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Sharang Biswas

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Sharang Biswas
Occupation(s)Game designer/writer, interactive media artist, fiction writer, journalist, and academic
Employer(s)NYU Game Center, Fordham University, Museum of the Moving Image
Notable workAvatar Legends co-writer
AwardsENNIE Awards, IndieCade, Indie Game Developer Network

Sharang Biswas is an Indian American designer/writer of tabletop role-playing games and interactive media, a writer of science fiction and fantasy short stories, a games journalist, and an adjunct professor of game studies. Biswas has won multiple awards for his game writing work as both a solo designer and a collaborator: one IndieCade award, four ENNIE Awards, and two Indie Game Developer Network awards. He was an Artist in Residence at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Games and interactive media

Biswas has won four ENNIE Awards for game writing: the 2024 Silver for "Best RPG Related Product" for KOBOLD Guide to Roleplaying,[1] the 2023 Gold for "Best Family Game/Product" and "Best Rules" for Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game, and the 2023 Judges' Spotlight Award for Moonlight on Roseville Beach: A Queer Game of Disco and Cosmic Horror.[2] Biswas won the 2020 "Most Innovative" Indie Game Developer Network Award for Feast and the 2019 "Most Innovative" award for Verdure.[3] Biswas was co-editor with Lucian Kahn for the LARP anthology Honey & Hot Wax, which was nominated for an IndieCade award in 2020.[4] He won the 2017 IndieCade "Dark Horse" award for Feast.[5]

In addition to his award-winning work, Biswas co-edited Strange Lusts, an online anthology of interactive fiction about sex and sexuality, which was published in 2021 by Strange Horizons.[6] He wrote a game for Simon & Schuster's The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book.[7] He was on the writing teams for Tanya DePass's game Into the Motherlands[8] and Green Ronin Publishing's Cthulhu Awakens.[9]

Biswas was the 2021 Artist in Residence at the Museum of the Moving Image.[10] He has continued to produce interactive installations for the museum.[11]

Games journalism

Biswas has been a frequent contributor to Eurogamer.[12][13][14] He has also written articles for Kill Screen[15][16] and Dicebreaker.[17] He was a judge for the 2022 Dicebreaker Tabletop Awards.[18]

Short stories

Biswas has been featured in Fantasy Magazine,[19] Lightspeed (magazine),[20][21] Nightmare Magazine,[22] and Strange Horizons.[23] Charles Payseur for Locus reviewed Biswas' short story "Season of Weddings", which was published in Lightspeed: "Biswas keeps the tone and feel of the story flirty and fun, and painting an interest­ing picture of a shared and expansive collection of pantheons all interacting, being messy, and, for all their immortality, very human. It’s delightful!"[24] Paula Guran for Locus reviewed Biswas' story "Waiting for Jonah", which was published in Nightmare Magazine: "it’s a good story that employs an unusual use of some equally unusual fairies."[25]

Talks

Biswas was a special guest at Flame Con 2024.[26] He was a 2024 guest of honor at Ropecon.[27] He gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference about portrayals of sex in video games.[28] He spoke on the game designer panel "Playing with Identity: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Queer Power Self-Definition" at Flame Con 2019, discussing the impacts of queer identity on game design and play.[29]

Academia

As of September 2024, Biswas is an adjunct faculty member of NYU Game Center.[30] Biswas was a visiting film and media studies professor at Dartmouth College, where he co-organized a collaborative speculative fiction project between authors and Dartmouth science faculty.[31] He has also taught games studies courses at Fordham University.[32]

Biswas wrote the chapter "Sex and Game Design (Part 2): Mechanics and Verbs" in the book Passion and Play: A Guide to Designing Sexual Content in Games by Michelle Clough.[33] He wrote a 2019 article for the University of Waterloo's Games Institute about the use of live action role-playing games for building queer community.[34] He also wrote about LARP for the academic journal Analog Game Studies.[35]

References

  1. ^ "2024 Winners & Nominees – ENNIE Awards". Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  2. ^ "2023 Nominees and Winners – ENNIE Awards". Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  3. ^ "Previous Award Winners". Indie Game Developer Network. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  4. ^ Chan, Banana (2020-12-21). "Games of the Year 2020: Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall co-creator Banana Chan". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  5. ^ "Feast | IndieCade - International Festival of Independent Games". web.archive.org. 2017-09-14. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  6. ^ "Track Strange Lusts / Strange Loves's Kickstarter campaign on BackerTracker". BackerKit. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  7. ^ Elderkin, Beth (2020-11-05). "Join a Teenage Bird Gang in This Exclusive Game Reveal From The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  8. ^ Carter, Chase (2021-05-20). "Tabletop RPG Into the Mother Lands is now on Kickstarter". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  9. ^ Carter, Chase (2022-01-20). "Green Ronin's new RPG Cthulhu Awakens will attempt to transcend cosmic horror's baked-in bigotry". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  10. ^ "Game Play: Interview with Sharang Biswas". Museum of the Moving Image. Mar 24, 2021. Retrieved September 25, 2024.
  11. ^ "Stories in Motion: An Interactive Pop-Up Art Exhibit". Museum of the Moving Image.
  12. ^ Biswas, Sharang (2024-07-05). "From Mediterranea Inferno to Baldur's Gate 3: the queer ecstasy of monster-loving". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  13. ^ Biswas, Sharang (2021-06-29). "Hunky Dads & Voxel Flags - Video Games and Our Queer Future". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  14. ^ "Fanfiction, fan-mods, and the joy of gay fantasy". Eurogamer.net. 2022-06-27. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  15. ^ Biswas, Sharang (2016-03-01). "Videogames and the art of spatial storytelling". Kill Screen - Previously. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  16. ^ Biswas, Sharang (2016-05-20). "Why adults are drawn to teenage stories". Kill Screen - Previously. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  17. ^ Biswas, Sharang (2021-02-17). "Indie RPGs show roleplaying can - and should - be far more than Dungeons & Dragons". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  18. ^ Meehan, Alex (2022-11-24). "Meet the judges for the Tabletop Awards 2022". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  19. ^ Puncekar, Alex (2020-12-17). "Sharang Biswas". Fantasy Magazine. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  20. ^ Wagner, Wendy (2022-02-14). "Author Spotlight: Sharang Biswas". Lightspeed Magazine. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  21. ^ Wagner, Wendy (2023-05-18). "When Shiva Shattered the Time-Stream". Lightspeed Magazine. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  22. ^ Wagner, Wendy (2023-11-08). "Author Spotlight: Sharang Biswas". Nightmare Magazine. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  23. ^ "Sharang Biswas". Strange Horizons. 2021-10-25. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  24. ^ "Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Cast of Wonders, Lightspeed, and Hexagon". Locus Online. 2024-06-08. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  25. ^ "Paula Guran Reviews Nightmare, Heartlines Spec, and The Deadlands". Locus Online. 2024-04-01. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  26. ^ Nye, Annmarie (2024-07-05). "Sharang Biswas - Special Guest". The World's Largest Queer Comic Con. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  27. ^ "Ropecon 2024 Guests of Honor Sharang Biswas and Alessandro Giovannucci". Ropenomicon (in Finnish). 2024-05-16. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  28. ^ Farokhmanesh, Megan (March 23, 2022). "How developers are rethinking sex in video games". Axios. Retrieved September 25, 2024.
  29. ^ Sendaula, Stephanie. "Highlights from Flame Con 2019". Library Journal. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  30. ^ "Sharang Biswas". NYU | Game Center. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  31. ^ "Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project considers next steps for the genre". Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project considers next steps for the genre - The Dartmouth. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  32. ^ "Coursicle – Chat with classmates". www.coursicle.com. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  33. ^ Noble, Barnes &. "Passion and Play: A Guide to Designing Sexual Content in Games|Paperback". Barnes & Noble. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  34. ^ "Possibilities for Queer Community-Building Through LARP - First Person Scholar". www.firstpersonscholar.com. 2019-03-27. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  35. ^ "Play to Find Out What Happens: Insight Through Reflection | Analog Game Studies". 2021-06-07. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
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