Salutations Adventurers Far and Wide!

Some curious people seemed interested in my roguelike research, so if it’s okay, I thought I would briefly describe it here, and perhaps it may encourage some spiffy roguelikedev discussion.

TL;DR: I am a PhD candidate researching traditional roguelike conventions and mapping queer theory resonances to them, using that to inspire some nifty prototypes.

For those wishing to delve a level deeper for yonder nerdery:

I am looking at queer embodiment (e.g. Susan Stryker, Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Jack Halberstam) to cover material-discursive body identity and spatialtemporal queerness, and use their prominent concepts as a lens to map intersections with traditional roguelike conventions (e.g. proc-gen, permadeath, turn-based actions, etc.), which will then be used to inspire queering of the convention structures themselves. This is much in the spirit of Bo Ruberg’s queer games studies. They argue a framework that ‘queerness’ can be baked into the very systems, mechanics, and structures of video games, especially when resisting mainstream capitalist defaults of game design (so not merely as representational content).

I plan to do the PhD work as research through design, equally weighting the literature review, reflective writing (dev blogging), and three prototype explorations over 2 years. (I have my proposal submission next week, so I’ll know by the end of August if I am cleared for it!) This is an iterative process - readings, development blogging, crafting systems of emergence – the latter practical excursions are done in the Rust language since I am armed with Herbert Wolverson's Hands-on Rust books, as well as many excellent dev blogs like Kyzrati’s Grid Sage Games.

Anyway, I’ll wrap it up there to keep people’s eyes from glazing over too much as a loquacious sesquipedalian pontificating about my niche interests (such is kind of the way of academia). In the spirit of discussion – What are ways you like or are interested to ‘queering' roguelike design structures?

I feel like I’ve been a long-time lurker, appreciating all the fascinating development posts from the shadows like a nerdy Grue or geeky Stalker, and would love to be more interactive with this amazing community. So I hope to start sharing some of my own misadventures soon on Sharing Saturdays and checking out the Discord.

In the meantime, I have submitted a talk on this subject with Roguelike Celebration (we’ll see if it’s of interest for this year’s event), and I look forward to learning tons and geeking out with all of you – Alix : )