Queer video game turns genre on its head

Welcome to Queer Power, your have-sex-anyhow-with-any-gender (or no gender) video game oyster.

The game was among five juried submissions in the installation category of the ninth installment of Signal and Noise, a Vancouver-based festival of avant-garde, interdisciplinary art hosted by Vivo Media Arts Centre, Apr 17-19.

Queer Power, which invites players to fuck-and-give-pleasure instead of fight-and-eliminate, stands the traditional video game on its head in its look, characters, content, goals, and even its audience.

It's the brainchild of the video game collective Molleindustria, which develops and promotes video games that challenge mainstream commercial gaming, as evidenced in the names of some of its other projects — Faith Fighter ("religious hate has never been so much fun"), Operation Pedopriest ("establish a code of silence and hide the scandal until the media attention moves elsewhere"), and Where Next (which encourages those tired of betting on the Nasdaq and sports matches to bet on where the next terrorist attack will take place).

The primary creative force behind Queer Power, Paolo Pedercini, says his Signal and Noise entry is a parody of blood-and-gore fighting games like Mortal Kombat, popularized in the early '90s, that endorse a Western militaristic perspective. Queer video game turns genre on its head