okay, how would you design this? What does it look like?
[00:10:29] What is it gonna take for you to do it? How are you supposed to do it? And all of those were very difficult to answer questions in a way that it's not in film and in television, where I also work. And that trajectory has been illuminating, frustrating, difficult. It makes a lot of sense why we keep seeing the persistent gap in creators in the industry of certain backgrounds, why it's so difficult to advance.
[00:10:51] It's a very just, it's a hard field in general. but we built a game. We shipped it. it didn't make it out of beta for a lot of reasons. We started during the [00:11:00] pandemic, and all kinds of stuff was happening. So it was a time, it was a time to be trying to make a video game. but we did launch it into beta and got feedback, got players, got customers, like we did all these kind of things.
[00:11:09] And then we did a, play and watch experience for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival called "Hell I Ambic," and that was like a first of its kind. okay, you're designed to be playing this game while you're watching the play and figuring out and syncing like the theater troupe and the theater company around okay, what are the main plot beats?
[00:11:24] What are, where are places where there's a lull where people might wanna look at their phones? How do we integrate what's happening on stage in a way that feels organic? 'Cause it's not a traditional second screen experience where you can like pause or something.
[00:11:35] It's a live experience. So we developed that, with, the fantastic Scarlett Kim, who's the director of innovation at, OSF at the time. And, so we had those two. So both those launched to the App Store. So I was like, "Wow, beat the odds twice, launched two games." so that was cool. And then after that, we hit 2024, and it's just been, it's been challenging years since 2024.
[00:11:55] there's a number of studios that have shuttered, closed, had to do layoffs, stuff like that. [00:12:00] We were no different. Ended up closing the studio. and at that time I was consulting for Activision. They were like, "Hey, do you wanna come in full-time on this new game?" so I was like, "Yeah, cool." And so that's where I've been ever since.
[00:12:09] and that has been its own education and amazing idea and understanding just at very different levels of development. So seen a pretty wide swath of the games industry,
Never Limited by Form
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[00:12:20] Susan Gold: and the thing is that you're trying different facets of storytelling, which I'm really loving.
[00:12:27] Latoya Peterson: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I always think of myself as a writer, and it's just my format changes. So again, before I die, I'm like, "I'm gonna still write a play. I still wanna write a screenplay. I still wanna write movies." to me, I just don't like to be limited by form.
[00:12:39] like there's all of these ideas of these like hybrid forms that you can do, that do require the-- an understanding and mastery of some of these pieces.
[00:12:47] So like the, with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival game, Scarlett then worked with Noah, who does a lot in terms of XR and live theater, to produce this conference called Worlds in Play, where we represented "Hell I Am Back," and then we [00:13:00] did, some other conversations around just like what is the interaction between games and live theater, and this idea of intimacy with your audience, intimacy with the player agency, and just thinking through all of these different ideas that we grapple with as creators and playmakers is a really huge one.
[00:13:18] And so it's been a really unique journey. It's super odd and like it takes every skill I have. Each time I like go to a different level, I'm like, "Oh." It's like every single-- it's like literally leveling up with the bare level of XP that I needed to get to the next level is the-- That's what's been happening, but made it.
[00:13:36] So it's been a, it's been a ride. I think... I hope to be in games for a while.
[00:13:42] I don't know, 'cause this career is very volatile. But it's such an interesting and compelling place that even with the brutality of what it's like to create an actual video game and ship it, even with that brutality, it's still s- really compelling.
Forking Problems
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[00:13:56] Susan Gold: what was the biggest shock when you crossed the line from calling out the [00:14:00] problems to actually having to come up with a responsible answer?
[00:14:06] Latoya Peterson: The infinitesimal amount of decisions that continue to fork. I think that's the biggest characteristic of video games that I don't think anybody can compa- can prepare you for. And if you're-- I'm on the narrative side, right? So I don't even deal with the code side or whatever, but it's similar, I've noticed, on the engineer side, where again, problems kind of fork, right?
[00:14:27] And they start doing stuff. And so normally when you have narrative branching or narrative trees, when you're trying to figure out what are all the potential possibilities for things your player can experience in your game, at some point you have to make a decision to close and collapse those lines or else things sprawl exponentially.
[00:14:44] And I didn't realize until, I was the owner of a studio That's also all the problems that you have. One small decision that you make about, like for us, oh, here's my favorite, the beards conundrum, right? We wanted representation in the Insecure game. We wanted to do beards. We talked to [00:15:00] Ethan Redd, who was our art director at the time, and Ethan Redd, we're like, "Ethan, what about beards?"
[00:15:04] And he goes, "Okay, let's talk about beards." And he goes, "How much beard do you want?" And we're like, we expect Black men to play this game, and so we want to have-- we want them to be able to look like themselves." And he goes, let's start thinking about the polys and the tris of a beard." And what Ethan started explaining to me was this idea of basically any beard that's protruding off the face, so anything that's not a goatee, is going to create just cascading levels of problems with the different planes, how people move around the world, all these different pieces that all have to be accounted for in all these different use cases, whether or not the player has chosen to have a beard or not, we have to still build for all of those different things, right?
[00:15:45] So it's oh my God, it's like the doors problem, right? That's the very famous games industry conversation of do we have a door, right? Which is still very hotly debated, still a big problem. Has not a more elegant solution in 20 years of making that joke. There's-- [00:16:00] That solution has not gotten better, right?
[00:16:02] And so beards is similar, and so it's like it's all of these tiny, infinitesimal, tiny decisions. Same thing, plus-size character model. Of course, we should have one. Oh, but then you need to implement it in all of these different cases and all these different scenarios. And so the fact that your problems branch and they bleed and they become more and more, so much more that you learn this weird detachment for if this-- I would like this, but if this doesn't work, I'm also happy with this, and if that doesn't work, I'm also happy with this, because that's the only way you get the game out to market.
[00:16:35] And so there's-- it's just, it's so many different sets of problems to solve. And it's not to say that film and television or whatever don't have cascading sets on fire and all kinds of things that you also have to solve. That's also its own unique set of problem-solving. But the difference is, one, it's like a linear narrative where it's like at least it's planned and you know like from beat to beat, here's what's supposed to happen.
[00:16:56] And then you have unscripted television, which kind of throws that out the window. So you have to [00:17:00] you work on those variables as well. But at least it's like you're telling one kind of clear story all the way through the end. And with video games, everything is multiplied, even down to if you gave a player a choice, that means you wrote the same line, you wrote one line, and then you gave three different answers, as opposed to a film where you wrote one line and there's just a response.
[00:17:17] And maybe you have a couple options, but it's one versus this, we end up operating in matrices.
Joy as a Radical Design Choice
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[00:17:25] Susan Gold: You've talked a lot about centering Black and brown joy as opposed to the trauma or the negative stereotypes of people,
[00:17:35] when did you realize that joy itself was a radical design choice?
[00:17:41] Latoya Peterson: Oh, yes. Joy is a radical design choice, particularly when you're telling like Black and Brown stories, because the narrative and the prevailing narrative in culture is us of struggle, suffering, strife, and that's what's most familiar to people.
[00:17:57] This is why you get a lot of [00:18:00] media that is mainstream produced around like slavery specifically. slavery is a major, part and conversation in the, I would say the Afro-Caribbean experience, right? So there's an African American experience, but there's also a Black British experience. There's a Black, sometimes scholars call it the Black Atlantic experience.
[00:18:18] We're connected by that, by the Atlantic Ocean, and that's where, the transatlantic slave trade took place. So all of these different cultures that were impacted by it were all in like the Black Atlantic. And so there's that piece of it. But that is one 400-year chunk, you could argue five, but 400-year chunk of a millennia's long history of everything else we were doing. So yes, there was this big galvanizing event that was happening that changed literally, everything that happened previous to that point and everything that was gonna happen beyond it. But there's still more to that story. There's still more understanding. And so when you look at [00:19:00] creators and you look at the different art forms in which, we choose to create in, you start seeing that when you get to the gatekeeping level, it's what's understood about your story?
[00:19:10] And it's "Oh, we understand like Black people went through slavery and it was bad, so let's talk about that." Or, "Ooh, that's too depressing. I don't wanna talk about that." But the other notes, this idea of joy, this idea of resilience, this idea of how do we celebrate? I always think about it in terms of the, glorious picture from Chef Jessica's kitchen.
[00:19:27] I'm blanking on her last name right now. But she had all these photos of civil rights leaders. That very famous photo of Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin dancing was taken in Chef Jessica's kitchen, right? Because there's always a party, there's always revolution. People have to survive, right? And it doesn't matter if we're talking about the AIDS crisis and LGBTQ activists.
[00:19:45] It doesn't matter if we're talking about,civil rights and Black American activists. Doesn't matter if we're talking about, different labor movements. All of these movements have parties. Things-- Why? We have to still celebrate our life while we are living. That's why. And that our life is not to be grieved.
[00:19:59] [00:20:00] And so it's interesting because as you're trying to articulate that to perhaps gatekeepers who only understand your life through the lens of, "I have seen a struggle And I expect to see that reflected". It becomes not just, a charge, but also a mandate, right? And we see this again when you ask the questions about Black rom-coms.
[00:20:20] Can we have one without struggle love? Can we tell a Black story that doesn't have drugs? Can we tell a Black story that doesn't have,violence? one of the things I love about Issa's work is Black women are never harmed in her worlds. And again, that wasn't, super obvious to me until I started working on the game and, really looking deep into the source material and realizing she doesn't create a universe in which Black women are harmed.
[00:20:43] You see them in other forms of media. You see them in other forms of Black media, but you don't see that in Issa's world. And so that charge that we have as,as artists of color and specifically Black artists to think about the ways in which we document our struggle and our suffering, absolutely.
[00:20:58] But we also [00:21:00] document our joy and our celebration and who we are when we are just off duty, and how that, again, becomes, a radical act to itself.
[00:21:09] Susan Gold: Whose joy are you picturing? and how do you know that that joy is actually coming through to the players?
[00:21:16] Latoya Peterson: there's a lot of fun in terms of just being able to do stuff. I remember I was looking at,for a different project, we're looking at,rap. And it's always, so I did "AI and the Trap." I do a whole bunch of things. I did a hip hop-based project. I will do other hip hop-based projects.
[00:21:31] And one of the things that I always love is I was like, every time I look at old hip hop videos and the aesthetic that was revived, streetwear, all the stuff that came out of that, and I was like, "Yo, we really found a way to make poverty look cool."
[00:21:41] And we took that and it's like the entire world is copying this aesthetic, this way of walking, this way of talking, this way of being. And it's like that is the thing that most people look down upon. Like, why would you? And yet, here we are. And so it, it's one of those things where in some ways want to invite people to understand [00:22:00] what is actually happening.
[00:22:03] And so when I see South Asian designers like Ekka or doing stuff like, Project Dosa, and his like indie games, they're fantastic and they're so deeply South Asian in a way that obviously I can't understand them, I'm Black. But, in ways that really are like, "No, this is my life.
[00:22:19] This is my experience. This is what it sounds like at my house. This is what you're-- This is what I grew up around. This is what it feels like, and I want to have you experience a little bit of that." It's not gonna be the same, but I wa- I wanna give you a little gift. Try this, right? Try a little bit of that
Language and Design
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[00:22:34] Susan Gold: So in Insecure, did you come up with a moment of Black life that you insisted on including, even if it didn't seem important from a traditional game design perspective? Was there something that would make me feel that, that joy, that experience of being happy in your life and like that kind of thing?
[00:22:57] Latoya Peterson: Yeah. A lot of what we thought about was [00:23:00] language. So Anango, our chief rap officer, our CRO. Our
[00:23:03] AKA Samus, is just this fantastic, brilliant rapper and artist, and I'm always in awe of her just ev- her everything, her style, her brain, every single thing about her.
[00:23:12] I'm so glad that we're friends. I'm so glad that we met very randomly at a Kickstarter conference, like 10 years ago, I'm so happy that happened. But anyway, so with Anango, and so we talked a lot about language, and particularly the playful language that we wanted people to use, and that can be difficult because particularly in games, you're always thinking about localization, you're always-- which slang does not localize.
[00:23:34] that is woof, brutal, brutal. and so many different things, and when we talk about like linguistic patterns of hip hop, how do you translate? some of these things do not translate well. Like you've gotta really think about how we're approaching all of these different pieces. We ended up not localizing the game.
[00:23:47] uh, but so we talked a lot about the language we wanted to use and like the playfulness and that feeling of like sisterhood that we really loved from the show, that we wanted to convey that [00:24:00] playfulness.
[00:24:00] I was watching old episodes of "Living Single", and it's that, it's that same feeling where it's no, y'all feel like y'all are real friends. Like it's not, the canned sitcom-y type friendships. Like y'all are laughing in the middle of these jokes. You are, you're going on each other.
[00:24:14] This feels like a real die to the wood friendship, right? And so that is the thing that we were trying to capture and convey, all of that heart and that funness and that like banter that was back and forth that's indicative, but it's also different.
[00:24:28] So Anango wrote this piece where she was She was using all these references from like Cecily Bowens' work on trap feminism and like all this stuff where she was explaining a particular mechanic call we had made where We were thinking about the ways that you create intimacy through words, right?
[00:24:47] And so on one hand, we didn't want the idea that you could weaponize language against other players. So in the system, you can't call somebody else a bitch. You just can't do it. [00:25:00] That option is not available. But you can use bitch self-referentially as in, "I am that bitch," right? You can do that. And so those kinds of weird little distinctions, not really on a developer's roadmap, that's not a thing that you would be...
[00:25:13] But those are things that breathe life into your game where people like those tiny nuances. Maybe most players won't even notice that. Maybe only a tiny segment of players will be like, "Oh, wait, I can't call somebody a bitch, but I can call myself that bitch? I can only be that bitch in this game. In this game, I can only affirm, I can't take away."
[00:25:31] And so it's a interesting twist of mechanic that is informed by the way in which we thought about how we want people to show up in the space. So it's like we made a bunch of decisions like that over and over again.
[00:25:46] Susan Gold: And that's beyond just traditional design problems. So that's another layer, but it adds such a deep personality to the work. It gives it true soul. Yeah.
[00:25:59] Latoya Peterson: [00:26:00] Absolutely. And when we work with rap and hip hop in general, right? An MC style is like a fingerprint almost. No one really raps the same way. If you do, you get clowned because they're like, "Oh, you just sound like this other person." And so there's so much nuance in the ways in which each rapper constructs how they make a sentence, what their style is, what they're known for.
[00:26:20] And so it was a fun, almost like a whodunit puzzle of "Oh, how are we doing this? How are we interpreting this? What style, what voice do you get to assume as the player?" So in some ways, again, it was like one of our investors, Ed Fries, had said this very... He was like, Rock Band was a great business when it came out, and it was the fantasy of being a rock star, and this one is the fantasy of being a rapper in a different and more executable and accessible way."
AI and the Trap: Collaborative Artwork
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[00:26:50] Susan Gold: I'm gonna divert from the games right now, and I'm gonna talk about some of your collaborative artwork because you have-- discuss quite a bit about [00:27:00] your thoughts on AI, and I think a lot of people think a lot about AI right now. Our industry, we've always used AI, it's been a part of our vocabulary since we started. However, now it's starting to take people's jobs and people have this, negative feeling.
[00:27:19] I always believe that you learn to master a tool or it masters you. But I-- You've-- I saw a lot of your writing about what you were thinking and that I think fed into "AI and the Trap."
[00:27:31] And so for our listeners, I wanna explain that "AI and the Trap" is a collaborative art project that uses hip hop as a lens to examine artificial intelligence and predictive policing, race, and the future of work, and how those all collide. and it looks at how AI systems and their policy technologies encode bias.
[00:27:54] And that is something that I have talked about with a whole bunch of my friends.
[00:27:59] It's [00:28:00] really something like South American bias or, African American bias or anybody's bias. Y-You can find it in AI. And so, how your artwork starts to talk about these things and how we might be able to imagine different, and I wanna just kinda talk about that a little bit. when was this project started?
[00:28:27] Latoya Peterson: Oh my gosh, yes. AI and the trap, how did that happen? That was such a weird side quest, and it's-- I love it, and it's still ongoing. it's one of those how did this happen type projects, which again, I told you this is my career. It's always like, "How did this go?"
[00:28:40] So I had gone to a talk at the MoMA R&D Lab, Paola runs it over at the MoMA in New York, and it's just this fantastic curation of just thought leaders and intellectuals talking about topics. So she had this talk called Artificial Imperfection. It's still one of my favorite things. as far as I've gone at this point, I've, deployed networks, I've trained at NVIDIA, I've done all this [00:29:00] stuff, but, that is still my favorite.
[00:29:01] I'm like, "Oh, you don't know much about AI? Start with Artificial Imperfections." Two hours and well worth the time.
[00:29:06] There's a whole bunch of people who work at different intersections of AI explaining it. One of the people was the co-founder of Blacks in AI, which is this global group of, of, basically Black-identified people who work in artificial intelligence. And so I came up to her and I was like, "Oh, hey."
[00:29:21] I, at the time, was still working at Disney at ESPN, and they had put me in a working group to... First it was for VR/AR, and the creators of that,it ended up being Cheyenne, Kelly White, and Mike White. They all-- They were like, "Hey, Latoya, are you interested in learning AI?" I was like, "Oh, absolutely." I thought I was too old and I didn't really have math skills or anything, so I was like, "Let me do it." So I go and I do the Disney program, finish all the modules for training. They're like, "Oh, you're into this. Okay, let's try to figure out how we collab." So I ended up collabing with some of the really cool people and working on some small projects at Disney, and then when I stepped out, I was like, "Oh, how should I continue this?"
[00:29:54] So I met Blacks in AI. I'm talking, just talking. This was not a project yet. It was just talking. Talking, [00:30:00] and I was talking to somebody and I was like, "Yeah, I had this idea. It's, more of an art project. It's not really, a science project, but it's an art project, and I really wanted to look at the social norms of artificial intelligence because at that time I was spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley, and the social norms in Silicon Valley are very different from where I grew up and they're very different from most of America in general, right?
[00:30:19] Silicon Valley is a very wealthy place now. It wasn't before, but now it was very wealthy and, the folks in Menlo Park and Palo Alto and the people who make this technology, were not people who were necessarily engaging with the world in the same way that I did.
[00:30:31] And so the social norms of, Palo Alto are not the same social norms of, Washington, DC. And so a lot of what I was thinking about where I was like, "Oh, AI by default is made to snitch, essentially. It's made to report on all your actions, save everything, save all that data, send it to the cloud, send it to the servers."
[00:30:49] you don't really control, we saw this with ChatGPT and everything. You don't control those things. Whereas in chat, there's an anti-snitching, we do not talk about things, you do not spread visit, you do not do these things. So I just looked at, these [00:31:00] different social norms and I was like, what, I wonder what would happen if one norm was swapped with another if we try to do it this way." And I was talking to one of the other, fellows in Blacks in AI, and they were like, "Hey, you should submit this to our workshop at NeurIPS," which is, this giant AI conference.
[00:31:16] it's like a researcher conference. This is deep science. And I was like, "Oh, I don't think..." I "I barely finished high school. I didn't graduate college. I don't feel like I'm, that's not a thing I would do." I was like, "I don't even know where I would even start. I don't know." So I was like, "Eh," I, "It's a cool project, but, maybe I'll just develop it or something." And I must not have been the only person having that same reaction and conversation because, the great Timnit Gebru, Dr. Gebru, who is most famous for being a whistleblower at Google who got fired for pointing out the issues in ethics in AI, that Timnit was also one of the co-founders and sent this email to everybody in BLISSr that was like, "Do not say no to yourself".
[00:31:54] if we tell you to submit this thing to the workshop, can you please submit your paper and keep it moving? let other people say no [00:32:00] to you." Don't say no to yourself." And there was this read that just forever will be burned in my brain. I was like, "Oh my God."
[00:32:06] And it definitely shamed me and 165 other people out of the woodwork where we're all like, okay, I'm sorry. maybe this idea has some merit." So wrote a course proposal, submitted it, it was selected. And so I got later I found out that this was part of, of, Timnit's, Timnit had gone to one of the other, NeurIPS conferences and was like, "Hey, this is the future of AI, and I am one of six Black people here.
[00:32:27] this has got to change." And so she created-- Part of the workshop was creating to bring more people in. That was the goal. So I was like, "Oh, okay." So I got to go. And so I went to this conference that was all, scientists, and, I remember they were like, "You need to make an academic poster," which I had never done.
[00:32:42] So I was like, " I'm gonna make a movie poster?" 'Cause that's what I knew how to do. I was just like, it was And then I couldn't even print the poster. I was, like, in Montreal, going to the FedEx. It was just an adventure. But, I got so much exposure to all the workshops, the other ideas, the other things that people were building, like all the cool stuff they [00:33:00] were doing in terms of oh, AI doesn't understand language and it can't speak Amharic, but look at all the stuff that it could learn if it did, and, like, all the possibility for it.
[00:33:08] and so I think in modern conversations about AI, we tend to get a little bit lost in this idea of oh, this is, this is evil. It's gonna eat jobs. it absolutely can be used for evil, 100%. We sh- we're seeing that now. That's 100% gonna happen. But there's also this transformative space that still exists that we can still access.
[00:33:25] we can look at the environmental harms, we can look at the social bias, we can look-- And there's been fantastic works, everything from, Safiya's book, "Algorithms of Oppression" to "Weapons of Math Destruction" to "Invisible Women." there's so many amazing books about, here's where the bias lies, right?
[00:33:40] And what we know about it in so many different forms of technology. But there's also, here's all of this transformative space of if it wasn't the richest people dictating how we use it, what else could be here? And so I still always wanna play kinda like in that space. so AI Untrapped ended up, we submitted the workshop.
[00:33:59] It was [00:34:00] this cool project. People were so interested. Then ended up founding a game studio, so I stopped doing my AI work for some years to, work on just oh, like the nuts and bolts of actually getting something off the ground. And now that I'm, like, a little bit more settled, stuff like that, I'm starting to reengage that side and looking at again, so how does this project then grow with everything I learned before putting together Rat Rian mechanic, what I've learned about natural language processing, what we're looking at, what the tools can do now that they couldn't do five years ago.
[00:34:26] All of those things factor into, what this AI future might look like.
Make your Own Room
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[00:34:31] Susan Gold: don't want you to how have you protected your own creativity and joy while being pushed into this role of spokesperson, educator, diversity explainer, and you're walking into rooms that weren't necessarily built for you?
[00:34:48] Latoya Peterson: I have so many different thoughts about that. That is such a awesome question because, one, what world is not built for [00:35:00] you?
[00:35:00] Because yes, on the surface, that is absolutely what we have come to in society. I'm not in any way saying that systemic bias is not real, that there aren't structural barriers to why you don't see more women, minorities, et cetera, anywhere, any field, any given one. You can talk about video games, you can talk about science, you can talk about the highest level of anything and, it's very small numbers, for the most part.
[00:35:25] And there are deep systemic reasons, there's deep policy reasons for all of those things, right? however, one of the things that I love about creating and innovating things is that it doesn't exist until you say so, in which case you have created the space in which you are in, and it was created, it is your creation.
[00:35:47] You did it. By default, you belong there. you made it be. And so it's this weird, let's just say It's this double consciousness of understanding that like, yes, this world was not necessarily set up for me to [00:36:00] succeed or to do well in, and most of the structures and systems are made to serve a certain type of default, and in spite of that, I would also like to do this other thing that hasn't happened, that hasn't before been seen, and that will change things.
[00:36:16] So is it challenging? Absolutely. Is it weird being hyper-visible? So like I used to-- So I was a woman in technology at ESPN. So not a woman in sports, though so much respect to the sisters over there 'cause they got-- That's battles. but I was a woman in tech, and there were very few. I think I was the only Latoya in the company system.
[00:36:38] everybody knew who I was before I walked in the room. They were, "Oh, it's a Black woman doing tech. It's Latoya. That's obviously Latoya." and that's for good and for bad.
[00:36:44] On one, everybody knows who you are. Two Everybody knows who you are. Sometimes it's not a good thing. But,that's part of the cost of doing something. I was just thinking this morning about, Miriam Edelman's quote, "If you can't see it, you can't be it." And Miriam Edelman is so [00:37:00] brilliant, such an amazing person and such an inspiration to people I find inspirational.
[00:37:04] And so I'm like, "Oh, she must have had a reason to say that." But I don't believe that at all. To me, I'm like, "If not, who would be the first? who would be?" Where would Sally Ride and Mae Jemison be if they were like, "Oh, I can't see a woman in space, so I can't be." No. No, I'm gonna go anyway. And so I think that is the feeling I apply to the work that I do. I understand that it's not what people expect and it's not gonna be for everybody, and Well, I should also give some gratitude here to the long tradition of activists and artists in the Black community, because we all know how this goes, and you might not be recognized for your work when you're on Earth.
[00:37:46] look at Zora Neale Hurston. Um,it took Alice Walker unearthing all of, and like publishing and being like, "Look at all this stuff that Zora did," And there's so many artists that go that way. Their work is amazing and celebrated after they died, after they're gone.
[00:37:59] They didn't get their [00:38:00] flowers when they were alive. you just keep creating anyway because that is the world that you wanna see, and you're pushing and pushing for other people to be able to see themselves in the world that you created.
Looking into the Future
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[00:38:12] Susan Gold: When you imagine Black and brown kids encountering games and mixed reality experiences 20 years from now, what do you hope feels totally normal that would be impossible when you started?
[00:38:25] Latoya Peterson: What I would love to see is that... Okay, I'm gonna give two answers to this one, 'cause this is, there's a very personal answer and then there's the very, there's a broader, more applicable answer. So I think the broader, more applicable answer in the same way that like the problem that I had growing up has been functionally solved by character creation.
[00:38:43] Functionally solved. Most players have an expectation that they'll be able to create and customize their own character now. They don't have to worry about what the developer picked. They can pick themselves. And so it's one of those things where, um, you still want more narratives, you wanna see more, but the idea that we're working toward is ultimately [00:39:00] that these things become unremarkable.
[00:39:01] It's not, "Oh, this game is cool and there's a Black female lead." It's that happens so often you just, "Okay, this is the new lead of that game and we don't need to worry about-" who she may be because there's so many other games that have so many other female leads, Black female leads, Asian female leads, white female leads, Latina female leads.
[00:39:19] Who cares? That it ceases to become remarkable in the same way that like, again, you open up social media, you open up, TikTok or Instagram Reels or whatever, there's creators of all colors. Like you don't know who's gonna hit your feed next. Games could be like that. So there's that-- that's the broad hope.
[00:39:37] But the very, very personal hope that I have is that our network stops being so small that you can call people. And I am thankful for that because I would not have survived my few years in games without the mentorship of the folks who came before me. Jacqueline Beauchamp, who was the first woman of color to ever own and pilot a game studio. she did Energize Entertainment [00:40:00] back in the '90s. I remember reading about her in Black Enterprise growing up. She did the Black college, football experience for Xbox, and it was one of the only ones from Energize Entertainment. It's the only person that was there in the old days, and people were like, "What happened to her?"
[00:40:14] She's still around. She's still making stuff. She called me at a studio. She was like, "Oh, let me talk to you so that you can avoid what happened to me so you can be more successful." Jacqueline comes to everything. She came to our first BIPOC in Games conference that I put on with Lindsay Grace. Jacqueline is every-- Jacqueline will call-- You okay? Muriel Tramis, first recorded Black female game designer, icon status. I got this random LinkedIn request. It's Muriel Tramis. Oh my God, this is living history. "Hi, who are you?" 'Cause there's not that many of us.
[00:40:47] You can call people. I sent a cold email to Reggie Fils-Aimé from Nintendo, and I was just like, "Hi, I'm a Black person with a game studio. I don't know what I'm doing. Please help." And he was like, "Yeah. Yeah.
[00:40:58] And
[00:40:58] there's a point when [00:41:00] you're pioneering something where you realize you're like the only folks in a room and you know everybody by default because you know everybody who's operating. Like I remember the first GDC I went to and I bumped into another blogger and I was like, "Game Girl Advanced?
[00:41:13] Jane? I followed you forever." Like I, I was so excited to meet Jane. And she goes, "Oh, you were someone from my blog." yeah, of course I remember you. And the same, I met Heather from Newsweek. there were six of us. We knew. we knew each
[00:41:25] other. Um,
[00:41:26] Yeah, and so that the pool is big now. The pool is so wide that we don't know each other would be a giant accomplishment. I would love to be like, oh, I don't know this person," and not be able to call one friend and be like, "Oh, by the way, do you know whoever this is?" like that would be the dream where it's oh, we have such a large network now that we can't just one degree of separation call each other.
Best yet to come & Where to find Latoya
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[00:41:51] Susan Gold: Okay, we have time for one last late question, and this is again, if some future historian [00:42:00] in 2050 was writing about women in games right now, what do you want them to be writing about you?
[00:42:07] Latoya Peterson: I feel like I have not done the work that they're gonna write about yet.
[00:42:11] Susan Gold: Ooh.
[00:42:11] Latoya Peterson: still coming. That's still coming. I got
[00:42:15] more to do. hopefully
[00:42:18] Susan Gold: can people find out more about you and your work?
[00:42:21] Latoya Peterson: that is a fantastic question because right now I'm an Activision employee and I am in self, and so I am keeping a very chill, low profile. I do have a website, latoyapeterson.me.
[00:42:32] I do have a LinkedIn. It's Latoya D. Peterson. you can find me on TikTok as gamedevmom. I don't post there very often. I just posted a Zach Fox concert, which is, nothing to do with video games whatsoever. It was just me hanging out. at some point I will put content on there, maybe. but I'm really focused this period of time, this Phoenix era, I'm creating a lot of new stuff.
[00:42:53] So you'll see more from me probably about two years. Check it out.
[00:42:57] Susan Gold: I hope you will include me in your [00:43:00] journey. I really thank you so much for being part of the GGJ Podcast. We here, are trying not only to expand everyone by sharing these oral histories, but expand their understanding of here's a woman who didn't know what she was doing but figured it out. We all managed to figure it out, and your success and the reputation that you have and the fact that your writing really stands out, I really find you to be one of those role models that I hope that women will be looking to not just Black and brown girls, but I also see all women looking at you as a model.
[00:43:45] Latoya Peterson: I hope that I can help light the torch that lights somebody else's way. That's always the goal, right? Here's this part of the work and then hopefully somebody else is coming behind making something totally new and cool following that path.[00:44:00]
[00:44:00] Susan Gold: Thank you so much, LaToya. I really appreciate having you on as part of this podcast, and I look forward to seeing your future.
[00:44:08] Latoya Peterson: Same. Thank you so much, Susan. Really appreciate it
Outro
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[00:44:10]