LGBT Gaming
‘A Closed World’ is a free-to-play browser game based on a teen dealing with sexual identity and peers who are not so kind towards his journey of sexual self-discovery.
This is a first for video games and was most probably created to help players understand what it is like to go through what many who are part of the LGBT community have to deal with.
Freeware Review - A Closed World
A Closed World was created by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT game lab and was, in their own words “created to be a digital game that deals with queer issues, something that’s very uncommon in games right now.” The developers put you in the shoes of a young queer person who leaves their village and sets out into the dark, lonely woods, and there must confront their inner demons and the bigotry of those they love. As a goal, this is an admirable one, and as a philosophy of design, this is a good first step, but as a game it has significant failings.
A Closed World is Closed, Itself
sardonicious.digital-flux.comA Closed World is Closed, Itself
Here’s a story I’ve been meaning to tell you all since, well, this thing got posted. A Closed World, as you might remember, did manage to touch a part of my life which I haven’t really had to wrestle with for a while despite not quite living up to what I and a number of other LGBTQQAI folks feel like a game which is meant to tell straight folks what’s what should have been. It’s nice for what it is, and it might even give some gay or lesbian kids some hope while they’re wrestling with the idea of coming out to their families, but like I said a lot was left out. That’s what we’re going to talk about now.
The simplest way to approach the topic is this: The game’s too simple.
Your character is either male or female. Rigidly. The gender binary is upheld throughout, because telling straight, cis folks that the whole thing is a sham would be too hard for their fragile sensibilities. They’d just fall apart if they heard mention of trans* people, or gender-fluid, gender-neutral, third-gender, gender-queer, and so on down the line, right? Right.
[More after the break! Follow the link!]
A Closed World (2011)
gambit.mit.eduA brilliant quick little independant JRPG-style game that aims to tackle something almost non-existent in games: LGBT issues. You play a boy or a girl who is in love with someone of the same gender, but you’re both worried about the repercussions your relationship will have on your closed-minded families (hence the title). Tackle the demons in the forest to advance & find your lost love…
A Closed World
gambit.mit.eduA Closed World is an awesome indie game about queerness.
Fully enjoyable even if you’re not gay [I’m asexual btw].
GAMBIT: Load Game: A Closed World
gambit.mit.eduIt’s a coming out video game…
a closed mind
auntiepixelante.comAnna Anthropy’s short review of “A Closed World.” It comes with a brilliant game, one I liked so much better than A Closed World for its moving content.
A Closed World
I found this awesome online game a couple of nights ago. I’m just going to copy and paste the description for you guys. It’s a really different approach to how we game and I just found out it was nominated for the IndieCade award. Currently you can beat this game in about 15-20 minutes once you figure out the patterns but I would love to see this game full realized into something much bigger especially as one who loves RPG’s. Here’s the description and link below:
http://gambit.mit.edu/loadgame/summer2011/aclosedworld_play.php
A Closed World was created to be a digital game that deals with queer issues, something that’s very uncommon in games right now. Game designers and marketing professionals alike have cited a number of reasons for this, ranging from a perception of institutional homophobia in game culture to a genuine desire on the part of game designers to “get it right” and create games with compelling queer content, rather than feeling that the element is merely “tacked on” in the end. The goal of this research was to present the design team with the challenge of creating a game that had this compelling queer content, and to observe the ideas and hardships they considered and encountered along the way, so that we could learn more about how to approach those challenges in other design contexts. The project left the ultimate message of the game open to the creators; what was important to discover were the challenges the team faced trying to include queer content in the game, and the strategies they used to tell the story they wanted to tell. The result is a game that asks us to carefully consider what we think of as “normal,” and what is needed to live in the world and be true to one’s self.
It’s a real, beautiful game at it’s core so support it if you like!
--Rohan, the Intern
