Bonnie Ruberg is Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Interactive Media and Games division at the University of Southern California and assistant professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. The lead organizer of the Queerness and Games conference, she has written for The Village Voice, The Economist, and Wired.

Adrienne Shaw is assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University and a Media and Communications PhD program faculty member. She is author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (Minnesota, 2014).

Contents
Introduction: Imagining Queer Game Studies
Adrienne Shaw and Bonnie Ruberg
Part I. Defining Queerness in Games
1. What Is Queerness in Games, Anyway?
Naomi Clark
2. Queergaming
Edmond Y. Chang
3. Queer Theory, the Body, and Video Games
Derek A. Burrill
4. Queering Games History: Complexities, Chaos, and Community
Zoya Street
Part II. Queering Game Play and Design
5. Ending the Cycle: Developing a Board Game to Engage People in Social Justice Issues
Peter Wonica
6. Playing Outside
Leigh Alexander
7. Building a Queer Mythology
Hanna Brady
8. For Play? Literary Ludics and Sexual Politics
Aubrey Gabel
9. Play and Be Real about It: What Games Could Learn from Kink
Mattie Brice
10. Queering the Snapshot: Ambient Mobile Play
Larissa Hjorth and Kim d’Amazing
Part III. Reading Games Queerly
11. On “FeministWhorePurna” and the Ludo-Material Politics of Gendered Damage Power-ups in Open-World RPG Video Games
Robert Yang
12. Welcome to My Fantasy Zone: Bayonetta and Queer Femme Disturbance
Amanda Phillips
13. Roleplay as Queer Lens: How “ClosetShep” Changed My Vision of Mass Effect
Todd Harper
14. Queer(ing) Gaming Technologies: Thinking on Constructions of Normativity Inscribed in Digital Gaming Hardware
Gregory L. Bagnall
15. On Gone Home
merritt kopas
Part IV. Queer Failures in Games
16. The Trouble with Communities
Adrienne Shaw
17. “Play Like a Girl”: Gender Expression, Sexual Identity, and Complex Expectations in a Female-Oriented Gaming Community
Gabriela T. Richard
18. The Nightmare Is Over
Katherine Cross
19. Queer Gaming: Gaming, Hacking, and Going Turbo
Jack Halberstam
20. The Arts of Failure: Jack Halberstam in Conversation with Jesper Juul
Moderated by Bonnie Ruberg
21. “I Wouldn’t Even Know the Real Me Myself”: Queering Failure in Metal Gear Solid 2
Jordan Youngblood
Part V. Queer Futures for Games
22. If Queer Children Were a Video Game
Kathryn Bond Stockton
23. Queer Growth in Videogames
Christopher Goetz
24. Finding the Queerness in Games
Colleen Macklin
25. Organizing New Approaches to Games: An Interview with Chelsea Howe, Toni Rocca, and Sarah Schoemann
Moderated by Bonnie Ruberg
26. Forty-Eight-Hour Utopia: On Hope and the Future of Queerness in Games
Bonnie Ruberg
Contributors
Index