This guide was originally written by Bonnie “Bo” Ruberg in early 2016 with contributions from Amanda Phillips, Teddy Pozo, and Adrienne Shaw. It has been updated a number of times over the years, most recently in DECEMBER 2019. Additional suggestions are very welcome. See side bar for contact info.
Welcome to queer game studies! Queer game studies is a rich, vibrant, and growing area of scholarship that stands at the intersection of game studies and queer studies. This handy guide offers a quick introduction to queer game studies research, a list of published or shortly forthcoming work on queerness, and other related resources.
This guide is designed for both folks working within the queer game studies community and those who are new to queerness and games. It’s an exciting moment for queer game studies; new writing on queerness and games is appearing all the time! That means it can be hard to keep track of recent publications. It can also be daunting for folks who are just starting out. Hopefully this guide will help.
Researchers, teachers, and students are all welcome to borrow, share, and build from this resource. Engaging with the work of our fellow scholars is an important part of nurturing a conscientious, ethical academic community that supports marginalized people.
What is “Queer Game Studies”?
Queer Game Studies is the academic study of queerness and/or LGBTQ issues in relation to video games, analog games, and play. Alongside queer game studies, queer game-makers and queer games are also flourishing in a contemporary “queer games avant-garde.” At a time of profound unrest around social justice in games, as well as political crisis on a national and international scale, the importance of making space for LGBTQ perspectives in this widely influential medium has never been more evident.
Though writing on gender, sexuality, and games has appeared since the 1990’s, queer game studies truly began taking shape in 2012 and 2013, when it was galvanized by community events like the Queerness and Games Conference and the Different Games Conference. Edited volumes like Queer Game Studies (2017) and Queerness in Play (2018), as well as the journal special issues listed below, have brought a range of voices exploring queerness and games together in exciting ways. Today, in 2019 and beyond, many new scholars from across disciplines are entering queer game studies. It is wonderful to hear from new contributors, especially when they engage with, build from, or even challenge existing queer game studies scholarship.
There are now a number of wonderful texts that provide an overview of queer game studies, draw out its main themes, and suggest important areas of future work. These are included below in the “Introductions & Overviews” section. For an especially fiery welcome to the field, check out “Not Gay as in Happy: Queer Resistance and Video Games.”
What is the state of Queer Game Studies in 2019?
The first edition of “Queer Game Studies: An Introduction to the Field” was written in the spring of 2016. Nearly four years have passed since then. In the intervening time, queer game studies has only continued to grow. It seems like every day there is more work being published in this area, more folks giving conference talks on queerness and games, and more students pursuing educational paths focusing on queer game studies. On the creative front, queer game-makers continue to challenge and reimagine the medium of video games. More and more games by, for, and about queer people are being developed and released on platforms like itch.io. Events like the Queerness and Games Conference are going strong, with the 6th annual conference scheduled for May 2020 in Montreal.
Particularly notable since the last update to this guide is the release of new, major publications dedicated to queer game studies. The volume Queerness in Play, edited by Todd Harper, Meghan Blythe Adams, and Nicholas Taylor, was released in 2018 from Palgrave Macmillan. My own monograph, Video Games Have Always Been Queer, came out from New York University Press in spring 2019. Four recent journal special issues have brought valuable discussions of queerness and games to broader scholarly communities. The First Person Scholar “Queer Game Studies” special issue, guest edited by Jess Marcotte, highlights perspectives that bridge scholarship and praxis. At the end of 2018, the journal Game Studies featured its “Queerness and Video Games” special issue, guest edited by Amanda Phillips and myself, the largest issue in the journal’s history. Most recently, the journal WiderScreen published a July 2019 special issue on “Sexuality and Play.”
There are still many more topics to explore at the intersection of game studies and queer studies, and queer game studies research is sure to keep expanding on, shifting, and complicating existing work.
QUEER GAME STUDIES BIBLIOGRAPHY (updated for DECEMBER 2019):
The following is a list of published and/or shortly forthcoming writing on queerness and games. As of the December 2019 update, the list has been grouped roughly into topic areas. (It’s not a perfect system, but as more and more work comes out, it can be helpful for getting oriented.) If you are unable to access articles due to pay-wall restrictions, consider contacting authors directly. They may be happy to share their work!
Edited Volumes
Harper, Todd, Meghan Blythe Adams, Nicholas Taylor (eds.). Queerness in Play. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Malkowski, Jennifer and TreaAndrea Russworm (eds.). Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017.
Ruberg, Bonnie and Adrienne Shaw (eds.). Queer Game Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Wysocki, Matthew and Evan W. Lauteria (eds.). Rated M for Mature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
Special Issues
Karhulahti, Veli-Matti, Laura Saarenmaa, and Ashley ML Brown (eds.). “Sexuality and Play” special issue. WiderScreen volume 1, issue 2, July 2019.
Marcotte, Jess (ed.). “Queer Game Studies” special issue. First Person Scholar, March 2019.
Morris III, Charles E. and Thomas K. Nakayama (eds.). “Queerness and Video Games” special issue. QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, volume 2, issue 2, 2015.
Ruberg, Bonnie and Amanda Phillips (eds.). “Queerness and Video Games” special issue. Game Studies, volume 18, issue 3, December 2018.
Ruberg, Bonnie (ed.). “The 2014 Queerness and Games Conference” special issue series. First Person Scholar, February 18, February 25, and March 11, 2015.
Monographs
Phillips, Amanda. Gamer Trouble: Feminist Confrontations in Digital Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2020 (forthcoming).
Ruberg, Bonnie. Video Games Have Always Been Queer. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
Ruberg, Bonnie. The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020 (forthcoming).
Shaw, Adrienne. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Introductions & Overviews
Brey, Betsy, Jess Marcotte, Bonnie Ruberg, Kara Stone, and Elise Vist (2019), “Queer Game Studies Special Issue” (introduction), First Personal Scholar.
Evans, Sarah (2018), “Queer(ing) Game Studies: Reviewing Research on Digital Play and Non-Normativity,” in Queerness in Play.
Harper, Todd, Nicholas Taylor, and Meghan Blythe Adams (2018), “Queer Game Studies: Young but Not New,” in Queerness in Play.
Lauteria, Evan (2018), “Envisioning Queer Game Studies: Ludology and the Study of Queer Game Content,” in Queerness in Play.
Ruberg, Bonnie and Amanda Phillips (2018), “Not Gay as in Happy: Queer Resistance and Video Games,” Game Studies.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2015), “Video Games, Queerness, and Beyond,” First Person Scholar.
Shaw, Adrienne and Bonnie Ruberg (2017), “Imagining Queer Game Studies,” in Queer Game Studies.
Affect
Pozo, Teddy (2018), “Queer Games after Empathy: Feminism and Haptic Game Design Aesthetics from Consent to Cuteness to the Radically Soft,” Game Studies.
Bonnie Ruberg (2015), “No Fun: The Queer Potential of Video Games that Annoy, Anger, Disappoint, Sadden, and Hurt,” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking.
Ruelos, Spencer Taylor Berdiago (2018), “Queer Gamer Assemblages and the Affective Elements of Digital Games,” Press Start.
Sundén, Jenny (2012), “A Feel of Play,” in Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures.
Archives
Pavlounis, Dimitrios (2016), “Straightening Up the Archive: Queer Historiography, Queer Play, and the Archival Politics of Gone Home,“ Television & New Media.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2017), “Creating an Archive of LGBTQ Video Game Content: An Interview with Adrienne Shaw,” Camera Obscura.
Shaw, Adrienne (2019), “Archival Serendipity, Excitement, and Whiplash: Affects and Collisions in Doing LGBTQ Game History,” ROMchip.
Bioware, Bioware, Bioware
Adams, Meghan Blythe (2015), “Renegade Sex: Compulsory Sexuality and Charmed Magic Circles in the Mass Effect Series,” Loading….
Condis, Megan (2014), “No Homosexuals in Star Wars? Bioware, ‘Gamer’ Identity, and the Politics of Privilege in Convergence Culture,” Convergence.
Dym, Brianna (2019), “The Burden of Queer Love,” Press Start.
Krampe, Theresa (2018), “No Straight Answers: Queering Hegemonic Masculinity in Bioware’s Mass Effect,” in Game Studies.
Perluson, Gaspard (2018), “Mustaches, Blood Magic and Interspecies Sex: Navigating the Non-Heterosexuality of Dorian Pavus,” Game Studies.
Bodies
Burrill, Derek A. (2017), “Queer Theory, the Body, and Video Games,” in Queer Game Studies.
Kelley, James B. (2013), ‘Hot Avatars’ in ‘Gay Gear’: The Virtual Male Body as Site of Conflicting Desires in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. In Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian.
Phillips, Amanda (2017), “Dicks Dicks Dicks: Hardness and Flaccidity in (Virtual) Masculinity.” Flow.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “‘Loving Father, Caring Husband, Secret Octopus’: Queer Embodiment and Passing in Octodad,” in Video Games Have Always Been Queer.
Youngblood, Jordan. “’C’mon! Make me a man!’: Persona 4, Digital Bodies, and Queer Potentiality.” Ada, 2013.
Community
DeAnda, Michael Anthony and Cody Mejeur (2019), “#DigiQueer: Social Dialogue on the Queer Potential of Design,” Field Guide.
Gray, Kishonna L. (2017). “Gaming Out online: Black Lesbian Identity Development and Community Building in Xbox Live.” Journal of Lesbian Studies.
Goetz, Christopher (2015), “Building Queer Community: Report on the Queerness and Games Design Workshop,” First Person Scholar.
Pozo, Teddy, Bonnie Ruberg, Chris Goetz (2017), “In Practice: Queerness and Games.” Camera Obscura.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2017), “Forty-Eight-Hour Utopia: On Hope and the Future of Queerness in Games,” in Queer Game Studies.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Community: The Queerness and Games Conference,” in How to Play Video Games.
Ruberg, Bonnie (moderator) (2017), “Organizing New Approaches to Games: An Interview with Chelsea Howe, Toni Rocca, and Sarah Schoemann,” in Queer Game Studies.
Sens, Jeffrey (2015), “Queer Worldmaking Games: A Portland Indie Experiment,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking.
Shaw, Adrienne (2017), “The Trouble with Communities,” in Queer Game Studies.
Squinkifer, Dietrich (2017), “Conferences, Conventions, Conversations, and Coffee.” Camera Obscura.
Design
Brice, Mattie (2017). “Play and Be Real about It: What Games Could Learn from Kink,” in Queer Game Studies.
Engel, Maureen (2016), “Perverting Play: Theorizing a Queer Game Mechanic,” Television & New Media.
Marcotte, Jess and Kara Stone (2019), “Questions on Queer Game Design: An interview between Jess Marcotte and Kara Stone,” WiderScreen.
Lin, Joyce (2019), “Queering Spacetime: Positive Representation, Liminality, and Intimacy in a Card Game,” poster presentation, Koret Research Fair, UC Santa Cruz.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2017), “Permalife: Video Games and the Queerness of Living,” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Kissing for Absolutely No Reason: Realistic Kissing Simulator, Consentacle, and Queer Game Design,” in Video Games Have Always Been Queer.
Salter, Anastasia, Bridget Blodgett, and Anne Sullivan (2018), “‘Just Because It’s Gay?: Transgressive Design in Queer Coming of Age Visual Novels,” proceedings of the Foundations of Digital Games conference.
Failure
Ruberg, Bonnie (moderator) (2017), “The Arts of Failure: Jack Halberstam in Conversation with Jesper Juul,” in Queer Game Studies.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2017), “Playing to Lose: The Queer Art of Failing at Video Games,” in Gaming Representation.
Youngblood, Jordan (2017), “‘I Wouldn’t Even Know the Real Me Myself’: Queering Failure in Metal Gear Solid 2,” in Queer Game Studies.
Fan Practices & Mods
Dym, Brianna, Jed Brubaker, and Casey Fiesler (2018), “‘They’re all trans sharon’: Authoring Gender in Video Game Fan Fiction,” Game Studies.
Harper, Todd (2017), “Role-Play as Queer Lens: How ‘Closet Shep’ Changed My Vision of Mass Effect,” in Queer Game Studies.
Lauteria, Evan W (2012), “Ga(y)mer Theory: Queer Modding as Resistance,” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture.
Milburn, Colin (2015), “Have Nanosuit–Will Travel,” in Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter.
Taylor, Howard Kenton (2019), “Romance Never Changes… Or Does It?: Fallout, Queerness, and Mods,” proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association conference.
Welch, Tom (2018), “The Affectively Necessary Labor of Queer Mods,” Game Studies.
Games beyond “Games”
DeAnda, Michael Anthony (2019), “Gaming with Gender Performativity, Sexuality, and Community: An Interview with Sofonda Booz on Hosting Drag Bingo Events,” WiderScreen.
DeAnda, Michael Anthony (2019), “Assimilation Gaming: The Reification of Compulsory Gender Roles in RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture.
Gender Non-Normativity
Adams, Meghan Blythe (2018), “Bye, Bye, Birdo: Heroic Androgyny and and Villainous Gender Variance in Video Games,”in Queerness in Play.
Deshane, Evelyn and R. Travis Morton (2018), “The Big Reveal: Exploring (Trans)Femininity in Metroid,”in Queerness in Play.
Jerreat-Poole, Adan (2019), “Non-Binary: A Choose-Your-Own Adventure,” First Person Scholar.
Stang, Sarah (2019), “(Re-)Balancing the Triforce: Gender Representation and Androgynous Masculinity in the Legend of Zelda Series,” Human Technology.
Heteronormativity
Brett, Noel (2019), “Hetero-Comfortable Avatars,” Platypus: The CASTAC Blog.
Nakamura, Lisa (2012), “Queer Female of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is? Gaming Rhetoric as Gender Capital,” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology.
Pulos, Alexis (2013), “Confronting Heteronormativity in Online Games: A Critical Discourse Analysis of LGBTQ Sexuality in World of Warcraft,” Games and Culture.
Richard, Gabriela T. (2017), “‘Play like a Girl’: Gender Expression, Sexual Identity, and Complex Expectations in a Female-Oriented Gaming Community,” in Queer Game Studies.
Sundén, Jenny (2012), “The Straight Game,” in Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures.
History
Harvat, Zachary (2018), “S(t)imulating History: Queer Historical Play in Gone Home and The Tearoom,” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture.
Pow, Whitney (2019), “Outside of the Folder, the Box, the Archive: Moving toward a Reparative Video Game History,” ROMchip.
Shaw, A., Rudolph, S., and Schnorrenberg, J. (2019). Rainbow Arcade: Over 30 years of Queer Video Game History. Berlin: Schwules Museum/winterwork. Catalog for the 2019 Rainbow Arcade exhibit.
Street, Zoya (2017), “Queering Games History: Complexities, Chaos, and Community,” in Queer Game Studies.
Indie Games
Anthropy, Anna (2012), Rise of the Video Game Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form, Seven Stories Press.
Harvey, Alison (2014), “Twine’s Revolution: Democratization, Depoliticization, and the Queering of Game Design,” GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Design.
kopas, merrit (ed.) (2015), Videogames for Humans: Twine Authors in Conversation, Instar Books.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “The Precarious Labor of Queer Indie Game Making: Who Benefits from Making Video Games ‘Better’?”, Television & New Media.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2018), “Queer Indie Game Making as an Alternative Digital Humanities,” American Quarterly.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Video Games’ Queer Future: The Queer Games Avant-Garde,” in Video Games Have Always Been Queer.
Interfaces and Controllers
Bagnall, Gregory L. (2017), “Queer(ing) Gaming Technologies: Thinking on Constructions of Normativity Inscribed in Digital Gaming Hardware,” in Queer Game Studies.
Marcotte, Jess (2018), “Queering Control(lers) Through Reflective Game Design Practices,” Game Studies.
Pow, Whitney (2018), “Reaching Toward Home: Software Interface as Queer Orientation in the Video Game Curtain,“ The Velvet Light Trap.
Sicart, Miguel (2017), “Queering the Controller,” Analog Game Studies.
LGBTQ Representation (& Its Discontents)
Kang, Yowei and Kenneth C. C. Yang (2018), “The Representation (or the Lack of It) of Same-Sex Relationships in Digital Games,” in Queerness in Play.
Ouellette, Marc A. (2013), “Gay for Play: Theorizing LGBTQ Characters in Game Studies,” in The Game Culture Reader.
Shaw, Adrienne. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Shaw, Adrienne (2009), “Putting the Gay in Games: Cultural Production and GLBT Content in Video Games,” Games and Culture.
Shaw, Adrienne, Evan W. Lauteria, Hocheol Yang, Christopher J. Persaud, and Alayna M. Cole (2019), “Counting Queerness in Games: Trends in LGBTQ Digital Game Representation, 1985-2005,” International Journal of Communication.
Shaw, Adrienne and Elizaveta Friesem (2016), “Where Is The Queerness in Games?: Types of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content in Digital Games,” International Journal of Communication.
Sipocz, Daniel (2018), “Affliction or Affection: The Inclusion of a Same-Sex Relationship in The Last of Us,” in Queerness in Play.
Wood, Jeremy (2019), “Planting the Seeds for Positive Queer Representation: My Personal Experience with the Harvest Moon Series and Stardew Valley,” First Person Scholar.
Live-Action Role-Play & Analog Games
Biswas, Sharang (2019), “Possibilities for Queer Community-Building through LARP,” First Personal Scholar.
Muller, Amber (2015), “Queering Girl Talk (The Board Game),” Analog Game Studies.
Tanja Sihvonen and Jaakko Stenros (2019), “On the Importance of Queer Romances – Role-play as Exploration and Performance of Sexuality,” Widerscreen.
Stenros, Jaakko and Tanja Sihvonen (2015), “Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG Source Books,” Analog Game Studies.
Stokes, Michael (2017), “Access to the Page: Queer and Disabled Characters in Dungeons & Dragons,” Analog Game Studies.
Vist, Elise (2018), “Dungeons and Queers: Reparative Play in Dungeons and Dragons,” First Person Scholar.
MMORPGs and Virtual Worlds
McGlotten, Shaka (2013), “Intimacies in the Multi(player)verse,” in Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality.
Schmieder, Christian (2009), “World of Maskcraft vs. World of Queercraft? Communication, sex and gender in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft,“ Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds.
Sherlock, Lee. 2011. “What happens in Goldshire stays in Goldshire: Rhetorics of queer sexualities, governance and fandom in World of Warcraft.” In Rhetoric/Composition/Play through Video Games: Reshaping Theory and Practice of Writing.
Stabile, Carole A and Laura Strait (2018), “Out on Proudmoore: Climate Issues on an MMO,”in Queerness in Play.
Sundén, Jenny (2009), “Play as Transgression: An Ethnographic Approach to Queer Game Cultures,” proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association conference.
Sundén, Jenny (2012), “Coming Out and Coming Home,”in Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures.
Thompson, Nathan J. A. (2014). “Queer/ing Game Space: Sexual play in World of Warcraft,” Media Fields.
Narrative
Chess, Shira (2016), “The Queer Case of Video Games: Orgasms, Heteronormativity, and Video Game Narrative,” Critical Studies in Media Communication.
Pugh, Tison (2018), “The Queer Narrativity of the Hero’s Journey in Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda Video Games,” Journal of Narrative Theory.
Platforms
Freedman, Eric (2018), “Engineering Queerness in the Game Development Pipeline,” Game Studies.
Hjorth, Larissa and Kim D’Amazing, “Queering the Snapshot: Ambient Mobile Play,” in Queer Game Studies.
Play
Bohunicky, Kyle (2019), “The Pro Strats of Healsluts: Overwatch, Sexuality, and Perverting the Mechanics of Play,” Widerscreen.
Krobova, Teresa, Ondřej Moravec, and Jaroslav Švelch (2015), “Dressing Commander Shepard in Pink: Queer Playing in a Heteronormative Game Culture,” Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace.
Milligan, Caleb Andrew and Kyle Bohunicky (2019), “Reading, Writing, Lexigraphing: Activity Passivity as Queer Play in Walking Simulators,” Press Start.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2018), “Queerness and Video Games: Queer Game Studies and New Perspectives through Play,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
Scully-Blaker, Rainforest (2018), “Make Tents, Not War: Queer Play as Play-that-Critiques” (extended abstract), proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association conference.
Taylor, Nicholas and Shira Chess (2018), “Not So Straight Shooters: Queering the Cyborg Body in Masculinized Games,” in Masculinities in Play.
Queer Theory Meets Games
Goetz, Christopher (2017), “Queer Growth in Video Games,” in Queer Game Studies.
Goetz, Christopher (2018), “Coin of Another Realm: Gaming’s Queer Economy,” in Game Studies.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Between Paddles: Pong, Between Men, and Queer Intimacy in Video Games,” in Video Games Have Always Been Queer.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Getting Too Close: Portal, ‘Anal Rope,’ and the Perils of Queer Interpretation,” in Video Games Have Always Been Queer.
Stockton, Kathryn Bond (2017), “If Queer Children Were a Video Game,” in Queer Game Studies.
Questioning Queerness
Betsy Brey, E. Deshane, Matthew Perks, and Jason LaJoie (2018), “I Dream of Dream Daddies: Questioning the Queer Logic of Dream Daddy,” First Person Scholar.
Kies, Bridget (2015), “Death by Scissors: Gay Fighter Supreme and the Sexuality That Isn’t Sexual,” in Rated M for Mature.
Schaufert, Braidon. “Daddy’s Play: Subversion and Normativity in Dream Daddy’s Queer World,” Game Studies.
Youngblood, Jordan (2018), “When (and What) Queerness Counts: Homonationalism and Militarism in the Mass Effect Series,” Game Studies.
Reparative Readings
James, Eric Andrew (2018), “Queer Easter Eggs and Their Hierarchies of Play,” Game Studies.
Ouellette, Marc A. (2014). “Coming out Playing: Computer Games and the Discursive Practices of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality,” in Computer Games and Technical Communication.
Mejeur, Cody (2018), “‘Look at Me, Boy!’: Carnivalesque, Masks, and Queer Performativity in Bioshock,”in Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock.
Phillips, Amanda. “Bayonetta, Femme Disturbance, and AAA Queer Desires.” In Media Res. Nov 2014.
Space
Perks, Matthew (2019), “Creating and Queering Space with Player Housing,” First Person Scholar.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Straight Paths through Queer Walking Simulators: Wandering on Rails and Speedrunning in Gone Home,” Games and Culture.
Snyder, Shane (2018). “The Impossible Relationship: Deconstructing the Private Space in Gone Home,” Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds.
Word, Jordan (2017), “Romancing an Empire, Becoming Isaac: Queering the Gamespace with Jade Empire and The Binding of Isaac,” in Gaming Representation.
Youngblood, Jordan (2015), “Climbing the Heterosexual Maze: Catherine and Queering Spatiality in Gaming,” in Rated M for Mature.
Theorizing Queerness + Games
Chang, Edmond Y. (2017), “Queergaming,” in Queer Game Studies.
Consalvo, Mia (2003). “Hot Dates and Fairy-Tale Romances: Studying Sexuality in Video Games,” in The Video Game Theory Reader.
Clark, Naomi (2017), “What Is Queerness in Games, Anyway?”, in Queer Game Studies.
Clark, Naomi and merritt kopas (2015), “Queering Human-Game Relations,” First Person Scholar.
Halberstam, Jack (2017), “Queer Gaming: Gaming, Hacking, and Going Turbo,” in Queer Game Studies.
Macklin, Colleen (2017), “Where Is the Queerness in Games?”, in Queer Game Studies.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Introduction,” in Video Games Have Always Been Queer.
Shaw, Adrienne (2015), “Circles, Charmed and Magic: Queer Game Studies,” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking.
Time
Knutson, Matt (2018), “Backtrack, Pause, Rewind, Reset: Queering Chrononormativity in Gaming,” Game Studies.
Lo, Claudia (2017), “Everything Is Wiped Away: Queer Temporality in Queers in Love at the End of the World,“ Camera Obscura.
Perluson, Gaspard (2018), “Flânerie in the Dark Woods: Shattering Innocence and Queering Time in The Path,“ Convergence.
Phillips, Amanda (2014), “(Queer) Algorithmic Ecology: The Great Opening Up of Nature to All Mobs,” in Understanding Minecraft: Essays on Play, Community, and Possibilities.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2019), “Speed Runs, Slow Strolls, and the Politics of Walking: Queer Movements through Space and Time,” in Video Games Have Always Been Queer.
Stone, Kara (2019), “Time and Reparative Game Design: Queerness, Disability, and Affect,” Game Studies.
Youngblood, Jordan (2018), “‘Your Life? Your Family? They’re a Fairy Tale, Kid’: Queering Timelines and Reproduction in Bioshock,” in Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock.
Undoing Queerness & Limits of Queer Design
Brett, Noel (2018), “Revision of Queer Bodies: Modifications of Sexual Affordances in World of Warcraft” (extended abstract), proceedings of the Digital Games Research Association conference.
Chang, Edmond (2015), “Love Is in the Air: Queer (Im)Possibility and Straightwashing in Frontierville and World of Warcraft,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking.
Chang, Edmond (2017), “A Game Chooses, a Play Obeys: BioShock, Posthumanism, and the Limits of Queerness,” in Gaming Representation.
Harper, Todd (2019), “Fire Emblem Doesn’t Just Need Gay Characters, It Needs Queer Life,” Vice.
Lauteria, Evan W. (2015), “Assuring Quality: Early 1990s Nintendo Censorship and the Regulation of Queer Sexuality and Gender,” in Rated M for Mature.
Ruberg, Bonnie (2018), “Straight-Washing Undertale: Video Games and the Limits of LGBTQ Representation,” Transformative Works and Cultures.
Stephen Greer (2013). “Playing Queer: Affordances for Sexuality in Fable and Dragon Age,” Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Shaw, A., Agloro, A., Nguyen, J., Phillips, A., Ruberg, B. “Oxford Bibliographies in Communication: Feminist and Queer Game Studies.” Oxford University Press. Online resource. Introduction to the field and annotated bibliography with 121 entries. (2019)
– LGBTQ Video Game Archive
“A collection of information regarding LGBTQ content in digital games from 1980s-present”
– Queerly Represent Me
“A database for games that represent sexuality, gender, and relationships”
Recommended viewing:
– Recorded talks from the 2018 Queerness and Games Conference
– Recorded talks from the 2017 Queerness and Games Conference
– Recorded talks from the 2014 Queerness and Games Conference
– Recorded talks from the 2013 Queerness and Games Conference
– Gaming in Color documentary
Conferences and community events:
– Game Devs of Color Expo
– Different Games
– GaymerX
– Lost Levels
– The Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon)
