Queer indie developers usually work individually or in small teams, and they produce their art across a variety of genres and platforms. The queer games avant-garde is understood as a “rising tide of indie games being developed by, about, and often for LGBTQ people…that disrupt the status quo, enact resistance, and use play to explore new ways of inhabiting difference”. The book begins boldly by stating that queer independent game makers are leading the charge in finding ways to deconstruct and reconfigure the medium of video games. It is a collection of 22 interviews with contemporary game makers who either identify as queer, aim to work queerly or make work related to queer issues. This is the context into which The Queer Games Avant-Garde, the latest book by Bonnie Ruberg (an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine), taps. At times, they have faced serious hostility on public platforms, as the 2014-15 hate campaign #GamerGate demonstrated. Such players, often perceived as “different”, have been systematically under- and misrepresented in games and gaming cultures. The stereotype of the white, straight, cisgender male gamer still prevails, although women, queer people, transgender people and others have always played and made games as well. The video gaming community is a masculine, heteronormative and racially and ethnically homogeneous site of action.
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