#23 Queer Quests

 Queer quests! What is that, I hear myself ask. Pride month being about, I got inspired to connect a concept learned in university about games with quests in particular. In the end, such a quest will be written.

Queering Quests

What, is queering? What is - queer? I'll come to this right now. 

"deconstruct existing game genres to find the fundamental assumptions driving patterns of play then queer the genres by twisting, flipping, or undermining those conventions."

Deconstruction is something we've met already in the very, very beginnging: I began my first post with a paragraph that expressed belief in the absence of any final truths, existents or answers.

Rather, so I think, we humans ourselves define, based on our perception, what we deem "true", what "a thing" is or what is "existing". We utilize systems such as language, memory and any medium to let such constructions endure. And because we're having a habit of thinking in categories, differences and so on, beliefs too often tend to become structured and finite, which isn't a very good method of approach to meeting many things in reality. However constructions still are incredibly useful and probably the best tool to understand and orient yourself and exchange our approaches to being, so most of us will want to take that bitter pill of imperfection.

But there is hope! We come to deconstruction, which involves taking some constructed thing and not only just experience it as it is, but also look inside, break it, find its connection. Deconstructing doesn't mean to destroy things, but to analyse it, doing a close reading and laying open what it is and why it is that. That allows for improving, refining. It is a safety mechanism for our faulty (but necessary) constructionist efforts.

I find the question "how much deconstruction do we need?" hard to answer.

Quests are products of constructionist efforts. Differentiating events is a structuring which is produced that way. Proclaiming a connection between events is another structure. Saying there are goals to them is the next one. When I say there is a meaning to things, then this, too is a structural differentiation. The meanings to quest elements/the quest itself may refer to other distinct meanings in our memory (which makes quests potentially relevant for contextualization). Quests often are stories - when they're enacted the player has probably pursues certain goals with some mechanics - even more levels of structuralism and proclaimed borders ...

In a way, while writing this blog, I deconstructed my own intuition and previous knowledge of quests to re-construct to something new, improved.

So I think we understand that there surely is a lot to deconstruct when taking a quest as object of study and we also understand why that might be sensible. But now, what about queerness? Let's repeat that citation above:

"deconstruct existing game genres to find the fundamental assumptions driving patterns of play then queer the genres by twisting, flipping, or undermining those conventions."

Applied to quests, I'd say queering means to twist (etc.) a part of what makes a quest - determining und understanding those parts being possible by deconstruction.

Let's see how this might look in praxis.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• Naomi Clark: What Is Queerness in Games, Anyway?, in "Queer Game Studies", 2017
  Origin of that citation I cited twice.
  

• I found the wiki-article on building deconstruction very interesting in this context

A Queer Quest

Let's queer, that a quest may contain multiple events. What remains? If I adjust my quest definition:

a series of connected goals and one event, where subsequent goal(s) are only revealed, when previous goal(s) have been reached or the event has happened.

What are the consequences? Well, in order to say "a goal has been reached", some change in the game must has happened. There must have been a final event, that triggered "a goal has been reached". In our case, it will be the same event for every reached goal.

Now if the event were a computer action, then the quest would be quite boring, because the player wouldn't have a direct influence onto it. If we make the event a player action it becomes more interesting: We then have a quest, which progresses only if the player does one specific input action. The quest basically becomes a to-do list which the player may tick himself. Maybe there are two types of quests: player-event quests and computer-event quests to a game and both interact.

Here is a quest design, in which I applied those thoughts:

 There are three things worth mentioning here:

1. The quest is partly inspired by Star Wars: Rebels season 3 episode 6 "The Last Battle"  

2. The graphic looks interesting

3. I reintroduced some events; the current quest design indicates an interesting mix of "player ticking" events and other events, who, however, never trigger that a goal was reached
   

I am quite interested whether there is actualy any game who does something like that and if so, how it feels. Maybe I'll find the possiblity to implement something like this somewhere sometime myself.

Ideas for Feedback

• What is your understanding of deconstruction (especially if you're somewhat proficient in poststructuralism, postmodernism etc. etc.)?
• How else could quests be queered without collapsing to meaninglessness (which is a problem)?

Conclusion

Thinking about and doing (de-)construction is one of my favourite free time activities. Guess I just have to live with that, but it really isn't that bad: I've heard they are just another synonym for doing science, artsy things and so on.

Until the very next time (proably not so strange as today, I might assure)!