ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the growing area of gendered representation in Game Studies. Genre fantasy has been subject to a range of criticisms centred around both its popularity and its perceived escapism, from scholars of realism and from scholars of other non-realist genres, such as horror and science fiction. The book examines both scholars and gamers themselves and, the video games produced by BioWare, has become a perennial topic in Game Studies scholarship. It explores how the producers of fantasy texts visual, game, cinematic, graphic and literary texts are able to play with gender and sexuality, to challenge and disrupt received notions and allows and encourage their audiences to imagine ways of being outside of the constitutive constraints of socialized gender and sexual identity.
