About
Cass Zegura is a queer games scholar with a passion for the underlying technical systems and development ecosystems of video games. They focus specifically game engines as the platforms that games are built in and on. Their work leverages the methodologies and theories of queer games studies to analyze game engine technologies, discourses, and communities. In so doing, they seek to better understand this overlooked but fundamental technology in game development and beyond. They received their MS in Informatics from the University of California, Irvine and their BA in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University, where their theses explored potential definitions, enactments, and ways of knowing affective and queer game engines respectively. Their current research interest is the history of game engine technologies as it intersects dually with the first-person shooter genre and the pursuit of hyperrealistic 3D real-time graphics and physics.