Abstract
Since it was first proposed by Markku Eskelinen in 2001, the academic field of game studies has seen rapid growth and adoption across disciplines such as sociology, psychology, literature, composition, design, and economics to name just a few. Editors Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw seek to continue the expansion of game studies across disciplines in their edited collection Queer Game Studies. Using the methodologies and theorizations of eminent media and game studies scholars such as Mia Consalvo, Ian Bogost, and Janet Murray, the authors in this collection infuse these established models for thinking about games with queer studies. Drawing on a diverse array of prominent writers and gender and queer scholars such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jack Halberstam, and Judith Butler, the collection seeks to disrupt normalized ways of thinking about games. Rather than seek to define queer game studies, a process that would go against the very ethos of queer studies, Ruberg and Shaw write in their introduction that the collection is more interested in how “the frameworks of queer theory offer lenses through which to reclaim the medium, giving voices to the experiences of queer player subjects and bringing to light the fact that games are queer (or at least queerable) at their core” (p. xiii). To this end, the editors and authors seek to move beyond mere representation of more lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) characters and into a “commitment to seeing differently, to finding the marginalized in between the lines, and to unlocking the non-normative potential that has been waiting in video games all along” (p. xxii). While the collection does make calls for more queer characters, queer game designers, and queer games, it does so in a way that questions the structures and systems of games typically taken for granted such as progression and winning.
Queer Game Studies is divided into five sections: Defining Queerness in Games, Queering Game Play and Design, Reading Games Queerly, Queer Failures in Games, and Queer Futures for Games. Through a mix of academics, games journalists, games designers, and educators, the essays in this collection range from the scholarly to the personal, though each essay stands as a readable, coherent text for a general audience. These essays are aimed at an audience that includes college students, industry professionals, video game enthusiasts, and research professors while never actively becoming too jargon heavy or insider-focused to be of use or interest to others outside the author’s domain of expertise.
Naomi Clark’s essay “What is Queerness in Games, Anyway?” opens up the first section of the book, “Defining Queerness in Games,” and sets the tone for the entire collection. Clark examines a range of games from the PowerPoint-like dys4sia all the way to cultural touchstones like Dungeons & Dragons. In her exploration of the potential for queerness in games, Clark concludes that it is “the refusal to obey orthodox conventions about games, and a willingness to embrace bare systems, that makes it easier for queer games to achieve striking new forms of interplay and consonance” (p. 9). This refusal and questioning of assumptions runs as a throughline for many of the essays in the collection. Other authors in the opening section take up this rejection of normative structures by looking at the body, communities, and even play itself.
In the second section, “Queering Game Play and Design,” Peter Wonica offers up a practical example of how queer theory can inform game design through a postmortem on a board game developed to help players understand the difficulties faced by trans women in leaving abusive relationships. Much of the second section focuses on the practical application of queer theory to game design by analyzing instances where games aren’t about winning or where winning is not a desirable outcome. Mattie Brice’s essay “Play and Be Real About It” is particularly strong in its refusal to dismiss games as “just games” and explores the implications of letting games have real world contexts while still indulging in the pleasure that is associated with play.
The third section is the book’s most conventional and features several close readings and analyses of video games through a queer lens. While these essays can be elucidating, they often seem to be focused on aspects of representation that the text’s introduction and many of the essays move away from. Robert Yang’s essay “On ‘FeministWhorePurna’ and the Ludo-material Politics of Gendered Damage Power-ups in Open-World RPG Video Games,” for example, represents a fruitful application of traditional close reading methodologies akin to literary or film studies, but does little to advance the conversation forward in regard to the potentials for a queer game studies.
In the penultimate section, “Queer Failures in Games,” the full potential of the intersection between queer theory and game studies is shown as each author approaches a particular video game convention such as character, online community, and win/fail states and questions what happens when such tropes are subverted. Jack Halberstam’s essay, “Queer Gaming,” is a particularly strong example. Halberstam looks at what happens when cooperation is privileged over participation, and glitches become opportunities for new, exciting forms of game play instead of inconvenient disruptions.
The final section, “Queer Futures for Games,” ends the collection with a forward-facing gaze that brings forth many of the conclusions derived from the application of queer theory to game design and failure. These essays position the trajectory of queer game studies to be one of creative disruption and subversive potential. Ruberg’s own contribution to the collection, “Forty-Eight-Hour Utopia,” rounds out the book with a call not for more rigorous methodology and broader, token-like inclusion, but rather a demand for change and a questioning of the very principles in which the commercial games industry is rooted.
Queer Game Studies serves as an excellent starting point for those interested in queer theory or game studies. While it does not formulate any groundbreaking theories or methodologies, it does offer up a unique way of seeing games and play that is invaluable to those who make, play, and study games.