Once I took a few hours to walk around Night City in Cyberpunk 2077, looking at all the flat and sloppily finished buildings. In my exploration of an apartment building off the beaten path, I stumbled through a hole in the digital asphalt, gazing up at the transparent backs of the ray-traced buildings, people, and cars as I hurtled through the emptiness of the simulated world. At the time, I would define queer gameplay through my pink-haired butch avatar's flirting with the other female characters in the gritty futuristic story, but looking back at that walk through the poorly rendered streets of Night City through a queer studies lens I see that transgression of both the game's intent and its very substance in a different light.
Previous / Next