Alternative bodies and localities: Queering Constructed Time and Space in Role-Playing Games

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Roleplaying games (RPGs) are misunderstood through their reductive association with violence (Laycock, 2015). RPGs can also act as spaces of alternative identity creation for players. In response to the exponential growth of RPGs and longstanding academic neglect (Clarke and Mitchel, 2007), I will conduct research into the queer potential of RPGs, looking at how they create alternative cultures of time and space for players. RPGs often omit paradigmatic life markers of heteronormative, capitalist reproduction and instead create life outside of these boundaries. Through critical engagement with scholarship in queer and ludology studies and ethnographic, interview and game research, I will explore the research question: how do identities, temporalities and spaces in game worlds enact queerness through play? Role-playing is elastic; it facilitates an expansion beyond the Self into the realm of the Other. Individuals who participate in RPGs open themselves to experimentation. RPGs involve self and social constructions: a character, a group, or a world. This project will analyse RPGs in relation to queer theory and will be structured according to themes that build on scholars of queer time and space (Halberstam, 2005; Edelman 2004). I will look at how individuals play 'transgressively,' modifying game rules to create alternative avenues to the predesigned 'straight' path. This stresses transformative possibilities for identity and space as it dislodge players from the normative structures set by design. The projectintersects queer studies and ludology, a juncture which has been recently approached by scholars (Harper et al. 2018; Ruberg 2019A;2019B; Ruberg 2018), but not fully explored. There is little scholarship focusing on how RPGs, provide the possibility of queerness. The field of queer ludology is 'young' (Harper et al. 2018) and typically focuses upon how queer characters are represented (Cole, et al. 2017). My project focuses on how queerness is played.Through ethnographic research I will observe creation of imagined spaces and how through interviews individuals articulate this creation. During game analysis I will look at the play setting and game rulebooks/paratexts that structure RPGs. These methods will supplement each other as they tackle RPG engagement on different levels: agentic construction (ethnography and interviews) and wider cultural construction (game analysis). I will draw from Taylor (2006: 153) who calls for a 'nondichtomous model' that does not see virtual and material worlds as different to explore how constructed subjectivities in RPGs become resources to perform in spaces outside of play.My research will articulate player perspectives that are often missed in the heteronormative landscape of game studies. The project will include engagement with the British Games Institute (BGI). This will take the form of a public workshop at the National Videogame Museum (NVM) exploring RPG histories and playing subjectivities. This workshop will allow participants to engage with alternative histories of gameplay and players to challenge the dominant perceptions of RPGs. My research will span 3.5 years, with the initial focus on secondary literature in months 1-6, followed by primary research in months 6-18, and writing and follow up research in months 19-30.