For my Critical Play, I decided to play “Queers in Love at the End of the World.” Queers in Love at the End of the World is a web-based, text-based game created by Anna Anthropy in 2013 using the software Twine, which is technically a story telling software. I think this game’s target audience is probably queer people, but at the same time it’s also an opportunity to expose non-queer people to queer narratives.
The game works by giving you an initial paragraph or plot point and then a few hyperlinks that you can click to further the narrative. You only have 10 seconds before the story ends, and you have to start from the first plot point again. To play the game, you essentially just run through many different scenarios and try to read whatever the story is, knowing that the moment those 10 seconds are up, you’ll lose everything and have to start again.
What does it mean to play this game as a feminist? Well, I think first of all, you have to have an open mind to play this game because it’s so different from any other game I’ve ever played. Additionally, you really have to try to put yourself in the shoes of whoever the characters are and come up with who the characters are in your own head. Because the game is text-based, it’s all about the narrative, but then at the same time, the narrative is gone every 10 seconds. However, it still feels like you’re living through the story more like a Groundhog Day kinda situation than a full reset. I think in accepting how different this game is from pretty much any other game I’d ever played, I automatically created a new genre for myself of what a game can be, which is what Shira Chess’ whole point was. This game goes so far away from what we think of when we think of games (such as a violent first-person shooter) and thus opens your mind up to the possibility of something else as a game. It’s very much so disrupting the Good Old Boys’ Playground. I also think that because it doesn’t cater to teenage or young men, it also disrupts the notion of a game being designed for those people. Nevertheless, I do think this game is a game that could provide a lot of value to people that have traditionally played very masculine games, because it could open their mind up to something different. Additionally, to Shira’s point about telling feminist stories, this game tells so many stories in one. Every 10 seconds is a new story or at least a new version of the same story, and I think this shows the diversity of what experience can be. You might spend those last 10 seconds at the end of the earth holding each other, talking to each other, or being physically intimate with each other, and all these things are different and they lead to different outcomes. But at the same time, there’s a general sense of positivity and love, and this game is definitely a very wholesome game (despite the whole “we’re all gonna die” vibe underlying it.)
I think one interesting thing is that at first I was annoyed that there wasn’t more of a dramatic end when the timer ran out, like an explosion or something more crazy instead of it just ending. But I think as I played the game, I started to appreciate that in how it disrupted what I was expecting.
One frustration that I had is that when I got to the end of the timer or a scene where there were no more moves to make (i.e., there were no hyperlinks). It was just a final plot point. I wish I could have kept going, even though I guess that is the point of the game. It still was frustrating as a player. I think it made me more engaged to want to play again, but at the same time it felt a little bit addicting and like something was being withheld from me, which I didn’t like.
