Queerer Than Ever: Centering and Celebrating Queer Indie Game Design with Xavier Ho

“Is my game too queer for the audience?” You might ask yourself five or ten years ago, and you might continue asking yourself that question as a queer game designer.

In this talk, the Xavier Ho will draw from 20 interviews with queer game designers featured at Pride at Play, a curated queer games exhibition with a focus on Oceania and the Asia-Pacific. The exhibit showcases queer games from all around the region along with conversational interviews that background each game. For this exhibit, Ho explored the participating artists backgrounds, motivations, goals, inspirations, communities—what it meant to them to ‘play with pride’—and who their audiences are. He will present an overview of what they found through these quiet conversations and provide insight into the state of queer games in Oceania and the Asia Pacific.