Video Games Have Always Been Queer Reviewed in Critical Studies in Media & Communication
Bo Ruberg's book Video Games Have Always Been Queer was reviewed by Cenk Koknar in Critical Studies in Media & Communication.
From the review:
Histories of video games have often been written through a heteronormative lens, and underrepresented or harmfully misrepresented LGBTQ subjects and their experiences (Ruberg, 2019, pp. 1–3). The mainstream video game industry and the player communities that align with its heteronormative logics have tended to reduce queerness in, on, and around video games only to the representation of LGBTQ characters and same-sex romance. In Video games have always been queer, Bonnie Ruberg prefers they/them pronouns helps the reader to understand queerness and video games in different ways beyond subjecthood and representation by looking at not only LGBTQ representations but also queer interpretations, and playing queerly. They believe a heteronormative logic, a belief system based on the presumption of heterosexuality and devotion to gender binary to normalize patriarchal gender roles, controls the dominant discourses surrounding the production, consumption, and play of video games. Their goal is to reclaim video games from this heteronormative logic, reimagining both queerness and video games by arguing that video games are not, and have never been for cisgendered straight white males by default.
You can read the full review here!