You Are Bisexual
Image description: A bisexual pride flag with the words “YOU ARE BISEXUAL: A game about not knowing that you are bisexual” written across it
You Are Bisexual is a short memoir game made in Twine.
I think games are an under-utilized medium for memoirs. This is not to say that no one is doing it — on the contrary, plenty of people are making games out of their experiences using tools like Twine. I think that, instead, more traditional memoir writers should know that games are an option. Interactive fiction (or, in this case, interactive non-fiction) lets readers put themselves in the position of the memoir writer in a way that no other medium can.
The core of this experience, and the idea that led me to eventually build the full game, is the inability to drive the narrative by voicing the phrase “You are bisexual.” I wanted to build in an interaction where users would choose that option, trying to hurry the character along to her realization, only to be prevented from doing so. By requiring the reader to follow my own journey by giving them choices — or, in this case, withholding the choices that they wish they could make — they’re able to experience some of my frustration and uncertainty firsthand. I think it’s a medium that memoir writers would like to take advantage of, if we can change the perception of games from a highly technical and specialized field to the accessible storytelling medium it has become.
This was an embarrassing game to make. For starters, it’s mostly about past crushes I’ve had which, let’s face it, is never pretty. But it’s also about my own internal biases, which kept me from realizing a pretty fundamental part of my identity for nearly thirty years. The game started out as a lighthearted series of vignettes intended to make fun of myself, but as it grew in scope, I had to be more honest with myself about the aspects of my identity that I was still struggling with. After it was released, I worried that it might be too personal, too specific, for anyone else to be interested. But the response was not only positive, but equally specific: every single bisexual-identified person who let me know they’d played it said the same thing: “I feel seen.”
That said, it’s still mostly funny. If there’s one thing past crushes are good for, it is laughing at them in retrospect.