Andrea DomanickSee also: Van Halen Assteroidz Is Back!
She ain't no Princess Peach, but Kreayshawn now has her very own video game. Kreayshawn: The Game bowed earlier this month, courtesy of Toronto-based illustrator-cum-game-designer Beth Maher. The 8-bit creation places the L.A. rapper alongside Van Halen, Michael Jackson and Journey, among others, in the gaming realm.
“I thought it would be fun,” Maher tells us over email, adding that it's her first game and she built it through a workshop helping young women to get into video game development. “A line like 'I got the swag, and it's pumping out my ovaries' deserves to be immortalized somehow, and I think video games — as an art form — can function as pop-cultural commentary.”
Credit: Beth Maher
The game itself is pretty straightforward, a Flash-based, four-level adventure à la Super Mario Bros. in which Kreayshawn shoots down Louis-tottin' “basic bitches” with super-charged balls of swag. Sound effects include a digitized Kreayshawn yipping “Swag!”, and an 8-bit midi version of “Gucci Gucci” is the theme music.
When Maher published the game to her website Kreayshawn – a fan of both pixel art and her Gameboy — immediately hyped it on Twitter and Tumblr, making it an instant hit.
“The hype is…scary? It just got 100,000 plays in four days. It's a lot to process,” Maher says. “Even people who don't know who Kreayshawn is, or don't care for her, seem to be enjoying it, which is more than I could hope for.”
Maher, a lifelong gamer, learned how to build the game in only six weeks. The workshop was set up by the Toronto indie gaming community Difference Engine Initiative, to help introduce women into the heavily male-dominated gaming world. The game's ass-kicking ethos was, in part, an ode to that.
Still, Maher isn't exactly the “superfan” Rolling Stone described her as in their writeup. She says the work should not be considered a fan tribute, though she can get behind “Gucci Gucci's” “anti-commercialism message.”
“[Kreayshawn's] individualist, DIY, punk rock spirit, combined with hip-hop is such a fresh thing – I don't know why we haven't seen more of it,” she says.
Maher adds that she's been criticized by some who say Kreayshawn doesn't “deserve” a game, but says she disagrees.
“There should be a Kreayshawn game. Not because she 'deserves it,' although I happen to think she does, but because it is the path my self-expression wanted to take, as an artist.”
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