Spotlight: Teddy Pozo

Abstract

Spotlight:Teddy Pozo Interview by TreaAndrea M. Russworm TreaAndrea M. Russworm: What would you like our readers to know about the history of video games and where you enter the conversation? Teddy Pozo: My book talks about two specific moments in video game history related to sexual and gender representation. The first is the early twentieth century, when moving pictures ceased to be arcade machines, and the arcade and the movie theater split apart. Film started to define itself as a disembodied visual medium, on the mind side of mind/body dualism, in a constructed zone of non-pornography. The second is the "queer games scene" of the early 2010s when trans artists started to become highly visible in video game design. The conversation around queerness and games did not initially separate "pornographic" and "non-pornographic" works, as it was part of a larger scene of sex and technology makers and queer pornography. In connecting these moments, my work goes much further back than games history sometimes does in order to understand more recent events in a historical frame. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Teddy Pozo (Jett Allen, 2021). Russworm: Since we may not often think about the erotic, haptic, and visceral dimensions of playing games, can you give us an example of how the haptic and the erotic converge in this regard? [End Page 4] Pozo: Think about the physical and emotional process of playing a Twine game: a sparsely designed one-on-one interaction between player and game, or player and game maker, where the white text on a black background of Twine's Sugarcane story format is much different than the social media feed or blog you may have clicked to arrive there. Clicking a hyperlink leads to a miniature world of hyperlinks simulating one other person's mind or chain of associations that may be very different from your own. There's no specific haptic technology in this moment, no vibration, electrotactility, or force feedback. However, the interaction between player and game or game maker in personal games is often "haptic" in a surface, caressing, intersubjective way of interacting with a piece of media that oscillates between understanding and being overwhelmed, taking and giving up control. This is consistent with Laura U. Marks's theory of haptic visuality.1 So many of the early Twine games that were part of the queerness and games scene were erotic or pornographic, depending on your definition.2 Marks argues that haptic texts are always erotic, regardless of subject matter, so experiencing a haptic pornographic text can be very powerful. Russworm: Perhaps we can play a game. Please offer a rapid-fire association to each of the following terms: touch, control, tingle, vibrate, consent. Pozo: Touch—An essential part of all the human senses, because every sense organ can both be physically touched and can call up haptic sense memories. Tingle—Tingle is a very old term that means to pass with a thrill or to vibrate as a bell, so it marks the intersection of electricity and vibration, from penny arcade vibration machines to The Tingler (1959), a William Castle film with a vibrating gimmick by Dona Holloway, that also influenced John Waters's Multiple Maniacs (1970), in its Tingler-esque Lobstora sequence, and Polyester (1981), with its card-based Odorama gimmick.3 Vibrate—Vibration has the potential to be appropriated for pleasure at all times. Consent—Digital environments can produce coercive consent structures, automatically collecting data and requiring us to opt out, for example, but games by queer and trans artists often try to transform digital consent to true interpersonal consent, allowing for touch to be experienced as care rather than coercion.4 Russworm: What do you think porn studies can contribute to game studies? [End Page 5] Pozo: What inspires me in porn studies is its labor consciousness—its understanding that while creative workers claim and demonstrate passion as part of the work, passion is not an excuse for not getting paid. Academics can relate to this! We in video game studies need to take a cue from porn studies and not exceptionalize our passionate relationship to an industry. Rather, we need to...