Just Because It\u27S Gay? : Transgressive Design In Queer Coming Of Age Visual Novels

While queer narratives have recently gained greater prominence and attention [35][51][48] both in games and game studies, they still represent a tiny portion of the playable romances available. Even fewer among these represent the potential of what Edmond Chang [12] has referred to as queergaming, or games which refuse to conform in their narrative, mechanics, and modes of play to a cisgender, white, heteronormative gaze. We argue that meaningful queergaming is impossible within the current norms and genres of so-called AAA, or mainstream. It thus requires space and platforms dedicated to transgressive game design, building on Aarseth\u27s [1] framework of transgressive play. To substantiate our argument, we use an examination of recent queer visual novels built using Ren\u27Py and released on Itch.io, with a case study of most popular current exemplar Butterfly Soup [32] alongside previous exemplars of queer romance in games. 1