Earlier, I attended a conference on queer theory, game studies, and game design. This inspired in me several topic ideas. I will start with the one that is most directly related, and most reactionary. One of the conference's major themes was how to find queerness in games beyond the literal inclusion of queer characters. Queerness isn't just in the characters, it's in the image of gamers, in the broader narrative themes, in the way we play games, and in the design and mechanics.
There are many great ideas in there. But some ideas... Well, they're "productive" ideas in the sense that it's helpful to discuss them, but they're ultimately bad ideas IMO. In particular, several conference speakers decided that queerness in games can mean conforming to their particular ideas about progressive (and transgressive) game design.
For example, it was repeated many times that queerness means choices in your video games. Queerness means transgressing the prescriptive definitions of a "game" made by formalists. Queerness is playing a game and making your own objective rather than using the one designated by the designer. One presenter even said queerness means fluidity in the rules of the game (this being the context of tabletop RPGs).
The overall message I seem to be getting is that queerness is Indie. Which maybe sounds just a little too much like self-flattery when it's coming from a bunch of queer indie game designers and queer indie game lovers.
Don't get me wrong, I love indie games. These days I've been playing more AAA games, but indie games are often the ones pushing the envelope, ultimately resulting in a better future for all games. But though queerness is great and progressive game design is great, they don't really seem to be the same thing.
If queerness is reduced to themes of human variance, fluidity, and transgressing norms, then you'll find these themes everywhere you want to find them. (You'll find these themes in AAA games too, but I think people at this conference were less interested in finding them there. It was said during the conference that buying AAA games is
supporting capitalism, but we shouldn't shame people
who do it because maybe they just don't have the cultural capital to
really be aware of the indie games out there.) And yes this is a problem.
It's sort of like... Dumbledore being gay in Harry Potter. Author J. K. Rowling said that Dumbledore was gay, but it's not really clear from the books themselves. So the bottom line is that this
queer "representation" may not be satisfactory to many queer readers. Therefore, it's best not to overplay the queerness of Dumbledore, because frankly we can do better than that.
Similarly, it's best not to overplay the queerness in games, because
many queer people are not going to be satisfied just by progressive game
design, and we can do much better than that.
I can also imagine other problems with equating queerness and indie gaming. Imagine a queer person feeling that their queer cred is under question because they are disinterested in indie games. I don't think this is a likely scenario, but it could be likely if the queer indie ideology at this conference were widespread. It's even more problematic to say that fluid game rules are queer, because even when it comes to sexuality, queer does not necessarily mean fluid. Plenty of trans people felt they were always the gender that they are, and plenty of bi people do not feel that their orientation fluctuates from gay to straight (which is a common misconception about bi people).
If progressive game design means bucking some common sexist, racist, cissexist, or heterosexist conventions, then sure, that's more queer. It would be great to come up with new fantasy races, rather than the rather racist ones inherited from Tolkien. It would be great to have some new mechanics which make it easier to
tell stories about groups in relation to society (rather than the usual stories about a single straight white male hero). It would be great to offer the player more choices about character genders (ie more than two) and sexualities. New ideas in narrative and game design are essential to improving the experience of queer players, but progressive game design in itself is not sufficient.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Conference report: queerness in gaming
Not the target audience
I attended the Queerness in Gaming Conference (QGCon) this weekend. It was a unique intersection of topics: game design, the academic study of games as a medium, and queer theory.
I was not really in the target audience for this conference, since I neither design games, nor work in a remotely related academic field. I am a mere consumer of games. Probably a conference like GaymerX would have been more appropriate for me. But even though I was not the target audience--in fact, partly because I was not the target audience--I found it to be full of ideas that were novel and fascinating. And though I will not apply any of this knowledge, it was thoroughly stimulating, and could enhance my enjoyment of games.
Being a typical ungrateful blogger, I will talk at length about all my disagreements with things in the conference, while glossing over the stuff I agreed with. But one should not infer that I disliked the conference. Even listening to talks I disagree with is a joy.
In particular, there was a lot of critical theory in the conference (literary criticism, postmodernism, or whatever you'd like to call it). In the world of skeptics, I'm relatively sympathetic to postmodernism, but that's like saying that in the world of gender studies, I'm relatively conservative. A lot of critical theory is still nonsense to me, and this conference provided many egregious examples. For much of this post, I may be teetering on the edge of a rant, but I'll try to save the rant for another time.
More than representation
The most striking thing about the conference is how little it discussed queer character representation in games. Speakers uniformly believed that there are many more ways to find queerness in games.
For example, stories can have queer themes without having any queer characters. Jack Halberstam talked about how once we moved from 2D animation to 3D animation, cartoons became more capable of depicting crowds, and thus featured more stories about large groups. So you get stories about conflict between groups, which is more reflective of the conflict between queers and normative society.
Some mechanics of games were also described as queer. If players can decide for themselves the traits of their character, this allows them to express something different or unique about themselves. Unfortunately, choices also tend to be constrained, such as to a gender binary. Or perhaps the choices have no real impact on the game (eg, the NPCs in Skyrim will hardly react to the protagonist's race, even though there's supposed to be signficant racial tension in the world).
There are also many ways we can apply queer theory to how we play games. Samantha Allen and Kathryn Bond Stockton both made a fascinating analogy between the way people are shamed for being queer, and the way they are shamed for being gamers. There are also some interesting problems in the way gamers are presented in order to buck their negative image. Namely, social gamers are emphasized, and solo gamers are deemphasized. Another interesting parallel was between The Art of Failure and The Queer Art of Failure. The latter book is about the way that the system of success and failure enforce cisheteronormativity by describing queerness as failure. The former book is about how we like games even when we fail at them, much the same way we enjoy tragedies.
And there were lots more analogies; speakers really liked analogies. Sex and gaming was a particularly common analogy. Moral panic over kids playing games is like moral panic over kids being gay. The power structures and role playing in games are like kink. There was a lot of Freudian comparison of joysticks and first person shooters to penises (I think only some of this was serious, although it is my humble opinion that ironic Freudianism is no more acceptable than serious Freudianism). One speaker compared the censorship of sexual content in imported games to the blocking of homosexual immigrants earlier in US history.
I liked speaker Adrienne Shaw, who talked about doing some ethnographic studies of gay gamers. She found that most of them don't care so much about having character representation. They care more about the homophobia, and the image of the white heterosexual cis male gamer. She critiqued the idea that if we just got more gaymers together, representation would automatically follow. Female gamers have been around for a long time, and yet the structures of exclusion have not been dismantled. Furthermore, even if game producers did decide to cater to the queer market, this would only include the least marginalized among queers, and would not be a complete solution.
But yes, representation too
There were, of course, also lots of talks about representation. I particularly liked talks about history. Bill Jahnel talked about the (very problematic) history of queer representation in comic books. Hanna Brady talked about the (also extremely problematic) representations of race in fantasy, and also had a bunch of cool book recommendations. Evan Lauteria had a short but fascinating talk about the way early Japanese games were localized in the US. In particular, he compared Poison from Tekken and Flea from Chronotrigger, both trans villains.
There was also lots of talk of more modern representation, from Bayonetta to Dominique Pamplemousse to Bioware. While I enjoyed these talks, I seem not to have written many notes on them... but they were a presence!
I also enjoyed the open arcade, which was a showcase of indie games with queer themes in various forms. It included a couple Twine games, an interactive fiction, and a puzzle platformer that told me it hated me. Indie games, of course, are much more able to have queer themes and appeal to niche audiences. My favorite one, of course, was the puzzle game. Triad was a short puzzle, designed by Anna Anthropy, in which the goal was to fit three people on a bed without anyone falling off. And I entered this conference thinking that there wasn't much opportunity for queer representation in puzzle games.
My greatest disappointment with the conference is that Anita Sarkeesian was there, but I did not even realize until after it was over!
Potential future topics
Attending QGCon, especially the parts I disagreed with, inspired in me several blogging ideas. Most of these ideas extend beyond just this conference. I outline them here:
I attended the Queerness in Gaming Conference (QGCon) this weekend. It was a unique intersection of topics: game design, the academic study of games as a medium, and queer theory.
I was not really in the target audience for this conference, since I neither design games, nor work in a remotely related academic field. I am a mere consumer of games. Probably a conference like GaymerX would have been more appropriate for me. But even though I was not the target audience--in fact, partly because I was not the target audience--I found it to be full of ideas that were novel and fascinating. And though I will not apply any of this knowledge, it was thoroughly stimulating, and could enhance my enjoyment of games.
Being a typical ungrateful blogger, I will talk at length about all my disagreements with things in the conference, while glossing over the stuff I agreed with. But one should not infer that I disliked the conference. Even listening to talks I disagree with is a joy.
In particular, there was a lot of critical theory in the conference (literary criticism, postmodernism, or whatever you'd like to call it). In the world of skeptics, I'm relatively sympathetic to postmodernism, but that's like saying that in the world of gender studies, I'm relatively conservative. A lot of critical theory is still nonsense to me, and this conference provided many egregious examples. For much of this post, I may be teetering on the edge of a rant, but I'll try to save the rant for another time.
More than representation
The most striking thing about the conference is how little it discussed queer character representation in games. Speakers uniformly believed that there are many more ways to find queerness in games.
For example, stories can have queer themes without having any queer characters. Jack Halberstam talked about how once we moved from 2D animation to 3D animation, cartoons became more capable of depicting crowds, and thus featured more stories about large groups. So you get stories about conflict between groups, which is more reflective of the conflict between queers and normative society.
Some mechanics of games were also described as queer. If players can decide for themselves the traits of their character, this allows them to express something different or unique about themselves. Unfortunately, choices also tend to be constrained, such as to a gender binary. Or perhaps the choices have no real impact on the game (eg, the NPCs in Skyrim will hardly react to the protagonist's race, even though there's supposed to be signficant racial tension in the world).
There are also many ways we can apply queer theory to how we play games. Samantha Allen and Kathryn Bond Stockton both made a fascinating analogy between the way people are shamed for being queer, and the way they are shamed for being gamers. There are also some interesting problems in the way gamers are presented in order to buck their negative image. Namely, social gamers are emphasized, and solo gamers are deemphasized. Another interesting parallel was between The Art of Failure and The Queer Art of Failure. The latter book is about the way that the system of success and failure enforce cisheteronormativity by describing queerness as failure. The former book is about how we like games even when we fail at them, much the same way we enjoy tragedies.
And there were lots more analogies; speakers really liked analogies. Sex and gaming was a particularly common analogy. Moral panic over kids playing games is like moral panic over kids being gay. The power structures and role playing in games are like kink. There was a lot of Freudian comparison of joysticks and first person shooters to penises (I think only some of this was serious, although it is my humble opinion that ironic Freudianism is no more acceptable than serious Freudianism). One speaker compared the censorship of sexual content in imported games to the blocking of homosexual immigrants earlier in US history.
I liked speaker Adrienne Shaw, who talked about doing some ethnographic studies of gay gamers. She found that most of them don't care so much about having character representation. They care more about the homophobia, and the image of the white heterosexual cis male gamer. She critiqued the idea that if we just got more gaymers together, representation would automatically follow. Female gamers have been around for a long time, and yet the structures of exclusion have not been dismantled. Furthermore, even if game producers did decide to cater to the queer market, this would only include the least marginalized among queers, and would not be a complete solution.
But yes, representation too
There were, of course, also lots of talks about representation. I particularly liked talks about history. Bill Jahnel talked about the (very problematic) history of queer representation in comic books. Hanna Brady talked about the (also extremely problematic) representations of race in fantasy, and also had a bunch of cool book recommendations. Evan Lauteria had a short but fascinating talk about the way early Japanese games were localized in the US. In particular, he compared Poison from Tekken and Flea from Chronotrigger, both trans villains.
There was also lots of talk of more modern representation, from Bayonetta to Dominique Pamplemousse to Bioware. While I enjoyed these talks, I seem not to have written many notes on them... but they were a presence!
I also enjoyed the open arcade, which was a showcase of indie games with queer themes in various forms. It included a couple Twine games, an interactive fiction, and a puzzle platformer that told me it hated me. Indie games, of course, are much more able to have queer themes and appeal to niche audiences. My favorite one, of course, was the puzzle game. Triad was a short puzzle, designed by Anna Anthropy, in which the goal was to fit three people on a bed without anyone falling off. And I entered this conference thinking that there wasn't much opportunity for queer representation in puzzle games.
My greatest disappointment with the conference is that Anita Sarkeesian was there, but I did not even realize until after it was over!
Potential future topics
Attending QGCon, especially the parts I disagreed with, inspired in me several blogging ideas. Most of these ideas extend beyond just this conference. I outline them here:
- Labels are maps, not walls
- Can analogies be arguments?
- Queerness and progressive game design (and why they're not the same)
- People should bring out their disagreements rather than acting like we all agree
- Academic queer theory vs internet queer theory
- thoughts on gamer shame
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