“There’s no Way She’s Straight”: Towards a Heuristic of Positive Queer Representation in Gaming

Caitlin Dungan

Advisor: Douglas Eyman, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Seth Hudson, Wendi Sierra

Horizon Hall, #4225, https://gmu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAoduuqrzwjGdRlLcSoF8a-jzLZLEx6kOp7
August 02, 2023, 01:00 PM to 03:00 PM

Abstract:

While the current trend in queer gaming studies is shifting away from queer content towards an idea of how gaming itself is queer, operationalizing the term “queer” to suggest “outside of default expectations or parameters,” there is still a great deal to be learned from exploring the canonically queer content that already exists in video games. Operating under the assumption that there is a positive correlation between representation in media for marginalized identities and the social normalizing and tolerance of those identities, the primary research questions are: What aspects of performative queer coding may help queer players to positively identify with a character? Are these aspects conscious on the part of game programmers, or does this connection have more to do with queer literacies of subtext in media? And finally, if we can identify what queer players found positive in a character, can we use that information to purposefully replicate it in future games without being reductive?

The game Mass Effect was chosen as a case study due to its enduring popularity among queer gamers. Transcriptions from both the cisgender/heterosexual romance path as well as the queer romance path were gathered and analyzed using several coding lenses from Rhetorical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis. Results of these analyses indicate that the potential reason queer gamers felt well represented was due to a relative equality of content and agency for the player character between the two paths, as well as an adherence to performative cues that have been cited as indicators of queer identity. Findings from this study show that it is possible to showcase queerness in characters regardless of sexuality, which has positive implications for the inclusion of overlooked queer identities in gaming, including asexual or nonbinary.