Graduation Date
Spring 2019
Document Type
Thesis
Program
Master of Arts degree with a major in English, emphasis in Literary & Cultural Studies
Committee Chair Name
Dr. David Stacey
Committee Chair Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Dr. Mary Ann Creadon
Second Committee Member Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Subject Categories
English
Abstract
In this project, I analyze two video games, Gone Home (Fullbright Company 2013) and What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow 2017), through a queer theoretical framework, focusing on three specific features of the games: 1) their status as open world games, 2) the agency given to players in interactions with objects, and 3) how ambiguous player-character identity is used to create a sense of estrangement in the player. I use these features to argue for a specifically queer theoretical approach to hypermedia, which is attentive to the process of how players create an identity for themselves within the game world. I also introduce the concept of the reader-player, a term that I believe (more accurately than reader or player alone) represents the cognitive/embodied approach that reader-players bring to hypermedia texts.
Citation Style
MLA
Recommended Citation
Boers, Cat, "Toward a working theory of queer hypermedia: An analysis of queer textual structures in gone home and what remains of Edith Finch" (2019). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 246.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/246
Included in
Digital Humanities Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Rhetoric and Composition Commons