What does queerness have to do with games? Games and game-making are sometimes seen as juvenile or frivolous. Playing games and talking to people while solving imaginary problems can seem like a waste of time. Yet socialising, collaborating and playing are all popular modes of active learning, from early childhood education to adulthood learning environments. In my ongoing research, I find that Australian queer game designers and players are engaging with games in ways queerer than ever.¹ And the games industry is super gay. Recent industry surveys conducted in English showed that 8% of global game designers reported as non-binary, transgender or gender-diverse, and 32% did not report as heterosexual or straight, which is three times higher than the average figure.² While nearly one- third of game designers (and their friends) are being kicked around like a football in the newsroom, queer and trans people have steeled the resolve to embed personal and political realities in their games.

Queer and trans representation is one of the most influential social phenomena in the course of continued LGBTQIA+ activism in Australia. Without representation, queer people would have no safe spaces, younger queers would have no role models, and the general public would have little understanding of the reality of how it feels to be queer and trans. Australian queer and trans game designers are making queer and trans games because Australia routinely refuses to acknowledge the rights of queer and trans people to self-determination. Between 2004 and 2017, proposed legislation to allow same-sex marriage failed 22 times.³ The government subsequently sought to hold a plebiscite and failed to secure parliamentary support for that too, instead holding a (legally non-binding) postal survey about whether the law should be changed to allow two same-sex people to marry, sparking a heated, often toxic nationwide debate.⁴