Be Gay Do Crime?

Queerness Visibility and Invisibility in Video Games

Abstract

Videogames, and media in general, have adopted a more progressive stance on the representation of sexuality: it is common to see LGBTQIA+ stories and characters in movies, games, and books. Different authors in games studies have argued that Queerness visibility in videogames often follows heteronormative rules. Goffman’s notion of front stage and backstage can be useful to understand the relationship between Queer visibility, invisibility and heteronormativity. The front stage represents the game itself, the including its portrayal of queer characters and issues, while the backstage refers to the software structures and affordances that often are coded in a “straight way”. The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between Queer visibility and heteronormative structures in videogames: the research design mainly involves immersing in the games selected for the case study to produce an ethnographic diary and using it to perform a Critical Discourse Analysis of the games themselves.