Hello reader who is also a reader! It’s time to upend another sackful of tomes over your head, care of another game developer. This week, we’re talking to Nadya Lev – co-founder of New York studio Aconite, and developer of the splendidly unsexy Fucksweeper, which I had the pleasure of trying not to be seen playing in a crowded airport lounge in 2024.
Lev is also one of the minds behind augmented reality phone game HoloVista, the publisher of US alternative magazine Coilhouse, and a lecturer “on everything from Soviet-era mind control techniques to ancient spells found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead”. Cheers Nadya! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
What are you currently reading?
The Eudaemonic Pie. It’s a nonfiction book about how a group of Bay Area physicists invaded Vegas in the 1970s with the goal of cheating at roulette, a game of chance that was, famously, believed to be impossible to beat. Their plot included using Newtonian physics to predict where the ball would stop. They built a tiny microcomputer that fit into one of their shoes. They used foot taps to communicate with one another via shoes, electronically in secret. What they would do is observe the specific conditions of each roulette spin (how forcefully the wheel was spun, how the ball bounced, etc) and by feeding that data into their shoe microcomputer, they’d get predictions for what to bet on. It’s a wild, true story! I love the concept of the Eudaemon; it is a cybernetics term. In the olden days, it referred to a benevolent spirit bringing luck. But in this context, it refers to an unseen helper – an algorithmic spirit, quietly steering outcomes.
What did you last read?
A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton. It’s a deeply mystical, extremely funny, very moving book about three trans women who meet online in 1998 and try (but fail) to ship a game called “Saga of the Sorceress.” The book is a love letter to ZZT (an ASCII game-making system with a very creative subculture around it), the 90s internet, Hermetic Kabbalah, mental illness and/or divine inspiration, and being an artist. The story starts in 1998 and flashes forward to 2016. Life took the three women in very different directions, but the process of trying to make this game together haunts each of them in a different way. The story is about what happens when they collide again. I feel like a lot of people missed out on this book because it was labelled “LGBTQ lit”, and people thought, “it’s not for me.” But it’s so universal and profound! I love this book so much. Thornton grew up making games, so she’s able to write about game dev from the point of view of a teenager who is at once grandiose and insecure, in a very real way.
What are you eyeing up next?
It’s not out yet, but I am very excited for the book Making by Miracle Jones. It’s the fourth book in a seven-book series called The Fold. The first three books are utterly, brain-meltingly insane (the first one in the series is called Sharing and it’s wild). I love The Fold because it’s a completely different take on fantasy. Most of the fantasy genre has this European, old-world DNA, despite 90 years having passed since The Hobbit. Fantasy generally deals with lords, peasants, castles, throne succession drama, enchanted swords, names like “Aldric Thornwood” or whatever. It’s stale! Miracle Jones does this really interesting thing where he asks: “what would it look like if we started over and had a fantasy series that was purely American in its DNA?” What are the component parts of that? Diners, roadside attractions, melting-pot immigrant cities, Puritanism, criminality. The Fold series takes these as a spiritual foundation, and this absolutely insane world unfurls out of that… it’s hard to describe, but it’s one of the most breathtaking, imaginative worlds I’ve ever encountered. MJ’s short stories are also truly unhinged. Horror, sci-fi, too-strange-to-be-classified stories… they’re all up for free on his site and they’re all very funny and clever and weird! His writing can also be found in marketing-fetish horror sim Fucksweeper, and in our soon-to-be-announced new game!
What quote or scene from a book sticks with you the most?
There’s a scene in The Master and Margarita that I really love. Everyone remembers The Grand Ball at Satan’s; it’s one of the best scenes in the book! (I’ve actually given a talk about it.) But there’s another scene in that book that I love even more. It’s a scene in which Margarita, a woman who enters into a pact with Satan, is given a cream by Azazello, one of Satan’s henchmen. Satan wants her to host his ball, but in order for that to happen, she must transform into a witch. So she rubs this cream on her face and suddenly, she begins her transmutation. Her neat hairstyle falls apart and her hair is wild. Her skin takes on a preternatural quality. She begins to float. She laughs for the first time in a long while. She starts causing chaos. She hops on a broom and flies to the ball… but on her way to the ball, she casually flies through a window into the apartment of a guy she hates and utterly wrecks it. It’s just such a dark, joyful, beautifully-written scene. I think we all wish we had a little jar of that cream sometimes!
What book do you find yourself bothering friends to read?
I love The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. It’s one of my favorite books. I think it’s like… a true work of modern literature. It’s a book that really paints a beautiful picture of a lost New York and a desolate suburban Vegas. A lot of the themes in it are very universal. It’s sad, it’s funny, the prose is absolutely stunning. Everyone should read it. It’s the kind of book that makes you feel like you’ve actually lived someone else’s life by the time you finish it.
What book would you like to see someone adapt to a game?
Labyrinths by Borges. Still one of my all-time faves! I’d love to see it turned into a series of little vignettes, a la The Beginner’s Guide. Infinite libraries, labyrinths that fold in on themselves, gardens where every path exists simultaneously, stories within stories… there’s such rich material for playable worlds in that book. David Forster Wallace once purportedly said, “When you read a Borges story you are playing a game, perhaps an amusing game and perhaps a deadly serious one — and you don’t know the rules of the game.” His stories are basically games already. I know that a level in the exquisite game Manifold Garden was inspired by it, but I want more!
One extra from me. The aftermath of the Geoff Awards is a good time to check out Brendan Keogh’s monograph The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist, which “challenges core assumptions about videogame production and reveals the diverse and precarious communities, identities, and approaches that make it a significant cultural practice”. I can’t remember if there’s a section on industry award ceremonies, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t. In other news, I have got to get me one of those eudaemons, with some regional modifications. I need a pair of shoes that lets me hack the UK housing market. Book for now!