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Alienated Serendipity and Reﬂective Failure: Exploring Queer

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Alienated Serendipity and Reflective Failure
Exploring Queer Game Mechanics and Queerness in Games via Queer Temporality
MATTHEW HANTSBARGER∗ , Northeastern University, Art + Design, USA

GIOVANNI MARIA TROIANO∗ , Northeastern University, Art + Design, USA
ALEXANDRA TO, Northeastern University, Khoury College of Computer Sciences, USA
CASPER HARTEVELD, Northeastern University, Art + Design, USA
Queerness can help redefine interactive technologies and re-conceptualize their design beyond cis-
heteronormativity. Recently, games have emerged as promising avenues for exploring queerness. In this
research-through-design (RtD) effort, we advance queer explorations in games by leveraging queer tempo-
rality to evoke and explore feelings of alienation and isolation in a horror game called You’re Going To Be
Late. We further engage with queer individuals who playtest our game and participate in focus groups to
discuss how queer they felt our game was and what they regard as queer game mechanics. Participants had
varying experiences while playing our game, ranging from serendipity and wonder to alienation and confusion.
The focus groups described queer game mechanics as queer modes of play and often tapped into gender
representation. Finally, we show how including and amplifying queer voices in discursive efforts around
interactive technology design has implications for transformative and critical reflections that can broadly
benefit game design and HCI research.
CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → User studies; Field studies; Interaction design theory,
concepts and paradigms.
Additional Key Words and Phrases: Queerness, queer games, queer temporality, game design, player experience,
research-through-design, focus group
ACM Reference Format:
Matthew Hantsbarger, Giovanni Maria Troiano, Alexandra To, and Casper Harteveld. 2022. Alienated
Serendipity and Reflective Failure: Exploring Queer Game Mechanics and Queerness in Games via Queer
Temporality. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CHI PLAY, Article 221 (October 2022), 27 pages. https:
//doi.org/10.1145/3549484 221
1 INTRODUCTION
Queerness, queer theory, and queer studies have first emerged in academia in the 1990s and have
since proliferated, particularly within the social sciences [70] and in research around gender identity
and sexuality [39]. Hence, the notion of queerness had been primarily and inextricably developed
in relation to gender and sexual expressions that challenge heteronormativity and the status quo
[39]. While many researchers have attempted to formally define a notion of queerness, the term
∗ Both authors contributed equally to this research and the manuscript.
Authors’ addresses: Matthew Hantsbarger, hantsbarger.m@northeastern.edu, Northeastern University, Art + Design, Boston,
Massachusetts, USA, 02115; Giovanni Maria Troiano, g.troiano@northeastern.edu, Northeastern University, Art + Design,
Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 02115; Alexandra To, a.to@northeastern.edu, Northeastern University, Khoury College of
Computer Sciences, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 02115; Casper Harteveld, c.harteveld@northeastern.edu, Northeastern
University, Art + Design, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 02115.
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3549484
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 6, No. CHI PLAY, Article 221. Publication date: October 2022.
221:2 Matthew Hantsbarger et al.
is not broadly agreed upon and its meaning is still debated to date. In fact, Jagose [39] cautioned
against attempting to formally define queer or queerness, as “part of queer’s semantic clout, part of
its political efficacy, depends on its resistance to definition, and the way in which it refuses to stake its
claim” (p. 1). Within the scope of human-computer interaction (HCI), a research field called Queer
HCI [19] is interested in the interplay between queerness and technology and its promise to push
technology design beyond cis-heteronormativity. In that respect, DeVito et al. [19] broadly defined
Queer HCI as “research in HCI by, for, or substantially shaped by the queer community itself and/or
queering methods and theory, regardless of application subdomain.” As our work is contributing to
HCI research, particularly games, we refer to queerness by following the definition of DeVito et al.
Recently, queer theory has extended its scope beyond the representation of gender and sexuality,
to help re-conceptualize the design of interactive technologies, and from a non-cis-heteronormative
angle (e.g., exploring technology as a site for queer freedom [7], centering transgender and non-
binary people towards inclusive technology design [31], etc.). In particular, games have undergone
a near decade-long renaissance with games that are made “by, about, and often for LGBTQ people”
[75] leading a wave of games that challenge cis-heteronormativity, enact resistance, and explore
alternative ways of being (e.g., [64, 65, 74]). Ruberg refers to this movement as the queer games avant-
garde [75]. Because games appeal to wide audiences and have a long tradition of experimenting with
“unconventional” content [91], they represent a favorable avenue to explore queerness and further
understand how this notion can be translated into the design of interactive experiences. When
examining and deploying queerness in games, both academic and non-academic perspectives have
focused on diversity in representation (e.g., LGBTQ+ characters [13, 43, 46]) as well as queer gaming
practices (e.g., how queer gamers reclaim heteronormative game spaces [69, 84] or how “gaymers”
of color engage in identity development and community-building [29, 30]). Queer game studies
further caution against simplifying the notion of queerness in games—there are opportunities in
unfolding the full potential of designing novel, non-normative gaming experiences [74]. In that
respect, Macklin [48] proposes that queerness in games may be deployed also through narrative
structures [12], temporal structures [47], and game mechanics [72, 86].
In this paper, we extend the body of work that explores the notion of queerness in games beyond
representation. Particularly, using a research-through-design (RtD) approach [93], we inquire how
queer temporality [41, 47] can be translated into a game mechanic [83] to evoke and explore
alienation and isolation as horror tropes in queer games and player experience. In contrast to
chrononormativity, the ways in which time is bound to human bodies towards biological and political
productivity [25], the concept of queer temporality describes how certain temporal experiences
defy those notions, often focused on how the experiences of queer individuals exist in contrast
to socially-constructed norms regarding reproduction and life [35]. Queer temporality, with its
emphasis on non-normative experiences of time, has been among the foci of previous research
around queerness in games [8, 20, 46, 47, 66, 73]. As the game mechanics of our game embody
and deploy queerness via queer temporality, we align with JK Needham [54] and refer to those as
queer game mechanics. We leverage queer temporality to design queer game mechanics in You’re
Going To Be Late, a queer “horror” game that we designed using the online game design platform
Twine1 . You’re Going To Be Late is a text adventure game in which the player navigates a house
each morning day after day, given the goal of getting to school on time. The game uses a clock
and stated goal as constructions of chrononormativity, and creates obstacles towards achieving
those expectations by placing the player’s character outside the “regular rooms” of the house and
gradually closing off paths to get back to those rooms and get to school on time. After enough
days, the player’s character becomes trapped, but the player is then able to discover and talk to
1 https://twinery.org/
Alienated Serendipity and Reflective Failure 221:3
characters that help the player to escape, not back to the established temporal cycle, but in an
ambiguous escape from the house and from the goal of being “on time.” In our game, we deploy
queer temporality similar to Anna Anthropy’s Queers in Love At The End of The World [3], i.e. we
establish time constraints (represented in-game by a running clock) that constantly “wrestle” with
the player and disrupt their attempts to progress through the game narrative. However, differently
from [3], we use queer temporality in our game to enhance a sense of alienation and isolation in the
player, and in so doing have them experience daily routine tasks (e.g., get up in the morning and
get to school in time) but from the angle of people living at the margins, who may find it hard to
conform to social norms, among which chrononormativity. To explore the various implications of
our game design, we presented You’re Going To Be Late to five queer individuals and discussed with
them what (potentially) constitutes queer game mechanics in our game and games more broadly.
The scope and motivation of our research are twofold: (1) exploring how principles of queerness
(e.g., subversion, vulnerability, non-normativity) and queer temporality [41, 47, 53] can be used
to shape the game mechanics of horror games, and (2) inquiring queer individuals about their
understanding of and perspective on the meaning of the terms queerness and queer mechanics,
particularly within the context of gaming. Hence, our work contributes the following to research
on queer games and HCI: (1) an account of how queer temporality can be translated into a queer
game mechanic to evoke a sense of alienation, isolation, and horror in player experience, and (2)
a qualitative report describing how queer individuals (engaged with gaming and game design)
rationalize and describe both queerness in games and help define a notion of queer game mechanics.
Above all, this work provides an example of translating queer experiences into (theory-driven) game
mechanics, for game designers (regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation) who want
to engage with queerness in games or make queer games. Queer games that embody, or spotlight
their designers’ personal experiences and stories, are incredibly powerful. However, requiring
that queer games be only made through personal disclosure often forces queer designers into
vulnerable positions [49] and may inadvertently reduce queer design to a “niche” in HCI research.
We show, instead, that queerness has a lot (more) to offer to game design and HCI research, and
show the importance of engaging queer folks (beyond developers and designers) more consistently
in discursive and practical efforts to design games and interactive technologies.
2 WHAT AND WHERE IS QUEERNESS IN GAMES?

In a 2005 lecture, game designer and play expert Bernie DeKoven coined the term Hegemony of Play,
which was later adopted by Fron et al. [26] to describe how the games industry has constructed a
normative (often, heteronormative) idea of games. Such a normative idea, DeKoven says, prioritizes
perspectives and attitudes about games that are inherently heteronormative (e.g., hypermasculinity
and hypersexualization of game characters [69]). This normative/cis-heteronormative approach
to constructing and designing interactive technologies, which is often not limited to game design
(see [88, 92]), has for many years defined trends of how games should be designed, critiqued, and
played [74]. According to Salter et al. [79], this trend enforced by the hegemony of play is so
predominant that “meaningful queergaming is impossible within the current norms and genres of
so-called AAA, or mainstream. It thus requires space and platforms dedicated to transgressive game
design” ([79], p. 1). Furthermore, this trend continues to impact discussions around queerness in
games to date, where the mainstream game industry sees queerness in games merely (and often)
from a perspective of “utility”, with queer games being expected to include “tantalizing sexual
content or provide opportunities for straight players to empathize with queer people” ([75], p. 83).
However, research that explores queerness in games from a non-mainstream angle (see [74, 75,
77]) is concerned with broadening its scope beyond a “reductio ad sexum.” As part of this broadening
process, researchers have questioned, for instance, whether or not it is enough for a game to be
defined queer if (1) a game’s creator is queer and the game speaks to part of their personal queer
experience, or if (2) any game that explores non-normative mechanics, narrative, or experience can
be deemed as queer. While researchers continue to interrogate these ideas, the existing literature
around queerness in games (e.g., [48, 74–76]) shows how this novel form of thinking about games
and game design represents a promising avenue, through which designers can challenge the above
mentioned hegemony of play and status quo in games [81]. To name a few, Quing’s Quest VII 2
by D. Squinkifer, Conversations With My Mother by Merrit Kopas, With Those We Love Alive3 by
Portpentine, and Queers in Love at the End of the World 4 by Anna Anthropy, are all examples of
how queerness in games can deconstruct such hegemony of play and provide players with novel
narrative and play experiences [8]. In contrast with mainstream games, the aforementioned games
are usually characterized by the consistent presence of queer and LGBTQ+ characters, non-linear
timeline structures, and unconventional narrative schemes. In the broader scope of queer research,
which includes queer literature [10], queer cinema [6, 44], and queer sociology [52, 90], an emphasis
on the representation of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations is foundational in studies
that wish to apply and/or extend queer theory [39], hence making representation often prominent
in queer studies around games too [8, 11, 45]. However, queer studies on and queerness in games
are also not necessarily limited to representation, as noted by JK Needham in the following quote:
Coming from a generation that uses “queer” as an identity, I lean towards the reclamation
of queer as an identifier that opens space for queer identities beyond “gay” or “lesbian.”
I use the word queer both to describe the more fluid queerness inherent in some game
mechanics or forms of media, but I will also use queer as an umbrella term for LGBT folks
of many sorts ([54], p. 11).
In an attempt to systematically inquire where can queerness in games be found or identified,
Colleen Macklin asked the following questions: “Do we find it when we play as queer-identified
players and/or form player communities? Or is a game queer when the designer crafts the game with
queer intentions? Where is the queerness in games?” ([48], p. 249). In this regard, Naomi Clark ([13], p.
3) clarified the dilemma brought up by Macklin, by making a distinction between two independent
goals in queer studies that wish to identify and/or deploy queerness in games:
(1) Studies focusing on “diversifying the content and representation of marginalized identities in
the industry”
(2) Studies that “investigate how to queer the structure of games”
Here, we align with the second scope aforementioned to focus on how queerness can be deployed
in games through queer game mechanics. We do so because we are interested in broadening both
the ludic and narrative potential of this interactive medium [13, 54], by means of queering it,
and exploring how this “alternative” angle to game design can help conceive ideas that push the
boundaries of gaming beyond the normative mainstream gaming landscape [75].
2.1 Queering Game Structures, Mechanics, and Play

The notions of queer structures and queerness in games have been discussed and conjectured to
address the following open questions: (1) what do queer games do? [48] and (2) what does it mean
to “play queer?” [23]. In that respect, JK Needham proposed to differentiate between queer narrative
and queer mechanics in game research, with the former inquiring about and exploring how to queer
narrative structures and timelines in games, while the latter is concerned with identifying those
ludic qualities that provide “alternative pleasures that exist outside normative structures of design”
2 https://games.squinky.me/quing/
3 http://slimedaughter.com/games/twine/wtwla/
4 https://w.itch.io/end-of-the-world
([54], p. 47). In recent years, many researchers have attempted to answer the above questions by
exploring both queer narrative and mechanics in games. Maureen Engel explored (and deployed)
the notion of queer game mechanics in a game called Go Queer [23]. In this game, she explored
these mechanics as the interconnection between place (mostly generated by the content of the
game) and presence (mostly generated by the mechanics of the game), to generate counter memories
that make “both the meanings and the contradictions of the past available in the present” ([23], p. 354)
for players to experience. When attempting to answer the question “what does a queer game do?”,
Colleen Macklin presented the case of Anna Antrophy’s dys4ria5 , remarking how queerness in this
game can be found beyond Anna’s gender-transition story and in the very game mechanics that
characterize the gameplay, which aim to subvert “our expectations of control and agency as players,
which is the seamless interactive foundation of most games” ([48], p. 252).
According to Shira Chess, to unfold the potential of queerness in games designers must “engage
with their narrative possibilities” ([12], p. 90). To corroborate her argument, she explained how the
browser-based game Lim6 subverts the usual mechanics of a maze game, by embedding the narrative
of “passing” (i.e., getting past enemies, find the exit to escape a maze) in the very game mechanics
and ways unexpected to players. This “subversion” in Lim is deployed through game mechanics
that force players to blend in with their enemies to get past them, dynamically stretch/compress
time in a non-linear fashion (i.e., time passes slower-faster, runs forwards-backward, based on
player’s decisions and actions), or enhance a sense of vulnerability and powerlessness by depriving
them of any defense mean (e.g., weapons, agile movements). Another example of a game often
deemed as queer is Gone Home, a game where the protagonist (a young girl) returns home to find
an empty house and has to investigate what happened to her family. The game utilizes both queer
representation within the story, which centers on the gay awakening of the main character’s sister,
as well as an alternative (read as queer) game design style that eschews death as a “fail-state” and
encourages explorations of unconventional narratives [62]. However, both Pavlounis [62] and
Ruberg [76] argued that the game is not as queer as it might first appear, considering both its
designers’ goal to appeal primarily to entrenched gamers and its underlying sequential rhythm,
which is ultimately characterized by linearity in both time and narrative.
Researchers have also inquired queer game mechanics by exploring “queer modes of play,” as
well as questioning what constitutes (or defines) “queerness in play.” In that respect, Edmond Chang
argued that queer modes of play are found in those games that “challenge the limited binary of good
and bad endings...play against the grain...end in critique rather than recuperation” ([11], p. 241); this
bears striking similarities with the experimental cinematography of David Lynch, whose work
has been described, from a queer perspective, as “non / anti / contra-straight gravitation toward
narrative circularity and irresolution” ([44], p. 118). In short, the qualities that have been often
associated with queerness in games, or that are thought to characterize queer game mechanics,
include failure, idle time, dis-empowerment, submission, vulnerability, non-closure, and subversion
of the so-called chrononormativity [23, 33, 47, 63, 74, 82]. Among the above mentioned, the notion
of time passing “differently,” non-linearly, and, in short, without abiding by the chrononormativity
of straight narratives/procedures [42], seems to be a favorable concept for deploying queerness in
games and translating queer experiences into game mechanics.
2.2 Queer Temporality in Games and Play

Queer temporality is a notion that describes the different ways in which queer and LGBTQ+ people
experience time. This notion was originally brought up by Jack Halberstam in 2005 [35] and
5 http://www.digiart21.org/art/dys4ia
6 http://legacy.gamesforchange.org/play/lim/
expresses an idea of time that is in contrast with a binary, linear, and straight idea and experience of
time (often referred to as chrononormativity [25, 71]). In short, the notion of queer temporality exists
outside of (and in contrast with) the “assumed” markers of heterosexual-straight life timeline, often
characterized by the biological urge of reproducing, as well as the socially-constructed notions of
marriage, finding stable jobs, and establishing the traditional values of family. To clearly exemplify
a notion of queer temporality, Melody H Cooper [15] used a metaphor based on how vampires
“live” and exist in horror movies:
“Vampires are mythical creatures. We know that they cannot exist; however, their existence
in film allows for a subversion of the normative temporality that most people are used
to. It is through horror film that queer time is represented as the original time, where
heteronormative society can attempt to but not permanently abject it” (p. 15-16)
As said in Section 2.1, queer temporality is being explored in the context of games (e.g., [8, 20,
46, 47, 66, 73]) and shows promise for queering game structures and mechanics. Ruberg discussed
how allowing players to continue playing a game “after death,” or to exist in a space where death
is impossible, can be a way of experimenting with queer temporality in games [73]. However,
it should be noted that using time in games “differently” than in real-life does not constitute in
and of itself a deployment of queer temporality. Even if the timeline of a game is shuffled in a
non-linear fashion, and players can operate outside the conventions of linear narratives, gaming is
still performed in real-time and its experience is bound up in a larger scheme of satisfaction and
play. Therefore, queering time in games is more than simply rejecting or subverting a “typical” (or
chrononormative) flow of time. Rather, to deploy queer temporality one must critically engage
as a game designer with what values are expressed in games through temporality, and how one
can leverage (or manipulate) those values to achieve non-normative and alternative expressions
of time in play [73]. For instance, Matt Knutson attempted to exemplify the various extents of
queer temporality in games by examining the case of Life is Strange7 [42]. Knutson argued that
Life is Strange deploys queer content through temporality with its game mechanics, for instance, by
allowing players to reverse time for “correcting” their failures but only after these failures have
been performed and experienced. Here, the non-linearity of time is bound-up with an idea of queer
failure [33], where the time-travel mechanic of the game plays a key role in its larger narrative
thread, and engages players with an experience of failure that “grows past it in some ways and
accepts it in others- sometimes fatalistically” [42].
In Queers in Love at the End of the World [47], the game mechanics are characterized and ruled by
queer temporality, where, the game only lasts for ten seconds before ending with a screen displaying
the message “everything is wiped away.” Here, the mechanics of ending the game “prematurely,” as
well as conveying destructive implications to players in the end screen text, completely subverts
what players would “normally” expect to experience in a game, namely (1) a timeline that stretches
out longer than just ten seconds and (2) the possibility to control and/or affect through the gameplay
how the story ends. In that respect, the game also refers to the idea of acting “here and now” against
a swift and dramatic end, with the game mechanically supporting this focus on the brevity (and
futility) of the present moment by encouraging repeated plays. In essence, the game is falsely
promising temporal satisfaction to players by luring them into an infinite loop of brief moments
that create the illusion of an endless timeline. Furthermore, this repeating loop does not allow
players to achieve a better ending but only lets them revisit the same time over and over again to
create a feeling of “optimistic failure”, thus engaging players in attaining a cathartic experience in a
brief window of time [47]. Like in the above examples, we also leverage queer temporality to deploy
and create queer game mechanics. Here, however, we explore how a queer temporality experience
7 https://lifeisstrange.square-enix-games.com/en-us/
can elicit an experience of alienation and isolation, and how these in turn can engage players in
a horror-like game experience that symbolically represents the struggle of marginalized people
to accept (and adapt to) social norms and expectations. For this, we design a queer-horror game
called You’re Going To Be Late, where the protagonist is expected to make it to school on time, but
struggles to fulfill such expectations because experiencing time in a non-chrononormative way.
3 DESIGNING YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE

When opening the second chapter of their book The Queer Games Avant-Garde [75], Bo Ruberg de-
scribed modes of designing queer games that do not have the representation of LGBTQ+ characters
as a central element:
“...these game makers rarely include representations of queer people in their work. In fact,
many of their games do not depict people at all. Instead, in modes reminiscent of the
conceptual queerness found in queer theory, the engagement of these game makers with
queerness manifests in how they create their work and the unexpected places it leads them”
([75], p. 61)
In line with the above reflection, we designed a queer game called You’re Going To Be Late to
explore queerness in games beyond the representation of gender and sexual expressions. Specifically,
we are interested in further unfolding (1) how to engage players with a queer narrative (here horror)
via queer temporality, and (2) how the notion of queer game mechanics is understood and reasoned
about by queer individuals. We do this by combining a queer game design exploration and a
qualitative inquiry based on focus groups [61] in a research-through-design (RtD) study [93]. In
this section, we describe our game and its game design in detail.
3.1 Designing a Queer Game with Twine

We created our game using the online game design platform Twine, which has been previously
used by trans-feminine and non-binary game developers for designing queer games (e.g., [36]) and
is considered favorable for exploring queer themes, structures, and game mechanics in games [8].
We used the most recent executable version at the time (i.e., version 2.3.9). The other explicit effort,
as part of our RtD approach, was to consider how queer temporality could be included in our game
design and leveraged to enhance a sense of horror in the gameplay as a result of players feeling
alienation and isolation while playing the game. To do so, we made sure to embed the passing of
time in our game as an element that both (1) constantly disrupts players’ attempts to progress
through the game narrative (alienation) and (2) forces players to rapidly find a “way out” of an
apartment in which they are increasingly confined (isolation).
The whole design and coding process took approximately four months and was developed by
one of the authors, while the other authors provided feedback as the game design progressed.
The motivation for this project was to find ways to bridge developer-directed and player-directed
approaches to discovering or injecting queerness in games. Both perspectives often focus on
personal experiences, but there is still room for exploring how to deliberately create queer game
mechanics and experiences that bridge these perspectives. Our approach was to create a game with
queer themes and queer game mechanics and to examine how such a game connected with queer
players’ understanding of queerness in games. Next, we describe our initial game design ideas and
conceptualization in further detail.
3.2 Game Conceptualization

We started developing ideas for our game mainly by writing out the game plot and narrative
structure in short paragraphs. As we planned to design an interactive text-based narrative game,
Fig. 1. The layout of the game "You’re Going to be Late" in Twine. Each passage/page is shown as a white
"box" containing text representing the content of the passage. Between the boxes, the curved line with arrows
shows how the various passages are connected to each other. The boxes that contain the programming for
events and choices happening in the various rooms of the house are in the top part of the layout, while the
boxes containing the programming of NPCs dialogues and respective user interactions are at the bottom.
we did not create any visual artwork for our game and fully concentrated on conveying all game
aesthetics (e.g., the game environment and in-game characters) by means of textual descriptions.
Initially, we wanted to design the game around the story of a child escaping their (fictional) house
and family members, where the child would slowly morph into a Kafka-esque bug [40] as the game
story progressed. However, we discarded this initial idea as this would have put too much emphasis
on the idea of “physical” transformation, while our main aim was to emphasize both space and
temporal transformations. Furthermore, after a discussion between researchers, we refrained from
using a Kafkian metaphor four our game narrative, as this would have deployed queerness mainly
through the perspective of “pain,” thus risk (1) jeopardizing our primary focus on queer temporality
and (2) providing a potentially negative metaphor for physical transformation-transition. The initial
game design idea and group discussions took approximately four weeks.
6:08 You wake up in the morning in claustrophobic darkness. You sit up from the wooden floor, shoulders
scraping against the walls to either side of you, and immediately start coughing from the kicked-up dust. You
look around and find yourself sitting on the floor of a narrow passageway. You see light peeking out from
between the slits of one wall.
Head around the corner.
6:06 You squeeze yourself sideways through the dark passageway and around a tight corner. The passageway
opens on your left into your bedroom closet.
Exit to the bedroom.
Go back to where you woke up.
6:16 You’re in your bedroom. The bed is neatly made as if you hadn’t fallen asleep in it last night.
Leave the bedroom.
6:19 You are in the second-floor hallway. To your right are three doors, leading to you and your brother’s
bedrooms, as well as your shared bathroom. Around the corner ahead of you are the stairs down to the first
floor, which you can see through the balustrade.
Head down the stairs.
Go to the bathroom.
6:34 You are on the first floor. To your right is the door to the dining room; to your left is the door to your
parents’ bedroom. Behind you is the entryway to the kitchen; morning light diffusing into the hallway. Ahead
of you are the vestibule and the front door.
Move to the front door.
Go upstairs.
6:45 You are in the vestibule. Before you is the front door, flanked on both sides by an umbrella stand and
an overflowing shoe rack. Through the frosted door, you can just make out the front steps, mailbox, and
sidewalk. Return to the main hallway.
Leave for school.
You arrived at school by 7:21
You were late for school.
The day is over.
Fig. 2. Text from the game You’re Going to be Late that illustrates one example of a play “loop.” The game’s
stated objective for the player is to navigate the house until they can reach the front door and leave for
school; all selectable choices are italicized and colored in blue. Once the player selects "The day is over." The
loop repeats. As the days repeat, certain options become closed off to the player, requiring that they find new,
longer paths to reach the front door. Because making it to school on time is so difficult, the game invites the
player to "break free" of the stress of trying to adhere to its temporal schema.
After discussing and evaluating the preliminary game ideas described above, we started inquiring
about how to articulate and design our game around the notion of queer temporality more consis-
tently. In this phase, we started looking at existing queer games and how they deployed queerness
through their game mechanics to be inspired in designing our own queer game mechanics—in
particular, we referred to the game Queers in Love at the End of the World [47] as our main source
of inspiration, as the game explicitly tackles queer temporality. Furthermore, we carefully studied
the work of Ruberg [75], Halberstam’s work on queer failure [33], and Chang’s work on queering
game narrative and structure [11], to understand how to imbue our game with a queer type of
narrative tension. This resulted in two main themes emerging in our game. First, we aimed to use
queer temporality in our game narrative to evoke and let players explore alienation—this would be
conveyed by positioning the player in a constant struggle to adapt to societal norms that play out
in mundane life scenarios, such as “having to be on time” to some physical place, as often required
by society in specific contexts (e.g., attending school). Second, we evoked and let players explore
isolation by designing the environment in which the main character navigates as claustrophobic
and labyrinthine—in so doing, we aimed at evoking a general sense of horror and horror-like
Fig. 3. A screenshot from You’re Going To Be Late showing the event that allows the player to talk with one
of the two NPCs. After feedback from playtesters, the text indicating the event was changed to have a red
color to help draw attention to it.
atmospheres through the game mechanics and narrative structure. Finally, we discussed the idea
of “subverting” horror tropes in the game narrative by having the game invite the player to reject
the idea of “returning to normal,” but rather escape their predicament by embracing alienation
and thus find comfort in non-normativity to resolve the game horror. This element was important
to communicate that the game was about queer temporality rather than about struggling against
chrononormativity. The inability of the player to meet the expectations set out by the clock and
objective is not meant to be a failure that must be overcome. Instead, the intended experience is to
embrace queer temporality to “escape” the confines of chrononormativity.
3.3 Game Narrative and Mechanics of Queer Temporality

In You’re Going To Be Late, the player acts as a child who wakes up in the morning at 6:00 AM to go
to school and becomes slowly trapped in an expanding, labyrinthine crawl space inside the walls
of their house. The objective of the game is for the player to roam through the house, find their
way to the front door, and make it to school by 7:00 AM. To do so, the player will have to play
through various levels, and for each level read a piece of white text, which describes what their
game character is doing (e.g., “You wake up in the morning”), where they are (e.g., “You sit up from
the wooden floor”), and the vibe of their surroundings (e.g., “claustrophobic darkness”); the clock
marking the passing of time is placed above the white text (Figure 3). Then, to progress from one
level to another (i.e., from one house space/area to another), the player will have to click on the
interactive blue text that is placed underneath the white text (Figure 3), which provides the player
with possible actions to move around the house, interact with objects, or engage in interactive
conversations with non-playable characters (NPCs). For each level, the player is presented with one
or multiple possible choices, depending on whether the level will impose a forced choice or not.
As the game progresses, the space inside the walls of the house grows and the options given to
the player to return to the interior of the house begin to decrease, making it increasingly difficult
to escape being trapped. Eventually, the player will be unable to leave, will be stuck in the space
inside the walls, and will have to learn how to live outside the “normal” spaces of the house (e.g.,
the bedroom, the kitchen, etc.). Thematically, the game aims to convey both (1) a sense of childhood
innocence and vulnerability [22] and (2) being “lost” and isolated, which is a metaphor for one’s
sense of separation from the society living outside. The game progresses until the child becomes
permanently stuck inside the wall ways, whereupon the player must figure out how to escape—a
metaphor for asserting one’s own conception of queer time. The continuous shifting of speed in
the clock creates a sense of pressure on the player, who will never really know when time can
speed up or slow down, and is not informed by the game as to whether or not their decisions are
affecting the passing of time. As the player progresses through the days, the increasing difficulty
of navigating to the front door, combined with a lack of reward for making it to school on time,
gradually inures the player to a sense of failure (a metaphor of “failing to adapt” to social norms).
Once the player is unable to leave the inside walls and the crawl spaces, the game will introduce
two NPCs that the player can interact with and talk to (1) a child trapped in a similar situation
in the adjacent house and (2) a mysterious person speaking with an unsettling voice from the
basement (Figure 4). Through talking with the two NPCs, the player can find a way to escape the
crawl space and make their way to freedom—this, however, will not result in the player being able
to return to the “normal” spaces of the house or being able to try again to get to school on time.
Essentially, the game was designed to engage the player with an experience that both mechanically
and metaphorically can capture and convey the feeling of queer temporality and its reclamation
through narrative structures and game mechanics (e.g., passing of time impacts freedom of action
and vice-versa, surrounding spaces collapsing into claustrophobia, NPCs emerging as metaphors of
bargaining). Furthermore, the clock exists in the game not necessarily as a challenge to overcome,
but rather as an adversarial representation of chrononormativity imposed by societal expectations
and norms, here represented through the metaphor of arriving at school on time; in this respect,
not only will the player systematically fail to meet their “timing expectations” (as the game will
systematically and consistently not allow players to make it on time to school), but also experience
a cathartic failure when failing to abide by social norms.
3.4 Designing Queer Temporality in Twine

As time (i.e., queer temporality) is essential in constructing queer game mechanics in our game, we
explain how we designed this with Twine in detail. As said earlier, the notion of queer temporality
expresses the various ways in which time can be experienced in contrast to socially-constructed
norms that impact multiple aspects of organizing an individual’s life. For instance, such a way
of experiencing time may challenge the idea that an individual’s life timeline is essentially built
around the three pillars of family, reproduction, and marriage. In our game, the experience of queer
temporality is mechanically implemented primarily through the clock and tangentially through
the game’s main narrative thread. The clock, in conjunction with the main narrative thread (i.e., a
kid whose main task is to get to school on time), provides a sort of “heteronormative scheduling”
[53], but at the same time act as agents that disrupt such scheduling by making it practically
impossible for the player to adhere to it. We implemented this mechanically in Twine by designing
the underlying structure of You’re Going To Be Late based on a series of passages (or pages), which
are defined by the Twine Cookbook as follows:
Fig. 4. A dialogue between the player and the mysterious NPC.
“Passages can be thought of as divisions of time, space, or combinations of the two. They
can also be thought of as blocks of dialogue, sections of code, or simply ways to break up a
complicated project into more easily understood parts” ([17])
We created a passage for each room and dialogue featured by the game and linked them to
allow players to navigate between each passage (i.e., each area of the house) and interact with both
objects and NPCs. We handled the coding using Harlowe 3.1.0 8 , which we used primarily to track
the in-game flow of time, the textual changes following the game narration, and the interactive
choices available to players. We articulated the passages in (1) daytime passages, where a special
header displayed the current in-game time through the clock, or (2) non-time passages, where the
in-game clock was not displayed—the start screen of the game and the concluding the day passages
were the only ones where the in-game clock did not progress. For the passages that concluded
each day, the in-game clock displayed at what time the player made it to school. The in-game
clock began each day at 6:00 AM and went up roughly one in-game minute every second. The time
was tracked between passages, only stopping once the player either left for school or returned to
their room to go back to sleep, which they could only do once the way to leave the space inside
the rooms of the house had completely closed off to them. Although initial concepts envisioned
having certain days progress at different speeds, in the final prototype the clock progresses at the
same speed throughout the game. Once the player becomes "trapped" the initial concept was that
some days would close off existing paths while other days would change the speed of the clock,
but that only one would change on any given day. However, as the game developed it became
clear that there was not enough space to explore this changing time in a way players would notice
without adding extraneous days and thus we cut it from the prototype. A nonlinear manipulation
of time has potential for future exploration, but we decided that keeping the clock unchanging and
inflexible still provided a sense of tension and antagonism for the player to experience and react to.
8 https://twine2.neocities.org/
3.5 Alienation, Isolation, and Horror

Our game wants to represent the struggle of non-adapting to societal norms and expectations by
leveraging a narrative tension akin to the experience of horror games—a sort of domestic, routinal,
and societal horror. Such themes are not the sole experience of queerness; these themes were
inspired by research into the queer readings of horror [32] and were selected as one avenue full of
potential to explore aspects of queerness, rather than as an attempt to capture queerness and queer
experience as a single, monolithic whole. To create such a narrative tension and evoke horror-like
atmospheres, we were inspired by several games, including queer games like Gone Home [28] and
Queers in Love at the End of the World [47]. It should be noted, however, that our goal was not just to
evoke these feelings, but rather to explore them and let our participants explore them in a manner
similar to the fruition of other horror media, and thus as a means of invoking empathy and/or
reflection. First, we imbued the game with a sense of alienation, where identical actions, scenarios,
and choices repeat time and time again, much like in the loopy horror game PT/Silent Hills [78].
Second, we created narrative tension by allowing for the metaphorical nature of “being punished”
for non-adapting to societal norms (here instantiated primarily through time and space constraints)
to emerge explicitly through the game mechanics, including the collapsing of space for failing
to abide by chrononormativity, intermittent restriction of possible choices, and the frustration
generated by the clear impossibility of achieving the game’s main goal. Third, the game subtly
hints at a sort of “fascination” for the “normal,” invoked by the game’s narrative contrast between
the (only imagined) “normal life” waiting outside of the house (e.g., the school, other kids, family)
and the claustrophobic, horror-like vibe that lives inside the walls and crawl spaces of the house.
However, the game provides a non-obvious solution to this narrative tension, by subverting the
horror iconography of the “monster” as the mysterious NPC (the only in-game element that breaks
the sense of isolation), firstly presented as a possible threat, but then revealing themselves to be
the only one who can potentially help the player “escape” the horror in which they are trapped
and find a possible “way out” of that uncomfortable situation.
4 PLAYING AND DISCUSSING YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE

As part of our design process, we invited five queer individuals to play our game, and then asked
them to follow up with a moderated discussion around our game and queer games more broadly
in focus groups. For our study, we targeted a small sample size in which our objective was to
engage with queer participants in an in-depth discussion around queerness in games, thus favoring
the gathering of rich qualitative data over quantifiable and generalizable results; this has been
considered a favorable strategy for rich qualitative studies by Crouch and McKenzie [18], who
argued how this methodological approach “facilitates the researcher’s close association with the
respondents and enhance the validity of fine-grained, in-depth inquiry in naturalistic settings” (p. 483).
Such an approach, we argue, is particularly a good fit for our study, where maximizing a sense
of association with participants was paramount to obtain rich feedback and enhance a sense of
comfort and empathy during the discussion.
4.1 Participants
To gather insights on the player experience of You’re Going To Be Late and inquire queer people’s
perspectives on queer game mechanics, we primarily sought out people who identified as queer as
prospective participants. Furthermore, we aimed to have participants who are professionally or
scholarly engaged with games and game design, to ensure a quality discussion around our game
and queerness in games tout-court. Therefore, we recruited our participants primarily from online
LGBTQ+ and/or queer-friendly social media groups (e.g., Facebook, Reddit, Discord), which were
Participant Pronouns Professional Engagement with Games

Participant A she/her Game Design Student
Participant B they/them Gamer
Participant C they/them Gamer
Participant D he/him Previous Game Developer (QA)
Participant E they/them Current Indie Game Developer
Table 1. Participant pronouns and level of engagement with games/game design.
focused on game design, game studies, and video game streaming, as well as local game developer
groups in the Boston area; such a social media/snowball sampling strategy has been shown effective
in previous studies with hard-to-reach populations [21]. When contacting prospective participants
about possible participation in our study, we carefully explained to them the scope of our queer
exploration of games and clearly stated that, if they agreed to participate, their personally identifiable
information would be kept strictly confidential, and that the only demographics that we would
disclose is what they felt comfortable with (displayed in Table 1). Our study was approved by the
Northeastern University IRB ethics board (IRB#: 22-05-19). We recruited a total of five participants,
who first played the game on their own computers and at their own pace, and then joined one of the
two online focus groups (discussed in detail below). Table 1 shows the participant’s demographics
that we gathered and that they felt comfortable sharing with us. The first group discussion had
three participants, hereby referred to as participants A, B, and C. Participant A is a game design
student, and participants B and C are regular gamers/streamers. The second discussion group had
two participants, participant D, and participant E. Both participants D and E have experience in the
games industry—participant E is a game designer and developer, while participant D is a former
game developer with experience in quality assurance for game companies. Participant E stated
their motivation for participating in the study, saying, “I enjoy making stories, and I enjoy writing
things that will help people see something from a different way”.
4.2 Playtesting and Focus Groups

We structured our engagement with our five queer participants in two distinct phases: (1) the
“playtesting” phase, where they played You’re Going To Be Late and took note of both their player
experience and their judgment of the game design; (2) the discussion phase, where we invited our
participants to follow up in a one-hour focus group taking place on the online video-conferencing
software Zoom, which was intended to let them elaborate on their player experience with our game
and critically discuss with us the notion of queerness in games and queer game mechanics, and
both in our game and in games more broadly.
4.2.1 Playtesting. To playtest our queer game, we asked our participants to play (and possibly
complete) You’re Going To Be Late online using a link to itch.io, which we provided to them via
email upon their consent to participate in the study. The participants could play our game on
their own computer/device and at their own convenience; however, we gave our participants a
maximum of two weeks to come back to us with their feedback. Although we let participants decide
on which device they would play the game, we recommended that they play it on a desktop or
laptop computer for the best player experience.
4.2.2 Focus Groups. The invitation to the follow-up focus group was distributed along with the
game link 9 and participants could reach out to us anonymously via email to confirm their interest
in participating. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we organized the focus groups online on Zoom.
This online setup allowed non-locals to participate in the focus groups too. Following the research
approaches with trans and queer people proposed by Baldwin [4] and Haimson et al. [31] in HCI,
we took the necessary steps to ensure that our study would provide a fair and safe environment
for our participants to express their ideas and opinions on both our game and queerness in games
at-large. To do so, we emphasized to our participants that no ideas, visions, or insights that they
would bring to our focus group discussions would be either judged or scrutinized by the moderator
and that they could leave the focus group at any time if they felt uncomfortable. We asked all
participants for permission to record the conversations emerging during the focus group and to use
excerpts and quotes from those conversations in a potentially published manuscript, for which all
participants provided explicit consent. Also, we informed them that all video and audio recordings
from the focus group would be safely stored in one of our encrypted servers and deleted once
the data analysis was completed. To facilitate each meeting and create a comfortable space for
discussion, we asked everyone (both participants and moderator) to introduce themselves and
provide their pronouns at the beginning of each focus group.
After the introductions, we engaged our participants in a group discussion focused on (1)
describing their experience and their general impressions about our game, (2) how “queer” they
felt the game was, and (3) what they thought constituted queer game mechanics in our game. We
also asked our participants to elaborate specifically on their perception and understanding of queer
temporality in You’re Going to be Late, and how that in turn characterized their player experience.
If our participants found it particularly hard to articulate their notion of queer game mechanics,
we occasionally (and strategically) made reference to existing notions of queerness in games
[13, 53, 73, 77], and leveraged those to inspire discussion around the topic. Furthermore, we asked
our participants to provide and discuss examples of queer game mechanics that they thought they
encountered in their previous experience with games; this allowed us to further inspire a discussion
around queerness in games and queer game mechanics, grounding it in concrete examples, as well
as extending the discussion around those notions beyond our own game. Last, but not least, we paid
particular attention to when participants referred to gender and sexual representation as relating
to queerness and queer game mechanics and took note of those instances; since our game is scoped
beyond the representation of LGBTQ+ identities, this allowed us to inquire whether this element
was paramount to our participants even when not explicitly embedded game design and mechanics.
4.3 Thematic Analysis

We scrutinized and summarized the discussions emerging from the focus groups through thematic
analysis [14], employing a procedure similar to previous work in HCI around technosexuality and
speculative design [88, 89, 92]. However, differently from the cited work, while still organically
emerging from the analysis, our resulting themes were mainly informed by the research questions
that we established prior to the focus groups, namely (1) how did participants experience our game
and queer temporality as a game mechanic? (2) how and where did they find queerness in our
game? (3) what did they think constitutes queer game mechanics both in our game and in games
broadly? It should be further noted that our thematic analysis was conducted on a smaller number
of participants (n = 5) compared to the work previously cited, and that presents limitations of
saturation in our data [2]. However, using the tool provided by Fugard et al. [27] on sample size
calculation for thematic analyses, we calculated (in RStudio) that to identify three instances (i.e.,
9 https://tzarl.itch.io/youre-going-to-be-late?password=testgame
themes), with a population theme prevalence of at least 75% (queerness and queer game mechanics),
and have at least 80% probability of identifying those instances, our desired sample size was five. The
thematic analysis was performed initially by the leading author of this paper. Then, the emerging
themes were discussed and cross-validated with the other authors to reach consensus. The whole
process took approximately one month to be completed.
5 RESULTS
The thematic analysis resulted in three main themes, which emerged consistently across the two
focus groups: (1) Feeling Horror Through Alienated Serendipity; (2) Introspecting as an Act of Queer
Liberation; (3) Queer Game Mechanics as Queer Modes of Play. Below, we briefly summarize the
content and salient features of these themes:
(1) Feeling Horror Through Alienated Serendipity—where our participants described how alien-
ation and confusion helped them engage with a “horror” game experience, but also how
they saw this as an opportunity to further explore the game world and subvert the game
mechanics of alienation into serendipitous discovery.
(2) Introspecting as an Act of Queer Liberation—here, our participants emphasized how the
constant struggle in playing against the clock (i.e., against chrononormativity), combined
with a sense of isolation (from the outside world), further emphasized a sense of horror in
their player experience, but also how this unnerving feeling was resolved by (1) accepting
defeat from the clock and (2) turning “failure” into an act of liberation by engaging with
introspection and reflective inner dialogues.
(3) Queer Game Mechanics as Queer Modes of Play—when discussing queer game mechanics,
both in our game and in games more broadly, our participants posed emphasis on how these
can be found in queer modes of play, explaining that, aside from designers intentionally
designing game mechanics to be queer (e.g., enhancing vulnerability rather than reinforcing
heroic tropes), these can be found systematically in the ways in which a player subverts the
intended way of playing a game.
Overall, the emerging themes reflect our game design intentions and the player experience we
sought to provoke. However, at the same time, they reveal new and unexpected angles proposed by
participants, which help unpack notions of queerness and queer game mechanics from the angle of
“queer modes of play” [72], thus helping to contribute to extending discussions around queerness
and queer game mechanics in games and play. Next, we present the three themes and our findings
from the focus groups in further detail.
5.1 Feeling Horror Through Alienated Serendipity

Participants’ insights about the game revealed how they generally engaged with what we intended
to be their player experience (i.e., one of alienation and isolation). A sense of confusion dominated
their feelings early in the gameplay:
At first, I was a little confused, like I went into the bathroom because I thought in order to
get ready for school I would need to brush my teeth and get a shower, so I started going
into rooms I had thought would be relevant and then it just said "leave them" and after a
little bit I got oh, this is less about like actually getting ready for school and more about
finding your way out of the house—(Participant B)
This sense of confusion in participant B was then accompanied by a sense of frustration, for not
being informed (by the game) about whether or not the protagonist needs to be dressed up before
they can leave the house to go to school:
I was a little confused by that. I guess maybe some text about "you’re already dressed and
ready to go" at the beginning, or something like that
The frustrating experience described by participant B is likely the result of our intention to
leave certain key game elements ambiguous, and in doing so subvert expectations of control and
agency in players, which Macklin [48] described as one of the scopes (or perceived effects) of
queering games. Such ambiguities left our participants often “wandering” during their gameplay,
engaging them in repetitive loops of action, and thus infusing their player experience with a sense
of repetitiveness and alienation:
At first, I tried to race to—well no, actually I explored the house first and then I realized
how to get to school. And then the next time I tried to race to school but I was still late.
The third time I tried to race to get to school I was still late. And then after that, I’m just
like... well, I didn’t race to try and take a different path to see if it would have a different
result. I was still late, but as I explored the different paths that’s how I got stuck behind
the floorboards and kept going in that direction—(Participant E)
Such a feeling of repetitiveness and alienation was further enhanced when participants realized
that the game would make it hard (if not impossible) for them to get to school on time, never
allowing them to experience the “world outside,” and how this, in turn, enhanced a sense of isolation
that is further amplified by the external pressure of social norms:
[The game] provided a dynamic of like "oh you’re in this private space that’s kind of
dictated by the public time" like the deadline is school and at no point in the game are you
ever in a public space—(Participant A)
To accompany these feelings of alienation and confusion, the queer temporality dynamics
established by the in-game clock provided not only a further sense of urgency and pressure to the
player experience, but also contributed to establishing a general sense of “fear” in the game and
ultimately engaged participants with a horror-like experience:
I think the clock really helps with that, it helps fuel the horror aspect of this new situation
which is intensely more complicated and hard to work your way through—(Participants
B)
Surprisingly, however, once our participants settled within these repetitive, alienating, and
horror-like game mechanics, they re-appropriated these game mechanics and turned them into
enjoyable leisure, in which engaging with spontaneous explorations and serendipitous discoveries,
as exemplified by participant A:
For me, part of the experience was like, oh there’s all these extraneous rooms and then I
can kind of misclick and go to any one room if I’m in a rush, so having that maze was
kind of nice
In this sort of “forced serendipity,” our participants found not only new meaning in their player
experience, but also recognized a potential queerness in our game, or even queer mechanics beyond
the most obvious queer temporality deployed by the in-game clock. This is particularly evident in
the following comment by participant E on their interaction with the two NPCs while stuck inside
the labyrinthine wall ways:
So, I found it interesting that you started speaking with the characters. I was a little
confused as to why I got stuck behind the walls I did walk around the house a little bit
but then I was like "Okay I’m stuck here so okay." And then I spoke with one of the guys
behind the wall and he was like "you can’t go back to your old life, but there might be a
new way". So I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but in retrospect, I can kind of see how
that might be a queer mechanic in a certain way
This new attitude towards the game, gave our participants inspiration to eventually disengage
with both the time and social pressures embedded in the game narrative and clock mechanic. Hence,
they began exploring the possibility of engaging with the more “expressive” and non-obvious game
mechanics in our game, rather than emphasizing a successful understanding of its most “obvious”
game mechanics (see [74], p. 76). In so doing, our participants embraced the possibility of failure as
an act of liberation from the “tyranny” of the clock and conventions of chrononormativity:
I definitely felt like I was paying attention to it for the first two runs, the first because
I was doing some casual exploring and noticed it was going pretty fast and so I had to
backtrack and try to leave, and the second one was because I was trying to go as fast as
possible to arrive on time. But the third one I just accepted that I was going to be late and,
fuck it. And consciously ignored it at that point—(Participant D)
5.2 Introspecting as an Act of Queer Liberation

And so you, wanting to get out of there, wanting to try something new, you actually go
down there under the floorboards and you speak to the person, who I’m assuming is a
guy...you speak to a person and they’re like "well I’m not really certain I can help you" but
eventually you decide to go for it and you come back and there’s actually a light under the
tunnel. To me that kind of sounds like, you know—it kind of sounds like it could be parallel
to discovering yourself or trying a new experience that is liberating—(Participant E)
In the above quote, participant E describes a new, alternative resolution in the gameplay of You’re
Going To Be Late, where the game mechanics are no more focused on the urge to “beat the clock”
to make it to school on time (and thus complying with social norms). Rather, the game now evokes
a need for inner and self-discovery, and reclaims a certain sense of “liberation,” where queerness is
found by disruption of the initial (and primarily intended) narrative tension [12], and the supposed
main game objective (i.e., getting to school on time).
This, in turn, provided participants with a chance to engage in a moment of inner dialogue and
reflection, which they felt contributed to making the scope of the game more abstract, shifting the
gameplay rhythm, and providing them with a newer goal that transcends a linear passing of time
imposed by the clock—this allowed for a moment of intimacy that stretched the perception of time
and revealed how the “true” scope of the game was more about finding a way out of normative
procedures by “looking inward,” rather than finding a way out of physical space:
But yeah, in trying to reach your goal in trying to escape I kept going deeper and I never
quite make it to my goal but instead I had to go down in order to find the light, which was
kind of—I feel like it’s a sort of abstract way about reflecting inward, I feel like there’s
some sort of message behind it about—like "the way out is in"—(Participant E)
Such a spontaneous shift of focus from (chasing societal validation) outward to (finding one’s
own validation) inward infused the gameplay with a new perspective, in which failure (or queer
failure [33]) is seen as an opportunity to “turn the tables,” and deploy a sort of “queers’ hopefulness
and optimism in the face of destruction” ([47], p. 190). In that respect, participant B went even further
in their interpretation of queerness in our game and provided a perspective that not only accepts
the possibility of failure as true “success” or resolution in-game, but even argued that embracing
mechanics of “circularity and irresolution” ([44], p. 118) in the narrative of our game, may represent
the true guiding mechanics that shape the player experience in You’re Going To Be Late:
I honestly kind of liked it as something that looped forever, because I think the theme of it
being active work to continue and still actively a stressful situation to continue to be in to
not take this person’s help and to continue to live in here. Like I feel that’s fitting given
what I interpreted the themes of your game as. So I don’t necessarily think you need an
ending there.—(Participant B)
Within this sort of new narrative tension of circularity and irresolution, our participants identified
metaphors of struggle and marginalization that characterized the game protagonist’s queerness
mostly through the narrative elements that describe their life, experience, and relationship with
family/society. This shows opportunities for alternative modes of queer representation in games,
which follow a reflexive and ethical approach [80], and focuses on “representing diversity in the
narrative worlds” ([86], p. 32) rather than necessarily on the aesthetics of queer characters:
Like there’s this one part where you were talking to the other person on the other side
of the wall where you two were talking about how it was scary being in this whole new
place and your parents don’t seem to notice that you’re missing at all, which in this case
would be like not noticing that you are going through this struggle and not having any
way to talk to you about it about the fact that you’re not a cishet person if they could
notice.—(Participant B)
And like, you knock at the door, but your parents don’t hear you, and no one else can
really help you, and there is another person on the other side of the wall and they can’t
really help you but they can understand what you’re going through. And so they can point
you to someone who maybe introduces you to a new experience, like "well, hey, this other
person can help you, but I’m not ready for it; I’m kind of scared." —(Participant E)
It is evident here, we argue, how the personal perspective of our participants allowed them to
unfold these “hidden” queer mechanics in our game and enabled them to find new meaning in the
gameplay. Such an impetus for transforming, subverting, and disrupting game mechanics is what
our participants believed lies at the core of how we find queer game mechanics in games. They
emphasized how queer game mechanics can be generated as a consequence of how a (queer) player
approaches and “queers” a game, thus going beyond the intention of a queer game designer.
5.3 Queer Game Mechanics as Queer Modes of Play

Our participants reasoned about queer game mechanics in various ways, often defining them as
disruptive mechanics (participant A) or subverting mechanics (participant E). However, they all
seemed to agree on queer game mechanics being potentially player-driven and/or relating to “queer
modes of play” [72], where players willingly engage with “alternative modes” of playing games,
and in doing so establish “player-created” modes of play not initially intended by game designers.
When asked about whether they heard the term queer game mechanics prior, and whether or not
they could consistently identify these mechanics in games, participants D and E engaged in the
following conversation:
I personally have not. I guess, my questions would be if a mechanic is a system designed
to elicit decisions and reactions from the player, what about that system could be more
identifiably queer than any other system. I’m not saying that’s impossible, I’m just saying
that I had not considered that that was a concept, and I think I would need some examples—
(Participant D)
I think we kind of covered the same thing. Initially, I wasn’t clear whether a queer
mechanic was something that was relevant to the queer identity or something that was
just an unusual or atypical mechanic. And what we condensed it down to was that it
was an atypical mechanic that was somehow also relatable to queer identity. Is that
appropriate?—(Participant E)
As the above conversation shows, identifying and defining queer game mechanics was not easy
for our participants, and often based on the idea that these mechanics should intertwine with
(or relate to) queer identity to be clearly identified. Other participants proposed that queer game
mechanics can be found in disruptive play or as queer topics:
I think for me at least a subset of queer mechanics would be disruptive mechanics where
the game sets up a system and the gameplay is disrupting that system in some way. Where
so many games are about building a big thing, a game that takes an already complicated
structure and then picks away at it—(Participant A)
Whenever I start thinking of like queer mechanics my mind automatically goes to games
I’ve played that are explicitly about queer topics, for instance, Normal Lost Phone or
games like that, where it’s more highlighted by just the introspection and the discovery of
self —(Participant C)
Participant B mentioned Animal Crossing [59] as a game that engages players in queer modes of
play and queer game mechanics, for instance “because there aren’t any guns in it.” Participant E
provided more examples of existing games that might feature or deploy both queerness and queer
game mechanics, noting how in games like Mario Bros [56] and The Legend of Zelda [57], while the
main plot clearly features cis-heteronormative themes (i.e., rescuing a defenseless princess while
saving the world), the in-game characters and their ambiguous portrayal could be interpreted by
players as queer (which observations are in line with the work of Tison Pugh [68]). Participant
A provided a possible account of queer game mechanics by mentioning game speedrunning or
pacifist runs in PUBG [67]:
Most of the things I’m thinking of I’m realizing are fewer mechanics that are intentionally
placed in games than like things that people do in games. Now I’m thinking about pacifist
runs in PUBG where people don’t pick up any weapons, they drop all of their gear and
they see how long they can last
Participant E provided yet another possible account of queer game mechanics, where a particular
character in a game can be designed to act differently from the other characters, and thus represent
a sort of anomaly in which their actions are in and of themselves disrupting the rest of the game,
thus generating queer game mechanics. Specifically, they talked about the character Steve in Super
Smash Bros. [58] (originally featured in Minecraft [51]):
He’s...he’s very strange and interesting. Like you can literally—so you *do* mine in the
game to build up stuff which allows you to place blocks, summon minecarts, and basically
do things that you would in Minecraft but you do them for combat. And he has a very,
compared to many of the other fighters, he takes some specific mastery and he’s powerful,
but he’s like awkward powerful, it’s very strange but like when you play him he’s a very
interesting challenge to master. So I think he might be a good example of that because a
lot of people just run and punch you and he’s like, "well I’m going to summon a block here,
I’m gonna send a minecart at you, and then I might drop some TNT on you’re head while
lighting this thing on fire" and he just sets the area around you into a bomb, basically
Participant D provided a similar account from the game Slay the Spire [37], and posited that the
game mechanics of Defect might be considered queer. He compared the character to its alternatives,
saying that while Ironclad and Silent were designed to deliver straightforward damage in combat,
Defect was more focused on its unique “orb” system, resulting in gameplay that challenges players
by subverting the orthodox game mechanics of Slay The Spire:
Defect is my favorite of the three launch characters because instead of focusing on "okay
so how do I do direct damage or damage over time" they have this interesting orb system.
Defect has to juggle an additional resource because, as you gain more of these orbs,
eventually they’ll be passively activated every turn, but if you have, say three orbs already
and you are at your capacity, if you try to then get a new one it will push out the last one
entered or the oldest one that you have. So, as opposed to the other classes where it’s kind
of, you have these cards in hand and then you play them and if you do get ongoing effects
that’s because you played this card, this is more of a "what is the setup that I anticipate
for the next turn because these orbs will persist"
Finally, participants A and E attempted to summarize the respective focus group discussions with
the two following statements, which characterize queer game mechanics as, once again, primarily
a way of playing games “differently,” or perhaps more interestingly, as a “class” that can be used as
a tool of analysis:
If I might try a synthesis of our explanations, it seems like to us what might seem to be a
queer mechanic is like, you’re playing the same game as other people, but you’re playing
it in a different way—(Participant E)
I almost think of it kind of like a class where it can be a tool of analysis...like any game or
type of play where people are like "you’re doing it wrong" or "that’s not a game" is kind of
disruptive to gaming and the genre conventions of what people think of. And so that could
be a type of queerness in itself —(Participant A)
6 DISCUSSION
We translated queer temporality [15, 41, 53] into a queer game mechanic of a queer game called
You’re Going To Be Late, and used the game to spark discussion around notions of queerness in games
[75] and queer game mechanics [54]. Overall, our game engaged participants with the intended
player experience, and the embedded mechanic of queer temporality successfully engaged them with
feelings of alienation, isolation, and horror. Throughout the focus groups, our participants provided
alternative angles by which queerness could be deployed by our game and showed opportunities for
further queering it. When attempting to identify and define queer game mechanics, our participants
used terms such as subversion and disruption and emphasized a notion of queer game mechanics
that is bound up with queer modes of play [72]. Most importantly, our results exemplify how our
participants consistently engaged with transformative and critical reflection around games [50],
which challenge prior HCI work and have potential implications not only for game design but for
the design of HCI technology too.
6.1 Lessons Learned from Translating Queer Temporality into a Queer Game Mechanic
The intent behind the narrative and mechanics of You’re Going to be Late was to extend prior
work on queer temporality in games through designing alienation. Across the board, our player
participants felt the intended tension between the mundane societal norm of needing to be on
time and the game and narrative mechanics that prevent that. We then observed two different
approaches to embracing alienation. For some players, realizing that you could not make it on time
was a moment of release. They could choose to ignore the time and more pleasurably explore the
space—the clock “faded away.” Here we can see echoes of what Halberstam [34, 77] wrote about
other queer games that offer “a queer sense of time and space” through immersive experiences
of wonder and melancholy. Conversely, other players struggled to embrace this inevitability and
sometimes quit the game “too early.” For instance, two participants struggled to engage with the
NPCs in the more explorative part of the game and therefore found it hard to comment on its efficacy
in being a representation of embracing queer time. However, these players still had a realistic
experience of queer temporality—they believed that arriving at school on time was hopeless and
were alienated to such a degree that they felt that could have been the end of the game experience.
But is realism our only goal in creating an experience of queer temporality? This is an important
point of reflection for ourselves and other designers of queer technologies. It may be enough to
create “authentic” experiences, but we push for designs that can reflect reality while empowering
and uplifting queer people (e.g., Principe Cruz’s notion of games as counter spaces
Additionally, the queer experience and queer temporality are not monolithic. As Jaffe [38] notes,
“queer people’s relationships to normative developmental timelines don’t come about simply because
many skirts or shun heterosexual imperatives of marriage and reproduction.” A sense of lost childhood
is not common to all queer people. We are encouraged that all participants engaged actively in a
queer reading of the game once the design motivation became evident to them (e.g., identifying
specific moments of queer temporality within their gameplay). To that end, this is a successful
implementation of a queer mechanic. However, only one participant related the game’s use of queer
temporality to their own personal experiences. Participant A’s reminder that “queer people can be
queer in completely disparate ways”, stresses that approaching queer people as an audience that
can be catered to in singular ways expecting quantifiable measures of success is doomed. Within
the concept of queer temporality different expressions of queer time reflect different times and
subcultures. According to Freeman [25]:
“Queer time overtakes both secular and millennial time. And within the lost moments of
official history, queer time generates a discontinuous history of its own, which includes
colonialist endeavors (the source material for the novel Treasure Island), the homosocial
nationalism of boys’ culture (the cultural work to which Treasure Island was put), cowboy
culture and manly Manifest Destiny in the "Red West" of the Americas, the aforementioned
ports of homosexual call, drag culture, and even the Church itself, each of which fostered
erotic contact between men” (p. 10-11)
The diversity of queer time poses both challenges and opportunities for designing queer game
mechanics with queer audiences in mind. Queer developers can create games that express their
queer identity, and queer players can find games that speak to their identities, but the question
remains: what approaches can developers take when designing games for queer audiences? Of
course, any evaluation of how an interactive experience relates to a queer audience must contend
with the interpretations and experiences of queerness. We then encourage game designers to view
these questions (or “problems”) as an opportunity to envision many disparate queer experiences in
design and caution against foisting the burden of representing a massive, diverse, intersectional
community onto singular game experiences. This suggests to us that including and amplifying
the voices of queer, trans, and LGBTQ+ folks in discursive (and participatory) efforts [16] around
interactive technology design is paramount to enhancing the diversity of perspective and outcome
in our research, as well as continue pushing efforts of social justice in our research community [31].
6.2 The Need to Amplify Queer Voices and Perspectives in Games and HCI research
Queer modes of play and queerness in games have been extensively explored, as previously outlined
in Section2. To provide additional examples, queer and feminist theory has been used to critically
analyze games and other interactive technologies in ACM contexts (e.g., consent mechanics in video
games [55], and selective visibility in queer use of social media [9]). Yet, an inquiry of queerness in
games and queer game mechanics from the perspective of queer individuals engaged with gaming
and game design remained mostly underexplored. To the best of our knowledge, no prior work at
games/HCI venues has sought to design queerness in games, and similar studies centering queer
voices are scarce even outside games and HCI research [1]. As such, we consider the angle of our
study (and thus its results) in and of itself already a valuable contribution to the field, which has the
potential to generate vibrant discussions around the topic of queer(ing) interactive technologies.
While we are aware that our results may not be novel and/or surprising to a queer audience, we
argue that they are still valuable to advance discussions around queerness and queer design of
interactive technology in which (1) they further unfold queer perspective on games and more
consistently from the perspective of queer players, which confirm, integrate, and extend the visions
of queer designers, and (2) they provide an account of game design from a queer perspective
to a community that has yet to engage consistently with these alternative forms of (re)thinking
interactive design form a non-normative angle. This, in turn, points to a need for further and
similar explorations in future research around games and HCI, to further unpack the notion of
queerness in games (and interactive technology design), from a queer user experience (i.e., queer
UX [5]) perspective, and simultaneously engage a community of games and HCI designers with
non-normative avenues that can push them out of their comfort zones.
Our RtD methodological approach gave the opportunity to queer folks to share visions on how
they resist and transform the game medium from a queer player and queer UX perspective. However,
they did not limit themselves to a simple and superficial analysis of the game’s usability and their
user experience. They re-appropriated the mechanics of our queer game and managed to queer
it further. This suggests that queer folks, when involved in the right experimental and research
settings, can provide designers and researchers with high-quality feedback that goes above and
beyond expectations, and have clear implications for reflective and critical thinking around the
design of interactive media [24]. In that respect, our work tangentially answers the call of Mekler
et al. [50]:
“Hence, more research is required on how people respond to games specifically designed
for transformational or critical reflection, especially in terms of comparing players that
are inclined to enjoy doing so and those that are not. Perhaps more importantly, future
work can investigate how game design or the particular gaming contexts may promote
higher levels of reflection, and whether this results in different experiences or enduring
transformation”—(p. 324).
In contrast with the results of Mekler et al. [50], in our study, we see multiple accounts of
transformative and critical reflections. These results also potentially challenge previous work in
HCI around critical and reflective design [24]. In sum, our results show that the queer gaming
context is particularly favorable to promoting higher levels of reflection and provides fertile ground
for engaging in transformative and critical reflection on the design of interactive media and
technologies—in our case games. We conjecture that similar results may very well emerge in studies
around designing HCI technology more broadly. Thus, we strongly encourage the HCI and games
research communities to take up such an opportunity and start considering queer perspectives
(and queer folks) more consistently in their research (see also [88]), and not only limited to the
design of a specific technology for a specific group or minority (e.g., [31]) but to adopt a similar
approach for the design of interactive technologies tout-court and for a broad audience. Last, but
not least, we consider our encouragement to embrace queer perspectives and queer UX not only as
beneficial to both the HCI and games communities, but also as a matter of continuing to further
efforts that wish to broaden the participation of diverse audiences in the intellectual discourses
surrounding games, game design, and HCI research (e.g., [31, 60, 85, 87]).
7 CONCLUSION
Games are an ever-developing medium and queer game studies help unfold alternative pathways
and avenues for game design, but also for HCI research and design at large. The strength of
queer explorations in games lies in its consistent, persistent, and tenacious will to explore ways
of challenging normative design paradigms, and in doing so also help reveal alternative, non-
normative ways of conceiving the design of interactive technologies tout-court. In this study, we
explored queerness in games from the standpoint of queer game mechanics and by leveraging
queer temporality. To do so, we employed an RtD approach by designing and “testing” a queer
game called You’re Going To Be Late. Our participants enjoyed playing our game and revealed
various understandings of the notion of queer game mechanics. With just five participants we
were able to glean extensive insights regarding their thoughts on queer temporality, queer game
mechanics, and designing queer games. By combining queer explorations of game design with
an RtD approach, these insights can offer avenues for experimentation with the design of games
and interactive technologies from a non-cis-heteronormative perspective, broadening the ways
in which queerness can be explored and expressed in games. In this initial foray, we designed for
alienation and isolation and were delighted to witness how participants found connection as well
as empowerment and serendipity within that experience. We are enthusiastic about the future of
queer gaming and technologies that continue to explore empowering aspects of queerness.
8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the people who agreed to participate in our study and provided valuable
feedback, as well as the ones who supported our research by helping us in recruiting participants.
Last but not least, we would like to thank Bonnie Ruberg for their insightful comments during a
lecture series hosted by Northeastern University, which contributed to inspire our methodological
approach to study queerness in games in this research effort.
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Received February 2022; revised June 2022; accepted July 2022
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Alienated Serendipity and Reﬂective Failure: Exploring Queer

Article in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · October 2022

Giovanni Maria Troiano Casper Harteveld

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MATTHEW HANTSBARGER∗ , Northeastern University, Art + Design, USA

2 WHAT AND WHERE IS QUEERNESS IN GAMES?

2.1 Queering Game Structures, Mechanics, and Play

2.2 Queer Temporality in Games and Play

3 DESIGNING YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE

3.1 Designing a Queer Game with Twine

3.2 Game Conceptualization

3.3 Game Narrative and Mechanics of Queer Temporality

3.4 Designing Queer Temporality in Twine

Fig. 4. A dialogue between the player and the mysterious NPC.

3.5 Alienation, Isolation, and Horror

4 PLAYING AND DISCUSSING YOU’RE GOING TO BE LATE

Participant Pronouns Professional Engagement with Games

4.2 Playtesting and Focus Groups

4.3 Thematic Analysis

5.1 Feeling Horror Through Alienated Serendipity

5.2 Introspecting as an Act of Queer Liberation

5.3 Queer Game Mechanics as Queer Modes of Play

Received February 2022; revised June 2022; accepted July 2022

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