The Hand of the Developer

Biting the Hand of the Developer

The Hand of the Developer is an adventure game created by Kevin Nguyen using Gamemaker: Studio. It was inspired by the motif of the Hand of the Animator (Artist), which moved from textual annotations to black minstrel shows to early animation to computer interfaces and finally to games. The hand exhibits the artist’s control over its creation while linking yet obfuscating its history in its gloved incarnation. What was once oil on canvas but now mouse on screen, the player executes lightning-fast drawings using mouse clicks in the same manner as an artist’s lightning sketches. After drawing Theo the Turtle, the player’s objective is to feed him in the same manner as J. Stuart Blackton’s The Enchanted Drawing (1900). While a button purely for food in an image editor is unusual, the role of food and drink in the Hand of the Animator motif has been to interact with a drawing while supporting the illusion of the subject being alive. When Theo is done consuming the apple, the apple core is left behind and to progress the player is forced to clean up the mess using the eraser tool. By doing so, the childish or pet-like aspect of Theo is revealed and the player assumes the role of his caretaker. In Gertie the Dinosaur, Winsor McCay showed his control over Gertie but met resistance as Gertie asserted its arguably free will. Theo the Turtle does the same, refusing to swim and more importantly refusing to be animated or entertaining. The command line text that follows express the developer’s frustration and ensued infuriation. Utilizing a Super Mario Bros. inspired mushroom power-up, the hand icon that has been used as a cursor grows in size resembling the Master Hand of Super Smash Bros. When the image editor ceases to work, a new work area appears where Theo is remade as a “funny animal” cartoon donning gloves and mischievously yet suspiciously smiling. These new gloves hint at the Mouse Hand’s influence and even more subtly the history of the glove in animation.