Waszkiewicz, Agata

While video game studies which long have been recognizing that video games no longer can be perceived as an activity enjoyed solely by white, heterosexual, teenage men, this stereotype still is common. However, despite Bonnie Ruberg’s (2019) famous statement that “video games have always been queer” and the increased representation of homosexual characters in video games, the number of games portraying the experiences of non-normative genders is still small.

With especially the mainstream video games still including protagonists that are white, straight and able-bodied, researches turned to a particular genre of dance games, recognizing their potential to explore alternative masculinities on the scale not encountered in other genres (Miller 2014). As Jane Desmond argues “dance provides a privileged arena for the bodily enactments of sexuality’s semiotics and should be positioned at the center, not the periphery of sexuality studies” (2001, p. 3). Recognizing that the act of dance often offers freedom of self-expression to members of marginalized groups, game researchers discussed how dance and movements incorporated in the game experience challenges the stereotypes of tough masculinities often connected with the gamer identity. However, little attention has been brought to single-player games where the dance is a form of expression of the character rather than the player like in the independent puzzle video game Felix the Reaper (Kong Orange 2019).

The paper will focus on the game’s protagonist, Felix, whose cheerful personality subverts expectations towards a Reaper and whose fat, constantly dancing body becomes a tool of expressing and embracing soft masculinity.

• Desmond, J. (2001). Dancing desires: Choreographing sexualities on and off the stage. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• Kong Orange. (2019). Felix the Reaper. Hamburg: Daedalic Entertainment.
• Miller K., Gaming the system. Gender performance in Dance Central, „New Media & Society” 2015, vol. 17(6), s. 939–957.
• Ruberg, Bonnie. Video Games Have Always Been Queer. NYU Press, 2019.

Agata Waszkiewicz is a video game researcher at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. They published in several journals including Game Studies and their research interests include metafictional and experimental video games, queer representation in video games, and the ways in which games allow for exploration of one’s identity.

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