Video Games Have Always Been Queer by Bonnie Ruberg (review)

The main claim of Bonnie Ruberg's Video Games Have Always Been Queer can be found in its title. Throughout the book, Ruberg puts forth their argument that queerness can be found in all video games—not just contemporary games that have started featuring queer characters. Ruberg bases their claim in an understanding of queerness that goes beyond identity: queerness represents a way of being, doing, and desiring differently. Through this understanding, video games can be played, designed, and interpreted queerly, allowing for games to be repurposed for alternative desires. Recognizing how queer audiences can meaningfully connect with seemingly heteronormative games allows for the possibility for queerness to be found in all games. Queerness manifests in video games in two primary ways (which also function as the headings of the book's two sections): "Discovering Queerness in Video Games" and "Bringing Queerness to Video Games."

Ruberg's focus in the first section ("Discovering Queerness in Video Games") is to uncover the queerness that undergirds all games. The games analyzed in this section are those that do not read as queer at first glance with Pong (Atari, 1972), Portal (Valve Corporation, 2007), and Octodad: Dadliest Catch (Young Horses, 2014) being the focus of the first three chapters. Each chapter is organized around a specific video game, a core reading or concept within queer studies, and an application of the reading or concept to the game through a close textual analysis. In conducting close readings, Ruberg reveals how queerness can be found in several different machinations: gameplay, game controls, narrative, aesthetic, and purpose.

In Chapter 1, "Between Paddles: Pong, Between Men, and Queer Intimacy in Video Games," Ruberg pairs two foundational works to their respective fields: Pong for video games and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's (1985) Between Men for queer studies. In this first chapter, Ruberg presents a reframed Pong where the paddles and ball symbolize the homosocial tensions and intimacy created through Sedgwick's erotic triangle. Positioned as a foundation to the medium of video games, the use of Pong in this chapter powerfully demonstrates Ruberg's thesis that the discovery of queerness in video games has always had potential. In Chapter 2, Ruberg utilizes D. A. Miller's (1990) "too close reading," highlighting the heteronormative hegemonic ideology held by gamers used to invalidate queer analysis of games. Ruberg claims that unless games feature content that is explicitly queer, they have typically been considered "straight" by default. Ruberg uses a comment they received on a blog post about the game Portal to showcase how queer analysis is invalidated. In the comment, the user rejects Ruberg's queer interpretation and tells them, "There is nothing gay about this game, you just made that up. No one ever says lesbian" (63). By getting "too close" to Portal, Ruberg shows how the default categorization of games as straight can be disrupted and how reactionary gamers' criticism of scholarly analysis can be resisted (83).

Chapter 3 centers a compelling discussion of passing through an analysis of the narrative and the control scheme of Octodad: Dadliest Catch. Playing as an octopus, the game asks the player to control Octodad in such a way that he authentically passes as a human man. In Ruberg's analysis, the game's awkward control scheme—where each appendage is controlled by a different button—the player embodies fumbling through a performance of normalcy, all while experiencing the worry of being exposed. In doing so, the game provides players with a brief sense of the otherness that some queer individuals experience daily. Finally, Chapter 4 analyzes the "goal-less-ness" of Realistic Kissing Simulator (Andrews & Schmidt, 2014), where Ruberg presents the liberating potential of degamification through its challenge of the ontological assumption that video games must have "win-state or pre-prescribed ending" (114). The "goal-less-ness" of Realistic Kissing Simulator can be found in its omission of a win-state or unlockable achievements for which players should...