Mikei Huang

Mikei is a New York based designer focused on visual design and interactive design. With work ranging from user experience design, interface design, game development, virtual reality, motion graphics, graphic design, and illustration, Mikei has worked with Electronic Arts, Panasonic, Audible, A&E Networks, and Parsons School for Design. His works have been exhibited at SXSW, Game Developers Conference, Games For Change Festival, Different Games Conference, Immersive Storytelling Symposium, NYC Media Lab Summit, Parsons Playtech, Playcrafting NYC Expo, Game Devs of Color Expo, and Babycastles Gallery.

- Perfect Eggplants Don’t Exi- is a virtual reality experience about attaining the ideal body image, and failing to do so. In this superficial world of eggplants, players experience the doubling effect of sexual objectification in the gay culture through modifying their bodies to meet society’s arbitrary expectations.

- Perfect Eggplants Don’t Exi- is created in direct response to gay men’s obsession with their own body images. In this game, players are able to experience self objectification, objectification of others, and being objectified by others through interactions such as customizing their own bodies, taking selfies, and being judged and influenced by social media. The game substitutes male bodies with an eggplant avatar to directly objectify male bodies as merely sexual objects. The metaphor also serves to deviate from heteronormative values, and leaves the beauty standard to be randomly generated by code. The game mechanic uses the classic avatar customization tool and turns it into a sandbox environment where players can change their body shapes, and receive quantitive compliments in the form of social media likes. Perfect Eggplants Don’t Exi- is designed to be endless, and the ultimate goal of the game is to have the players realize that the ideal body image is unattainable.