What is Game Curious Montreal?

On its website, Game Curious describes itself as “a book club for games.” Supported by the Mount Royal Gaming Society (MRGS), Pixelles, Quebec Public Interest Group (QPIRG) Concordia, and Association for the Voice of Education in Quebec, they offer “a series of free public events aimed at creating a space for people who are new to games, or who feel marginalized or excluded by the dominant culture.” The collective provides an accessible avenue for engaging in radical social justice topics for players of any background — from those who’ve always been curious but have never played, to those who’ve clocked in many hours at their favorite video games. This initiative allows people with any level of experience to contribute something important to the discussion of inclusivity in games and gaming spaces.

The collective provides an accessible avenue for engaging in radical social justice topics for players with any background.

Game Curious’ weekly themed workshops

The workshops take place on Sundays at 2 p.m. in Café Aquin, on the second floor of UQAM. Free food is offered, with plenty of vegan options available. The space is wheelchair accessible, and services such as childcare and French-English whisper translation are offered. There are laptops featuring games related to each week’s discussion. Zines explaining Game Curious’ safer space policy and local grassroots organizations, such as Solidarity Across Borders, are also available. After giving players several hours to test out each game, a round table discussion is held to talk about the games, their impact, and how they relate to the theme of the day.

The first workshop in the series this year was held a week ago with the theme “Immigration & Borders.” Showcased games included Papers Please (2014), Borders (2017), I’ll Take Care of It (2017), Bury Me, My Love (2017), and Penalties (2013). The discussion centred mostly around Papers Please, a game where you play as a bureaucratic border agent forced to either allow or deny people’s entry into the fictional post-Soviet country of Arstotszka. This game forces players to be complicit in the system of oppression that upholds the racist ideal of the “model immigrant.” It gives players insight into which aspects of immigration are regulated. At a certain level of the game, they must even deny those whose outside appearance doesn’t match the gender on their passport. As the game progresses, the player is also forced to make choices between taking care of their family or joining the resistance movement, at their own cost. Though the experience of playing this game is tedious and menial, it encourages players to question the legitimacy of borders and nationality, and to reflect on current refugee crises.

[Papers Please] encourages players to question the legitimacy of borders and nationality, and reflect on current refugee crises.

In I’ll Take Care of It, you play as a young Latina immigrant who is being harassed by faceless, heavily militarized immigration agents, who wear helmets dotted by two shining red eyes. She seeks the help of a bruja (a Latina witch) living in her apartment building who comes ready to brawl the next time the police arrive. This power fantasy inspires the player to fight back against the likes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the U.S. by declaring that “anyone can be a bruja,” and shows the importance of support networks for immigrants.

Penalties is an autobiographical game by a Palestinian refugee in the U.S. This escape-the-room horror game has a self-harm content warning, and induces feelings of anxiety and for some, claustrophobia. It intentionally makes the player feel trapped, choiceless, and desperate with the hope of escape. These feelings parallel what it’s like to be suffocated by oppressive structures upheld by ethnonationalism and borders.

Conclusion

Video games, like any piece of media, do not exist in a vacuum. Video game design and content reflect the dominant ideologies of the context in which they are produced. Ignoring and refusing to discuss the politics of video games only feeds into the alienation and marginalization of certain groups. On that backdrop, Game Curious carves out spaces for subversive dynamics to grow, bloom, and boom.

Game Curious carves out spaces for subversive dynamics to grow, bloom and boom.

Upcoming Game Curious workshops revolve around the themes of Policing and Prisons on February 4, Feminism and Consent on Feb. 11, and Capitalism and Workers Struggles on Feb. 18. Additionally, the Game Curious website has links for all the games showcased so far, so if you’re unable to attend a workshop they’re there for you to explore. The collective also plans on hosting workshops to teach people how to create video games of their own, with a group game-making event  (also known as a Game Jam), following shortly after. If you’re interested, make sure you stop by to play some games and to participate in the discussion. Game on, comrades.

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I would first like to acknowledge that I speak solely from my experience coming from Soviet Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, and I do not represent the vast and varied experiences of Sephardic, Mizrahi and other Jewries, which I encourage you to seek out and listen to. In what then is my Jewish identity rooted? It definitely does not come from my practice of Judaism, whose teachings have long been abandoned by my single mother and whose last shred of influence over my life was extinguished in the secular suburbia in which I grew up. I don’t speak Yiddish, and despite learning Hebrew in elementary school, I’ve lost all traces of it. This begs the question: if not religion, if not language, then what? Is my Jewish identity found in the shakshouka my mother taught me how to make, or in the matzo ball soup I eat once a year? Is it nested in the intricate braids of the Challah bread I once baked? Is that where it hides?

The simple answer, the same one propagated ceaselessly by the Israeli state, is that my identity is somehow irrevocably bound to the land I was born in. I am meant to believe that the center and core of my existence as a Jew is tied to a strip of land an ocean away that can be crossed by car from tip to tail in less than six hours. A land that has been grabbed by force and violently occupied by white settlers since even before the night of the Nakba in 1948, and has since been defined by increasing military expansionism, state-sanctioned brutality, and discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens. A land whose government has built a literal wall to separate those it deems to be second-class and has refused to provide the most basic of services to these people, and whose fertile soils and trees have been razed to the ground by the military to deny Palestinians any means of securing their livelihoods. And what a fitting image that is, an uprooted olive tree to symbolize Israel’s violence.

“Zionism and antisemitism – two sides of the same coin, both maintaining that Jews do not belong in the countries where they’ve lived over the centuries”, writes Leon Rosselson, a British poet and singer-songwriter as well as a prominent anti-Zionist activist. To claim that Jews must relocate to Israel to be considered whole is to deny the range of Jewish experiences across the world that cannot be collapsed into one tangible identity. Jews from New York, Argentina, Ethiopia, Germany, and Russia all have different histories to tell which have been undeniably shaped by anti-Jewish oppression, and which Israel attempts to reduce to a single, hegemonic narrative.  

My Jewish identity need not be confined to ethno-nationalism to be considered valid. Instead, in Isaac Babel’s own words, “I am a Jew because of my unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and the exterminated.” I identify with the legacy of radical Jews who’ve seen the injustices of the world, and labored tirelessly to correct them. It is precisely because Jews are so intimately familiar with violence and persecution that we must fight against them in all their forms, especially when they are being perpetrated by a government that claims to act in our name. Judaism is the only religion I know of in which you’re encouraged to argue with your God and community leaders. And while I am non-practicing, this sentiment appeals to me. The freedom to question the legitimacy of higher authorities, spiritual or not, is the hallmark of a just society.

It has become increasingly clear that this is not the type of freedom afforded at my university campus. In the aftermath of the General Assembly (GA) on October 23, the proverbial shit hit the fan. In what was misconstrued as an act of anti-Semitism, Noah Lew was not ratified to the BoD. Later in the GA, SSMU President Muna Tojiboeva alleged that Democratize SSMU and others were motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment when voting down Lew. At best, those involved conflate what it means to be Jewish with what it means to be a Zionist, essentially stating that one cannot exist without the other. At worst, they fall into anti-Semitic tropes that further alienate either side.

Allegations of anti-Semitism must be taken seriously, and I extend my solidarity to every Jewish-identifying person, both on campus and off, who has experienced this form of discrimination. However, it must be made explicitly clear that when Jewish and non-Jewish students criticize the Israeli state, or call someone out for being affiliated with Zionist organizations, it is not inherently an anti-Semitic act. To state otherwise-as the McGill administration and Tojiboeva have done-is to adopt a reductionist view that silences our very democratic call for justice.

This is why, sitting in the humid SSMU Ballroom at this past General Assembly, I voted against Noah Lew’s re-election to the BoD. Amidst growing evidence against his competency, from his illegal campaigning for Muna as well to his failure to recuse himself from the BDS ruling,  I stood with fellow students in exercising my right to unseat a member of a political institution whose policies I don’t agree with. While Democratize SSMU made a misstep in adopting anti-Semitic language when calling Lew out, they later apologized, their error does not invalidate their goal of holding student representatives accountable. Nor should it be a reason for Lew and Tojiboeva to point fingers without first understanding the basis of students’ critiques. Lew crying anti-Semitism only reinforces the conflation between Jewishness and Zionism, and erases anti- and non-Zionist Jewish voices. We exist, and our voices must be heard.

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