Table Of ContentQ U E E R N E S S
I N P L AY
eds. todd harper : meghan blythe
adams : nicholas taylor
Palgrave Games in Context
Series Editors
Neil Randall
The Games Institute
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON, Canada
Steve Wilcox
Game Design and Development
Wilfrid Laurier University
Brantford, ON, Canada
Games are pervasive in contemporary life, intersecting with leisure, work,
health, culture, history, technology, politics, industry, and beyond. These
contexts span topics, cross disciplines, and bridge professions.
Palgrave Games in Context situates games and play within such interdisci-
plinary and interprofessional contexts, resulting in accessible, applicable, and
practical scholarship for students, researchers, game designers, and industry
professionals. What does it mean to study, critique, and create games in con-
text? This series eschews conventional classifications—such as academic disci-
pline or game genre—and instead looks to practical, real-world situations to
shape analysis and ground discussion. A single text might bring together pro-
fessionals working in the field, critics, scholars, researchers, and designers. The
result is a broad range of voices from a variety of disciplinary and professional
backgrounds contributing to an accessible, practical series on the various and
varied roles of games and play.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16027
Todd Harper • Meghan Blythe Adams
Nicholas Taylor
Editors
Queerness in Play
Gerald Voorhees
Managing Editor
Editors
Todd Harper Meghan Blythe Adams
Division of Science, Information Arts Department of English and Writing Studies
and Technologies University of Western Ontario
University of Baltimore London, ON, Canada
Baltimore, MD, USA
Nicholas Taylor
Department of Communication
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC, USA
Palgrave Games in Context
ISBN 978-3-319-90541-9 ISBN 978-3-319-90542-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90542-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957198
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the
whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or
information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does
not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective
laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are
believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors
give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions
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Cover design by Fatima Jamadar
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Acknowledgments
We are greatly indebted to the many reviewers who generously donated their
time and expertise evaluating manuscripts for this volume. The editors would
like to thank Bridget Blodgett, Chris Kampe, Erika Behrmann, Alexandra
Orlando, and Elise Vist for their service, without which this work would not
have been possible.
Considerable thanks are also due to the editorial teams for the companion
volumes to our own: Gerald Voorhees, Kishonna L. Gray, and Emma Vossen.
Situated as it is in the liminal space of queerness, our work both stands on its
own but is deeply enmeshed in the scholarship on gender in games these other
volumes are engaged with. The knowledge and insight our fellow editors
shared with us during this process has been invaluable.
v
Contents
1 Queer Game Studies: Young But Not New 1
Todd Harper, Nicholas Taylor, and Meghan Blythe Adams
Part I Queer Foundations 15
2 Queer(ing) Game Studies: Reviewing Research on Digital Play
and Non-normativity 17
Sarah Evans
3 Envisioning Queer Game Studies: Ludology and the Study of
Queer Game Content 35
Evan W. Lauteria
Part II Representing Queerness 55
4 The Representation (or the Lack of It) of Same-Sex Relationships
in Digital Games 57
Yowei Kang and Kenneth C. C. Yang
5 Affliction or Affection: The Inclusion of a Same-Sex Relationship
in The Last of Us 81
Daniel Sipocz
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viii Contents
6 What If Zelda Wasn’t a Girl? Problematizing Ocarina of Time’s
Great Gender Debate 97
Chris Lawrence
7 Maidens and Muscleheads, White Mages and Wimps, from
the Light Warriors to Lightning Returns 115
Mark Filipowich
8 The Big Reveal: Exploring (Trans)Femininity in Metroid 131
Evelyn Deshane and R. Travis Morton
9 Bye, Bye, Birdo: Heroic Androgyny and Villainous Gender-
Variance in Video Games 147
Meghan Blythe Adams
Part III Un-gendering Assemblages 165
10 Cues for Queer Play: Carving a Possibility Space for LGBTQ
Role-Play 167
Tanja Sihvonen and Jaakko Stenros
11 “Sexified” Male Characters: Video Game Erotic Modding for
Pleasure and Power 185
Nathan Thompson
12 Let’s Come Out! On Gender and Sexuality, Encouraging
Dialogue, and Acceptance 203
Maresa Bertolo, Ilaria Mariani, and Clara Gargano
Part IV No Fear of a Queer Planet: Gaming and Social Futures 223
13 Outside the Lanes: Supporting a Non- normative League of
Legends Community 225
Nicholas Taylor and Randall Hammond
Contents ix
14 The Abject Scapegoat: Boundary Erosion and Maintenance
in League of Legends 243
Elyse Janish
15 Out on Proudmoore: Climate Issues on an MMO 261
Carol A. Stabile and Laura Strait
Index 273
Notes on Contributors
Meghan Blythe Adams is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario,
Canada. Her research interests include representations of androgyny in media, as well
as death and difficulty in games. Her work has appeared in Loading, Kinephanos, and
First Person Scholar. She tweets at @mblytheadams.
Maresa Bertolo is a researcher in the Department of Design at Polytechnic
University of Milan, Italy, where she deals with game studies, with attention to games
as a vehicle for communication, learning, and social dialogue.
Evelyn Deshane has appeared in Plenitude Magazine, Briarpatch Magazine, and
Bitch Magazine. Evelyn (pronounced Eve-a-lyn) received an MA from Trent
University, Canada, and is completing a PhD at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Her most recent project #Trans is an edited collection about transgender and nonbi-
nary identity online. Find more info on http://evedeshane.wordpress.com or follow
@evelyndeshane.
Sarah Evans is a PhD candidate at North Carolina State University, USA, in the
Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program. She is an editorial board
member for the international, student-run Press Start Journal. Her research has
appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking and Hyperrhiz: New Media
Cultures.
Mark Filipowich is a curator at Critical Distance, a video game criticism database.
He is pursuing his PhD in Communications at Concordia University, USA.
Clara Gargano graduated in BFA Graphic Design at Brera Academy, Italy, and is
finishing her MSc in Communication Design at Polytechnic University of Milan,
Italy. She got closer to the LGBT community during her five-month exchange pro-
gram at the University of Michigan, USA, in 2015. Since then she has been focusing
her thesis research on LGBT and gender studies. Her investigation led her to center
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