Quarantine Bae

This game was created as the final for ARTG 129-02, Queer and Trans Games.  

In this queer, kinky, COVID dating sim, the protagonist, Jax, has been in an open/consensually non-monogamous relationship with their partner Quinn and they moved in together right before COVID began. Due to COVID concerns and especially because Quinn works in a public health field, their relationship has become monogamous and they are not seeing other people anymore. Jax is very lonely and is not getting their needs met by their live-in partner. Their best friend, Argyle, who they used to live with in college, now lives far away and wants Jax to come and visit. Where Argyle lives in Santa Cruz has fewer COVID cases and Argyle thinks coming to visit would make Jax happier. Also available to date/interact with is Katherine, who Jax met on FetLife, and who is sexy and exciting, and wants to meet up and have sex. Katherine is not socially distancing or taking COVID seriously at all. Jax/the player must make choices like trying to reconnect with their partner and communicate their needs, cheating on their partner and potentially endangering them by meeting up with Katherine, or FaceTiming with/going to visit their best friend Argyle (which would also in some way mean giving up on their relationship with Quinn).  

 This game explores queerness and the way that living in quarantine during the COVID pandemic warps time. In his book “In a Queer Time and Place: Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies”, Jack Halberstam writes, “The constantly diminishing future creates a new emphasis on the here, the present, the now" (pg 5). This was written about living under the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but is quite relevant and applicable to the present moment, in which this game takes place. This game seeks to subvert and upend "the fundamental assumptions driving patterns of play" (What is Queerness in Games Anyway, pg 4) by forcing the player to do things other than simply date available partners, as is the structure of most dating sims. This game will force players to grapple with loneliness and take up COVID- specific habits to fill the time, like baking, cutting your partner's hair, and sewing your own clothes. This, too, is grounded in theoretical ideas about the value of crafting. In Time and Reparative Game Design: Queerness, Disability, and Affect, Kara Stone quotes queer affect scholar Ann Cvetkovich as having written, “The slow and sensual process of crafting can be a healing experience". I hope that playing this game will be both cathartic for players who might find recognition in the character of Jax, who is so lonely and frustrated in quarantine, and healing, forcing players to confront these feelings and work through them by having Jax bake bread, do a home haircut,       and connect with the people in their life.