Playing queer: Affordances for sexuality in Fable and Dragon Age
2013; Intellect; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1386/jgvw.5.1.3_1
ISSN1757-1928
Autores Tópico(s)Sports, Gender, and Society
ResumoThis article adopts the lens of queer theory to examine the terms of inclusion of non-heterosexual identities within recent mass market role-playing games. Focusing on Lionhead Studios’ Fable and BioWare’s Dragon Age series, I suggest how the intersection of queer theory’s resistance of presumptive categories for sexuality and theories of game design – notably the concept of affordances – may provide for a critique of the performative constraints through which gamers are able to ‘play queer’. While even-handed dynamics of relationship game play may espouse a liberal rhetoric of inclusion, I propose that a predominant logic of sameness – grounded in an even-handed ‘blindness’ to sexual difference – may also restrict the possibilities for queer identification.
Referência(s)