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 work | Feast, Avatar Legends co-writer |
| Awards | ENNIE Awards, IndieCade, Indie Game Developer Network |
Sharang Biswas is an Emirati-American designer/writer of tabletop role-playing games and interactive media, a writer of speculative fiction, an adjunct professor of game studies at NYU Game Center, and a freelance games journalist. His work focuses on LGBTQ and science fiction and fantasy themes. 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.
Biswas designed Feast, a game that takes place during a meal and uses eating as a game mechanic. [1] [2] Feast was featured in an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. [3] Feast won the 2017 IndieCade "Dark Horse" award [4] and the 2020 "Most Innovative" Indie Game Developer Network Award. [5]
Biswas has won four ENNIE Awards for game writing: the 2024 Silver for "Best RPG Related Product" for KOBOLD Guide to Roleplaying, [6] the 2023 Gold for "Best Family Game/Product" and "Best Rules" for Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game, [7] [8] and the 2023 Judges' Spotlight Award for Moonlight on Roseville Beach: A Queer Game of Disco and Cosmic Horror. [9] In addition to Feast, Biswas won the 2019 Indie Game Developer Network "Most Innovative" award for Verdure. [5] An Elegy for the Hive Witches from The Gauntlet's Codex Zine was also nominated for the IGDN "Most Innovative Award," in 2020. [10] Biswas' game Hex Ed appeared in the anthology You and I: Roleplaying Games for Two, which was nominated for an IGDN "Most Innovative Award" in 2019. [11]
In 2020, Biswas co-designed a LARP adaptation of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance for the Museum of the Moving Image, using puppets and other props from the museum's exhibit of the show's character design. [12] In 2021, Biswas became an Artist in Residence at the Museum of the Moving Image. [13] He has continued to produce interactive installations for the museum. [14] [15]
Biswas was co-editor with Lucian Kahn for the Pelgrane Press LARP anthology Honey & Hot Wax in 2020, [16] which was nominated for an IndieCade award and an Indie Game Developer Network award for "Game of the Year." [17] [18] Biswas contributed a game to the anthology called "The Echo of the Unsaid" about sexual tension between heterosexual male college roommates. [19]
Biswas co-edited Strange Lusts, an online anthology of interactive fiction about sex and sexuality, which was published in 2021 by Strange Horizons. [20] He wrote Absolution in Brass: A Game of Guilty Steampunk Zombie-Cyborgs for Simon & Schuster's The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book. [21] He wrote an adventure in Shadow of Operations, the official one-shots book for Grant Howitt's game Spire. [22] He wrote the adventure "Who Says Witches Don't Like Chinese Food?" for the Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall scenarios book. [23] He was on the writing teams for Tanya DePass's game Into the Motherlands [24] and Green Ronin Publishing's Cthulhu Awakens. [25]
Biswas' speculative fiction has been featured in Fantasy Magazine, [26] Lightspeed (magazine), [27] [28] Nightmare Magazine, [29] and Strange Horizons. [30] 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!" [31] 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." [32]
As of September 2024, Biswas is an adjunct faculty member of NYU Game Center. [33] 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. [34] He has also taught games studies courses at Fordham University. [35]
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. [36] 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. [37] He was interviewed about LARP for the academic journal Analog Game Studies. [38]
While working with Tech Kids Unlimited, Biswas collaborated with researchers and autistic students to assess the potential of video game design workshops in empowering autistic youth. [39]
Biswas holds a Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.) from Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and a B.A. and B.E. in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering from Dartmouth College. [40] [41]
Biswas was a special guest at Flame Con 2024. [42] He was a 2024 guest of honor at Ropecon. [43] He gave a talk at the 2024 Brooklyn Book Festival about games adapted from literature. [44] He gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference about portrayals of sex in video games. [45] 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. [46]
Biswas also works in games journalism. Biswas has been a frequent contributor to Eurogamer. [47] [48] [49] [50] He has also written articles for Kill Screen [51] [52] and Dicebreaker. [53] He was a judge for the 2022 Dicebreaker Tabletop Awards. [54]
Biswas grew up in Abu Dhabi and originally emigrated to the United States to study bioengineering at Dartmouth College. He discovered game design while taking a "fun class" with the designer and games researcher Mary Flanagan to offset his engineering prerequisites. [55] Biswas is gay. [56]
Game Writing/Design Credits
| Title | Publisher | Credits | Date | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cthulhu Awakens | Green Ronin Publishing | Writer | 2024 | [57] [25] |
| KOBOLD Guide to Roleplaying | Kobold Press | Author | 2023 | [6] |
| Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game | Magpie Games | Writer | 2022 | [7] [8] |
| Moonlight on Roseville Beach: A Queer Game of Disco and Cosmic Horror | R. Rook Studio | Writer | 2022 | [9] [58] |
| Strange Lusts | Strange Horizons | Co-Editor, Writer | 2021 | [20] |
| Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall | Game and a Curry / Wet Ink Games | Scenario Writer | 2021 | [23] |
| Honey & Hot Wax (game: The Echo of the Unsaid) | Pelgrane Press | Co-Editor, Writer/Designer | 2020 | [16] |
| The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance LARP at Museum of the Moving Image | Museum of the Moving Image | Co-Designer | 2020 | [12] |
| The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book (game: Absolution in Brass: A Game of Guilty Steampunk Zombie-Cyborgs) | Simon & Schuster | Writer/Designer | 2020 | [21] |
| Shadow of Operations | Rowan, Rook, and Decard | Adventure Writer | 2020 | [22] |
| An Elegy for the Hive Witches | The Gauntlet (tabletop games producer) | Solo Writer/Designer | 2019 | [10] |
| A Shroud for the Seneschal | The Gauntlet | Solo Writer/Designer | 2019 | [59] |
| Verdure | self-published | Solo Writer/Designer | 2018 | [5] |
| Hex Ed (in You & I: Roleplaying Games for Two) | Ginger Goat Publishing | Writer/Designer | 2018 | [11] |
| Feast | self-published | Solo Writer/Designer | 2017 | [1] [2] |
| Mad Science Foundation | Cryptozoic Entertainment | Co-Designer | 2015 | [60] |
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