Queerness and Games Conference
Montreal, Canada
The Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon) is now accepting submissions for presentations at its sixth conference, which will be held on September 26-28, 2025, in Montreal, Quebec. Proposals for talks, pre-constituted panels, workshops, roundtables, and post-mortems are due on April 13th, 2025.
PLEASE NOTE: we are not accepting submissions via email. Submit your proposal using the following Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScujFTJggD5wuz6_nj2X4SHqeWn7XK5kqki1bux4YbHNTT99A/viewform?usp=preview
QGCon is an annual event that brings together creators, academics, artists, educators, and activists to explore the intersection of LGBTQ issues and video games. After canceling our planned 2020 conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we shifted to online events for the last five years. QGCon 2025 marks our return to in-person programming. As part of our commitment to accessibility, QGCon 2025 will be a COVID-cautious event with respirator mask requirements — please read on for more specific information.
In line with our mission to combine and connect theory and creative practice, we welcome submissions for presentations of all kinds, including but not limited to:
- Talks and pre-constituted panels
- Roundtables, moderated discussions, and Q&A sessions
- Post-mortems and design talks
- Workshops, skillshares, and hands-on activities
- Performances and live gameplay sessions
In addition to this Call for Proposals, which focuses on talks and other sessions, QGCon releases an annual Call for Games. Accepted games will be featured at our arcade, where they will be playable throughout the conference. Those interested in submitting to the arcade should refer to our Call for Games here: https://www.qgcon.org/cfg
Speakers from all backgrounds are encouraged to submit. Because QGCon is a community-oriented event that seeks to foster dialogue across areas of expertise, we especially value sessions that are engaging for a diverse audience. Though the focus of the conference is LGBTQ issues, QGCon takes an intersectional approach to queerness. Sessions that center race, ethnicity, gender, disability, mental health, neurodiversity, socioeconomics, and sexual expression all address important aspects of the queer experience, and are welcomed.
THEMES: ACCESS AND URGENCY
This year, we also want to address the changing social climate around queerness, represented by the ongoing mass disabling event that is the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasingly dire climate emergency that disproportionately impacts the marginalized, and by the ongoing, intensifying oppression of transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people around the world. 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.
To give you a sense of how you might address these themes, here are a few example concepts:
Access
- The little-known history of a community-built mod that made a game accessible in an unintended way
- An oral history of a games community that did something related to access
- A comparative analysis of first-party accessibility features in games
- A Q&A session with a community manager about the balance between access and safety in queer gaming spaces
- An archeogaming perspective on how and whether games are preserved for future players to access and the issues around this
- A design talk about alternative strategies for content progression and how access to different parts of a game might be gated (or not)
Urgency
- A close reading of a game that uses game mechanics to create a feeling of queer urgency
- An ethnography of a games community that has navigated internal conflict & repair in order to create a space for queer people in the here and now
- A post-mortem of the development process of a game in which the urgency of a profit-driven release schedule came into tension with the queer ambitions of the creators
- A roundtable on the use of playful, gamelike or queer tactics in an activist movement
- Historical research on the use of play/games in queer spaces to navigate risk and harm
- A live play session or interactive performance that plays with feelings of danger, threat, and resilience
- A workshop about making games on the fly using discarded, recycled, repurposed, improvised, or jury-rigged objects
- These themes are intended as generative rather than exclusionary: if your project does not fit the themes but you feel it would still be a good fit for QGCon, we strongly encourage you to submit!
TRAVEL GRANTS
Accepted presenters traveling to the conference from outside Québec will be eligible for a limited number of travel grants. The number of grants available and the percentage of costs that we are able to cover depends on the success of QGCon's fundraising.
COVID-19 SAFETY
Convening a conference in a post-2020 world, amidst an ongoing pandemic, is a challenging proposition. Part of the reason for the long gap between QGCons is because we didn’t want to risk participants’ health or exclude immunocompromised and disabled people. At QGCon 2025, we will do as much as we can to reduce the spread of COVID-19 at our conference. This means the following:
- 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 additional 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.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING
PLEASE NOTE: we are not accepting submissions via email. Submit your proposal using the following Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScujFTJggD5wuz6_nj2X4SHqeWn7XK5kqki1bux4YbHNTT99A/viewform?usp=preview
Submissions are due no later than April 13th, 2025. In the submission form you will be asked for the following information:
- Your name, contact information, and a brief bio (approximately 100 words) for you and any co-presenters. If relevant, please include links to your website, CV, online work, or social media. Solo presentations and co/group presentations are both welcome.
- The type of session you are proposing.
- An abstract (approximately 350 words) summarizing the session you are proposing, including main points you plan to make and/or learning goals you have for your attendees.
- If you are proposing a panel, please include a ~100 word description of the overall panel as well as individual abstracts from panelists (~100 words per abstract).
- Info regarding special materials, space, or any other accommodations you need for your session, such as non-standard AV requirements, craft supplies, etc.
- Indicate whether you plan to apply for a travel grant to attend the conference.
Notifications regarding acceptance will be sent no later than May 30, 2025.
Please reach out to us at the contact email with any questions or concerns about your submission.
QGCon Organizing Team
