GAMING REPRESENTATION Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games

EDITED BY JENNIFER MALKOWSKI AND TREAANDREA M. RUSSWORM

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

00-FM_FN.indd 3 29/03/17 4:09 PM Tis book is a publication of

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00-FM_FN.indd 4 29/03/17 4:09 PM CONTENTS

Foreword | Anna Everet ix Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction: Identity, Representation, and Video Game Studies beyond the Politics of the Image | Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M. Russworm 1

PART I. GENDER, BODIES, SPACES one “I Turned Out to Be Such a Damsel in Distress”: Noir Games and the Unrealized Femme Fatale | Jennifer Malkowski 19 two No Time to Dream: Killing Time, Casual Games, and Gender | Braxton Soderman 38 three “Aw Fuck, I Got a Bitch on My Team!”: Women and the Exclusionary Cultures of the Computer Game Complex | Jennifer deWinter and Carly A. Kocurek 57 four A tention Whores and Ugly Nerds: Gender and Cosplay at the Game Con | Nina B. Huntemann 74 fve Video Game Parodies: Appropriating Video Games to Criticize Gender Norms | Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin 90

PART II. RACE, IDENTITY, NATION six Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in Te Walking Dead and Te Last of Us | TreaAndrea M. Russworm 109 seven Journey into the Techno-primitive Desert | Irene Chien 129

00-FM_FN.indd 7 29/03/17 4:09 PM 29/03/17 4:09 PM 251 212 179 197 147 227 164 245

Auto: f e , Posthumanism, e Queer Possibilities

T i T | Soraya Murray t | Jordan Wood SION Grand e Line BioShock R T VE B U S Spec Ops: e Bindingof Isaac e Queer Art of Failing at Video Games | LAY, LAY, T P ict in T f

and as a Whole | Rachael Text Hutchinson NESS, R

erword: Racism, Sexism, and Gaming’s Cruel Optimism | e Rubble and the Ruin: Race, Gender, and Sites of Jade Empire f Playing to Lose: Bonnie Ruberg Romancing an Empire, Becoming Isaac: of Representing Raceand Disability: San Andreas Entering the Picture: Digital Portraiture and the Aesthetics of VideoGame Representation | Lisa Pa T Inglorious Con Index and the Limits of Queerness | Edmond Chang Y. A Lisa Nakamura A Game Chooses, a Player Obeys: . QUEE

III T ten nine R eight eleven twelve A thirteen

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Contents viii 00-FM_FN.indd 8 Part III QUEERNESS, PLAY, S UBVERSION

12-Ch11_FN.indd 195 29/03/17 4:07 PM chapter eleven

PLAYING TO LOSE The Queer Art of Failing at Video Games

BONNIE RUBERG

when we play video games, we play to win, don’t we? sometimes we fail1very ofen we fail1but failure itself amounts to litle more than an unpleas- ant, if necessary, obstacle on the road to success. It’s normal to hate to fail; taking pleasure in failure itself, playing a game intentionally to lose, would be very queer indeed. At least, these are the assumptions that underlie recent writing on failure in video games. Tese same assumptions are being challenged by contemporary queer theory, which explores the functions of failure but doesn’t address video games. Tis chapter brings these two contemporary discourses into dialogue, in order to question and ultimately refute a set of accepted notions about games: that players fnd pleasure only in success, that players fnd only pain in failure, that the power of losing lies in the power of winning, and that it would be bafingly abnormal and dismissively unlikely to revel in defying a game’s expectations for success1to lie down willingly under the blows of our opponents, to crash our cars in a blaze of self-destruction. My ultimate goal is to bring together queer theory and game studies to ar- gue for failure as an inherently queer mode of play. To do this, I interweave two recent theoretical works of such strikingly similar titles that they beg us to read them together. In 2011 queer theorist Jack Halberstam published his book on fail- ing and cultural resistance, Te Queer Art of Failure. In 2013, games scholar Jesper Juul published his own treatise, an extended essay on “pain in video games,” Te Art of Failure. Te two texts share almost no common material and do not refer- ence each other.1 Halberstam doesn’t talk about video games; Juul doesn’t talk about queerness. However, considered as two pieces of one puzzle, these works, at once surprisingly similar and surprisingly diferent, form a conceptual basis for exploring queerness in video games beyond representation. Tat is, the abstract

197

12-Ch11_FN.indd 197 29/03/17 4:07 PM , ------29/03/17 4:07 PM a 1 2005 ( “queer” 1 is important uid concepts f T

ention to explicentionto 5 t Burnout Revenge erent approaches to de Inthis sense, approach 2 f rst counterintuitive. Lately, f er presenting some of the ways andwhat elements they have in f 1 Meanwhile, recent years have seen 3 en goes overlooked. f a video game, movie, and so on ention. 1 Scholarship around these issues has only re t 4 en promote reductivepromote en harmful or stereotyping. f Before diving into Juul’s and Halberstam’s queer arts, I unpack the stakes of ing queerness and games in dialogue is a nascent practice, for academics t from LGBT discrimination in the games industry to di signing LGBT content to the LGBT “geek” lifestyle to the academic intersection of queer studies and game studies. the inauguration of multiple conventions and conferences exploring everything this proposition, that we might look for queerness beyond LGBT representation. What happens when we call a work like Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, and Sigmund Freud, I focus on ludics, meanimplyandto that shouldn’t dedicate we don’t I queerly.I a so do itly queer games elsewhere, that queerness is somehow inept by association with failure, or that player masochism equates to player sickness. Indeed, failure, mas ochism, and the queer are all used here as powerful, positive, and that allow us to see queerness where it o work has played a crucial role in orienting games.our However, my thinkingfocus lies elsewhere. I arounddo not discussqueerness literal andrepresentations of queer characters or the alienation of queer gamers denied representation. I do not lay out the history of queerness in games or the games industry for queer or content a brighterprescribe tomorrow. Instead, in the tradition of ludologists like Juul, algorithmic thinkers like Alexander Galloway, and classic theorists of play fromincluding LGBT characters story or lines cludedo two currently disparate disciplines with much to gain from to another. one opening their doors On Queering “Straight” Representation: LGBT Beyond Games Pu and game makers alike. Traditionally, mainstream video games have shied away Criterion Games) both to illustrate and nuance my basic claim: that, contrary to commonassumptions, failure invideo games canpleasurable be powerfuland spectacular,masochistic resistanceof mode that disassembles normative expecta tions in and out of the game world. conclude,To I propose a new understanding of play through queer failure, a new understanding of queer failure through play, and a framework for future crossovers between queer studies and game studies, nature of their connections allows us to look for the queer, in its many guises,games in that have no explicitly LGBT content. A that one might fail for failure’s sake, I use the racing game ing games through the lens of queerness seems at though,numberindependenta of game developers directlywhosework addresses queerness have received national a cently begun to circulate. Previously, queer games writing frequently focused on questionslike, “What are the experiences LGBTof gamers?” existing“Howdo or games depict LGBT characters, and how could they improve?”

Bonnie Ruberg 198 12-Ch11_FN.indd 198 Playing to Lose 199 29/03/17 4:07 PM

------is h, In ere f ird, 8 T

9 T T lm and the f er the releasethe er or or at least not f 1 e traditionale wisdom from ed the doubtful “queer” into T , BioWare).

e pervasiveness of this homo f 6 T 2012 – , is claimed without question for the 2007 this response, one of many like it: “ f Portal cally because this presumed straightness so Allow me to illustrate.Allowto me Shortly a f series, 7 , ValveCorporation),, wroteI postblog a forthe ect f real, normal, straight, male players. Needless to say, 2007 , Rockstarinthefar, seducewomen women or Games) ( 1 Mass E 2006 , Portal Bully en draw parallels between the tumultuous history of f about lesbian overtones in the relationship between the game’s fe up until the imagined moment when the word “lesbian,” had it been in 1 Game designers and scholars, arguing for the legitimacy of video games as Queering the seemingly un-queer is a particularly touchy, and therefore par in“straight” games, much”too “read we into them, polluting the heterosafe space of queer-free play with our “gay” interpretations. wellhasbeendocumented. phobia gaming’s outspoken online community objects that when we explore queerness an art form, o is a “you”; iswomen anda “you”; queers fall in the “you” and stand outside an imagined, in visible community of “we” the beloved game itself, in this case “we” cluded in the game, would have satisfactorily solidi the comprehensible, categorical “gay.” any interpretation of a game not spelled out explicitly by the game itself must be personal, invented, and therefore invalid (e.g., “you just anyone made who thattalks up”). about queerness must be gay. Fourth, readinglike queernessgames itself,queerly, belongs in the closet (e.g., do it “in your own Fi home”). making queerness visible constitutes an act of violence against the quo. hetero Sixth,status this imagined violence is itself charged with unacknowledgederotics “don’t forcehomo (e.g., it down our throats”). Seventh, there is a and“we,” there comment neatly encapsulates what I would identify as the main tenets homophobia. of First,gamer any game not clearly marked as gay must be straight. Second, of theof widely popular Village Voice male protagonist and GLaDOS, her taunting, female-coded robot tormentor. kissschoolboys ( reaches of outer space ( ticularly powerful, practice when it comes to video games, an historicallycloseitstiesto artistic base.player homophobic form with gay? It’s likely It’s gay? that thequeer-free game inquestion includes overt no references to sexuality at all. the To player who sees queer as synonymous with gay, this game appears sexless, benign. Games like these make up a ciallyhuge majority released of commer titles. Yet it’s speci dominates the medium that we need to challenge the mold and look at allof gamestypes through the lens of queerness, not just those rare few where schoolboys even if it doesn’t seem to contain any playexplicitly at gay marriagequeer content? or chooseIf transgenderedplayers avatars,can’t if they or throw punches,can doesn’t that onlymake a gamerace by defaultcars “straight” the post’s comment thread, a reader le is nothing gay about this game, you just made that up. No one just everdykea knowsaying.bitch whodoesn’t sayswhat you’re You’re If wantyoulesbian. thinkto like that in your own home go ahead but don’t force it down our throats.” 12-Ch11_FN.indd 199 ------e 29/03/17 4:07 PM 1 T Flaming Classics: lm scholars faced in the f erently (or, inthis erentlycase, (or, play f At best, this hegemonic think er queer ways of seeing games. ese caveats may seem obvious, esh. More abstractly, queerness f 11 f T Under the Under truism that mass media e homophobic, anti-analyticalhomophobic, e com 10 comment mirrors with surprising ed by my remark.reader’s If we want lms games) (or as “pathetic and delu f T f Portal ned to the young and wobbly but blossoming in the face f itudes like those Doty encountered insistently So when we explore queerness in supposedly 1 t ), ), Alexander Doty describes the reactions of his a 12 1 ed by the 2000 en seems as if people think that since you have chosen ( f f erentlyandsimply being di f ). “It). o 1939 ( ourish as a rich, artful medium for entertainment and study, we’ll have e multiplicity of ways to interpret queerness also reminds us that there f s when they began to queer classic straight movies. In emptsto see something that there.” isn’t lmstudies and queer game studies. t erently): erently): a longing to live life otherwise, a resistance to social structures, T f f 1990 How do we argue for queerness in the face of such insistently narrow per Of course, to explore the queerness in all games, we must move past the ho ese modes of seeing value experience above content, a particularly important sionala isproduced andfor bythe average straight, white, middle-class male consumer and is therefore itself straight categorize queer readings of mainstream to read something queerly,” Doty laments, “you need to be pressured or patron izedinto feeling that haveyou made the wrong the or ‘less common and therefore easyundermineto putin or its place’ choice.” munity response exempli familiarity the dismissive, heterocentric backlash that mid- Queering the Film Cannon peerstohis queer readings supposedlyof safe, sexless favorites like the movie Wizard of Oz current state of interactive media criticism,of as cinema did in its earliest decades. similarA parallel exists between queer ing di and an embrace of the strange. spectives?First, mustwe understand in its contemporary the“queer,” word usage, to mean much more than gay, or even LGBT. Individuals who identifymight as queer see themselves as defying through heterosexual sexuality, norms in gender any queerness, number non-mainstreamso of on. And ways: queerness relationship isn’t just con styles, and meansboth desiring di ingposits that queer readings focus excessively smallon tidbits homoeroticismof that are insubstantial, subtextual, subcultural,tives to the allegedly and obvious, reasonable, always literal, ostensibly second-rate hetero interpretation alterna of bodies on-screen. mophobia and anti-intellectualism exempli games to ritory. are many, equally valid ways to interpret games. Queer readings ily don’t necessarseek to override straight ones. Instead, they o T approach for video games, where player input shapes the interactive world.game becomes queer,Any in a sense, when we experience it queerly. straight games, we’re not declaring them alsogay. We’re not calling their players saying not or makers We’re that gay. developers intentionally built queerness into their games or that every player experiences queerness similarly. not We’re even necessarily labeling this queerness as sexual.thevideofor but gamecommunity still“queer” represents untried anduneasy ter

Bonnie Ruberg 200 12-Ch11_FN.indd 200 Playing to Lose 201 29/03/17 4:07 PM

------16 - ere T en, and 17 t , Pyramid). Again eshand the control f 2008 ( . On a higher level, I think I

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on theon presumption that displea Patapon ctional, fantasy, but they are also f 15 e Arte Failureof Games are 13 T with personallose,a hatesto he much account how of Understanding fantasy helpsusunderstand desire, plea 14 recalling Freud’s fort-da game, in which a child repeatedly 1 e Arte Failureof theintimacy between playerand game, between an almost sexual and certainly ludic encounter with the video game T 1 1 ese opening paragraphs make clear that Juul hates failing, and that he as ing and proclaiming: t T thing that I most certainly do not enjoy? I am a sore loser. Something in me demands gamethat I try, andI thatwin, part of me isbeat, outraged andor tormentedcomplete whenever I failevery to do so. Still, I play video games though I know I will enjoy fail.playing video games, but why does this enjoyment contain at its core some e Arts Failure: of Halberstam and Juul ese intimacies are queer intimacies, alternate visions of the control-freedom throws away and retrieves a toy that reminds him painfully of his absent father. andagain, angry and dejected, fails, he puts the game then away, picks again,up it and then puts it away once more, returning as iftantalizing compulsively torment to the site of his that they contemplate giving up entirely. Yet players’ drive forwardto winpast failure,pushes them inspiring them to walk lostover levelsthe inemotional a brokenrush glassof determination, of pride, and testosterone. What Juul names sumes everyone else hates failing too. Failure makes Juul viscerally upset. tells he us,unequivocally,fore thoughtsanymasochismput minds.ourof to of out He “most certainly” does not enjoy his repeated demise, as we might be tempted suggest.to Indeed, Juul founds sure is the logical and normal response to losing. Players who lose feel ro loss jolts them out of the game with such a nauseating punch to their self-esteem Everyone who plays video games participates in the same illogical dance, Juul as serts: “It is safe to say that humans have a fundamental desire to succeed and feel competent, but game players have chosen to engage in an activity in whichare almost certainthey to fail and feel incompetent, at least some of the time.” To To illustrate this contradiction, this “pleasure spiked withfailing pain,” at Juul a describeslevel of the Japanese rhythm game Juulopens admi T ers and the world around them. to set aside our knee-jerk, heterocentric defenses. doesn’t Games mean maythey’re justbe fun.fun, Asbut Juulthat writes, video deeper, somethinggames trulyspeak human, to something“something otherwise invisible” about their play told by those who do not share their passion for games that they care T too much. dynamic ler in our hands. sure, pain, and ourselves. Besides, what does it mean to read a game too closely? “Too close” implies intimacy, inappropriate contact, pokingpressing and prodding and itself. It means caring too deeply. Gamers, of all people, know what it’s like to be alwaysleastat half-real. 12-Ch11_FN.indd 201

- - - - - 29/03/17 4:07 PM 19 1 - - er. t they pro 1 e presumption T lled with emotions f e Queer Art of Failure the confusing fact that to failure’s roundabout T e solution,e tautologically, erent take on losing. Hal 1 1 f ctional tragedy. No, writes T f success is good, failure hurts, enoverlooked, Juul reasons, fail 1 f does not enter intoJuul’senterequation. not does so crucial, in fact, that Juul suggests 1 ers a very di 1 f ougho Maybe failure motivates us to continue 18 T and Halberstam’s cient but also promise us the opportunity to f ey] ey] recategorize what looks like inaction, passiv T . [

er a safea er space failure,for magica circle where falling . making it a logical, if unexpected bedfellow for Juul’s rst place.”

f . f

1 e Art of Failure In each of these proposed answers, though, the appeal of awed and de 20 f T ink of the havoc we wreak on the status quo when we, under the . Rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment,

aws. . atfailure might be its own success, its own pleasure, its own art

f . T

T e basic imperative behind Halberstam’s argument is to stop thinking ough Juul’s T T negativity, and critique. ity, and lack of resistance in terms of dominant.the practice of stalling the business of the Heteronormative common sense leads to the equation ment,of capital successaccumulation, withfamily, ethical advanceconduct, and hope. Other subordinate, queer, or counter-hegemonic modes of common sense lead to failurethe association with of nonconformity, anticapitalist practices, nonreproductive lifestyles, Juul suggests and dismisses a number of possible explanations for this para playing. Maybe failure keeps us agreeably honest. Maybe failure doesn’t ma along, to win. charge of queer nonconformity, play to lose: berstam’s book doesn’t discuss video games, but questionsdestruction sit at of its heart success and self- distinctly queerness-free text. What’s more, because it so guageprominently likeuses “losing”lan and “winning,” we can easily reenvision play. it as a treatise about about failure as an onerous frustration to be overcome. Instead,heteronormative think expectations of weall undermine the when we refuse to succeed, to play failure remains inextricably linked to eventual success abilitycleanseto feelingsbad encourage or uswin. to replicates the assumptions of the paradox itself and likes one no to hurt. have nearly identical titles, Halberstam o Juul come closest to a decision about the paradox of failure gameswhen make he posits us thatfeel overcome our of humiliation and inadequacy. Games do not purge these emotions duce the emotions in the dox.Perhaps video games o on our faces is “neither painful nor the least unpleasant.” inNo, some sense video game failure really does hurt, he insists. Perhaps failing in video games allowsto purgeus our reserves of pity and fear in response to Juul, “when we experience a humiliating defeat, we really are ure is a crucial part of the play experience we might call video games as an art operatingform here, for Juul,“the is thatart meaning in of failurefailure.” comes not from the pleasure or painfailureof itself, insteadbut fromthe frustrations andrewards strugglingof to overcomeit. performedtheplayerthebygame bybut not the “paradox of failure” sits at the crux of his argument orderreturn inwe throughtime(temporarydefeat) againhateplayand wetowhat toexperience what we love (success).

Bonnie Ruberg 202 12-Ch11_FN.indd 202 Playing to Lose 203 29/03/17 4:07 PM ------er f Mean 22 their idea of composed of 1 e queer takes on 2013 T nite, the embrace of the both sexually nonnorma f 23 1 ing up, not becauseing not up, determination t or it’s the successtheplaying of badlyit’s so or ing themselves in real peril, the fail t 1 21 and the Self-Destruction of Pleasure e one whorevels one e in “fantastic failures” is the T led. t erently, of embracing self-destructive agency. When we f Burnout Revenge us, to play queerly means to play the wrong way around, to T . Rather. than resisting endings andlimits, insteaduslet revelin andcling

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Juul and Halberstam disagree on what exactly constitutes the art of failure. the queer art of failure involves the acceptanceabsurd. of the to all of our inevitable fantastic failures. game and “[stalls] the business of the dominant,” the cheater who unsanctionedexercises agencyher not so much to win as, in Mia lenge the notionConsalvo’s that there is ‘correct’terms, one way to play.” “to chal one who loses,embraceswholosing, one likesandadjustHalberstam’s Ifwe it. language for games, we can read normative “advancement” as advancement through levels (or a refusal to advance), and “capital accumulation” as in-game points accumulated (or ignored, wasted). “Nonreproductive lifestyles” becomes the squanderingextra lives,of the abandonment of hard-fought unsaved games. the guise of the bad subject, the bad player who rejects the regulating logic of the while, clean, happy, “normal” people pass by and shake their heads happinessunse moment a for art, which makes a game of dying. all, who throws themselves in the mud for fun? Someone masochistic. exploringSomeone fun’s absurdities and abjections, playing with the meanings of pleasure, playing queerly. jump our unsuspecting, pixelated avatars into pits instead of reographover them,the to most cho unfortunate disasters. If Juul’s art ownsenseourHalberstam’smaking. of of game,playfulalsois one a a is failureIt art, ludic a is games, in this stam, by contrast, the art of failure isn’t an object that punishes us;enact, it’s an an artart we of being di failfantastically, artists.queertheare we phrasethein Halberstam’s “queer” of use “the queer art” highlights the word’s double meaning simplybizarre.tiveand Traditionally, artistry something;at beinggood equatesto failure equates to being bad at it. Any art of failure would be queer indeed. A For Juul,refersgames it For to themselves asanart form, interactive experiences care fully designed to bring us to our knees and convince us to stay there. For Halber live-action fail videos feature real bodies pu uregameinvideosfailurethe is well play to it becomes absurd. A compilationYouTube uploaded in May Fail Fantastically: questionTo the notion that players simply hate failing, we need look no thanfurther the multitude of “fail” videos accruing views playersInon record YouTube. theirthese own videos,epic in-game fails and then post them proudly. Whereas In this vision, queer failure does not just meansmeantaking fallingpleasure in that fall. meansIt facedown ge in the mud; it BurrillDerekvideoandgames“dietryin’,” as toon drives describesbookhisyou in performances of masculinity, but because you want to fall all over again. 12-Ch11_FN.indd 203

------29/03/17 4:07 PM 25 24 or re handguns lmed and up Dead or Alive f f nd nd particularly Mortal Kombat nite Ward) and f f Gaming Fails.” Stair Dismount en 1 f , In nd pleasure,shame, nd not f 2011 , Capcom), ( er all, failure plays a role in 3 ultimate f ) versus) failing in the way that 2014 – , Namco) basic unit of gameplay is ese playersese 1987 Passage ( ghting games series T f 2008 e pleasure viewers take in watching these ’s ’s ( nds a way to self-destruct in violent ecstasy. T erencebetween failing in the waythat gamea f f ing to avoid an incoming missile versus stepping t Street Fighter the distinction between failing toward or against a ghtingexpressgames,thewheremonolithic and goal f 1 er avatar f SoulCalibur IV Call of Duty: Modern Warfare cation, they imagine themselves failing by proxy. If, as Juul 1 f ack-and-defend match. If you win, the game sings your praises inging avatarone’s to a gruesome demise in t f Industries) promises scenes from “ ers two ways to play that are more enjoyable than winning. Option 343 f , cult to master, games that can never really be completed, games that , Tecmo) , Midway Games), f nite replay of their failure, which comes to function as an inverted per f 2012 2015 ( 2015 4 – – To explore theTo pleasure of failing against a game, we might forfeit, allow our As we think through the potential pleasures of game failure, a taxonomy be is seemingly endless enumeration makes sense; a rough this identi 1992 1996 and subjects the loser to a playbackhissubjectsanddefeat.a experience, of toIn my loserthe gametheunin tentionally o one: let yourself be slowly and beautifully beaten by your opponent. While I am selves to be beaten, or even commit virtual suicide. Failing on purpose takes on a particularlyappealqueerin is victory. Like many other long-standing ( ( the two-person, a wants us to (e.g., walkingtoward the inevitability deathof in a game does not want. Determining what any given game “wants” is itself tricky,but I am thinking here about what outcomes the game instructswhat us outcomes to it striverewards, for, what outcomes it punishes, what outcomes it renders impossible. game versus miscalculating in a tactical failure one), through inaction versus fail ure through action (e.g., forge in front of failureit), by accident or failure on purpose (e.g., tripping over versus stepping on a ticking bomb). I want to stress one distinctionimportant for I queer failure gamesystem. thisBy meanI the di that are di insultus, games that make us feel like failures coaxto us into learning, fair games, unfair games, games of skill, sadisticT games, cathartic games, suicide games.almostevery game. can We imagine failing in even ways more than Juul lists: fail ing with our bodies versus failing with our minds (e.g., messing up in a dancing are bound to enjoy a fail video more if T they have played the game in question. tells us, all players hate failing, who would watch these videos? Who would make them? ginstoemerge. Juul discusses many types gamesof atwhich wemight fail: games Players accidentally launch grenades at their own feet or into blithelynearby caches of explosives. Game fail videos are most o veryfailtheplayerswhothem. byin loaded in the in formance of non-skill and bravado. videos similarly speaks to the complex feelings surrounding failure. Spectators In this montage, avatar a clips from games like Halo

Bonnie Ruberg 204 12-Ch11_FN.indd 204 Playing to Lose 205 29/03/17 4:07 PM , ------2014 ( Need for and Play er winning a ghtingstages 360 f f Nidhogg e ack mode ups the actually playing. T ies up into the air; f esh, which I would t f f ed with racing chal t c A f ords players the opportunity f series promises entertainment e game itches and aches, sending ) with their emphasis on fantastic ey boast failure in their very title. ’s ’s characters have fast, agile move T embraces the pleasures of the crash. T er you’ve already you’ve er won. f Nidhogg Burnout Need for Speed e Need for Speed T console title, continues the series’ obsession with erent form in the independent game ghtingmechanics with classic platformer levels. Two f f is long, teasing self-torture makes me feel tantalizingly , Criterion presentsGames) players with an open world games, a long-standing racing series, have no explicitly T , Criterion Games), released for the Xbox Burnout 2012 ( acking each other with pixelated epees. Here, I spend inordi ’s primary ’s racingearnplayersmode,rewardsswiping tak for or games frequently end in treacherous ledges. A 2005 ey do, however, set themselves apart from other popular rac ( t Burnout T , a e f T as the fourth the edge of thelevelintooblivion.theof edge intothegorgeous, go green-blue,OutI 2 f SoulCalibur While possibleit’s to fail in almost any type of game, I am particularly inter Alternatively, we might choose to fail against a game through nonaction. -focus scenery. I am both victor and failure. is tactic takes a slightly di ese games illustrate, enrich, and yet ultimately complicate our thinking about BurnoutRevenge f impressive cars and driving physics, In ing down other racers in a show of sparks and metal. Tra queer content. ing intellectual properties (like destruction rather than simulated realism. Burnout Revenge Station daredevildemises. Whereas mostcommercially successful racing games focus on to danceto circles around an opponentwithout making contact. In an appropriately queer paradox, failing (i.e., playing in a way that the game requiresrefuses something liketo successrecognize) (i.e., staying alive). ested in games that blur the line between failing toward and againstT the system. queer play. T Messhof),which combines players face o nate amounts of time dancing. Since ments, leaping about produces something like an becauseany contact extemporaneousbetween swordsmen results in temporarya dance.death, the trick But,is lenges. thisYet same open world unintentionally a to opt out of racing altogether. in the form of fast cars, illegal maneuvers, and high-speed chases. I therefore take great pleasure in driving slowly and respectfully.lights; I followI other stop cars my at shinya safe distance.coupe at red a frantic stream of pop-ups to remind me that I should be o so Racing games are another genre unambiguously oriented toward winning, ingmak them a poignant site for experimenting with non-goal-oriented play. Speed: Most Wanted where they can roam a wide network of urban streets do my controller rumbles. present.Option two: commit suicide a in the bodylaysmatch,motionless thewhenloser’s the ground,on thewinner allowedis takesecondsfewgloat.preferto to a thatI success whenmoment, lookscertain, to jumpo losing, I get the chance to appreciate our rippling on-screen normally miss while slashing away, and to revel in the physicality of my proxy.in-game With each hit, I am temporarily disabled; my avatar 12-Ch11_FN.indd 205

------29/03/17 4:07 PM e T feels 1 ed with Burnout istruck, t e blood is T T the side over ough the game f T ered. er players select a t f er the moment of crash,of the moment er nishes, the heavyweight f f failing as spectacularly as compelledby the logic a of 1 1 that is, self-destruction . No drivers, no pedestrians. 1 the side of wrecked vehicles, reveal f , James Cameron). Meanwhile, the rau 1994 ( en there’s the cinematic pleasure. Before begin ’s ’s Crash mode Burnout Revenge T the sides of an old sedan. A pickup truck, covered on rapidly at the right causes moment your car to ex f is establishing shot, to borrow a cinema term, serves t ese cheering voices are as much confusing as congratu True True Lies T ’s ’s fervor for failure becomes clearest. ghter sporting yesterday’s bruises. A T f er to rear-end you with) wear their failure on their automo ing caught in head-on collisions. However, it’s in the Crash their bumpers askew, their windows sha t t 1 Burnout Burnout Revenge e paint chips o T ere are no people in T c accident will do the most damage. A well-calculated leap o Is it possiblefailIsit to gamea thatat win you failing,by failto against thesystem Success in f the blood in the veins of the player, who at once pushes to lose and to win. in a game that encourages you to fail toward it? Yes, but this type of failure looks of crashing cars and the cheers of an invisible your crowdaccomplishment. of male voices applauding latory. cars’ tinted windows, when they crumble o empty cabs. No blood. No victims. No victor. Instead, the bodiesthe bodieson-screen of are cars you crash, tapping the B bu sendingplode,an impressiveout mushroom-cloud thatboombreaks apart nearby vehicles. A replay video shows each crash from multiple, dramatic angles, includ ingswooping crane shotsthat transformseemto your humblehandiwork intothe culminating scene from cous,punk-inspired soundtrack addsaural adrenaline. A however, the music cuts to silence, broken only by the surprisingly distant sound undeniably good. Points, dollar signs, and otherscreen throughout achievements the pileup. accumulate on- ninglevel,thea gametracking presents long a throughshot thepeaceful cityscape you are about to ravage. equally as tactical shot, a chance to plot the exact path of your wreckage. Once passrail might, example,for land smackyou in the semitruck.a sideof now stopped on a busy highway, swipes other cars, causing a pileup of screeches and explosions. Seventy-two cars in seeminglya row, unperturbed by the danger, happilyintoplow you without breaking swerving or world designed and destined for destruction, where the only choice is the choice to crash. crash cars (all the be tive skins. in dents, looks like a trusty, crappy steed, the game shoots them speeding downobstacles. a Stay unharmedstreet do just long enough to spot the perfect crash site, where a tra challenges that primaryCrashitspresentas doesn’t Crashsuccinctlymode, distills important ele ments from across the game, and some form of Crash exists in almost all titles. Succeeding at Crash mode means one thingpossible. Players have their choice of location and vehicles. While the lightweight cars, designed for racing, have sleek curves and shiny ante, making destruction, not speed, the goal of each round.on cityPlayers, streetsunleashed buzzing with oblivious civilian vehicles, ram possibleinto withoutas manyge cars as

Bonnie Ruberg 206 12-Ch11_FN.indd 206 Playing to Lose 207 29/03/17 4:07 PM ------e - T e ac e Burn T rst. ering of f eringpro f er a crash f f shiny metal, images of two 1 y fascination to 1 t nishing f eringcaused. f nitely do come at a cost ing stuckon the shoulder f t e game wants us to feel in T ’s Crash’s mode, success means c passesc unharmed.by f er how fantastically. Make contact t s out smoke. On your way to impale a e images foreshadow the crashes sure to f T ers an array of epic shots of the (in this case f Burnout Revenge 26 series directly, but quickly dismisses it as an un Burnout ’s ’s brand of self-destruction to be unpleasant but not un e game again o as those in which we receive cash and applause for our failure. T is part of a small trend that does not involve the long-time su 1 Burnout agellation. Instead, they’ll continue their victimless massacres without f series and its pleasures lack thereof), (or Juul writes: is experience of self-destruction has an unpleasant aspect to it, but the game the protagonist, but rather fascinates through the immediate joyful discomfortwitnessing of (bodily) destruction. T presents no human characters, and furthermore restarts immediately a deemphasizinghenceplayer,the with costto no humanany su out Paradise Juul addresses the erent than we might expect. In e game also uses the same load screens for Race as for Crash course, the game forces you into a three-second, third-person, noninteractive f ashing sparks f true self- consequence,whichextension by rendersthemassacres themselves inconsequen tial. my To eye, contrary to Juul’s reading, accidents de pleasantenough. Without any mangled bodies to mourn, without sua tagonist to identify with, surely players will never rise from pe Again, Juul emphasizes the unpleasantness of losing, but with a few new caveats. He proclaims appear in commercial games, though in less Burnout direct forms. About failure in the cars smashing together at great speed. follow, taunting us with our imminent loss, and reminding us goal, thinlyof the veiled game’s inreal talk of points and winners: destruction. remarkable example in the pantheon of video game failure. Duringabout suicidea discussiongames, Juul notes that a similar suicidal instinct does occasionally we squirm as our competitors zoom by. At the same time, Race mode does want us to enjoy the spectacle of our own destruction, even as it incentivizes standard racing goals, like clocking in a record-breaking lap or cutscenessimply of our undesirable demise are as aesthetically appealing f T wants you to crash your own vehicle, no ma with another car at the wrong angle and, instead of o triumphantly sending them slow-motion scene of your own car smashing itself to bits (only to appear, recon stituted and ready to race, once the scene is done). convenienced by the crashes in Race mode, and we do; for those three seconds tractor trailer, you accidentally swipe your car against a bollard.comes to anHere end.your turn decidedly nonepic and unsatisfying) destruction you carshave spinaroundthepartmostfor out you,but tra caused. A few other tion-movie pleasure of success becomes fail-video shame, inverted as a display of dullness, not bravado. As for the game’s primary Race mode, it technically never di going out inviolent a blaze; failing, however, means ge of a highway while your engine lazily pu 12-Ch11_FN.indd 207 ------29/03/17 4:07 PM ’s ’s er ers ers f f t e mas . o

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. Revenge T

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ering at all. Yet, f Burnout allwhile shrugging as something other ers (that “immediate ers(that 1 f 1 o withitsfast cars, presumed 1 Burnout nes herself not through tenacity f ering f , in which there are no human bodies, with BurnoutRevenge at leads to a handful of coherent, if controversial T e game becomes, in this view, one that plays di through a masochistic lens, we see that the power Burnout T cally in their combination of pain and pleasure, which f erently, a queer game that queers us as we play. If failing at e Queer Art Failing of Games Video at f T ered on theeredon highway, the pain seeing not of our automotive avatar . However, his approach to understanding self-destruction helps t Burnout Revenge Burnout ered on the highway, the pleasure of the fantastic crash when we go up in Ofcourse, since Halberstam’s reference videodoesn’t book games, doesn’t he t the impact game’s for its lack of bodies? Most importantly, Juul is wrong about ll in the missing pieces of Juul’s interpretation. By joining Halberstam in insist ames, the pleasure of living to die another day. f tam’s tam’s masochist, like the loss-driven player, de and recognition, but through her choice to embrace pain and regularlydeathJuulargues ingames). that(one “dies” thesu heterosexual male player base, and war-gasm than normative explosions or sexless. ently, that we play di propositions:that failure toward (whether against or queermusta beway game) a to play, that failure brings queerness to games with no that explicitlya game queer basedcontent, on failure must be a queerguise itselffailure)isintegral of allgame,inconvenientmerelytogames. frombeing a Far and that queerness (in the and inconsequential obstacle on the road to success, video game failureand canma be leveraged as a form of resistance. Together, these supposedlyseea claims straight game likeallow us to Playing Lose: to What,then,callcanwe queerartfailingthe of videoBetweengames?at queerthe ory and game studies, we have triangulated a new perspective. Failure is integralto games, and failure is queer. up a critique of the organizing logic of agency and subjectivity itself. ochist tethers her notion of self to a spiral of pain and hurt. She refuses to cohere, refuses to fortify herself against the knowledge of death and dying.” ing on the queer in the game’s art of failure, we masochisticcan reinstatepleasure. We can also begin to playinguncover to the lose. Halberstam,full inqueer his potentialchapter on of masochism thatand we feminism,see self-destruction insists not as a pathological behavior from which the queerartist needs rescuing, asbut form a resistanceof against mainstream power struc tures. He writes, “I propose a radical form of masochistic passivity that o self-destructionin the game: unpleasant. isn’t it highly It’s pleasurable. In fact, it’s fantastic. discuss f in Race mode. And in Crash mode, they’re not the cost; they’re thehow point.can Also,we blithely group gamesthat centeraround “witnessing (bodily)destruction” f joyful discomfort”) feels so good we hardly know whether su it’s if we look at of such games lies speci scrambles our prescriptions for success and loss: the pain of seeing our tiveavatarautomo spla spla

Bonnie Ruberg 208 12-Ch11_FN.indd 208 Playing to Lose 209 29/03/17 4:07 PM , - - - - - one one Burn es the 1 f : how can we gamesthem Need for Speed ? It might look nite and uniquely f . In Burnout Burnout , opting out takes skill, Burnout empt to play at beingtheat play to empt t e drivee towardqueer failure T Need for Speed isn’t just in how it exempli navigates a precarious line. It seems Burnout Revenge in a stubborna ina Burnout ames. When we crash in a brilliant blaze, then, f Burnout Revenge BurnoutRevenge , it might take the form of lingering too long over destruction, dance, which requires avatar proximity but breaks with avatar ’s Crash’s mode, we win when we fail well. In the game’s Racing mode, Nidhogg edly, that basic contradiction does some queering of its own. Try gingerly t Ultimately, the true usefulness of However, before unambiguously claiming failed play in the name of queer Burnout Revenge ferent angles, to try and fail at failing. Juul posits many reasons why we returngame to failure time and again, though we (supposedly) hate it. We could similarly queerfailure.at playmanyposit reasonswe why for pleasures of self-destruction but also in how it lays bare the in queer dialectical tangle between system and player, failure and success, pain and pleasure. It shows us that winning can be equal parts subversive and conformist,and that a player’s hurt and joy are not contradictory, but interwovenshape blursand color thatexperience. When it comes to queer failure in video games,ambiguity this is apt. Games allow us to play at queer failure, to examine it from dif whatever system players choose to fail against, they fail into the arms of another. Admi navigatingstreetsthe of goodsubject in wrong.world a gone makesIt driving in the real world, with all its reasonable precautions and normative regulations, seem equallywe embrace failure,absurd. we also queer success.When though, refusing to engage with the goal of the game (racing to win) is relatively easy: enterdon’t into a race. However, in and even this form of failure is bound to inevitably fail. Optingdriving out would crashing butnot mean at all,and everything in thegame is designed for impact. Like the contact, playing crashless in cessfully doesn’t mean catapulting into a semitruck, and that succeeding doesn’t mean watching yourself go up in we both conform to and ostentatiously reject systemsbelonging of to dominant the logic game, the other belonging play it. to What the socialwould it contextmean to in fail which againstquite we similar the to my gamedull, inlawful meandering in a system. Here is the particular paradox of failure at work in claimplayto queerly by failing in gamea where failing is the way towin? In out Revenge crashing makes it more likely that we’ll lose, yet the game clearly wants us to take pleasure in crashes. Any way we fail, we seem to be failingthe same time, culturaltoward expectationsthe game. outside of Atthe game dictate that driving suc levels.In these moments,the beautiful, painful, pleasurable vision self-destrucof tion,which players enact through their queer artistry, itself takes theon caliber of an undeniably alluring art. gameresistance, complicatewantto thisI calculation, theas selves demand. Keep in mind the distinction between failure toward and against or or playing Crash mode on fort-da repeat as the game tries to inch us toward new videogamesan artisplaying of everythewrong way, gamehas own its wrong way. In 12-Ch11_FN.indd 209

- - - 29/03/17 4:07 PM th and 129 ers a f p://www , bringing t 2013 er thaner didwe /the-queer-games t ned by imperfec f e Queer Games Scene,” , available at h 4341042 T 9 endees; and the University / erentGames, collaborativea t 24 f / 5 / ; Gaymer Connect hosted GaymerX 2013 2013 er graphics, an endless proliferation t is doesn’t just apply to games in which Queerness and Games Conference in Berkeley, T 2013 ings and Being Alive about It: . T 14 ; New York University New; York hosted Di /mla 2013 08 / p://www.polygon.com/features/ t 01 is Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Interactive Media / G , h R 2014 E 2013 B , 24 in San Francisco, a fan expo that drew thousands of a 2013 ough their books do not reference one another, Halberstam and Juul did present a con , May Brendan Keogh, “Just Making T For an overview of the history of LGBT representation in games and its discontents, see Electronic Arts hosted Full Spectrum, a one-day event addressing discrimination in the rst time. When we replay failure, we replay toward perfection, failing more

I close by reasserting an incendiary conjecture: that if we accept failure as . . . . f 1 4 3 2 BONNIE RU Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Chicago,.edmondchang.com/ January Polygon Notes versation, “Queer Arts of Failure,”California. at the Edmond Chang, “Queer(ing) Video Games and Video Game Studies,” presentation at the and Games Division at the University of Southern California. She Queeris Game coeditorStudies: Gender,of Sexuality, and a Queer Approach to Game Studies is lead organizer of the annual Queerness and Games Conference. ture lays claim to all games as fair territory for exploringplatform on queerly.which It futurealso queero studies and game studies might intermingle and models how we can uncover and unleash the queer, subversive tensions inherent to any game. fundamental to games and we accept failure as coded as queer, all games become queer, in a nonrepresentational sense. players willingly blow themselves to pieces. the To extent that no game can exist without failure, no game can exist without queerness. homophobic voices In who response,would silencethen, to queer the thinking as marginal, this conjec and more fantastically. New games to fail at mean more elaborate deaths, deaths rendered more and more impressive by be of ways to self-destruct. Perfecting the art of failure, an arttion, abjection,de and artlessness, puts us back in the realm of paradox. What we’ve learned, therefore, is to embrace the paradox, to explore nonnormativealternate desires as theylongings speak to us from withinand our play. itself reveals a contradiction within the queer art of failing at video games. When throwwe ourselves inthe theforhundredth mud time, be it do we the conference on diversity and inclusivity in games, in April in August of California at Berkeley hosted the Queerness and Gamestogether Conference scholars and gamein developers.October -scene. videogames industry, in March

Bonnie Ruberg 210 12-Ch11_FN.indd 210 Playing to Lose 211 29/03/17 4:07 PM

. , ; 2 4 ), ), ), ), 2013 , 4 2011 2000 er removed (Cambridge, f p://www.her , May t /homophobia-at , h ). (Cambridge, MA: 27 / ). 10 2007 / YouTube 2014 , 1967 17 !” (New York: Peter Lang, 2011 2013 ). (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, (NewYork:Routledge, 2015 , October (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at . (New York: Bantam, . Heroine Sheik (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 145 – 187 eld. See . . , 1 f ipiwE. 6 144 88 ), ), , , 89 131 Gaming Fail Compilation , , 2009 e Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century T . eory and the Death Drive p://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/ Village Voice t 52 T , , h 48 ultimate (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, , e Queer Art of Failure . /portal-is-for-lesbians/. , directed by Philip Jones (MidBoss, 2 31 2011 17 T , , xi. , , / FlamingClassics: Queering the Film Canon Beyond the Pleasure Principle 27 Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames 10 Die Tryin’: Video Games, Masculinity, and Culture ). e Arte of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games / Queer Art of Failure Queer Art of Failure . Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds . T 5 22 2005 , . 2007 . ), ), 5 15 No Future: Queer – , . 4 9 7 100 , October Art of Failure Art of Failure Art of Failure 2013 Gaming in Color is comment, along with other overtly hateful remarks, were shortly therea ; Kathryn Bond Stockton, . 4 Bonnie Ruberg, “‘Portal’ Is for Lesbians,” T Adrienne Shaw’s work epitomizes this AlexanderDoty, Ibid. Jack Halberstam, See Many articles, both inside and outside the gaming community, have addressed this issue. Jesper Juul, Sigmund Freud, Juul, Ibid., JesperJuul, Ibid., Ibid., Halberstam, Juul, Derek Burrill, Mia Consalvo, Ibid., LOL Cod Comedy, “ Juul, Halberstam, 2 Forbes

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oine-sheik.com/ from the post at the request of the the Margins of Gamer Culture Lee Edelman, 2004 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, For a representative piece, see Gay?” Erik Kain, “Homophobia at BlizzCon:-blizzcon-is-gamer-culture-anti-gay/. Is Gamer Culture Anti-

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