Is Untitled Goose Game Queer?

by Colleen MacklinSeptember 8, 2020

Hosted by

Colleen Macklin

Colleen Macklin is a game designer and Associate Professor in the school of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design. In 2006 she founded and co-directs PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab), a lab that develops games for experimental learning and social engagement. She is a member of the game design collective Local No. 12, makers of the card game The Metagame (2015), and the videogame, Dear Reader (2019). She co-authored with John Sharp Games, Design and Play: A detailed look at iterative game design (2016) and Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure (2019)

We play Untitled Goose Game, a game where you play… a goose! But the question I have is for my special guests, media theorist Bonnie Ruberg and historian Laine Nooney is, is Untitled Goose Game Queer? Listen to find out! (filmed and recorded October 2019)

Listen to the full episode:

Additional Content

Unedited footage from our Untitled Goose Game play session:

Special Follow up interview with Bonnie Ruberg

A few months after recording this episode, Bonnie and I had a chance to catch up and discuss new thoughts in queerness and games, as well as the role of videogames in a post-pandemic era.

Guests

Bonnie Ruberg

Bonnie (Bo) Ruberg , Ph.D. is an assistant professor of digital games and interactive media in the Department of Informaticsat the University of California, Irvine. They are also core faculty in the UC IrvineProgram in Visual Studies. Bo’s research explores sexuality and gender in digital media and digital cultures, with a focus on LGBTQ issues and video games. They are the author of The Queer Games Avant-Garde,Video Games Have Always Been Queer, the co-editor of Queer Game Studies, and the co-founder and co-organizer of the annual Queerness and Games Conference.

Laine Nooney

Laine Nooney is an Assistant Professor of Media Industries at New York University, specializing in historical, cultural, and economic analysis of the video game and computer industries. Her research has been featured in popular venues such as The Atlantic, Flash Forward Podcast, The Internet History Podcast, and NPR, as well as academic journals such as Game Studies, The American Journal of Play, and Journal of Visual Culture .

Show Notes

Untitled Goose Game is by House House Games

Colleen Macklin is the host of Fun Games with Serious People
Colin Howarth is our Editor and Producer
Yiqin Ma, is our Videographer
Our theme is “Rainbow” by Chad Crouch

Fun Games with Serious People is made possible through a grant from The New Schooland Parsons School of Design.

Thanks for listening!

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