Queer Games After Empathy: Feminism and Haptic Game Design Aesthetics from Consent to Cuteness to the Radically Soft.
Dr. Teddy Pozo develops new terms for queer videogame studies drawn from haptic game design aesthetics including consent, cuteness, and radical softness through close readings of several contemporary queer and trans indie games.
Following critiques of the framework “empathy games” by queer games artists including EMPATHY MACHINE (merritt k, 2014), Empathy Game (Anna Anthropy, 2015), and empathy machine (Mattie Brice, 2016), this talk historicizes the empathy debate, offering new directions for queerness and games in the realm of affect, intersubjectivity, and embodiment.
Teddy Pozo, they/them, is Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Their work on media technology, sexuality, feminism, and queer and transgender theory has appeared in such academic journals as Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Porn Studies, Mediascape, and Media Fields; anthologies including Digital Love and Rated M for Mature; the Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory, and the Encyclopedia of Video Games.