The other binary that is tackled extensively in Queer Game Studies is the tendency of video games to encourage certain kinds of play and not others through ‘win’ and ‘lose’ states. In her essay “What is Queerness in Games, Anyway?”, Naomi Clark describes how this way of thinking predisposes players to dislike games that don’t revolve around the player exploring some complex mechanical system, and therefore limits the variety of stories the medium is able to convey. The term comes from a binary way of thinking about video games and has provided fodder for the narratology/ludology debate among game theorists for over 20 years now. It describes a situation in which some mechanical aspect of a video game doesn’t make sense in the narrative universe the game is trying to immerse the player in, taking the player out of the magic circle and reminding them that this is just a game. If you’re someone who dips their toes into the deeper river of games journalism - beyond the shallow waters of the latest Nintendo product news - you’ve certainly heard of the term ‘ludonarrative dissonance’. Having triumphed over our antiquated views of the gender binary, queer theory is mobilized to tackle other socially constructed binaries in Queer Game Studies, which, as it turns out, video games are pretty rife with. But they limit our thinking and lead to exclusionary practices in both the games we make and how we see their audiences. As with gender, which used to be thought of as having two polar opposite states with nothing in-between and is now pretty uniformly (at least among academics) understood as a vast and rich spectrum, these binaries are often taken for granted simply because of their historical momentum. The main thread tying a lot of this collection together is the idea of breaking entrenched binaries in how we think about video games. With academic essays, opinion pieces, personal accounts and interviews working together to provide a full picture of the multifaceted world of queer game studies, it stands as a shining example of what great benefits the wider gaming community stands to reap as people of more diverse backgrounds find themselves comfortable within that community. “We often think ourselves into corners by dividing spheres of human life from one another and then naturalizing these divisions to the point that we actually believe them to be real and true.” - Jack HalberstamĬurated and edited by two prominent academics of New Media whose prior work has mostly revolved around LGBTQ issues and video games, Queer Game Studies features a stunning collection of written work by a wide variety of game developers, journalists, and academics.
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