People are dotted along the bar's interior all night. "The sex doll is a way to set up expectations about the game and also add a layer of context to its intention." "Using the doll is a very simple way to add a physical component to the game, to make it more suitable for display in an accessible way," Roots says. It was designed in collaboration with the owner of Bar SK, Louis Roots, specifically for Ruck Me. On its back, hidden underneath the jersey, are two Xbox 360 controllers, gaffer-taped to the doll. An erect inflatable penis protrudes from between the doll's legs.Īn Xbox 360 controller is gaffer-taped to the sex doll's butt.
It even has a name - "Nathan Fuckley" - named after legendary player and current Collingwood coach, Nathan Buckley. The slender, blue-eyed doll is adorned in the black and white, prison-bar-styled jersey of the Collingwood Magpies, one of the AFL's most historic clubs. To interact with the game, players make use of the sex doll that lies in front of the screen. Ruck Me explores homoeroticism and sports bar culture, framed by Australia's national sport: Aussie Rules Football, or AFL. It's a game that will cease to exist in one week. It's a video game that only makes sense here, in Bar SK, in Australia. "My games are concerned with playfulness, bodies and masculinity, so obviously sports culture is bursting with so much material for me," he says. Yang has always wanted to make a sports game.
Yang releases them for free at his itch.io page and they're remarkable not just for their design, but their considered approach to sex and sexuality as mechanics. They often skirt the line between "art" and " video game". Yang's games are delicately crafted experiences that exist outside the narrow, consumer-driven scope of triple-A blockbusters like Fortnite or Call of Duty. "The games certainly aren't perfect, and I still have a lot to learn, but I hope the games at least feel honest." "These games are my attempt to articulate gay experiences as digital systems," Yang says.
Hurt Me Plenty is a spanking simulator that explores intimacy and consent, as well as sex as reward in video games. The Tearoom, released in 2017, explores the dangers homosexual men faced when meeting and having sex with strangers in a public bathroom in 1962. Many of Yang's games re-create gay real-world experiences, fantasies and anxieties. It's a first-person shower-simulator where you scrub down naked men over successive real-world days and receive a rating for how well you clean them up.
Rinse and Repeat is possibly his most well-known game. Robert Yang calls Aussie Rules "the gayest sport he's ever seen." He is one of the most banned game developers on Twitch. His games are popular and critically acclaimed, and they are also notorious. Robert Yang is something of a celebrity in these circles - and that might be underselling it. Just like in any bar, anywhere else in the world.Īt the front of the bar, yellow text bursts onto the wall, overlaying the Aussie Rules Football match, illuminating the crowd. Patrons, drink in hand, talk amongst each other, laughing and smiling. In front of the screen a life-sized, inflatable male sex doll rests face down. Most gather around a projector screen that fills a bar wall with footage of athletic men kicking an oval-shaped ball, tackling each other around the waist and leaping into the air. The grungy bar vibrates with a buzz of bodies. In fact, it's probably the first homoerotic sports game period. It's called Ruck Me and it's the first homoerotic Australian Rules football game. It's controlled with an inflatable sex doll. It's a game about masculinity, homosexuality, bar culture and sport. Here, Robert Yang, game critic, developer and professor of video game studies at New York University's Game Center, is displaying his latest video game. It's playing host to " Artworld Videogames", a new exhibition celebrating independent, experimental video games and the cultural connection between New York City and Melbourne. Hundreds of bar coasters with hand-drawn figures adorn the walls. In another, Xbox controllers and an arcade stick. In one corner, a mannequin with a horse's head, draped in hanging lights. It looks like a Jackson Pollock painting of video games and offbeat effigies. Welcome to Bar SK, a meeting point for local game developers and players. In a dimly lit dive northeast of Melbourne, Australia, a crowd begins to gather.