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Gay Engines: Imagining a Queer Development Platform for Video Games

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Abstract:
If there are queer games, could there be queer game engines? "Gay Engines" uses queer theory as a means of intervention into the software platforms used in game development, from technical behemoths like the Unity Engine to small platforms closely associated with the queer games movement like Twine. And, in-line with queer theorist Sara Ahmed's remark that "queer does not have a relation of exteriority to that with which it comes into contact" (Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology, 544), this paper goes beyond analysis of existing engines to propose its own radical, speculative project: the queer game engine. Although the work of designing the queer game engine is far from done, "Gay Engines" lays its foundations through establishing theoretical allegiances and connections to the material realities of game development. It ends by considering how the queer game engine might be developed, such as by using close readings of existing game engine components to propose queerer alternatives which could be located in the queer game engine itself. The paper concludes by performing two such close readings, small contributions to the queer game engine's existence which nonetheless provide the blueprints for future work.
Notes:
Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2020
Concentration: Modern Culture and Media

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Citation

Zegura, Cass, "Gay Engines: Imagining a Queer Development Platform for Video Games" (2020). Modern Culture and Media Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.26300/t5z3-xf75

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