"Just Because It'S Gay?": Transgressive Design In Queer Coming Of Age Visual Novels

Keywords

Game romances; Queer games; Transgressive play; Visual novels; Walking simulators

Abstract

While queer narratives have recently gained greater prominence and attention [35][51][48] both in games and game studies, they still represent a tiny portion of the playable romances available. Even fewer among these represent the potential of what Edmond Chang [12] has referred to as "queergaming," or games which refuse to conform in their narrative, mechanics, and modes of play to a cisgender, white, heteronormative gaze. We argue that meaningful queergaming is impossible within the current norms and genres of so-called AAA, or mainstream. It thus requires space and platforms dedicated to transgressive game design, building on Aarseth's [1] framework of transgressive play. To substantiate our argument, we use an examination of recent queer visual novels built using Ren'Py and released on Itch.io, with a case study of most popular current exemplar Butterfly Soup [32] alongside previous exemplars of queer romance in games. 1.

Publication Date

8-7-2018

Publication Title

ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1145/3235765.3235778

Socpus ID

85055564382 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85055564382

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