"Consume Me"
Jenny Jiao Hsia ‘16 (BFA, Game Design) is one of the most intriguing young indie game developers working today, but right now she just wants to knit.
“I picked up knitting because it was the first creative thing I’ve wanted to do in a long time,” Hsia says. “I love the feeling of getting so sucked into doing something that you forget about everything else.” And who could blame her? After what’s been nearly a decade-long journey developing her game Consume Me, which she first began work on as an undergrad at the NYU Tisch Game Center, she’s only recently glimpsed the light at the end of the tunnel.
The project, which is inspired by her own experience with disordered eating, has taken a sinuous road to completion, recently earning a wave of press after yielding five Independent Game Festival Award nominations. But as we begin to chat about the arrival of Consume Me, unofficially set for later this year, she finds herself at odds with the moment. Amidst fine-tuning the game for release and workshopping elevator pitches, the emotional toll of the artistic process is self-evident. “I feel like I need to set aside therapy time to reflect on what I just did for the past 8 or 10 years,” she says. It seems catharsis is rarely uncomplicated.
The growth and evolution of Consume Me has coincided with Hsia’s self-described “letting go” of the game. And that’s a good thing, she assures. Liberating the project from isolation has meant welcoming a talented roster of artists into its universe. “My co-creator, AP Thompson, and I have been working on this pretty consistently since 2017,” Hsia says. “Prior to that I was just working on the game by myself, but with his help we really began to turn this into a real product with potential.” Since then the team has grown to include Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, and Ken "coda" Snyder, who have readied the game for its official release.
Animated with an explosion of pink and orange hues, Consume Me enjoys a playful aesthetic that belies its deeper meditations on disordered eating. The gameplay is engineered around a series of scrupulous tasks that range from workouts and dieting to laundry and calorie counting, collectively mounting into an ever more challenging and frenetic lifestyle. It’s a character arc that flirts with undertones of both humor and anxiety, ultimately avoiding the usual temptations of gameplay escapism. The result is a gaming experience that is twofold: on one hand whimsical and fun, and on the other emotional and challenging.
Hsia’s work signals a fresh new voice in the majority-male game industry, but she’s decidedly more invested in letting the game speak for itself rather than prescribing any potential impact. She recently took some time to chat with us about Consume Me’s earnest and artful representation of disordered eating, the mixed emotions that come with finishing a long-gestating project, and her hopes for the future.
"Consume Me"
Consume Me has led you on a protracted and winding journey. Rather than recall the last eight or so years, tell me about the moment you’re in now and how you’re feeling?
Jenny Jiao Hsia: It's currently a very busy season. You know, announcing the game publicly, and releasing a trailer of all our most recent work, and getting nominated for these awards—it makes it feel much more real and makes me have more pressure to finish the game. Prior to that we didn't really post much on social media and wanted to focus on just developing the game. Our philosophy was pretty much however long it takes to finish the game, we're gonna’ give it that time because we [don’t want to] rush. But now that everyone knows about it, and I also want to finish it, there’s more pressure to get all that done. I think I'm still figuring out how to rearrange my life so I can get those things done and still maintain my sanity.
How has developing this game in a professional context compared to working on it during your time at Tisch?
Jenny: Working on this game has been a crazy learning experience. I graduated from undergrad and got this game design degree, and [then] I had this part-time teaching job. But I think I was very much accustomed to being at school, surrounded by classmates and teachers and getting their feedback and feeling the sense of routine and identity. After that, once we decided to work on this game full-time, I didn't have that access to mentorship, and that was very scary. It felt like falling off a cliff. And then the pandemic happened, so we were transitioning to all remote work. Looking back at it, I did learn how to lean on myself to make sure I got work done. I still feel like I struggle with that to this day.
Around 2018 or 2019 we were able to secure funding, and the game was also featured at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. [Ultimately] it was just this hard lesson in, well, you have all this money. You get to make your dream game. But now you have to make the dream game. Where's the game, you know?
Your games have an observably playful and mischievous quality, but also an element of unease that is essential to the experience. Is there added apprehension around releasing such a personal project to a wider audience?
Jenny: I feel like [we’ve worked] on this game for so long and expanded the size of the team working on the game. As that team grew, the project that started out as a very personal project for me became less personal. And not in a negative sense. I think it needed to be a shift in my ego as an artist. As one person you can [only] do so much. When I realized that I wanted this to be a substantial video game that takes six to eight hours to play, I had to give away parts of it to other people, and that was very hard for me. But in some ways I think by doing that I feel the game is not who I am—I am working on the game like it's a job. I think that actually helps me maintain a better mental state when it comes to sharing this project.
Don't get me wrong. I still feel very nervous about sharing it publicly, and I worry, oh, am I going to communicate something incorrectly? And is the Internet going to come after me? Because this game deals with disordered eating, which is something that I experienced in high school. There are so many topics in there that I don't really want to have to explain myself. I just want the game to be what it is, and for someone to play it and hopefully feel touched by it.
How do you think of yourself these days: as a storyteller or a developer? Is there a distinction?
Jenny: [It’s] definitely not technical anymore. Maybe it was something that I felt more ownership in when I was working on these prototypes for myself. I hope this doesn't sound too self-deprecating of me, but I don't really think about myself that much at all. I recently picked up knitting because it was like the first thing that I've wanted to do in a long time, and I just love the feeling of getting so sucked into doing something creative that you forget about everything. And I'm just hoping for more of that experience. I feel like that sounds so chaotic [laughs].
I can certainly appreciate that. How do you ultimately hope game players respond to and interact with the game?
Jenny: When I think about the sort of player who will be touched [by the game], I actually think of one of my friends who is like eight years younger than me that I met through ballet. I think about her, and I think about how she’s a younger version of me. And I hope this work speaks to her—I hope she feels touched. I genuinely want her to play the game and see her reaction.
I've been playing around with the 30-second elevator pitch of the game, which is, “Did you feel stupid, fat, and ugly in high school? Because I did. And I made a video game about it.” I think everyone feels that in some way, and I think that it resonates with a lot of different people.
