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- Title
Playing queer: Affordances for sexuality in Fable and Dragon Age.
- Authors
Greer, Stephen
- Abstract
This 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.
- Subjects
QUEER theory; LGBTQ+ people; ROLEPLAYING games; ROLEPLAYERS (Gamers); VIDEO game design; GENDER differences (Psychology)
- Publication
Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 2013, Vol 5, Issue 1, p3
- ISSN
1757-191X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1386/jgvw.5.1.3_1