Radical Gender Neutrality: Agender Euphoria in Gaming and Play Experiences

TL;DR

This paper explores agender euphoria in gaming, identifying how games can create gender-free joyful experiences and providing design criteria to foster such experiences for agender and related players.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of agender euphoria in gaming, empirically investigates its creation, and offers design guidelines to promote gender-neutral joyful experiences.

Findings

Games can elicit agender euphoria under specific conditions.

Empirical criteria for designing games that foster agender euphoria.

Identifies factors that inhibit agender euphoric experiences in games.

Abstract

Agender euphoria is a new term representing the powerful feelings of happiness, joy, and contentment derived from experiences in gender-free embodiments, spaces, and activities. People with and without agender and adjacent identities (e.g., genderless, gender-free, non-binary, gender-apathetic) may have such experiences under the right circumstances. Video games can offer gender minorities a safe haven for gender euphoric experiences. However, the possibility of agender euphoric experiences was unexplored. We considered this overlooked frame of self-actualization with 142 people who identified as having or desiring agender euphoric experiences. Using the critical incident technique (CIT), we uncovered how games and play experiences create (and inhibit) agender euphoria. We surface this experiential phenomenon and provide empirically-grounded criteria for the design of games to elicit agender euphoric experiences for everyone, but especially agender and agender adjacent players. This work adds to the growing critical literatures on marginalized experiences in games research and human-computer interaction.