What Is “Queering” in Video Game Design? Naomi Clark on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #103

While LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion in video games has been improv­ing (as with oth­er media), Nao­mi Clark (who designed games for LEGO, Game­lab, Fresh Plan­et, Rebel Mon­key, et al) has some­thing more dis­rup­tive in mind when argu­ing for game “queer­i­fi­ca­tion.” The pro­to­typ­i­cal video game includes a more-or-less lin­ear pro­gres­sion through a pre-defined sto­ry to a defined win con­di­tion, and any­thing that chal­lenges that tra­di­tion to allow more self-expres­sion is a step in the direc­tion of queer­ing. Many pop­u­lar games now include a sand­box aspect that allows play­ers to make their own deci­sions, and this ges­tures at a con­tin­u­um of free­dom in play­er-game rela­tions, with the extreme being a game that just pro­vides a plat­form for play­ers to cre­ate their own games.

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er and guest co-host Tyler His­lop engage Nao­mi about top­ics like how games train us, char­ac­ter cre­ation, glitch­es, speed runs, gam­i­fy­ing  tasks, and eco­nom­ic and indus­try pres­sures in game design. Some games we touch on include The Sims, The Last of Us, Cyber­punk, and Mass Effect.

Read Naomi’s pre­sen­ta­tion on “Queer­ing Human-Game Rela­tions.” Get involved with the NYU Game­cen­ter where Nao­mi works. You can also play her ear­ly game Sis­sy­fight 2000 free online. A cou­ple of her oth­er cre­ations that come up in our dis­cus­sion include Won­der City and the card game Con­sen­ta­cle. Read her wis­dom on Quo­ra and fol­low her on Twit­ter @metasynthie.

Some sources reviewed to pre­pare for this episode include:

• “Just Mak­ing Things and Being Alive About It: The Queer Games Scene” (2013) by Bren­dan Keogh
• “The 15 Queer­est Video Games, Ranked” by Alley Hec­tor (2018)
• “How Video Games Can Help LGBTQ+ Play­ers Feel Like Them­selves” by Lak­en Brooks
• “Press A, Be Gay: LGBTQ Rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Video Games” by Jason Villem­iz
• “15 Games With Non-Bina­ry Friend­ly Char­ac­ter Cre­ation” by Alli­son Stal­berg
• “Can We Do Bet­ter Than Zel­da? Queer Tropes in Video Games” a video from Fem­i­nist Fre­quen­cy
•  “The trans nar­ra­tive in ‘The Last of Us Part II’ is com­pelling. There’s so much more to be done.” by Julie Muncy
• “ ‘Am I Trans?’: One Teen’s Quest and How Gam­ing Helped” (2015) from Note to Self pod­cast (which fea­tures Nao­mi)
• There are sev­er­al specif­i­cal­ly gay video game pod­casts worth check­ing out, includ­ing Gay for Play and The Gayming Pod­cast.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.