welcome!
[[ what is this? where am I? ]]
This is a research project on queering video game design. I recently read the article "Just making things and being alive about it: The queer games scene" for my video games class. I was fascinated by the work queer designers are doing to challenge normative thinking within video game design and wanted to explore this more for my final project.
[[ normative thinking in video game design? ]] I wanted to create this in Twine as a story-based project for several reasons.
1) Twine has, over the last 15 years, been used by designers on the margins as a space for alternative video game design, and I wanted to explore the platform and its capabilities as an alternative way of researching -- and to challenge my own research process and norms.
2) One of the central aspects of queer game design is that it centers messiness, unpredictability, and non-linearity. (More on this later, if you're interested.) So it seemed a little strange to write a linear essay about something characterized by messiness.
3) Researching this is, also, a messy process that takes you in all sorts of directions, and I wanted to celebrate that rather than try to bend it into a singular narrative. The paths this project take are reflective of my personal thought process as I researched -- a process that can at times be disorienting or end in rabbit-holes of thought.
You can see the full scope of the project -- a screenshot of the Twine map -- here:
(link-repeat: "projectmap")[(open-url: 'https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mmen9lWwVSdMjE35QT090YNH4JxQlfoy/view?usp=sharing')]
I've included a lot of pathways of thought in this process -- you choose what to explore.
[[ tell me more about Twine ]]
[[ what does this word "queering" mean? ]]
[[ take me to your thesis first ]]
[[ wait I need some coffee first ]] Twine is a hyperlink-based storytelling platform. It was originally designed by Chris Klimas in 2009 for interactive hypertext fiction, but has been reappropriated for DIY games. Importantly, using Twine requires only a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, and it's open-source -- you only need an internet browser both to create and to play the game.
The free, open-sourced, low barrier-to-entry nature of Twine is important in the conversation of WHO gets to design video games; it has been used by many marginalized designers and has been a powerful platform for queering game design.
It also challenges mainstream assumptions of what qualifies a game as a game -- a contentious conversation in the gaming world, and one that more often than not results in the dismissal of queer games as "notgames."
Though Twine is far from new, I wanted to use it to explore a platform that is so important to the history of queering video games.
[[ what does this word "queering" mean? ]]
[[ what is a game and what isn't? ]] Queerness is a term in large part defined by its lack of definition; it is based on personal experience and ambiguity. In general, though, being queer means deviating from the dominant mode of thinking and existing otherwise; or, as well-known queer game design scholar Bo Ruberg writes, "Being queer is about being different and desiring differently."
Queering, then, refers to opening a space (like game design) to include and encourage queer ways of thinking and queer identities. It resists normative modes of thought such as consolidation, simplicity and capitalist logic. (Living Games Conference)
Or, as Jess Marcotte writes, queering means "reorienting, redirecting, deviating from and causing to deviate."
Though one aspect of queer video game design involves more representation of queer characters and narratives, I'm even more interested in the nuances of how a video game can be designed in a queer way that challenges the status quo -- down to the mechanics.
[[ I want to know more about queerness ]]
[[ okay, but representation matters too ]]
[[ is queer video game design a new thing? ]]
[[ so how do you queer video game design space? ]] The video game world is, unsurprisingly, characterized by a lot of heternormativity -- not only in the demographics of the players and designers (historically, it's overwhelmingly men) but also in the mechanics of gameplay, the heteropolitics baked into the games, the themes and ideas present, and even the the medium of the games themselves. The normative thinking in video games might not always be obvious because it's exactly that -- normative -- but there are people out there doing the work to create new spaces for designing and playing.
[[ why does this project look like this? ]] honestly same... just out of curiosity, how do you like your coffee?
[[ black coffee. nice and simple. ]]
[[ I'm more of a latte person. ]] same here!!
Ok, while it's brewing...
[[ let's play a video game ]]
[[ what does this word "queering" mean? ]]
[[ maybe I should water my plants while I'm up. One moment ]] I'm drinking one as we speak!!
Ok, while it's brewing...
[[ let's play a video game ]]
[[ what does this word "queering" mean? ]]
[[ maybe I should water my plants while I'm up. One moment ]] This game went viral when it came out in November 2017.
(link-repeat: "HairNah")[(open-url: 'https://hairnah.com')]
Here is what the designer writes about it:
"Hair Nah originated as the answer to a brief: What are the stresses that Black women face and how can we address them? Starting as a script, l realized that a video game would explain this issue phenomenally better. So we made one... Hair Nah is a response to the perverse action of touching a Black woman’s hair without permission. The micro-aggression of assumed authority and ownership of black bodies." (Momo Pixel)
In the game, you swat away hands (belonging to white people) as they attempt to touch your hair. The game involves intersectional identities and is an example of how a video game can communicate the personal experience of existing as a marginalized person.
Representing lived experience and emotion in gameplay is queer because the capitalistic, heteronormative mode of design distances play from the individual experience (more on this).
And, in turn, Momo Pixel is subverting the role of a video game as not just an entertainment space, but as a space for self-expression, centering lived experience and emotion, and as a productive learning space.
[[ tell me more about self-expression and lived experience as a design principle! ]]
[[ but games are supposed to be entertainment, right? ]]
Your plants are probably doing better than mine. Although this fall has been suspiciously sunny so they're kinda enjoying themselves!
[[ my coffee is done brewing, let's get back into things! ]]
[[ actually, since I'm moving around my plants anyways, this is kinda a perfect opportunity to repot one of them. ]] [[ what does this word "queering" mean? ]]
[[ is queer video game design a new thing? ]] so true.
[[ while I'm at it I think I will vaccuum. ]]
[[ let's get back into things! ]] Not at all!! As Keogh writes, though "the mainstream industry might still be dominated by a single demographic, there is a huge diversity of people on the outside, on the margins, that have been creating their own video games for years" ("Just making things and being alive about it: The queer games scene").
Interestingly, video games were born from people, such as MIT students in the 60s, using computers and systems for something they were not initially designed to do (Keogh) -- so you could argue that video games are rooted in misuse of an existing platform (which is what much of queer design looks like as well).
[[ tell me more about redefining who gets to design games ]]
[[ tell me more about queering game mechanics ]]
Queerness is a term in large part defined by its lack of definition; it is based on personal experience and ambiguity. In general, though, being queer means deviating from the dominant mode of thinking and existing otherwise; or, as well-known queer game design scholar Bo Ruberg writes, "Being queer is about being different and desiring differently."
Queering, then, refers to opening a space (like game design) to include and encourage queer ways of thinking and queer identities. It resists normative modes of thought such as consolidation, simplicity and capitalist logic (Living Games Conference).
[[ I want to know more about queerness ]]
[[ is queer video game design a new thing? ]] Queer theory is closely tied to the framework of intersectional feminism. Video game designer and scholar Jess Marcotte, who identifies as queer, writes in "Queering Control(lers) Through Reflective Game Design Practices," that
being an intersectional feminist thinker "means to interrogate our first impulses and assumptions as well as establishing one's own position within these systems."
And again, important to queerness is the personal, situational, individual aspect of it. "Its definitional indeterminacy, its elasticity, is one of its constituent characteristics,” wrote Annamarie Jagose in Queer Theory: an Introduction (1997).
[[ so how do you queer video game design space? ]]
There are, of course, endless ways to queer design space -- as many as there are individual identities.
Game designer Toto Lin, who identifies as queer, writes it well in "Queer and Trans-formative Game Design" :
"One way is to think of queering as subverting norms of capitalistic, linear gameplay, by exploring a values-based, futurist perspective instead."
One example of subverting norms in gameplay is through the game mechanics and controls themselves. While not as obvious as representing a queer love story or identity, it is a resistance of the capitalistic and heteronormative logic so present in the video game sphere.
Another way is by changing what it looks like to be a game designer. Spaces like Twine, for instance, open up game design to people that don't necessarily have a background or education in programming -- in the process challenging the definition of a "video game" and "video game designer."
Yet another way is by centering lived experience and human emotions -- something often absent in normative game design.
[[ so what are the norms in gameplay we're trying to subvert? ]]
[[ tell me more about queering game mechanics ]]
[[ tell me more about redefining who gets to design games ]]
[[ tell me more about self-expression and lived experience as a design principle! ]] In "Queer Gaming In Conversation: Author Bo Ruberg with Designers Jess Marcotte and Dietrich Squinkifer," the trio brings up the issue of who gets to program -- and who doesn't. Platforms like Twine mean that more people can design games, in turn changing what it means to be a video game designer, even if you don't have a programming background.
[[ tell me more about self-care in video games ]]
[[ what are some game examples? ]] This idea can get vague quickly, but it's worth it to think about it in the abstract before diving into examples.
Video games are different from something like a movie or a video in that there is an interface the player interacts with as a instrument of some level of control.
This instrument or interface of control is what turns the user from a viewer to a player, and it is what grants them agency. There is opportunity for queering here. Control and agency are key topics in conversations and experiences of queerness, making this a powerful space for reflection and a method to challenge video game norms.
Jess Marcotte writes:
<blockquote>The concept of control in games is inextricably linked to the control interface (or controller), but extends into the game software, as agency in-game is not exclusively linked to the physical interface itself. The liminal space formed between the physical interface and the software must be addressed as part of the control provided to a user/player (Galloway 2012, p. vii).</blockquote>
And Naomi Clark writes in "Queering Human-Game Relations":
<blockquote>Meaningfully intervening in games... means considering queerness at a granular level by implementing mechanics that challenge oppressive values. This could look like denying players ownership of a single character that grows in power over time, or creating nonrepresentational spaces for the player to explore in a first-person game.</blockquote>
[[ sorry, come again ]]
[[ keep going with this mechanics thing. ]]
[[ let's go one level deeper than the interface -- to the code itself. ]]
Edmond Chang writes this in "Love Is in the Air:
Queer (Im)Possibility and Straightwashing in FrontierVille and World of Warcraft":
"Games and game worlds, like the real world, cannot remain natural, neutral, or empty. They are full of reality and can oppress as much as they allow for expression, can limit and control even as they provide a limited kind of agency, and can displace or disguise problematic discourses and identifications excused or even celebrated as “fun.” Games cannot be fun for some and deadly to others."
In other words, video games as a medium have the capacity to oppress -- which can be difficult to see when they are, often times, seen as simply "fun." It's worth thinking about the norms and assumptions they perpetuate and even hide, and the identities and self-expression they exlude through their very format.
[[ I would prefer this in a list format, thanks ]]
An overwhelming amount of the designers I researched emphasized the fact that video games are a form of self-expression; many of their games are semiautobiographical and draw on their personal experience as humans and as queer people.
Worked into this is the centering of emotion as a design principle -- something that many normative video games do not do.
Toto Lin wrrites this about putting human experience and emotion first:
"Many game designers begin designing by focusing on the feelings they want players to have. In my games, I strive to create feelings of abundance, catharsis, and solidarity, which align with personal values like intersectionality and self-care."
[[ what are some game examples? ]]
[[ tell me more about self-care in video games ]]
This is a really interesting question, and it's been a conversation for a while in the game space.
As Naomi Clark writes,
"Games have always been sites of tension between cultural ideas about the productive and the unproductive–not just between ideas like work and leisure, but between the idea of “doing something for a purpose” and “doing something for no reason save itself.”
Clark goes on to argue that viewing games purely as entertainment turns player excess energy into profit and fuel for capitalism and consumerism, as well as into a lifestyle accessory. On the other hand, viewing games as purely productive -- and non-productive games as "wastes" -- dips into utilitarianism (which is also a slippery slope to capitalism) (Clark).
These are some of my personal questions when thinking about this:
[[ what are the politics of passing time? ]]
[[what are the politics of escaping reality?]]
[[ wait, why are we talking about capitalism now? ]]
Yeah, this is where it can get a little complicated.
Edmond Chang, in "Why are the Digital Humanities so Straight?" writes about the "problematic (im)possibilities of queer games," arguing that because video games are built upon code, and code is binary, video games (and any computer-based spaces) are inherently straight.
He references Sadie Plant's argument that “the zeroes and ones of machine code seem to offer themselves as perfect symbols of the orders of Western reality, the ancient logical codes which make the difference between on and off, right and left, light and dark, form and matter, mind and body, white and black, good and evil… active and passive… masculine and feminine.” (207)
Chang writes that the "binary, algorithmic, and protocological underpinnings of both game programming and design constrain and recuperate queerness."
In other words, technology is deterministic in that its very structure -- code -- is oppressive and normative, so therefore can never be neutral or objective.
He calls this concept "technonormativity."
[[ that's interesting... keep going ]]
[[ but then wouldn't co-opting a system coded for normativity be the ultimate form of resistance? ]] Queerness is, fundamentally, a rejection and resistance of the normative logic our society is built on -- of logic that emphasizes hierarchy, linearity, and black-and-white solutions. As a result, it is inherently political, and it implicitly involves capitalist logic.
Bringing queerness into video game design, then, means approaching it with nuance and humanness.
[[ ok, continue ]]
What politics are implied by the terms "productive" and "unproductive"?
Is their power in doing something for the sake of doing it?
Is leisure a privilege?
This is the end of this line of thought. You've reached a point where my thinking on this hasn't gone further yet.
[[ return to another checkpoint ]]
[[ play a game ]]
[[ end project ]] This is a question I didn't expect to come up in my research, but it's an interesting one -- because there is, undoubtedly, a politics and a privilege wrapped up in the idea of escaping reality, and of games being an escape from the real world.
Sarah Sharma (2017) argues that the desire to escape, to exit, is a fundamentally masculine cultural fantasy and "an excerise of patriarchal power" in response to what she calls "the pain of capitalism."
In other words, there is a gendered politics to the ability to escape reality.
[[ so... games shouldn't offer an opportunity for escape? ]] Yeah, that's one thought I had.
And at the end of the day, even if the binary nature of code does make it inherently constraining for queerness, that doesn't mean we shouldn't still bring queerness into the space as much as we can. Maybe focusing too much on this extremely granular level of the argument takes emphasis away from the actual designers doing the hard work in a space that has historically been so noninclusive? Maybe rather than focus on the queerness of the coding of a game, we should redefine who gets to design games?
At the same time, it's a really important point to consider. We can't think about the bias of video games without thinking about the logic their code is built on.
And the thought of queer designers working in a language (coding) that literally is built to push them out makes it all the more impressive.
[[ tell me more about redefining who gets to design games ]]
[[ my brain hurts. I need to take a coffee break. ]] Yeah, good idea. If it makes you feel better I'm already on my third coffee of the day.
[[ return to another checkpoint ]]
[[ play a game ]]
[[ end project ]] In other words, the way the player interacts with the game, through the mechanics of gameplay and through the controller (physical or otherwise) itself, can enact queerness -- or normativity.
[[ keep going with this mechanics thing. ]] Alexander R. Galloway, in an essay titled "Countergaming," disucsses the "conventional gaming poetics versus alternative modes of gameplay," writing that:
<blockquote>By radical action, I mean a critique of gameplay itself. Visual imagery is not what makes video games special. Any game mod focusing primarily on tweaking the visual components of a game is missing the point, at least as far as gaming is concerned. Artists should create new grammars of action, not simply new grammars of visuality. They should create alternative algorithms. They should reinvent the architectural flow of play and the game’s position in the world, not just its maps and characters.</blockquote>
This is a long quote, but it's an important one -- it gets at the importance of looking past the visuals and literal gender expressions in a game to think about the construction of the game itself.
I especially love the phrase "grammars of action" -- it gives us pause to think about what norms we are taking part in through the way we move through a (video game, but also real world) space. (It also draws on a larger conversation of queer poetics/grammar in the design world at large, not just in gaming.)
Thinking about how time is expressed and thinking about the controllers we are using to move are two ways of approaching this idea of alternative grammars of action.
[[ tell me about queer time ]]
[[ tell me about queering video game controllers ]]
In "Why are the Digital Humanities so Straight?" (an essay that is, interestingly, written in BASIC, so that the reader is transformed into a player and must paste the code into a BASIC emulator to read it), Chang asks:
"Might we argue that the very structures of digital computation develop at least in part to cordon off race and contain it?... might we ask whether or not this same culture seeks to segregate gender and sexuality queerness and desire from digital media?” (206)
It's interesting to consider the queerness of video games at this extremely granular level. Anything built in a language of binaries inherently has a black-and-white structure that surely makes it difficult for nuance, neutrality, or fluidity to be expressed.
It is, as Safiya Umoja Noble calls it, an "algorithm of oppression." (Noble)
All binaries are linked; the binary system, as a social construct, perpetuates itself through the extension of more binaries. The binaries of "true or false" are linked to "white or black," which are linked to "good and evil." It is a system of logic that operates on the assumption that nuance does not exist in the world, and that thrives on segregation and labelling. It's also a system of logic that has historically been used to oppress people. And it's a token part of capitalist logic.
If your only options for self-expression through computer code are "yes" or "no," "true" and false," and "masculine" or "feminine," how can you express nuance, fluidity -- queerness?
[[ but then wouldn't co-opting a system coded for normativity be the ultimate form of resistance? ]]
[[ why are we talking about capitalism now? ]]
It would be impossible to list all the norms that need to be addressed in video game design, but here's a few that have been on my mind and that I'm going to take a look at in this project, in no particular order:
1. the demographics of video game design is overhelmingly male and straight
2. normative video games seem to take the emphasis off lived human experience and real emotion
3. controllers and mechanics can be used to enact heteropolitics
3. there is a cut-and-dry sense of the "right" way to play a game or to win
4. normative video game design leaves little room for messiness
5. there is a rigid definition of what counts as a game
5. the gaming sphere has a weaker sense of self-care and community
those are just some thoughts -- I'm not going to explore all of these in a way that will do them justice, but it's at least something to start thinking about.
[[ ok, onwards! ]]
[[ tell me more about queering game mechanics ]]
[[ tell me more about redefining who gets to design games ]]
[[ tell me more about self-expression and lived experience as a design principle! ]] Queerness is, fundamentally, a rejection and resistance of the normative logic our society is built on -- of logic that emphasizes hierarchy, linearity, and black-and-white solutions. As a result, it is inherently political, and it implicitly involves capitalist logic.
(Not to mention the video game industry is functioning within a capitalist system -- leading to things like overworking, exploitation, etc.) A conversation on video games involves a conversation on capitalism.
[[ my brain hurts. I need to take a coffee break. ]]
[[ speaking of capitalism... ]] Queer time is one example of tweaking and subverting grammars of action.
"Chrononormativity," as queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman defines it, is "the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity" (Freeman); it is the assumption that everyone operates on the same timeline.
This is an important word when thinking about queerness, since in many cases, LGBTQ individuals face pressure from society's expectations of personal timeline. And it can also be applied to thinking about queerness in video games.
In contrast, "queer temporality," or "counterhegemonic time," which are terms Bo Ruberg uses to describe the concept of queer time, "represents a resistance to the standard logics that dictate what one should do, where, when, and at what speed" (Ruberg 185).
Similarly, Freeman describes queer time as a “hiccup in sequential time” (Musser).
[[ how do you apply this to video games? ]] Movement and action are powerful things, and in a video game, players enact their agency on a world / digital space through the use of a controller. Of everything I've researched, this aspect of queering design is the most difficult for me to wrap my head around, and it's one that hasn't been extensively explored.
Marcotte (2018) suggests several approaches to this, including (but not limited to) letting players "interact with something other than plastic" by bringing control back to the body itself, and "taking players out of the flow state and away from seamless, invisible experience."
[[ is "seamlessness" problematic? ]] What does it look like to resist normative standards of time in video games? Is this even possible?
Ruberg, in //Video Games Have Always Been Queer//, argues that speedruns and walking simulators are two examples of non-normative gameplay that explores counterhegemonic time, because "they represent challenges to dominant standards of what it means to play in ways that are normal, valuable, or right" and "embody alternative forms of desire: the desire to rush, the desire to linger."
This idea returns to the concept of chononormativity in that it counters the expected sequence and speed of events and movement through space. Playing out of synch with a game or with other players' expectations is a form of "playing otherwise," and, in turn, "existing otherwise."
It's subtle. But this is the point: introducing more nuance and play into the gaming experience, as well as using something the wrong way -- changing what "success," and "failure" mean in a game.
Game designer Toto Lin writes this:
"And you know what? Sometimes queer game design is living your life queerly, embodying the values you wish to convey in design. Take time for things. Heteronormativity, capitalistic society, and even Sonic the Hedgehog will try to tell you that you gotta go fast. But you don’t have to. Stop and smell the roses because you need to."
[[ does this play into ideas of self-care in video games? ]]
[[ i'm intruiged by this idea of "success" and "failure." ]] Building care into a video game and into the design process is one way to approach non-normative game design, since it is implicitly humanizing and caring -- which resists capitalistic, hegemonic logic.
[[ let's talk about practicing care in the video game design community ]]
[[ tell me about building care into the game itself ]]
Care-centered games can be radical. Games that center protection, nurturing and connection (which designer Brie Code calls "tend-and-befriend" games) over conflict and flight-or-flight reactions are one example. Games like this are "a way of bringing the bodies and indeed the pleasures... of alternative players into the design of video games" (Ruberg and Scully-Blaker 659-660).
They also respond to the "hegemony of play" in which men have historically been the target audience of video games (660).
Another approach to this is the "cozy game." Game and software designer (Spry Fox) Daniel Cook writes that coziness "is a subversively humanizing design practice in a society built on monetizing base animal needs" (Lost Garden); a cozy game, to my mind, means that the player is offered a space to take a deep breath and exist for the sake of existing in a space that is safe and abundant, without the pressures and intensity they may experience in other games and in the "real" world.
[[ tell me more about coziness ]]
[[ what are some issues with care in video games? ]]
It's also important to consider the ways in which care can be practiced not just inside a video game, but within the video game design community. An important word here is "community care," through which "marginalized people collectively support one another instead of going it alone" (Ruberg and Scully-Blaker, 661).
[[ let's talk about practicing care in the video game design community ]] The video game industry is known for its problematic labor and overworking practices (Cote and Harris). Practicing community care by taking part in collective projects and otherwise cultivating community and conversation can be seen as an opposing force to the exploitative state of the video games industry and capitalistic hyper-individualism.
As Dietrich Squinkifer says in "Queer Gaming In Conversation," the design process should be "built on a foundation of trust and respect and having fun together."
return to... [[ tell me about building care into the game itself ]] There is definitely something to be said for the way applying a slower, more meandering approach to a video game re-centers your self and your own needs; maybe going slower -- stopping and smelling the roses because you need to -- is a form of self-care within a video game.
[[ tell me more about self-care in video games ]]
And here enters another way to resist normative video game design: changing what it means to "fail" and to "succeed" in a game.
As Judith Halberstam (2011) writes in// The Queer Art of Failure//, with regards to queerness in general (not just game studies):
"failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world."
[[ is "seamlessness" problematic? ]]
[[ but winning is the whole point of a game! ]] This is an important point, and one whose answer is not obvious. Should we consider a game "queer" just by virtue of it having abnormal mechanics, prioritizing self-care, or being otherwise "subversive"?
If we consider a game "queer" just by virtue of it being "cozy" -- could this do some damage, or at least remove the focus from games specifically designed by queer designers, who we should be uplifting?
I don't really know, but I think it's important to come back to the conversation of what queering design space means: creating something that is "otherwise," that operates in opposition to the status quo, that represents an alternative way of moving through and existing in a world.
Using an intentional practice of care within a video game is, possibly, a way of doing this.
[[ what about practicing self-care in the "real" world? ]] As Ruberg and Scully-Blaker write in "Making players care: The ambivalent cultural politics of care and video games," though video games that center care can be radical, it's important to also be crtical of the ways in which care in video games can exploit marginalized people and game designers (655).
[[ go on... ]]
Cook and a group of designers separated coziness into the categories of safety, abundance, and softness (Lost Garden). This last one strikes me in particular, since so many times I have heard the term (coined by GenderFail) "Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance." This term populates websites like Are.na and queer graphic design and writing platforms and research, so it's something that's been on my mind for a while. The idea of softness is nuanced, but it generally refers to spaces full of emotional intimacy, humanity, and authenticity.
(also, this is why I have tried to build coffee and tea breaks into this project -- to encourage self-care and slowness!)
[[ does a game being "cozy" necessarily mean it's queer? ]]
[[ this is my cue for a tea break! ]] yay! tea! that brings us into...
[[ what about practicing self-care in the "real" world? ]]
There is a politics to empathy and care. We need to be thoughtful of the way in which assuming queer designers' role is to educate or express personal experience.
<blockquote>Video games made by marginalized people are often met with the ill-conceived expectation that they will educate normative, privileged players about experiences of difference and oppression... the rhetoric of empathy should give us serious pause: “When you walk in someone else’s shoes, you’ve stolen their shoes. (662)</blockquote>
This conversation is not one that is limited to the video game design world; the notion, in general, that marginalized people must educate non-marginalized people is dangerous and exploitative. We cannot conflate freely expressing personal experience and emotions with this being one's responsibility and role.
This is the end of this line of thought. You've reached a point where my thinking on this hasn't gone further yet.
[[ return to another checkpoint ]]
[[ play a game ]]
[[ end project ]] I think there is a lot to be said on this topic. One the one hand, since the ability to escape is a privilege, shouldn't video games offer that rare opportunity of escape, especially to marginalized people?
Shouldn't they be an opportunity for marginalized people to express the fact that they, unlike members of the patriarchy, can never truly escape from an oppressive world?
On the other hand, should we be more critical of games that allow for escape, especially when it is the escape of members of the patriarchy who have the privilege to, according to Sharma's analysis?
I don't know the answers to these questions.
[[ what does Sharma think? ]]
The Game //Mainichi // is an exploration of the designer Mattie Brice's personal experience navigating daily life -- created in a way that "didn't require programming and used community resources" (Brice 2012).
(link-repeat: "Mainichi")[(open-url: 'http://www.mattiebrice.com/mainichi/')]
//Dys4ia// by Anna Anthropy is an autobiographical game about the dysphoria experienced from hormone replacement therapy.
(link-repeat: "Dys4ia")[(open-url: 'https://w.itch.io/dys4ia')]
It's worth noting that these games center personal experience, and they don't take the normal or expected format of video games -- which is important because it is important we expand the definition of what "counts" as a game -- something hotly debated in the video games community.
[[ what is a game and what isn't? ]]
So productive!
[[ look, there's something under the couch! ]] [[ what does this word "queering" mean? ]]
[[ is queer video game design a new thing? ]] Capitalism, as a system, thrives off order and linearity.
For this reason, designers like Llaura MgGee use messiness and chance as design principles that oppose the status quo.
[[ tell me about messiness]] Sharma posits that "Care is an opposing political force to exit... Care is that which responds to the uncompromisingly tethered nature of human dependency and the contingency of life, the mutual precariousness of the human condition."
In other words, care is the opposite of exit, because it focuses on what we actually do have -- the people and communities that are already in front of us, and leans into this.
[[ tell me more about self-care in video games ]]
[[ is care really the opposite of escape? ]]
[[ what are the politics of passing time? ]]
[[what are the politics of escaping reality?]]
Is care really the opposite of escape?
Does escape always imply privilege?
What does it look like to escape in a way that is conscious, empowering, queer?
How can the concept of escape be a healthy experience in the video game world?
This is the end of this line of thought. You've reached a point where my thinking on this hasn't gone further yet.
[[ return to another checkpoint ]]
[[ play a game ]]
[[ end project ]] [[ tell me more about queering game mechanics ]]
[[ tell me more about redefining who gets to design games ]]
[[ tell me more about self-expression and lived experience as a design principle! ]] You have reached an ending point to this project (for now)...
[[let's see the sources ]]
[[ don't you have a thesis? ]] How about one of these?
The Game //Mainichi // is an exploration of the designer Mattie Brice's personal experience navigating daily life -- created in a way that "didn't require programming and used community resources" (Brice 2012).
(link-repeat: "Mainichi")[(open-url: 'http://www.mattiebrice.com/mainichi/')]
//Dys4ia// by Anna Anthropy is an autobiographical game about the dysphoria experienced from hormone replacement therapy.
(link-repeat: "Dys4ia")[(open-url: 'https://w.itch.io/dys4ia')]
// HairNah // expresses the personal experience of a Black woman navigating a sea of white hands trying to touch her hair.
(link-repeat: "HairNah")[(goto-url: 'https://hairnah.com')]
[[ return to another checkpoint ]] It does -- and while this project won't explore issues of representation in video games to a full extent, it is worth mentioning.
As Megan Condis (2014) writes,
"a self-representation that is not specifically identified in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and ability is often assumed to be a member of the dominant class: a white straight able-bodied male."
Because of this, representation through simple things such as character appearance IS important. But it's also not enough.
Edmond Chang (2015) notes that "most mainstream games with “queer” content or play focus on largely inconsequential narratives, gay (or lesbian) sex, and same-sex marriage plots," which can sometimes be shallow or forced inclusion.
Chang goes on to say that tokenizing identity in this way is "still largely normative, stereotypical, and reduced to the hetero- and homosexual binary."
[[yeah... representation shouldn't just be a checkbox]]
While representation is important, is only a starting point. As Condis writes, with regards to female representation in video games, video game projects that focus on creating more diverse avatars "assume that players with female bodies require video games that feature female avatars crafted in a particular style... the content of the game is assumed to be dictating to the player what gender and sexuality mean in the context of the game world," which situates the player as a passive consumer (Condis 2014).
I would also argue that offering LGBTQ and female avatars as a way to attract members of these groups to a game without critiquing the hegemonic assumptions built into the game itself could potentially be seen as an exploitation of marginalized people for capitalist benefit.
It's not that representation is important -- it is, and I don't want to downplay this, since representation can allow for players to feel comfortable, seen, and expressive. But this has been extensively explored, and I want to dig even deeper in this project, thinking about other, more nuanced ways of queering video games.
[[ so how do you queer video game design space? ]]
Marcotte suggests that seamless games, which lead to total immersion, can reduce the use of critical thought. They draw on Khaled (2018), who writes that designing a non-seamless, more messy game "encourages “reflection over immersion” and “disruption over comfort."
[[ tell me about messiness]]
but is it really bad for a game to be immersive? ... and [[what are the politics of escaping reality?]]
Ruberg (2022) writes "when a video game is designed more loosely, more messily, and with less precision, it allows more space for players to experiment with chaos and approach the game world as a sandbox for exploring queer possibilities."
Game designer Llaura McGee applies principles of messiness and chance through the use of glitches and abstractions, and ultimately through using the medium the "wrong" way."
Glitches are interesting because they can be seen as "a kind of queer failure that we should celebrate," and which "disrupt the idea that games are a seamless, packaged experience—bursting the surface of a game from within" (Clark and Kopas 2015).
[[ ooh, I like this phrase ]]
[[ the wrong way? ]] "Bursting the surface from within."
This feels an apt phrase to end this line of thought on, since it seems not only an expression of a glitch but of the whole point of queering and resistance on a larger scale.
At the end of the day, the point is to be critical of the assumptions we bring to video games and open-minded to the way video games can be an expressive, subversive and radical medium -- both on the end of the designer and on the end of the player.
[[ end project ]] Clark (2015) writes, "expanding our notions of ranking, hierarchy, and winners means a wider palette of disequilibriating journeys to explore." We have assumptions of what it means to win or succeed at a game, but we should be questioning these.
What is the logic wrapped up in the need to win at something? Is that another deep-rooted assumption?
Or should winning or the opportunity to succeed be a cornerstone of gaming? Are games powerful experiences in that they offer us the opportunity to win?
This is the end of this line of thought. You've reached a point where my thinking on this hasn't gone further yet.
[[ return to another checkpoint ]]
[[ play a game ]]
[[ end project ]]
what is it?
[[ a fifty dollar bill! ]]
[[ the left sock of my favorite Christmas socks I've been missing forever ]] okay, you've gotten distracted.
[[ let's get back into things! ]]
[[let's find the other sock]] Wait what?? What are you gonna do with it?
save it for later. [[ let's get back into things! ]]
[[ I'm definitely gonna go buy something ]] You have reached the end of this project... somehow without actually doing any research! Maybe now's not the time.
[[ try again from the start ]]
[[ exit ]] Okay, okay. I guess fluffy socks are a requirement for getting good research done.
get back into the project?
[[ let's get back into things! ]]
[[ Now that I'm so cozy, I might just take a little nap. ]] As McClure responds when interviewed about her design process:
"I'm a queer person in a non-queer society... that shows in the way that I find beauty in messing something up or using something the wrong way."
It's worth noting, as well, that the video game itself was born from using a computer the way it wasn't intended (Keogh).
[[ does this mean video games have always been queer? ]]
This also gets into the conversation of what gets to count as game -- and how setting up harsh categories of what "is" and "isn't" a game is a problematic marginalizing force. To return to that checkpoint (if you haven't been there yet): [[ what is a game and what isn't? ]] Approaching gaming -- both design and play -- in a more nuanced, curious, and queer way is not only a mode of resistance but, perhaps, the only way forward if we want to address issues of marginalization both within the gaming world and outside of it.
[[let's see the sources ]] bibliography !
Brice, Mattie. "Mainichi." //mattiebrice.com//, 2012.
Chang, Edmond Y. "Love Is in the Air: Queer (Im)Possibility and Straightwashing in FrontierVille and World of Warcraft." QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 2 no. 2, 2015, p. 6-31.
Clark, Naomi and Merritt Kopas. "QUEERING HUMAN-GAME RELATIONS," //First Person Scholar,// February 2015.
Condis, M. (2015). No homosexuals in Star Wars? BioWare, ‘gamer’ identity, and the politics of privilege in a convergence culture. Convergence, 21(2), 198-212.
Cook, Daniel. "Cozy Games." //Lost Garden//, January 2018.
Cote, Amanda and Brandon C. Harris. "The cruel optimism of “good crunch”: How game industry discourses perpetuate unsustainable labor practices." //New Media and Society//, May 2021.
Freeman, Elizabeth. "Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories." Duke University Press 2010.
Galloway, Alexander R. "Countergaming." //Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture//, Electronic Mediations, Volume 18, University of Minnesota Press 2006.
Keogh, Brendan. "Just making things and being alive about it: The queer games scene." //Polygon//, May 2013.
Lin, Toto. "Queer and Transformative Game Design." //Color Bloq//, October 2020.
Marcotte, Jess. "Queering Control(lers) Through Reflective Game Design Practices." //The international journal of computer game research//, December 2018.
Musser, Amber Jamilla. "The Politics and Erotics of Time." //Reviews in Cultural Theory//, June 2011.
Pixel, Momo. "Hair Nah." //momopixel.com//
Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: NYU Press, 2018)
Ruberg, Bonnie. "Hungry Holes and Insatiable Balls: Video Games, Queer Mechanics, and the Limits of Design." //Journal of Cinema and Media Studies//, Volume 61, Issue 3, Spring 2022.
Ruberg, Bonnie and Rainforest Scully-Blaker. "Making players care: The ambivalent cultural politics of care and video games." //International Journal of Cultural Studies//, 2020.
Ruberg, Bonnie. The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games. Duke University Press, 2020.
Ruberg, Bonnie. "Speed Runs, Slow Strolls, and the Politics of Walking." //Video games have always been queer//, New York University Press 2019.
Sharma, Sarah. "Exit and the Extensions of Man." //Transmediale//, August 2017.
"Queer Gaming In Conversation: Author Bo Ruberg with Designers Jess Marcotte and Dietrich Squinkifer." Duke University Press, YouTube, November 2020.
"Queer Game Design Principles & Practice," Living Games Conference, YouTube, 18 May 2018This is a tricky one. As Keogh notes, "Games are designed by a small, male-dominated culture and marketed to a small, male-dominated culture, which, in turn, produces the next small, male-dominated generation of game designers."
But I would argue that the medium of video games as a concept contains elements of queerness -- such as a culture of hacking and reappropriating. Ruberg, in //Video Games Have Always Been Queer//argues exactly, well, that -- the video game as a medium is inherently queer (even if the the industry's demographics don't reflect this).
This seems like a good note to end on: video games and queerness are inherently interwtined.
[[ end project ]] The conversation of what counts as a game and what doesn't has been used as a further method to exclude marginalized identities from game design culture. As Keogh writes in "Just making things and being alive about it,"
<blockquote> Not a game' is an accusation that has befallen many a queer game, whether it is because they lack graphics like Twine games, because they are too short or linear like Lim or Dys4ia, because they are more concerned in communicating a message through a system than allowing it to be mastered like Mainichi or because they are simply of a much lower fidelity than what gamers, growing up playing blockbuster triple-A games, have become accustomed to. Many commentators, be they well-meaning or intentionally malicious, have worked to further exclude many of the creations of the queer games scene from mainstream video game culture by labeling them 'notgames,' 'ungames' or 'interactive art </blockquote>
As Kopas is quotes as saying in the article, "When we call something a nongame, we are basically saying, 'We don't really need to talk about it'" (Keogh). It also means it is harder for queer designers to get funding because their work is not taken seriously.
Thinking about what "makes" a game a game is an interesting rhetorical thought process, but in the real world, creating definitions and hard lines is always a dangerous business, and cannot be done without marginalizing people, and without sidelining those peoples' personal experiences.
[[ let's play a video game ]]
Believe it or not... yes.
You've just read a lot of arguments and research, so I'll keep it short.
We need to examine and analyze video games and the norms and assumptions they perpetuate -- and we need to celebrate queer designers and the work they are doing. Games offer us the opportunity to resist -- through their mechanics, the self-expression they can provide, and the designers we uplift. Video games should make us uncomfortable at times; they should lead to reflection; they should help us see into a life that's not our own.
Approaching gaming -- both design and play -- in a more nuanced, curious, and queer way is not only a mode of resistance but, perhaps, the only way forward if we want to address issues of marginalization both within the gaming world and outside of it.
[[ exit ]] [[ what is this? where am I? ]] You have reached the end of this project... somehow without actually doing any research! That was some top-tier procrastination.
[[ try again from the start ]]
[[ exit ]] bye! Thanks for stopping by :)
to see the full map / visualization of the project:
(link-repeat: "projectmap")[(goto-url: 'https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mmen9lWwVSdMjE35QT090YNH4JxQlfoy/view?usp=sharing')]
Chloe Montague
J429 Studying Games
Andy Wilson
5 December 2023