Constance Fleuriot

Constance Flueriot is an artist, writer and researcher who is shifting her focus to VR story worlds, such as Lux & the Shadowmaker on PrettyDigital. She also runs GrrrlGamers, a tech hub based in Bristol for women who make games. Constance discusses the work she does with projects focused on women, games and technology in Bristol.

Have you always been involved in games development?

I’ve never really felt like an expert in anything; just a bit of a mixed bag of skills from crafts to tech to teaching. While a mother of three young children, I studied fine art at Bristol Polytechnic and started playing around with the Apple Macs there, sneaking into the graphics department to play around with Photoshop and filters. I used them to make text illegible and screen print my diaries. Later, I did an MSc in IT at the University of the West of England (UWE), and then got a bursary to do a PhD at UWE in personal information systems. This led to a job at Pervasive Media Studio, helping people of all ages use the software platform. I also worked for the Digital Cultures Research Centre (DCRC) at UWE, where I instigated a symposium on ethics and pervasive media. I also co-created the Pervasive Media cookbook — an online resource that included on how to design in an informed way.

I finally went on a very short writing for games residential course at the Arvon Foundation. I’d been doing a lot of creative writing and it seemed like a good mix of my interests. I felt a bit out of my depth because everyone else there played LOTS of games and I don’t, but I love making up the story worlds of possible games and how they might link to other creative output, such as art, film, text and music. I like the idea of making games that are fun, engaging, interesting and subtly (or blatantly) thought provoking in their content.

What was the next step on your path to making games?

A couple of weeks after the Arvon course, I saw a call out for Queen of Code which was a collaboration between Creative England and Crowdfunder. They were looking to support women to make games. I got onto that and had to write a game outline, a budget and then spend a month frantically crowdfunding to raise my target.

There was PR and marketing support from Crowdfunder and Creative England, but it was pretty much up to me to get people engaged. I hit my target and as one of the five games with the highest number of supporters, I got an extra £3,000 from Creative England to make my game.

What were the challenges you faced as a debut game developer?

As part of Queen of Code, I had £8,000 and no experience and no support to run the games project and made a few mistakes in how to employ people and run the project. There was no money in the Creative England budget to help with any mentoring, which I could really have done with. Using the funds, I employed a couple of people but none of us had enough experience to get very far.

If I had £8,0000 now I know I could get so much further. Software has developed so much that now I could get the look I want and get the VR version so much more easily. Back then, I was pretty clueless, and possibly too generous. As a result, we worked too slowly for the amount of time I could pay people and we ended up with a really basic version of what I wanted.

As someone who doesn’t consider themselves an experienced gamer, what specific challenges did that bring?

During that process, I feel that I was influenced to make my game more standard. Like, it had to have the sort of elements that ‘normal’ games have, where actually I didn’t want a quest or a puzzle. I wanted to create a lyrical and intriguing experience, where the narrative builds up through fragments of content. I suppose that sort of experience or narrative game builds on my experience of creating locative, mobile or pervasive work with others, except this game was contained in a 3D landscape, in a computer rather than a physical space, in the real world.

What are you interested in for future projects?

I am interested in how I might use AR to create some micro games from my story world, where elements of the virtual world grow on screen when you look at the real world. It feels like the technology has finally caught up with some of the ideas we worked on years ago.

You are currently working with Bristol Women’s Voice on a project that celebrates the Suffragettes and the 100 year anniversary of some women getting the vote. What is Bristol Women’s Voice and how did you get involved?

Bristol Women’s Voice is an organisation in Bristol run by women for women, that is running a whole series of events and projects to commemorate the first women getting the vote in England 100 years ago. They knew that I run GrrlGamers, so asked if I would be interested in running a project for them.

What is the Suffragettes project?

We want to work with three groups of young women, aged 13 to 18, and develop games through a series of games jams. We are engaging with local schools and community organisations to get going. There’s a lot of goodwill from people to support us. I have already organised for the young women to be able to visit UWE, PlayWest, Bristol Games Hub, Pervasive Media Studio and the Watershed, as well as Bristol VR Lab.

I am using the book The Women Who Built Bristol 1184–2018 as a starting point, to find women who lived in the different areas of the city we will be working in. Local radical historian, Madge Dresser, is also involved and has a wealth of interesting stories about what the suffragettes got up to in Bristol, which will feed into ideas for the games.

How important is it to tell stories like the ones of the suffragettes in a game development space?

I love using hidden stories and bringing them to wider audiences. Even if the young women decide to modernise or update the stories, we will have a website for all the games that will also have the snippets of the real stories. There will be some landmarks plaques around the city too that will point people at a website with all the games and stories on too.

What is it about making a game that can help bring this part of Bristol’s history to life?

For me it’s all about the young women working on the games too — engaging them with the history of the city they live in, engaging them with the idea of the importance of voting, and also showing them that they can make games, be creative and work in that industry either locally or beyond.