Chang Authors Two Essays: ‘Queergaming’ and ‘A Game Chooses, A Player Obeys’

Dr. Edmond Y. Chang

Dr. Edmond Y. Chang, Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University, published essays in two recent books.

An essay on “A Game Chooses, A Player Obeys: BioShock, Posthumanism, and the Limits of Queerness” was published in Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games. 

Published by Indiana University Press in July 2017, Gaming Representation is edited by Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M. Russworm. The book is available for pre-order.

About the book: “Recent years have seen an increase in public attention to identity and representation in video games, including journalists and bloggers holding the digital game industry accountable for the discrimination routinely endured by female gamers, queer gamers, and gamers of color. Video game developers are responding to these critiques, but scholarly discussion of representation in games has lagged far behind. Gaming Representation examines portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of games, from casuals like Diner Dash, to indies like Journey and The Binding of Isaac, to mainstream games from the Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, Spec Ops, The Last of Us, and Max Payne franchises. Arguing that representation and identity function as systems in games that share a stronger connection to code and platforms than it may first appear, the contributors to this volume push gaming scholarship to new levels of inquiry, theorizing, and imagination.”

The essay “Queergaming” appears in Queer Game Studies, edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw. University of Minnesota Press released the book in March 2017.

About the book: A landmark anthology opens video game studies to queer culture. The in-depth, diverse, and accessible essays in Queer Game Studies use queerness to challenge the ideas that have dominated gaming discussions. This volume reveals the capacious albeit underappreciated communities that are making, playing, and studying queer games, demonstrating the centrality of LGBTQ issues to the gamer world and establishing an alternative lens for examining this increasingly important culture.