Games And Thirst, a Psychgeist series, edited by Kristine Ask, Ashley Guajardo, and Tanja Sihvonen.
Game characters are hot. From Leon Kennedy’s slutty little waist (Resident Evil 4) to Mel Medara’s graceful political maneuvering (League of Legends), videogames present us with magnetic, desirable, and sexy characters to thirst after. Thirst, in common internet slang, references a strong sexual attraction or desire for something. Just as a person who is thirsty in a traditional sense badly needs water, thirsty people in the slang sense crave a fictional character with the same desperation and intensity. If you have ever thirsted after a collection of on-screen pixels and wondered about your mental health, this is the edited collection for you!
This book is part of the collection brand new “Games And” series published by Play Story Press. This book series highlights iconic pop culture content from television, film, literature and video games through an examination of the psychological mechanisms that endear us to these stories for a lifetime. The tone of the collection is casual academic, meaning chapters should be written using scientific research, but in a way that is accessible to an audience of fans and aficionados of all kinds of fictional characters.
Chapters in this book will explore a psychological theme or concept related to attraction, or ‘thirsting’ after game characters. Chapters can choose to focus on any aspect of attraction, kink, fetish, pathology, desire, or eros, but at the core of each should be an emphasis on the horny. Of course, the distinction between love and sex is messy and conflated, so it is entirely appropriate to also discuss romance and emotion.
Several possible themes and topics are listed below, but do not consider this list exhaustive. Please feel free to propose a different combination of themes and topics:
Possible Topics:
- Men with slutty little waists: Unpacking sexy bodies and why they are sexy
- Free to roam, together or apart: Polyamory and non-monogamous desire in games
- Is it gay if it happens in Faerûn?: Homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, and queer and questioning characters and players
- “When I die, delete my search history”: Erotic fan art and fan fic communities
- Nonhuman and posthuman desires in the age of alienation
- Are anthropomorphic androids always asexual?
- Chasing after shiny objects? On the potentials and threats of robot love
- Monsterfucking & the Harkness test: Explorations of consent
- Rules are hot: BDSM and kink as gameplay
- Honk if you’re horny… for horror game protagonists. Or villains.
- Erotic role play: hooking up with friends and enemies in tabletop, analog, and digital RPGs
- Vigorous and large: Explorations of the desire for demi-humans, furries, shapeshifters, and druids
- Rule 34: Paraphilia and pathologic desires in gaming
We particularly welcome submissions from first time authors and authors from non-traditional backgrounds.
Send an abstract (of approximately 300 words) and your short bio or blurb to playinglikeafangirl@gmail.com no later than 15 February 2026.