Playing against the unlivable: an exploration of trans game art

Rivas-Berge, P.B.

doi:https://doi.org/10.7939/83658

Playing against the unlivable: an exploration of trans game art

Files

Primary Rivas-Berge-IDG-2025 Redacted.pdf (18 MB)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7939/83658, https://doi.org/10.7939/83658

Date

2025-02-01

Author(s)

Rivas-Berge, P.B.

Description

We are at a pivotal moment in gaming culture. From the playground to the Olympic arena, games and play are at the epicenter of an international wave of legal, physical, and legislative violence against transgender people. Over the last two years, hundreds of anti-trans bills have been filed and passed in state legislatures across the United States (Redfield et al., 2024) and, more recently, Canada (Smith et al., 2024), many of which focus on restricting young athletes’ participation in sports. These playground laws—in addition to alienating trans youth and creating a scapegoat for online transphobia and racism—are representative of the ways in which games themselves can be technologies of exclusion. This moment of extreme political violence coincides with an ongoing artistic reckoning: games—both digital and analog—are quickly becoming one of the single most important mediums for trans storytelling, art, personal expression, and even activism (Pow, 2024; Pozo, 2018; Ruberg, 2020, 2022). Designers create games out of oppressive “gender detection” algorithms, zines (small, community-published game collections) and charity game bundles regularly raise hundreds of thousands for mutual aid funds and trans advocacy groups, and indie developers create experimental “anti-games” that challenge our foundational understandings of interactive media, play, and art. In the face of these circumstances, the game has changed, and media scholars are rallying to understand how game makers, technologists, and educators can create space for trans play in game design and culture. By examining how gender diverse makers create selfimmolating and self-destructing games, anti-surveillance games that resist informational capture, and other “unplayable” works, this project will develop new theoretical interventions and provide remixable tools for gamemakers.