12 photos taken by video game developers
Their mission: Take an interesting photo in a boring room
The first photo of the evening was awkward. But I should have seen it coming.
Last Thursday, backstage at the DICE Awards in Las Vegas, I was asking each winner who ventured into the reporter-filled green room to do something unusual. Could they take my phone and snap the most interesting photo that they could imagine?
Right away, Nate Fox, co-director of Ghost Of Yotei (which just won Adventure Game of the Year) asked me to stand on a chair. He stood on one in front of me. And he asked me to… yell?
Here’s the photo:
This was not what I had planned. This image was going to look absurd in my newsletter, I thought.
But Fox was confident this was a good shot.
“Stephen, I think you’re the most interesting thing in the room because your readers go for your articles, because you’ve got such an interesting point of view,” he told me.
“So you opening up your mouth to roar…that’s what they’re into, dude. You’re the main event!”
That just about convinced me I’d made a mistake. This backstage photo gimmick could be a problem. Playing tic-tac-toe with award-winners? That was cool. Giving them word-game challenges? That had worked last year at 2024’s Game Developers Conference.
I thought this photo idea might show us something about each DICE Award winner’s creative process or maybe demonstrate something about their distinct perspectives. But I didn’t know I’d be obligated to show my giant face.
I stuck with it, as Game File readers saw last week, when I showcased the final photo of the evening, a dramatic dual-selfie from two of the co-founders of Clair Obscur studio Sandfall Interactive.
A more optimistic expedition
I’m going to start near the end of my three-day trip this week to Las Vegas, where I was reporting on and mingling with a who’s who of game designers, studio leaders, publishers, middleware makers, students and other industry figures.
As you’ll see below—and as teased in the collage up top—I got some other good ones, too. And some terrific explanations for some of these pics.
To set the stage, check out the room we were in. These are the constraints these game makers had to deal with.
After Fox was William Chyr, whose studio’s VR game Hotel Infinity won for Immersive Reality Technical Achievement.
“I wanted to really think about the space and how we could look at it differently,” Chyr told me, explaining his photo of the room’s ceiling light fixture. “And to me it felt like a secret, or like we’re underwater looking up. I thought of it as a way to look at a space from a different perspective.”
Considering Chyr’s prior perspective-bending work, this was on-brand for him.
A trio of PlayStation audio experts arrived backstage fresh off of an Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design win for Death Stranding 2. They took my camera, discussed some options with each other and shot this wall art:
“I have to say, it started with teamwork,” explained Justin Wilson, a dialogue supervisor for PlayStation. “We all worked together, as we did on the project. And we said: ‘What’s dramatic about what’s in this room right now?’ It came to this [artwork]. And I think, what’s interesting about it is the scale, and how it kind of tells a few stories of being organic and technical, like our approach to sound design.
Added PlayStation senior foley artist Joanna Fang: “I think it’s also beautiful in the sense that our team was massive on this project, And we all gave it a little sparkle, our best little light. And you have this sparkle of light that leads up to this giant shining ray, and I think it kind of represents game audio at its best.”
What a nice, happy thought, huh?
Next was the start of a mini-trend of chained photos.
Supergiant Games had won a best action game award for Hades II and studio co-founder Greg Kasavin used his phone to snap a photo of the TV in the green room, which was displaying a feed of the awards. At that moment, the TV showed Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, lead writer for Sandfall Interactive, accepting a best story award for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Kasavin took a photo of her on the TV.
“As someone who enjoys video games and enjoys good writing in video games—and also writes video games myself—I greatly, greatly enjoyed the work that she and that entire team did,” Kasavin said.
“It’s really heartening to see original games just hit the grand slam home run. If only it always worked out that way: when they put their heart and soul into something, they give it their all, they don’t chase trends, they just make the game they really want to make and they have it succeed beyond their own or anyone else’s wildest expectations—and really connect with people.
“There can be so much doom and gloom in the industry, but successes like that are just a source of optimism. And just a game I personally really enjoyed.”
Next up was Erika Ishii, who won Outstanding Achievement in Character for their portrayal of Atsu in Ghost of Yotei.
Ishii snapped a photo of one of the beat’s best reporters, IGN’s Rebekah Valentine, who was standing nearby. Ishii had spotted Valentine’s yellow sweater draped over a chair, and encouraged her to throw it on for a photo.
“I love the styling of it,” Ishii said of Reb’s sweater. “And I love how it’s a pop of color in, well, listen: We’ve evolved beyond the days of [game award show attendees wearing] the dev shirt and blazer and sneakers. But I still feel color is a bit anathema, still a little scary. So seeing a pop of color is lovely.”
Soon, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen was back in the green room and ready to take on my photo challenge. She looked at a weird wood-paneled water cooler, then pondered some green souvenir socks before pointing her camera at Ishii.
“I am a huge fan of Erika and find her very inspiring, her journey through games,” Svedberg-Yen said. “How she’s gone through a lot of different roles and how she has embodied this main character in such a powerful way. I think she’s done incredible work.”
During her acceptance speech, Ishii had been profusely thankful of her collaborators on Ghost of Yotei. And she said that people who made games deserve “fair pay” and “fair treatment” and called on viewers of the awards to demand that people who make games are treated well.
“I love the message she had in her speech that she just gave,” Svedberg-Yen said. “I can see the passion she just has for games…. She speaks from a place of sincerity and passion, and I’m just a huge fan.”
I don’t know what people think will happen when they are inducted into the DICE Awards’ Hall of Fame, but hopefully Naughty Dog co-founder Evan Wells imagined that he’d soon be asked to take an interesting photo in a boring room.
He indulged me with a snap of that wall art that the Sony audio people also liked.
“I like the lighting and the art and, when I got under there and looked up, it kind of reminded me of a sunny day rain shower,” he explained. “I just thought it was cool.”
Then I got a surprise two-part appreciation of still life.
My former Kotaku colleague Chris Kohler, now at Digital Eclipse, accepted Fighting Game of the Year for the studio’s Mortal Kombat: Legacy Collection and then had my camera in hand, perusing possible pics.
He took this shot of an Almond Joy that was resting on a table full of snacks supplied by the DICE Awards PR team for the backstage press corps.
“Fun-size Almond Joys fascinate me,” Kohler explained. “Every year, millions of children go out for Halloween. And every year, for some reason without fail, people put into these children’s Halloween bags a fun-size Almond Joy: which is essentially coconut and almonds, two things that I’ve never seen a child eat. And every year, as a child on Halloween, I would get Almond Joys, and they were the lowest trash candy.
“Now, my children go out into the world, and they receive so many fun size Almond Joys. They hate them. No one likes them. There’s probably one kid out there who likes Almond Joys for Halloween.”
“So you hate them?” I asked. “You took this picture with rage?”
“I don’t hate the Almond Joy,” Kohler said. “I would eat one. But, if you ask me, ‘Do you want a candy bar?’ ‘Yeah, yeah I want a candy bar.’ ‘You want the one that’s like an inch-thick layer of coconut with one of the weirdest nuts in it?’ I’m like, ‘No, can I just have a Milky Way?’ If you’re going to have a candy bar, why not have a Kit Kat or something like that?
“So, I don’t know what the purpose is of them but they somehow go on, to the extent that there is literally one of them in the green room of the DICE Awards. We just won a DICE Award, and there is a fun-size Almond Joy here that I have to look at.
“And that means what?” I asked.
“I don’t know. And if you know, please tell me.”
On Kohler’s heels was Mike Jungbluth, animation director at Compulsion Games. He’d picked up a trophy for South of Midnight’s win for Outstanding Achievement in Animation. And he, like Kohler, took a photo of the press/junk-food table.
“Right there tells me the story of your guys’ night, and I think it’s wonderful,” Jungbluth said.
“You’re back here, while you’ve got a bunch of people out there. You’ve got a table full of snacks, but, in this moment, somebody said, ‘I want a Snickers.’ And they’ve got a water, and it’s mostly drunk. But it’s got some condensation, so it hasn’t been opened for a little bit. And I just sort of love that. That, to me, is a bit of an indication of your night and your experience.”
I felt like I’d just spoken to Sherlock Holmes. Impressive!
Next was Deb Mars, who I think I’d last spoken to over a decade ago when she was a producer at PlayStation. She’s now a co-founder of Fictions, a publisher that won Family Game of the Year for Lego Party.
I told her about my schtick and explained some of the ones I’d done before, including the tic-tac-toe bit.
She took the camera and quickly snapped a shot of me.
Why me? This one got heavy.
“I took a picture of you,” Mars said, “because you led with talking about playing tac-tac-toe and whether that’s a good game. And that’s actually a really meaningful game for me.” She explained that a relative of hers had recently suffered severe brain injury. “As part of his brain trauma rehabilitation, I was playing tic-tac-toe with him. And initially it was very difficult for him to play, and as his brain trauma was healing, he was able to play tic-tac-toe and regain tremendous cognition.”
“For you, it’s definitely a good game,” I said.
“It’s definitely a good game,” she said.
And then there was Tonda Ros, whose debut puzzle game, Blue Prince, enraptured me for over 100 hours last year.
Ros took my camera and started examining the room we were in (If you’ve played Blue Prince, you’ll know that Tonda Ros is all about scouring rooms.)
He spotted a pattern on the wall and took a photo of a giant L.
He spent a lot of time getting the photo right, and I began to daydream that maybe he was creating a brand new puzzle right there, just for me.
Then, he changed his mind and took a picture of Mondo Rojas, a photographer who was snapping official shots of all the winners.
What had just happened? First, Ros explained the wall photo, using Tetris terms.
“I was tempted by L-block,” he said. “Simply because of the—let’s say—2005 GameFAQs character battle, in which L-block surprised everyone by usurping all your favorite characters of all time. And winning the entire character bracket, which GameFAQs did every year.”
Ros was off by two years, but, yes, that did happen. In 2007, GameFAQs’ Character Battle VI tournament opened with 142 characters, eventually narrowed to four (Zelda’s Link, Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud, Metal Gear’s Solid Snake and Tetris’ L-Block) before L-block beat Link to win the grand prize.
Why’d he change his photo from L-Block to an intense close-up of a photographer?
“Given my history as a cinematographer, it was kind of a weak photo photographically, even though it’s probably a better anecdote. So, I was like, I’ll take a picture of a Nikon, because that’s what I used to shoot on.”
Another example of what makes Stephen so great at his job. Looks like you have the trust of some of the industry’s best to participate in a silly and off the wall exercise like this, and I loved reading through it and seeing all the photos. Thanks for sharing, Stephen!
(Ros is misspelled as Ross in the 3rd-last paragraph)