August has been a month of connecting and reconnecting. We started desk-sharing and taking on production work with a new company (just around the corner from where we used to live in Chippendale), I went to visit my parents in Cairns, and we ended the month at a friends’ wedding in Tasmania.

Thanks to Queer Man Peering, we have been connecting with new people, too. It’s been so nice to discover people from all over the world enjoying our game. Yesterday morning Pete found two separate live-streams of people playing QMP. Not just playing it through either, really engaging with the work. Both streamers(you can watch their streams here and here) sat reflecting on their experience after the credits finished playing. Watching someone make connections that you thought you’d struggled to communicate is a magical experience.

Another (and their viewers) paused playing to explore the clues being offered by the game—film references, for example. It was great to watch people discovering the films we love in real time. Especially when those films are queer.

One particular thing we have noticed is how quickly players begin to worry that it’s going to be a sad story, and how delighted and surprised they are upon discovering  that it’s not. I thought “killing your gays” was a bit antiquated now, and maybe it is, but I guess a lifetime of consuming and considering media will stay with a person.

Perhaps the age of our lead character is a factor, too. There are many happy romances about young queers, maybe not so many about older queers.(Our Flag Means Death being a massively wonderful recent contribution to this space, although that does stretch the idea of “older”, doesn’t it?). Something to think about as we start tinkering on our next game, which is bubbling away in the background.

Hopefully we will have some more clues to offer in the next Pen Pals, but for now we are still dazed at being out of our production tunnel, walking around in the (as of tomorrow) spring sunshine and enjoying people enjoying Queer Man Peering.

—Scott