CFP: Queer Analog Game Studies

Special Issue Editor: Edmond Y. Chang, Ohio University, change(at)ohio(dot)edu

Analog games are here…but are they queer?  What’s queer about analog games?  What does it mean to queer tabletop, board games, or LARP?  How might analog games be queered?  In the introduction to Queer Game Studies (2017), editors Bo Ruberg and Andrienne Shaw asks readers, scholars, teachers, designers, artists, and gamers to imagine and explore new and alternative ways to play, make, and study video games as “systems of pleasure, power, and possibility, excavating the queer potential that can be found in all games” beyond close readings of LGBTQ+ narratives and representations or the lack thereof.  Inspired and informed by the volume and the growing field of “queer game studies,” this special issue of Analog Game Studies (AGS) seeks to assemble definitions, provocations, articulations of and experimentations with queer/queerer/queering analog games and queer/queerer/queering analog game studies.  Possible topics and lines of inquiry include:

  • What is queer analog game studies? What does it mean to define the field of queer analog game studies?
  • What makes analog games queer? How might analog games be queered?  Are analog games better/differently suited to queerness?
  • Analog games and queer mechanics, queer design, queer gaming, queer play.
  • Analog games and queer embodiment, affect, bleed, performance, pedagogy, space, time, failure, or futurity.
  • Analog games, queerness, and intersectionality, anti-racism, anti-fascism, Indigeneity, post/decoloniality, ludic justice.

While the LGBTQ+ umbrella is colorful and broad, submissions must engage “queer analog game studies” in a substantive way beyond just an analysis of queer representation, characters, stories, plots, and romances.  Please read AGS’s mission and editorial statement and submission guidelines.  Take a look at some of the previous essays on gender, sexuality, and queerness published by AGS.  Please submit the following to the special issue editor at change(at)ohio(dot)edu with “Queer AGS Special Issue” in the subject line.  Include the following:

  • Article Title (shorter is better)
  • Article Abstract (300 words or less)
  • 5-7 Keywords (e.g. genre, TTRPG, agency, mechanics, LARP, actual play, education)
  • Author’s Name
  • Author’s Affiliation (if available)
  • Author’s Email
  • Author’s Bio (150 words or less)
  • Completed essays should be 4000 to 6000 words (including references, slightly shorter than the usual AGS submission)
  • Use Chicago style footnotes for references and content notes

Questions and inquiries should be made to the special issue editor.

Full Essays due by:              April 7, 2025

Publication (tentative):        June 2025

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