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CDN will be showing a collection of queer games and narratives. Three panels around queer narratives and AI resistance, and a panel showing some local research in the field.

Joakim Johansen Østbye: Queer Game Developers and Players

Østbye will present findings from the research project Queer Game Developers and Players, based on in‑depth interviews with 15 participants (six developers and nine players), examining how queer people experience representation, inclusion, and openness in games, game culture, and the Norwegian game industry. The study finds that queer representation in games is seen as highly important for self‑expression, visibility, and reducing prejudice, but criticizes tokenistic background characters, stereotypes, and design choices that obscure queer content. Norwegian game developers describe the industry as generally open, yet constrained by commercial pressures and funding structures that favor large studios and limit support for smaller, queer‑focused projects, making it harder for the industry to keep pace with broader cultural developments.

Bio: A senior lecturer at the Department of Media and Communication. I teach and supervise students in media studies, I am a games scholar and the current program coordinator for the one-year unit in media and communication. If you are a student in one of my courses, feel free to contact me or stop by my office at the Department if you have any course-related/academic questions. You may also contact me to schedule a meeting.

Oliver Haimson: Queer and Trans AI Resistance in an Algorithmic World 

In a world increasingly dominated by AI, new lines of research have begun to examine how AI may be useful and helpful for marginalized groups such as queer and trans people. Yet many LGBTQ+ people are skeptical of and ambivalent toward AI, and increasingly resistant to it. In this talk, I explore alternative pathways for queer and trans technological futures that move beyond inclusion or representation within AI systems. I will present my and my collaborators’ research about AI attitudes among marginalized groups, queer methods for AI resistance, and speculative fiction as AI critique. Taken together, this work shows new possibilities for imagining technological futures that are not centered on AI, but instead prioritize consent, autonomy, care, and resistance. 

Bio: An Associate Professor at University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) where I direct the Community Research on Identity and Technology (CRIT) Lab, and author of Trans Technologies (MIT Press, 2025). I am also affiliate faculty with the Digital Studies Institute (DSI) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies (CATS). I conduct social computing research focused on envisioning and designing trans technologies, social media content moderation and marginalized populations, and changing identities on social media during life transitions. Much of my research has focused on transgender identities and experiences online and with social technologies. I am a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award, a Henry Russel Award, and multiple Best Paper and Honorable Mention awards at CHI and CSCW. 

Daniella Gáti: Our language is not a bunch of stereotypes: Why generative AI cannot represent queerness 

In this talk, Daniella explains why contemporary AI algorithms struggle to give us queer outputs. Focusing especially on large language models, which power chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT, Daniella shows that the pattern recognition methods on which these models are based guarantee that AI models will yield mainstream, average outputs. Daniella also asks what we can do to push back against the big AI companies and to work towards algorithms that are for (queer) people. 

Bio: A lecturer in Creative Computing at the University of Salford. An interdisciplinary scholar of digital media and queer theory, Daniella studies how algorithms and AI transform society, paying special attention to how marginalized groups such as LGBTQ+ people are impacted by digital worlds. The key question of their current book project, entitled A Queer Theory of AI and Algorithmic Knowledge, is how AI shapes the processes through which we understand the world and ourselves. How does AI envision and represent gender and sexuality? What are the limits to AI’s conceptualization of diversity? How does AI impact the ways in which young people recognize and accept their sexual orientations and gender identities? And how does AI deal with fluidity and uncertainty, concepts that are essential for both queerness and for being human more generally?

Sérgio Roxo and Tom Legierse, CDN PhDs

Presenting and discussing their research at the Center for Digital Narrative.

Ending with a panel of the presenters, talking about what research can do with/for queer folks in gaming and AI. Moderated by CDN Professor II Lin Prøitz, from Østfold University College.