'Queerer than ever': Centering and celebrating queer indie games

Activity: Community Talks, Presentations, Exhibitions and Events › Public lecture/debate/seminar

Description

"Is my game too queer for the audience?" You might ask yourself five or ten years ago, and you might continue asking yourself that question as a queer game developer. "Will my games make a profit?" The 'precarious labour' of queer game development mirrors the indie hero's journey, but with a triple obstacle course: funding, time, and of course, the audience. In this talk I will draw from 20 interviews with queer game developers featured at Pride at Play, a curated queer games exhibition with a focus on Oceania and the Asia Pacific. The original goal of the exhibition design was to showcase queer games from all around the region along with conversational interviews that background each game. We asked about their backgrounds, motivations, goals, inspirations, communities—what it meant to them to ‘play with pride’—and who their audiences are. I will present an overview of what we found through these quiet conversations and provide an insight about the state of queer games development in Oceania and the Asia Pacific.
Period30 Mar 2023
Held atUniversity of Sydney, Australia, New South Wales
Degree of RecognitionLocal

Related content

  • Outputs

  • Queer Indie Games on itch.io, 2013-2022

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference Paper › Research › peer-review

  • 45

    Research output: Non-textual form › Design / Architecture › Research