“But You’re Female!”: Discourses of Queer Gender and Sexuality Across BioWare’s Mass Effect Trilogy

Abstract

BioWare’s highly successful Mass Effect trilogy is one of the most lauded examples of mainstream video games that have incorporated prominent queer representation. In a media landscape that is still navigating marginalized representation in a meaningful way, BioWare has made strides in terms of their depth and quality of queer inclusion since its release. The ways that this inclusion is constructed in all levels of design – from formal game qualities to its storytelling choices – can tell researchers much about how discourses of queerness function, using the game space as a site of discursive operations. Utilizing theory from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, in tandem with concepts from film studies and queer studies, my research investigates the discursive operations at work throughout the Mass Effect games, with focus on what discourses of queer gender and sexuality are produced, circulated, and subverted though a critical discourse analysis of the games’ text and content. I examine the role of the player at the crux of it all, the specificities that arise from player choice and interactivity, and how they work to create something that demonstrates a nuanced and complex showcase of queer representation.