By Bryan OchallaThe much-ballyhooed PlayStation 2 game Bully, released last fall, may have featured gay content, but as with virtually all such video games, it was fairly well-hidden. In order to ferret it out you had to first work your way through various setups (like earn the respect of your classmates, pick a few bouquets of flowers, or strike up a conversation with a jock or prep). Not so with the free Internet game Queer Power: Welcome to Queerland, an old-school arcade-style beat-’em-up in the vein of Street Fighter II but with a seductive twist: Instead of fighting each other, players pursue each other until one or both climaxes (literally). Although it’s been out since 2004, the game’s novel ambisexuality, not to mention its communist underpinnings, has gone largely unnoticed. To play, you choose to control either a “dick lover” or “pussy lover”—or admit to being an “other” or simply “confused”—whereupon you are thrown into an arena of sorts, surrounded by giant genitalia and other naughty parts. Then you and your “opponent” are ordered to fight (though the game uses another word that starts with f), utilizing a repertoire of moves that generally involve one sexual act or another. “Game conventions are strongly biased by cultural and ideological values,” says Queer Power’s developer Paolo Pedercini of Italian video game collective La Molleindustria, whose mission is to disrupt “the dictatorship of entertainment.” “The point is to imagine an alternate reality where everybody is free to ignore their gender roles.” (The Advocate, May. 2007)URL: View Published Article Back to Articles
