Pride at Play announces Sydney WorldPride festival lineup
On Tuesday, Pride at Play announced the list of video games that will be showcased as part of the lineup for the Pride Amplified section of the Sydney WorldPride festival. The games and developers chosen have a particular focus on Asia Pacific and Oceania. Festival-goers will be able to check out 22 video games and tabletop roleplaying games, and an additional nine games will be presented in an online showcase. Some of the titles fans can look forward to are Witch Beam Games’ Unpacking and Studio Drydock’s Wyldeflowers.
“When you look at mainstream games out there, queer characters receive a lot of attention for a narrow slice of representation,” said Pride at Play lead curator and queer games researcher Xavier Ho. “We created Pride at Play to be an amplifier for games that are designed with authentic, purposeful, and thoughtful queer representation.”
The festival will also feature LGBTQ+ inclusive events that are free to register for. These include introductory tabletop RPG sessions, social board game nights, and a queer game developer panel. Those looking for more insight into game development will be able to purchase a physical exhibition catalogue that includes 20 interviews with contributing developers. All proceeds from the sale of this catalogue will go towards LGBTQIA+ charities in Oceania and Asia Pacific.
“Games that are designed by queer game designers for queer players can be so much more specific with the story,” Ho said. “You’ve got characters who are not just defined by their gender or sexuality, but also having a normal day job while going through a journey of discovery. It’s exciting but also refreshing.”
Pride at Play full lineup
- Unpacking – Witch Beam Games
- Wyldeflowers – Studio Drydock
- Kinder World – Lumi Interactive
- Mima and Nina’s Chocolate Workshop – npckc & sdhizumi
- Lilypad Days – Emma Pretty, Joshua Braines-Mead & Billie
- Hard Lads – Robert Yang
- Pretzel After Dark – Timothy Snowdon
- stand up – Rae White
- “So, About Last Night…” – Elissa Black
- That Boy is A Monstr – Sav Wolfe
- Make Our Own Heaven – Reizor
- Our Mundane Supernatural Life – Storybrewers Roleplaying
- TOMBS: Toot on my balls skeleton – Swamphen
- I’M A TRANS MAN AND I’M HERE TO FUCK (TRANS BODIES ARE SEXY) – Logan Timmins, Uncle Vlad, Nimael & Ro Heist
- LOGAN: An Autobiographical Tabletop Game – Logan Timmins
- userID – Hua Chai
- s/f/wønderland – Hua Chai
- The Beat: A Glam Noir Adventure – Up Multimedia
- Queer and Chill – Team Spicy Bubble
- Kaiju Noir – Jamie Kaiju Marriage, Lluis Abadias & Dani Bilham
- Small Town Emo – Fnife Games
- Please Be Happy – Studio Élan
Online showcase
- Navathem’s End – Sinta Posadas & Pam Punzalan
- Wrong Number – WitPOP
- Jubilee – gayleviticus
- Small Orbits – Timothy Snowdon
- Triangulate – Timothy Snowdon
- Foodomina – Irini Melas, John Engstrom, Jason Keen & Aris Diacolabrianos
- Journey to You – Logan Timmins
- Safe Place – Logan Timmins
- Red Handed – Isabelle White, Bailey Gibbons, Guriqbal Singh Majhail, Jim Ouk & Morgan Ainsley
Pride at Play will run from February 21-March 4, 2023 at the Sydney College of the Arts on Manning Road in Camperdown, 10am to 4pm daily except Sunday, the 26 of February.
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