The book's scope is wide, but mostly avoids sweeping generalizations of the various fields.Įditors Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw have clearly worked tirelessly on this volume, harnessing previously unpublished contributions into five sections: "Defining Queerness in Games", "Queering Game Play and Design", "Reading Games Queerly", "Queer Failures in Games" and "Queer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". They contribute to a diversity of methods and critiques on subjects ranging from close reading, game design and cultural studies. With almost thirty contributions, this collection affirms the diverse presence of scholars invested in the articulating a queer game studies. In other words, queer is here in games studies. The numerous perspectives within this collection each dare a radical rethinking of games and play, particularly in domains where such an approach is characterized as an intrusion, feared as an encroachment, and articulated as an attack on the assiduously protected play domains by those seeking to categorize who is truly a gamer, and what truly constitutes a game. The omissions are nonetheless startling given the rich profusion of queer game scholarship, and makes Queer Game Studies all the more needed. The entries on “Femininity” and “Masculinity” are useful inroads to this discussion, for example. My intent is not to chastise, nor to quibble with an ill-phrased marketing blurb, especially since the book is indeed comprehensive in many other respects, and a worthy addition to games studies scholarship. Even The Routledge Companion to Video Games Studies (2014), which boldly proclaims on the back cover to “provid students, scholars, and game designers with a definitive look at contemporary video game studies” (emphasis mine) includes neither a reference to sexuality or queerness the very words queer, homosexual and trans don’t even appear in the book, while lesbian is mentioned once in that 544 page volume.
Especially so, when one considers that LGBTQ studies in game cultures have often been excluded in academic discourse. The volume is also an important intervention in games studies. The contributions situate themselves against an increasingly vociferous opposition in some gaming communities that threatens to foreclose discussion and dissuade difference. Queer Game Studies, the first games studies volume to focus exclusively on LGBTQ issues, offers a broad, often interconnected queer critique of games and games studies. This decade has witnessed an increased focus on representing, discussing and experiencing difference in video games.
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