ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the aspects of gender presentation and representation in speculative video games that are unique to the ludic medium or present difference from the similar portrayals in the genre’s other audiovisual forms. It first provides an overview of the state of diegetic representation of gender in speculative video games, focusing particularly on the visions of non-normative sexualities and speculative genders. Second, it looks both at the ways in which speculative games provide—or fail to provide—opportunities for their players to self-express their gender identity and at how game mechanics may constrain expressions and fantasies or provide space for them. Finally, it comments on the fan-side practices, particularly modding, as they intersect with gender representation. While all these perspectives are necessarily interrelated, each of them expresses a different modality of games’ existence in culture: the first focuses on the in-game worldbuilding, the second on the space of intimacy between games and players, and the third on the social uses of games and their transformations.
