The Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon) 2025

At QGCon, we bring together academic researchers, game industry workers, artists, students, and players to share knowledge, engage in critical conversations, and build community, all in the context of approaching games through a queer lens.

Our events are PWYW (pay-what-you-want) and open to the public. We began in 2013 at UC Berkeley as a ragtag group of queer game artists and emerging scholars. After three events in Berkeley, we moved to Los Angeles in 2017, and then Montréal in 2018.

We take in an intersectional approach to queerness. We believe that the struggles — and the victories! — of we who play from the margins are interconnected. We invite attention to race, gender, body type, ability, class, and culture in all our work.

QGCon 2025 is our first in-person conference since the pandemic. We are so excited to be in community with you!

This year’s conference takes place in a more uncertain, hostile, and dangerous time for queer people than when we previously convened. To center this shift, and to consider how we might organize and build community in the face of it, we are organizing QGCon 2025 around two themes: Access and Urgency.

Access can refer to disability justice and accessibility, income inequality and access to resources, or how we use the technologies around us to create and restrict access socially, physically and digitally. The relationship between queerness and access is multifaceted. Access to information (and disinformation) about queerness is more available now than ever. Political debates and hate campaigns aim to limit our access to all aspects of public life, from bathrooms and healthcare to the digital platforms that play host to queer communities, like Tumblr and TikTok.

Urgency addresses the pervasive sense for many queer people that we are out of time. The queer theorist Jose Esteban Muñoz frames queer life as utopian – as a possibility for the future, not fully realizable in the present. But for many queer people in 2025, amidst a deadly pandemic, escalating repression, and looming climate apocalypse, it feels as though the future will never arrive. We must realize queerness in the present in whatever imperfect ways we can, while we still can.

At QGCon 2025, we will do as much as we can to reduce the spread of COVID-19 at our conference. All conference participants will be required to wear a N95, KN95, equivalent, or better mask at all times while indoors. We will provide N95/KN95 masks onsite for anyone who is unable to bring their own. In addition, we ask that conference participants wear a mask while traveling to Montreal, if taking public transportation.

Our venue’s air filtration system includes 2 filtration standards: Merv 8 for pre-filtration, and Merv 13 for filtration. Together, they filter up to 90% of fine particles (0.3 to 10 um).
In addition, we will provide HEPA filters throughout the venue to mitigate air filtration.

We are requiring all attendees to take a COVID antigen test, at most 24 hours old, and to affirm that they had a negative result upon arrival at the venue.

We will make COVID antigen tests available at the venue. Please note that COVID antigen tests are most accurate if taken twice, 48 hours apart. If you are experiencing cold- or flu-like symptoms, please stay home and self-isolate. We are happy to refund ticket sales if you get sick and are unable to attend.

We will strive to make QGCon as accessible to remote participants as possible. This means, at the very least, that all talks will be livestreamed and recorded. If you are a presenter and you are exposed to COVID or experience symptoms, we will work with you to ensure you can deliver your presentation remotely.

The above rules constitute the absolute minimum of what we plan to offer in regards to safety. We will not rescind any of these rules before or during the conference, and we reserve the right to add additional regulations as necessary.

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