Review of Alum Edited Queer Games Studies in CSMC
The Critical Studies in Media Communication journal reviewed Bonnie Ruberg's book, Queer Game Studies, in late September. Co-edited with Adrienne Shaw and published by the University of Minnesota Press, the work contains a collection of 26 scholarly and non-scholarly articles examining the intersectionality of queer theory and game studies.
Throughout the five sections of the book, Ruberg and Shaw discuss the video games field's chronological trajectory, as well as different queer approaches to games and game culture.
Overall, this collection by Ruberg and Shaw is an important and unique addition to existing scholarship in a field that is still incredibly young. Once again, the biggest contribution of this volume is its ability to synthesize the elements of play found in both game studies and queer studies and open a new line of dialogue to better understand our personal and social interactions. This collection is also to be commended for its truly diverse and representational collection of authors across gender, sexuality, race, and schools of thought. Allowing different voices and involving members of the communities intimately involved in the subject under analysis is a smart and bold approach. Because of these key contributions, this collection goes a long way to liberating the means and methods by which we can study queerness through play and vise-versa. There are seemingly an endless variety of ways that scholars could build off of the work in this book and given how many of the collection’s authors are still in doctoral programs or having just finished their programs, there is tremendous room for growth in the field—sideways or otherwise.