Is Gameplay Fun After All? Queer Indigenous Resistances Through Gameplay

This paper, a component of a doctoral thesis, examines how queer Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people experience and resist colonial and heteronormative structures through videogame play. Drawing on a standalone survey of queer Indigenous gamers in Australia, the author investigates both the representational politics of games and the personal meanings players attach to their leisure practices. The work is situated within an Australian Research Council project on LGBTIQA+ Indigenous artists and builds on emerging scholarship on Indigenous gameplay.

The central analytical move is the adaptation of Maria Lugones' concept of "world-travelling," the capacity to navigate spaces not designed for one's existence and to forge one's own pathways, alongside Elaine Castillo's notion of the "unexpected reader." The author reframes the unexpected reader as the "unexpected player," someone who must build connections across characters and narratives that were not created with them in mind. Survey respondents described comparable experiences, and their accounts suggest that play is not separable from these navigational practices. Respondents' reasons for playing were diverse and closely tied to their world-travelling, indicating that queer Indigenous players continue to engage with games despite exclusionary or unwelcoming environments.

The paper concludes that play carries a distinct significance for these players, one connected to shifting representational power and to joyful, sustained leisure. Its scope is narrow and qualitative, grounded in a relatively small respondent group, and the findings are presented as provisional insights from a work in progress rather than as generalizable conclusions about queer or Indigenous gaming communities more broadly.