Drag Queens, Fighting Games and 'Backroll' Netcode: A Chat with the 2022 Winner of AT&T's Unlocked Games
You may not have heard of Drag Her! before--not the most unusual thing for an unreleased indie game--but this drag queen fighting game is poised to take the gaming world by storm when it hits PC, Mac, and Nintendo Switch in 2023. And AT&T is helping to make it happen.
Among AT&T's many efforts to support women in tech is the Unlocked Games competition, which showcases the work of independent game developers who identify as women. Drag Her! from Fighting Chance Games was this year's winner, and we sat down with narrative designer Jessica Antenorcruz to chat about the spoils of victory, doing LGBTQ representation their way, and teaming up with all these awesome real-life drag celebrities.
«Our. Game. Is. Awesome!» she said. «It's fun, it's stupid, it's silly, it's campy. It's just kind of a celebration of drag, but also video games, because we grew up playing just the most bonkers games…And we decided that a bunch of drag queens and drag kings should be in a fighting game!»
As Drag Her! is an independent game, however, money is always a concern. The team put together a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year, while simultaneously competing for $100,000 in the Unlocked Games competition. Antenorcruz said that money is going to change everything not just for Drag Her!, but also for her own personal life. Because it means that, after having to work a side gig at the library during much of the game's development, she gets to draw a salary and focus her attention more fully on Drag Her!.
That money also led to some quality-of-life improvements to her home workspace--which she described as «not set up for me sitting here and working for eight hours»--and a fix for her headset that broke just minutes before they
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