Associate Professor in Media Studies and Production at Temple University
https://adrienneshaw.com/
Founder of the LGBTQ Game Archive
https://lgbtqgamearchive.com/
She/her
Cover photo image from Shannon Downey's 2022 Craftivism exhibit at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia: https://www.libertymuseum.org/show-item/craftivism/
Much of my youth revolved around the website ZineLibrary. It went down around Occupy in a massive loss for a movement whose ideas and knowledge mostly doesn't circulate online but in person.
Anyway I've put it back online with a *thousand* anarchist zines:
Over the past decade, GLAAD Gaming has worked to improve how the video game industry engages with LGBTQ stories and players. This commitment has included consulting directly with video game studios and dev teams to ensure LGBTQ content is authentic, spotlighting queer-inclusive games at the GLAAD Media Awards, and publishing research on representation in games
What we needAs you may know, this has been an immensely challenging year for fundraising around the world. QGCon is currently navigating a CAD$12,000 budget shortfall. We hope to raise funds, with your support, so that we can: offer travel grants to presenters in need of aid;feed our speakers and arcade presenters;print paper programmes, posters, and conference materials;pay our keynote presenters fairly for their time, travel, and expertiseThe more we raise, the more support we can provide to our presenters. We are proud to host one of the most accessible conferences out there. Help us keep QGCon free and affordable for everyone! Who we areqgcon.orgThe QGCon Collective is a volunteer-run, registered non-profit organization based in Quebec, Canada, best known for organizing the Queerness and Games Conference. We bring together academic researchers, game industry workers, artists, and students to share knowledge, engage in critical conversations, and build community, all in the context of approaching games through a queer lens.Our events are free and open to the public. We began in 2013 at UC Berkeley as a ragtag group of queer game artists and emerging scholars. After three events in Berkeley, we moved to Los Angeles in 2017, and then to Montréal in 2018. The next QGCon will take place once again in Montréal, in 2025.We take an intersectional approach to queerness. We believe that the struggles—and the victories!—of we who play from the margins are interconnected. We invite attention to race, gender, body type, ability, class, and culture in all our work.By supporting QGCon, you are uplifting queer creative work at a time when 2SLGBTQIA+ people’s hard-fought rights and recognition are increasingly under threat. Amidst so many challenges, queer scholars and developers continue to do vital, interesting work to advance the medium and expand understanding. In this context, queer perspectives and community are more important now than ever. If you want to help QGCon empower queer voices in 2025 and beyond, please donate or reach out to become a sponsor.Read even more about QGConOur Mission StatementThe QGCon Collective is a registered nonprofit that runs inclusive events at the intersection of queerness and games. We serve an international community of 2SLGBTQIA+ researchers, game industry workers, artists, activists, students, and players. Our efforts focus on queer people who experience multiple kinds of marginalization, including (among others) those based on race or ethnicity, disability, class, citizenship, and body size. The QGCon Collective is made up of organizers from all over the world and is headquartered in Tiohtià :ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. Our purpose is to facilitate and nourish connections between marginalized thinkers and creators who work in, with, and through games, to further education on 2SLGBTQIA+ topics of concern, provide community, and support queer joy and resilience. The community we serve is diasporic, diverse, and highly intersectional, and QGCon creates a space for dynamic cross-pollination between individuals and groups that might otherwise never have connected. To do this, we provide direct support to queer thinkers and creators via opportunities to showcase their work, network with others who share similar values and concerns, and learn from some of the most visionary minds in queer games. Our past activities have included conferences, game jams, workshops, carnivals, networking events, and more. At a time when a shifting social climate and mass layoffs within the industry have created renewed challenges for our community, we believe that QGCon can be a part of how we support each other through times like these. We aim to build bridges across identities, borders, and fields to concretely improve the lives of queer people.
William Gillis 🏴
