Queer Game Studies Reviewed on Electronic Book Review

Queer Game Studies Reviewed on Electronic Book Review

BCNM alumn Bonnie Ruberg's Queer Game Scholars was reviewed by Jason Lajoie of Electronic Book Review. Queer Game Studies is an anthology edited by Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw discussing video games from an LGBTQ+ approach.

An excerpt from the review:

Editors Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw have clearly worked tirelessly on this volume, harnessing previously unpublished contributions into five sections: “Defining Queerness in Games”, “Queering Game Play and Design”, “Reading Games Queerly”, “Queer Failures in Games” and “Queer Futures for Games”.

The first section places queer game studies in a larger social and cultural context and suggests that queerness in games studies arrives while queer perspectives are on the rise in digital humanities scholarship. Edmond Chang, for instance, who operates within both domains, introduced the term to Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, and whose work in this volume offers a model for countering hegemonic practices through play - “queergaming”. Adapting and extending Alexander Galloway’s countergaming theory, Chang’s contribution inadvertently maps the larger theoretical framework of the book’s structure. Arguing for a mode of interaction that goes beyond the superficial content of games and towards queerer design, play, and remediation, Chang aligns these queer orientations towards a future-oriented perspective, a “queergamification” that beckons a reconceptualization of games, their worlds and play within them.

Read the rest of the piece here.