I just attended the opening of “F(R)ICTION: Art & Games” at Arsenal Contemporary Art, an exhibition happening as part of the 2026 ELEKTRA Biennial. There’s a lot of cool stuff in there that I highly recommend checking out if you happen to be in Montreal sometime in the next month, including some impressive large-scale installations, an arcade cabinet with arms growing out of it, and some old-school computer terminals where you can chat with alien micro-organisms.

But also, tucked away in a corner off to the side is a little text-based game I made 12 years ago called “Quing’s Quest VII: The Death of Videogames”. I wrote it for a little game jam called Ruin Jam, which was organized in response to a not-so-little internet tantrum called Gamergate. Maybe some of you remember it? Anyway, the prompt for Ruin Jam, to quote the jam website, was to include the following suggested items that were considered at the time to be ruining videogames:

• "Forced Diversity", i.e. Minority characters with agency.

• People who make or talk about games having social and/or love lives.

• "SJWs", which stands  "Social Justice Warriors". It's bad to be this for some reason.

• People calling things that aren't games games. The criteria for what a game is has yet to be disclosed.

• Not being able to jump, shoot, or be killed.

• Criticism or satire of existing game franchises.

So I basically made a thing that included all of the above, complete with glitter text effects lifted straight out of “CRY$TAL WARRIOR KE$HA” by Porpentine. Given how scared I remember being at the time that I, too, would become a target of harassment for being a rising star in indie games who happened to be openly trans, it felt cathartic to be able to channel my feelings into something creative.

It’s weird to think that 2014 was 12 years ago: it feels both like a very long time and also very recent. A lot has been said about Gamergate being the canary in the coal mine for the rise of American fascism, and yeah, it certainly feels that way. I guess in that sense, the message of joyful resistance behind Quing’s Quest is still relevant today: we’re still here, and we’re still going to keep on creating.