Playing with Pride: When Game Culture and LGBTQ Culture Collide

Well, so welcome. I'm Matt Baume. Welcome to Playing with Pride. So, this is a several years long project to answer the question of what happens when queer culture and game culture collide and particularly what that collision means for game developers. For the last 3 years, I've been gathering video interviews with LGBT gamers along with my partner James and I'm we're going to share some stories that we've collected today. So, just quick introduction about me. I'm a writer and a multimedia producer in Seattle. I cover LGBT issues for Rolling Stone and Vice Magazine and Slate and a whole bunch of others. I have a podcast called the Sewers of Paris where I interview queer people about entertainment that's changed their lives and along with James, my partner, we do a live show and podcast called Queens of Adventure featuring drag queens playing Dungeons and Dragons. So, intersection of queer and game is a

big part of our lives. So, a couple of years ago we noticed that there was this rising interest in gaming events geared towards LGBT people and we were curious about that. What do games have to do with sexuality? This is a question that a lot of people were asking not always in good faith. So, we wanted to answer that particularly when it comes to the games industry. James is a long time game designer. I worked at Capcom and LeapFrog and LucasArts and we noticed that there might be a need for games culture and queer culture to overlap in a way that wasn't currently being met. So, we decided to ask people about that. We recorded interviews with over 100 people in their homes occasionally at work asking them how games have helped them to come out, fall in love, explore their sexuality, feel less alone. We also talked to developers about how they've incorporated queer themes into their work. A a of the people that we spoke to were queer, some were straight, some were trans, some were non-binary. We heard a

lot of deeply personal stories about navigating between those queer worlds and gamer worlds, particularly when it comes to love, romance, and dating. Uh, we also heard from gamers about needs and wants that the industry isn't currently meeting. And we talked to game developers about what they're doing to meet those needs, what they're changing on their end and changing about their practices. Uh, so what we're going to look at today, what I'm sharing with you is some short video clips from those conversations highlighting some themes that came up again and again and again. Uh, couple of quick notes. These are the stories from people that we talked to. It's not the complete queer gamer experience. There are a lot of topics that we touched on in these interviews that we just are not going to have time to talk about today. Uh, and also some of the folks that we talked to spoke about their experience being harassed. They used some slurs to talk about what they experienced. Just to prepare you in case that's something that you don't want to hear. Uh, so something that we heard from almost everybody is that when the people we spoke to were young,

gaming was considered safe. It was fun. It was something that brought people together. And then for a lot of people that changed when they wanted to share their love of games with queer friends or when they wanted to talk about sexuality or sexual orientation or gender identity with gaming friends. And these two worlds just seemed incompatible. You know, I feel I was an outcast, that I was some kind of freak cuz I didn't know any gay people and there was nothing on the telly. So, it was like, what's wrong with me? When I was a kid, all my friends were like the nerdy boys. And the fact the very fact that I was also into the same nerdy stuff that they were into made them assume that I wasn't gay. And if you talked about gay stuff, it was not okay. I'm sitting there like, I have all these likes and loves and it's like I didn't really have a place to really express and even in like the anime groups and whatnot, it was kind of like But you don't like it the way I like it. You got to staring at like all the big all the girls with big boobs in the

anime, and I'm just like, "Who's that hot guy over there?" I mean, before I was even attracted to anyone, I was being called [ __ ] I just knew that it was bad. Um and it was something that I should feel guilty about, and I tried to not be. Um so I guess I kind of closed myself off from my parents and closed myself off from my peers. So it made me, you know, I My parents got often commented that I was a hermit cuz I would just be up in my room all the time playing my video games, but that was that was the way I coped, although I didn't think of it as coping at the time. My friend had completely abandoned role-playing games. He no longer wanted anything to do with me. And so I was completely completely baffled. And I I would be asked, you know, "So what happened between you and your friend?" I don't know. Uh He just doesn't want to talk with me. Cuz like you kind of feel like an outsider in both worlds, um cuz it's like, "Oh, well,

I'm not straight, but like I'm not completely gay, so like I'm not gay enough." I have this like the gaming aspect of my life, and in a way I like I have the the queer, you know, aspect of my life, and like, you know, never the twain shall meet sort of thing. I can either be be black. I could be gay, or I could be a nerd. And I did for a really long time feel like that I kind of had to like hide parts of myself. Games kind of started being a lot more about like bang bang and like macho chest beating. And for like reasons that I can look back at now and understand, right? But at the time I couldn't, and I started just kind of being like, "Well, maybe I'm just not into games." You know, like um we have PAX East here in Boston that you when you go you you sometimes are concerned about, you know, being out and, you know, sometimes some people are being very immature, some people being homophobic. Um, other times if you just go, you know, to do other,

um, events like, uh, for example, going to gay pride, folks are mo- mainly more focused on kind of either kind of the more body conscious aspects of pride, looking good, or, um, you know, or we don't necessarily get to really talk about people's interests beyond just being gay. Yeah, the the two never overlapped. Then the gay community there's just other things going on, and so they don't neces- not always the best time to pull out a board game and be like, "Hey guys, want to play Risk?" My biggest gamer friends were all were all straight men. Which, I mean, not a bad thing. They're straight men are are people, too, and we should give them all the love they deserve. But it like there was definitely like we could only talk about video games. Like, talking about relationships stuff was a little like, uh, you're into the girls, I'm into the dudes, like mm. I I I think I I still feel like that Terra Branford character from Final Fantasy where that I don't feel like when I'm like at a gay bar that I fit in

there because everybody's excited about a Britney Spears video being on the the monitor, and I don't really care about that. And if I talk about a game that had just come out that I'm excited about, they don't care about that. So, I never really feel like I fit in anywhere. That's why I have animal friends. So, we By the way, we could do like a supercut of all the times that interviews have been interrupted by cats in this project. Turns out that queer people have a lot of cats. Uh, so the the feeling that a lot of those people talked about there of being, uh, unwelcome, uh, closed a lot of LGBTQ people that we spoke to. It just closed them off to games in general. Uh it made them feel as though gaming simply wasn't for them. Uh that was even my like personally, that was my own experience um for most of the my 20s in the 2000s uh I just didn't see queer people in games and I felt like I was intruding whenever I talked to uh what I

thought of it as real gamers. Uh and you you know, something that we heard from a lot of these folks that uh it would alienate queer people to talk about games. Uh and those feelings extended into dating uh as well. We heard from a lot of uh the folks that we visited uh who felt as though they couldn't bring up uh games on dates for fear of alienating a potential partner. Uh gaming was seen as a liability, uh a source of embarrassment. Uh like you're not a real queer if you play games, you're not a real gamer if you're queer. Um and then worse, that didn't stop with rejection. Uh that also included uh harassment from other gamers. Cuz sometimes with gamers it's a little they don't really care for drag queens. When I started playing World of Warcraft, um I was in a raiding guild, right? Like I was in a serious hardcore 40-man 3 days a week spending spending time raiding guild, right? And I left them because they kept using the word [ __ ] in guild chat and I was like, you know, I'm done. I was in a guild on my son's server and

that was anytime we didn't win, it was that's so gay or you dumb [ __ ] And I was just done. I I played World of Warcraft for short period of time. This is a long time before my transition. So um identifying as female at the time, there's plenty of bullying when it comes to female gamers. You know, at the time I couldn't even fight that. I just stopped playing. I think I only played World of Warcraft for maybe a week before I just completely stopped. We also heard a lot of first-hand accounts from people working in the game industry. Uh and a common thread was a perception that their input wasn't valued uh or that bringing up LGBT topics relating to games could negatively impact their career. And so this next video features all people who work in games and we asked them if they perceived obstacles to just doing their work. And here's what they said. If you go to GDC or you go to any convention that is gaming or tech focused, you don't see people like you. It can be very discouraging. Growing up, computer games were always

for children. And uh homosexuality was not not proper uh to be exposed to children. I just never I just even being in the industry, I just assumed that there that was those were two things that were never going to be um coming to connection to each other. You know, I thought, all right, well, the queer world is pride parades and all the bars and clubs and that sort of thing. And then there's the game world where I have to be super serious, you know, get ready, let's make this [ __ ] Uh I didn't realize there was any overlap. So I worked at Electronic Arts, uh global rookie of the year, and I designed a game called Madden Football. So um there was and before that I'd been like a sports reporter in school and and there was no intersection of gay life and sports professional sports life in that time, like in the early '90s. There was no It just wasn't a thing. Like there I wouldn't bring any personal to it. I just would just shut that down if anything got super close to personal

or what are you doing this weekend or whatever. I'd be like, sports. Going to PAX for the first time really opened my eyes to this is the community where I feel most at home. Um but then after I started, you know, participating in that community more, I also then started to see how I wasn't fully at home there and that you know, that the media for in that community wasn't being made for me. So we spoke to a lot of people about the problems that they've experienced as players or as makers. Um and we also found uh a lot of optimism as well. So, uh despite all those problems, uh a lot of people spoke about how games could provide some measure of relief. Uh even though most games, even to this day, aren't made with queer players specifically in mind, um many of the folks that we interviewed either sought out titles that intentionally included queer people uh or they used their imagination to insert themselves

into their favorite stories. Uh and in creating and playing as characters who reflected their interests, uh queer gamers were able to find a place where those two sides of their personalities uh could both coexist. Um and for a lot of these players, uh they spoke particularly intensely about the importance of character creators, uh particularly about having a avatar that represents them in ways that they might not be ready to express in real life. Uh so, that allowed, for example, transgender gamers to experiment with gender and sexuality before uh expressing themselves before basically affirming themselves uh in the real world. There's a chance to really get into the story, get into why characters doing things, hopefully in their motivations, and figure out kind of who I am along with these characters. We feel like our characters in Final Fantasy really represent what we would be in a fantasy world, like each other cuz you're white magic, I'm black magic, you're healing, I'm destruction. Yeah.

So, I have to clean up his mess well. Video games were actually kind of the first way that I kind of became comfortable with expressing other genders. My first kind of gender change happened when I was Someone had bought me a bootleg copy of Pokémon Crystal for my birthday. Because it was bootleg, halfway through the game crashed. And then when I rebooted my save, I was a girl. That was kind of an epiphany moment cuz I was like, "Oh, I like this more than I should." Peach was a big one growing up. Cuz back then she was just the princess. Um I always just kind of identified with her and always just like picking the girl characters when I could. It's nice seeing yourself on the game screen and that's your avatar out there. It's not actually you, but it's nice just to kind of think it is you a little bit. Seeing the Samus and uh knowing that was a girl going into that, I was like, "This is really cool." And she she kicked ass. I was just actually really aware of what I was doing. Like, I'm picking her because I actually identify that way. Favorite characters? Um probably

Wheatley from Portal. I I tend to kind of lean toward uh characters that aren't really uh specifically human because it's easier for me to relate to somebody who's not specifically set into a certain gender. Uh like robots, they're robots. Wheatley has a male voice, but that doesn't mean he's technically male. Um myself being a female-to-male transgender, it's easier for me to kind of relate to characters like that. Growing up, I had always chosen my character creation had always been male. Like, it was just oh, click, do that one. I mean, they was really they really were character creators were like such a safe place where I could just gender could be whatever. Like, the character creator would allow me to make it and I would always uh explore. Oh, and small boobs, short hair, women, no boobs, short hair. Big boobs. I don't know.

I have a lot of favorite game characters. One of them is totally cheating, which is Fem Shep from from Mass Effect. And it's cheating because a lot of what you make that character is is your choices. You know, she starts as a There's definitely some information filled in. Uh but she is very much what you make of her. But she's she's so well done and she's she's so nuanced. The writing and the presentation is so wonderfully done. Easily one of my favorite characters. Uh well, I guess you know, Shepard from Mass Effect. Uh you know, he was a good character. He's the hero. Um and then just you know, the fact on top of it that the game allowed you to play uh you know, a gay character. So, um it could be the the gay hero that I wanted to be. I think I probably took a lot of my inspiration for myself when I was coming out from the characters like Bayonetta, who are stronger and sexy.

The first time I went out as a woman and as my true self, I was I I think I remember shaking because I was just so nervous that people were going to be so mean to me. I think that's why avatars are so important, especially for like young trans kids cuz they can create that identity in the game and live as that identity, especially if they're not ready to do it in you know, in their actual reality. So, many of the people that we spoke to gravitated towards games that allowed them to explore objects of their affection and to roleplay romance stories. In contrast to real life situations where talking about gaming might cause a date's eyes to glaze over, which is something that a lot of people spoke about. Um a lot of the gamers that we spoke to found games that let them safely explore sex and attraction and relationships in ways that might not have been available to them or that they might not have been

comfortable exploring in real life. And for those players, the games weren't much were about much more than just having fun. Those games were providing a safe haven that folks might not otherwise have, particularly for people who live outside of a major city or who live in a country that might be more conservative when it comes to dating and might pose safety hazards to being openly queer or just to people who didn't have online support networks. I definitely give in to the sort of like typical male power fantasy except queer. So like with Dragon Age and Mass Effect, I build sort of you know like it's like you know build a boyfriend. I think my Fallout character was pretty hot. We like to make big muscle guys with beards and no hot wives. When we play Saints Row, we run around with our characters naked. So it's all about the beards and the muscles really. And for me it's inspiring cuz I I do want to have that

superhero body. So I work hard to like look like my characters. I really love the Shepard Kaidan Alenko romance option that was there, but I wish y'all got to [ __ ] more than once. And I also wish Alenko had a beard. And I want to see Shepard and Alenko on the rooftop looking at the stars in Vancouver where he's from. He is such a sweetie. In Fable, you can flirt with male or female. The storyline's amazing too, but to have that option until you actually have it and do it, you don't realize how much you missed not having it. I I mentioned Fable cuz I think that was the first game I played where you could actually play a gay character. It was common. It was you know it was something I could identify with. Like say Skyrim, I you could totally marry a guy. And you know it it you know being a gay man like

you know if you had the choice to marry a girl or a guy, of course you're going to marry the guy, you know. You know I'm playing Fallout 4 still right now and right now I am in a relationship with a feisty Irish lady, uh rugged, roguish ghoul man, uh a synthetic woman, and I'm currently working on impressing a certain George Clooney-looking uh paladin. And that that really is my idea of a perfect lifestyle. Uh that was a revelation because I was so I guess just shocked that something that is part of my life was suddenly in this video game. Having a lot of fun with Irish rogues and ghouls and paladins and robot women. So, I think that's that's the close That's the closest a video game's going to get to me, I think. So, just as a a kind of a measure of of how much has changed in the last few years, when we started this project um

probably about four four years ago, ish. Um you know, when we would have a conversation about queer characters in games, people would be like, "Oh, isn't this amazing?" That it was right before uh Inquisition came out. Uh and you know, people were like, "Oh, there's this game coming out that's going to have, you know, queer relationships." Uh isn't that amazing? And then just last night I was having a conversation with a developer uh about a dating sim involving monsters. And uh you know, I I asked, "Are there Are there going to be Can you have relationships with characters of any gender?" And he gave me this look like, "Of course." He was like, "Yeah, of course. Like, why wouldn't you?" Um so, just to have like have that be the response instead of like, "Isn't this amazing? We're doing this for the first time." Uh just in the last few years, a a lot has changed. Um so, uh as the people that were that we interviewed um felt more comfortable expressing those two sides of their personality, the queer side and the gamer aspect, um something big changed in their life. Um going from uh virtual relationships into real life, they found that this is something that

affected their dating and romance and relationships in real life. Uh when they talked about games on dates, uh instead of being met with skepticism, uh they were met with enthusiasm. And so games really changed how people were able to form bonds with other people. I met my boyfriend through Baldur's Gate. It's run this weird thread through my life. She was in a friend's dorm room fitting for her Padme costume from episode two. We met We actually met online. Which we don't usually tell people. Usually we say we met at a comic book shop cuz there's still a lot of stigma around people who meet online. We met on Grindr. Um Yeah, I mean we didn't know we were like kind of geeks in that way at first. Like over text It was just like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "Oh, I'm, you know, playing some Final Fantasy." "Oh, yeah, what's your favorite character?" And so we got into it into it that way and it was kind of cool. Right now he's still under-leveled, so I'm helping him, you know, gain his bearings and

and whatnot. Like the guy I'm seeing now is is very Canadian and I met him at a board game convention a couple years ago. So he's got It's really funny. The first time we went to his house I flipped out because I saw an NES like right by his TV and I got really happy. Like even if he doesn't play it, just knowing that it's there tells me something about him. Something that we already have in common. I think finding somebody who was also a gamer was really important to me because having that agreement and just being like our space is not going to be conventional and people are going to look at us and they're going to scream, "Oh my god, they're terrible nerds." and we're going to laugh in their face about it. And I needed that in my life. Um we're both playing through a Fire Emblem Fates right now, so we're each playing that on our own and we're talking about like, "Oh, who Who are we pairing together to make the to make their kid and like to have like the best stats and all that stuff?" Like he's made like a full-on like Excel sheet of like all the pairings that he's going to make for the game. Like he's super into

it. Yeah, and I'm like, "YOU'RE A NERD." And I'm like, I love it like you. Are we getting married tomorrow? Where's my ring? So, it's actually been a while since I showed that particular clip. And I just realized like a nice little coda to that story is that DJ is now engaged to his boyfriend. So, so he got his ring. Yay. And that was actually like an experience that I had as well. I met my partner James 15 years ago through Final Fantasy. It was in college and my suite had the nice TV and he had the PlayStation. And so, we kind of combined forces and that was like how we got talking to each other because we're both shy nerds and we wouldn't have been able to talk to each other otherwise. And so, you know, it's just this common thing that like games bring couples together in a way that really it's it's a recent development. It's something that we've heard from people in just the last couple of years that um was much rarer maybe like a decade or two ago. And so, that's not the only personal

change that people experienced through that blending of queer culture and game culture. A lot of players experienced significant personal changes when they encountered queer content in games or queer characters or just games that lent themselves to queer head canon. So, I mean for me Mario Kart like I queer every character in Mario Kart and I have this like whole backstory about like Bowser competing with Donkey Kong. I mean it's just my story. But, you know, we hear that the power of people kind of taking command of the of the content that they that is presented to them and saying, "Okay, thank you for making this Nintendo. Now, I'm going to take it from here." So, among those personal changes that people experience, there's seeing that acknowledgement of their existence. That invites queer players into games where they might have felt unwelcome. It gave them an It gives them an opportunity to identify as gamers where previously they would have been, you know, that we heard this common thing, "Oh, it's just not for me." Uh, this is still something that I personally like deal with. I you know, I I produce a show right now where

I'm DMing a D&D game. And just even a year ago, I when I thought about Dungeons & Dragons, I was like, "Oh, well, that's not for me." Turns out D&D is super queer. Um Uh, I'd say yeah, yeah. Uh, I'd say also like having games as a practice space to express that you are queer can allow players to build confidence in other aspects of their lives. Um, so a lot of people that we talked to talked about how gameplay helped them um assert themselves authentically even after they stepped away from the screen. Right after my sister passed away, I got a key for Gone Home. And I went through Gone Home and there was this moment of I don't know you could call it an epiphany or an aha moment. I was I was reading um one of the letters in the game and the character's, you know, was doing the voice-over and I kind of had a a little bit of disconnect because what the character was voicing about her sister, it really echoed some of the feelings and emotions and just

experiences that I had with my sister and her sexuality. And I remember I even like blurted it out on stream like, "Whoa, like I'm in my feelings right now. I might need to take a minute cuz this is really reminding me of the relationship that I had with my sister." I guess you could say revealed to me some of how she might have been feeling. It It put It put me in her shoes in a way. It was kind of like This might sound odd, but it was kind of a way for me to get closure. To like This is kind of reflecting me in my sister's life. It really actually gave me some peace, honestly. Gone Home as a game that was explicitly queer was extremely powerful. It was a game that I didn't realize I'd been waiting for my whole life until I played it. Why is this so rare? Why is it so unusual that a a narrative that centers, you know, queer women is practically

like unheard of? Confirmation that you exist is an amazingly powerful thing. Um I think at some fundamental level that's a a need that everybody comes to media and entertainment for. So, it's nice to see in something that's so mainstream that, you know, it's okay to be gay because that means that everything thing else in real life that's also mainstream makes it okay. And seeing the the character in Undertale, uh you know, portrayed with they, it's validation. It's it's realizing that somebody out there is willing to to sing part of your song. People said, I you you helped me They literally said, "You helped me realize I was gay. You gave your characters gave me the courage to come out as bisexual." Um your playing your game uh got me through a time where otherwise I was considering killing myself. And solidarity is a big important thing knowing that you're not alone. It's a I mean it sounds so cliche,

right? If you say like, "Oh, how do you feel when you see someone that's queer in a game or someone that you can relate to?" It's just like makes me feel like I'm not such a like I'm not so outside of the norm. Like I know that we're a minority, but it's great to feel like, yes, you're a minority, but you know, you're accepted that you are allowed to be like a human. Any light at the end of the tunnel, even if it's far away, like that is is so reassuring to me and to my friends and people I know. So, we found in our interviews that games give players a cultural touchstone around which they can build some community. Particularly in the last decade, we've seen a huge increase in offline social groups built around queer gaming. It's gotten to the point now where a lot of cities have multiple organizations all building queer community and support through games. In my hometown of Seattle, we've got two groups. There's Queer Gamers, which has been around for a couple of years.

There's Gamers with a Y, which is fairly new. I know Queer Geek. Queer Geek has been around for a while and it tends to be slightly like older demographic and a little more focused on board games. Gamers with a Y is a little bit younger and tends to focus more on like nightlife sort of events, so gamer parties. In LA, there's a newish group that's more focused on community service. So we're seeing like not not only are people organizing to meet each other in physical space, but there's enough demand in large cities that they're doing it in multiple different organizations. And for several years, one of the largest queer gaming events was the annual convention Gamer X. It was based here in the Bay Area for a long time. We heard from people all over the country that they attended that convention, learned organizing techniques at Gamer X from other people who were facilitating meetups and then returned to their own hometowns to start new local gaming organizations wherever they happen to live.

The only part of like gaming group I'm in is the Phoenix Gamers because I spent so many years of my life just sitting in this house like playing video games by myself and finally I figured out the experience that you can go out and do anything and be with like meeting people and it's such a great experience. I wish I had more places like to do that. Phoenix Gamers, we're a social group. A lot of the times people in our group they don't quite fit into like the main stream gay community and also just in general they don't quite fit into the nerd community. So we kind of like have that middle ground where to create that space where we can come together and it's it's really great to like know people and also like be bringing people together. Every other month or so we open up the house on a Saturday from like 3:00 until 11:00 and we have board games and card games. I'll you know set up uh Dance Central or rating rabbits down in

the basement and then we just have a big gay board game party. Um I host a monthly uh queer female queer women's board game group at Geek Love Cafe almost and I do a bi-weekly queer women's board game night at Phoenix Comic Games. I'm actually a coordinator for the Minneapolis Gamers Group. It's kind of a way for all of us gay geeks to kind of meet up and you know interact and meet people that we may not normally meet with. The you get So I'm just going to pause it for a second. That's like sounds like it has like a ton of reverb on it. Does that sound weird to everybody? Yeah, let me just double-check because I have a feeling I might actually have that slide. Yeah, okay, that's why. Uh sorry, I have the video on the slide twice. So that's why it was doing that. So I'm just going to resume that right there. We go. Sorry about that. meet with. That you get to actually have the nerdy effect of like liking getting satisfaction playing games around people

who are just like you and you know just it's great. It's a great social outlet. So something like GamerX is a place where people can go and then realize that they're not alone that there are people like them out there. So when I found a place that or like a a con where a bunch of people were gathering to kind of celebrate both aspects um and bond as one community like I I had to be there. I don't know. I just it just felt like a really big family and I'm I'm not even going to lie. I'm really looking forward to seeing some storm drag queens so I can be like, "Yes, [ __ ] Walk." I'm hoping that people who are straight go to the event just to see for themselves that as long as you're not a jerk, you're going to belong there. So that's most of the folks we're talking about Gamer X, which really was a transformative experience for a lot of people. Just show of hands like who's been to one of the Gamer X events? Yeah, it's actually not So not a ton of

people here. They're really lovely and MidBoss, the company that that did it, still exists and they're making games now rather than doing events. But it really it was the first time that there was an event like that where people could come from all over and meet at a specifically queer focused gaming convention. There was I think at the first one there was a proposal that was done with musical musical accompaniment by El McKinnon who's the voice of Gladus. There was I think a proposal at the second one as well. It was a really supportive, positive, and pretty unique space. And they haven't done it for the last year or two in part I think because we've just seen this huge rise in people organizing both online and offline. But it's really changed that like the community in physical like small towns maybe not small towns but in in more cities has has really expanded since where we were about five years ago. And one of the byproducts of that is that we're seeing queer gamers

organizing in ways that they didn't used to. We heard a lot of people who are becoming basically self-taught at articulating what they want from games. And so this presents a really beneficial opportunity for game developers. Now that queer gamers are becoming increasingly prominent, they can express what they want in more public spaces whether it's streaming or in physical spaces. And it's easier for devs to listen and to learn about how their games can appeal uh that broader audience and incorporate more queer content. Uh so here's some people uh this next uh video's going to be uh some people talking about um how basically how they found an audience uh and a community for uh expressing what is still missing from games. Seeing someone out there in the world um being gaming or anything that's like person came out and is doing all right. They transition like, "Wow, that's really cool." Or just seeing a woman in a prominent position. Like I identify as woman anyway, so I'm like seeing someone out there um in a position of power.

It's like, "Yeah, that's really cool. I want to Like there's more of there's more people out there like me. I Now I know I can be that person as well." The whole reason I started my Twitch channel in the first place was because of all the homophobia and the homophobic stuff that I was seeing from different gaming channels and different streamers. And I was like, "I really need to get into this and there needs to be much more vocal LGBTI identities on the Twitch sphere." I was hearing all these stories from like LGBT youth, hearing their coming out stories, or people that hadn't come out. And it's now my job to help create a safe space on that place for them to share those stories with each other. Now when you look at Twitch, some of the biggest streamers on their platform are LGBT or LGB LGBT allies, which is amazing. But a lot of um trans and gay people, younger people, they will come and ask me a lot of questions when I'm streaming because they don't have any outlets. And I love that about Twitch. It is not just

me sitting down to play a game, it's more like let all of us sit down and enjoy this title together. So I think it's great because it opens up line of communication with people you might not have ever met before. Earlier this year, I was looking for private funding to undergo some surgery stuff that was going on. And where years ago I'd been afraid to even talk about the fact that I was trans. In this example, like lots and lots and lots of people online came to my support and I think it took maybe 10 days to bring together this huge amount of money I was trying to for surgery and it was just this moment of not only am I not having to hide that I'm trans, but that there are people out there who are willing to step up and support me when I need it. If you can talk to people about video games and get them interested in what you're saying because of games, then introduce, "Hey, here's some of the struggles of being a queer person who's a content creator." It certainly makes it easier to get

people who otherwise might not listen to conversations about queer identity to say, "Oh, I will stop and listen because I care about you as a creator and want to see you happy." And like this last couple of years, I've had a lot of people come and say to me, "I didn't know anything about these issues that the LGBT plus community face. I know about them now because I listened to you talk about them in amongst silly discussions of gaming butts." And sometimes that's all you need to get people to listen is sandwich it inside a conversation that they're already looking for. I had a recent experience where I had a my first panel at PAX East. I went in there kind of thinking like, "What am I doing here? I'm surrounded by these amazing people." And my turn came up. And I've been out for years. It's no secret, but I just don't talk about it much. So, I went up there and said just my problem is how how open to be about it. I didn't realize how much I had bottled I had that bottled up inside.

Um I had to take a moment and kind of catch myself. I was like starting to have tears well up and I just stopped and a friend patted my shoulder and like, "It's okay." She gave me a hug. And the moment the entire crowd, like hundreds of people, start cheering and clapping and applauding. I'm like, "Oh my god, this is like, "Wow, thank you so much." And um I felt amazing. And that was my contribution is kind of like re-outing myself as a trans person cuz afterwards um if you go to panels a number of times afterwards people will start kind of rushing the stage. They want to talk to the panelists, ask them their questions. I look up and like there's people standing in front of me. Like what what? And I will never forget this person and I really wish I would have been able to catch their name. And they looked up and it was me. They had their spiky hair and this red final shirt. They had the biggest smile on their face and they just said, "Thank you. Thank you so much for being open." And just being out there. And I almost lost it right there again. And they walked off and never got to learn who they were. I really wish I could. And a number of other people came up and said the exact same thing. And I was

each time I almost started bawling in happiness. And uh like wow, I never thought of myself as being that person for people. But growing up I always like seeing someone who kind of represented me and now all of a sudden I was put into that situation where I'm that representation for someone else. So now it's easier than ever for queer for game developers to include queer gamers in the product that they're making. There's no shortage of voices on streams, at conferences, and conventions, people who are doing diversity consulting. And what we're seeing now is a lot of companies are changing their practices to listen to those voices and incorporate the feedback into their production process. So as part of this project we sought out some developers who are doing uh basically good work in that area, who people are putting queer content into their games. And so we asked them how they're doing that and how it's affected their work. I I own a video game studio now and that was actually my little childhood dream when I was six. So I mean like one of

the key things about Invisibles that it's about people from different viewpoints coming together and being better than like the monolithic thing. Um and so I mean just diversity is kind of like built into that storyline. Um it initially started out with like racial but then it's like, "Okay, let's expand this and see what we can do with it." So, we've got neurodiversity, we've got sexual diversity. Video games are what I really love to make, and they also pay my bills. When I started my company, it was like, "Either you need to drop drag cuz it's too expensive, or you need to make it work for me." So, I wanted to go against the grain, made a game about love, put kitty powers in it. That was another box I wanted to tick, was to make it very inclusive, the game, and to have a drag queen in it as well. I mean, there's a lot of queer in the game. It's not a queer game, but queers are included and they're very visible. Having suffered for so so much when I was a kid, I thought, "Well, if all these young kids are going to be watching this

video, this game being played, then at least they're getting some kind of exposure that I didn't get. If kids can see that and see it being treated as if it's normal, then that's a good thing. And we decided, you know, my producer pulled me aside and said, "Hey, I think I want to put a girl as an option in this game." And I looked at him and I was like, "You picked the right person to be on your team, buddy." Um, but it was Oh, it was so nerve-wracking. There were all these people around me who had years of experience, some of which who would have loved to have a lesbian route, but were too nervous to try. Um, and I was I'm grateful that I had the backing of two other senior producers behind me to say, like, "No, let's do this. We can do this." Um, and then let me take control of that content because they respected that I was a queer woman wanting to write this queer woman. Our queer fans, obviously, are overjoyed. Um, I've never I I get

teary-eyed when I look at some of their posts and their responses because they're so heartfelt and genuine in saying, you know, "Thank you. We've never had this sort of representation before. Thank you so much and it feels amazing to give them that. I just want to give people content where they see themselves in content where they get a happy ending. Those are kind of my two big goals. So, people aren't being quiet about it anymore and and that's a great thing. But, it can't just be the smaller indie studios. It can't just be, you know, the person making a twine game on their own time. It needs to be It needs to trickle up to the triple-A space. I'm here and I get our you know, I get our audience, but I get that our audience is also people like me and I'm fortunate to work with a bunch of people who understand that and and we do try and look out beyond the what is stereotypically thought of as as the target audience and with Twitter and and getting to go to conventions and and talking to people, we can just have a

lot more conversations a lot more easily than we used to and we can say, "Okay, we're going to make this kind of character." I'm not a trans person. How do we make a character that is respectful of you, that makes you feel like this is a good thing. And then, when it does okay, that makes it sort of less scary for the next game. Well, okay, maybe. And it cuz it rarely comes Change rarely comes in giant leaps and bounds and then it's, "Okay, well, this time we'll do this. This time we'll do that." So, the character of Krem in Dragon Age: Inquisition actually came pretty much out of a uh sort of a panel that ended up being more of a discussion that we did at a BioWare base in PAX Prime and it was specifically geared towards the LGTPQ community and it was just, "What do you want to see more of? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong?" And that opportunity for feedback and um trans gentleman got up to the microphone and said, "I would just love to see

someone in a game like me who's not a monster." And we all just went, "Okay, this is something we can do something about, you know, and and and that, you know, we went straight to somewhere and got drinks and started talking about, you know, okay, how can this is important. This is This needs to happen and we are in a place where if we do it right, we could maybe make it happen. Um and it was it was not was an easy. There was a lot of discussion. There was a lot of frank discussion and some hits and some misses and a lot of trial and a lot of error and a lot of talking to people. Um but we Patrick and I got to go to Dragon Con last year and met some people rocking some Krem cosplay who just came up to us and gave us hugs and there's

I don't know. It's hard to put into words that it's it's it's humbling and it still feels like it's not enough, you know, that a moment like that is so profound for someone is wonderful and also sad that it's rare and that it's something that stood out for them and um is wonderful to have happened and makes it really obvious we need to keep doing. So. Someone said they said like a like we need to see a trans character in games and let's be honest, it's not going to happen until BioWare does it and we went, okay, well, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this and I'm really really worried about messing it up. But if there were people who were telling us, you know, you saved our lives about gay stuff, if we can do something that has some minor effect on the same in the same way

for trans people, for non-binary people. We owe it to them and to ourselves to try to make that attempt. And again, we make entertainment. We make Yeah, we're not we're not curing cancer, but if something like that if that was someone who did not have that in their lives and and if our if our entertainment product helped someone hit that and made their lives a little bit easier or gave them let them realize there were paths available to their lives that they saw only as dead ends until that point, then it's worth us having uncomfortable conversations and making mistakes and messing stuff up. So, it's not a secret that the game industry has had a problem with potential gamers feeling excluded or feeling unsafe either as consumers or as people working on the games themselves. And for a long time when queer identity

collide with gamer identity, it left people feeling left out of both worlds. But a lot of the people that we interviewed found that those worlds don't have to collide so much as overlap. And that overlap can form the basis of strong relationships, provide shared meaning with partners, feeling attraction and falling in love and forming relationships are all fundamental aspects of queer identity. And games that incorporate those themes can help queer people understand their own sexuality, can improve the romantic bonds that they form with others, can turn people from being game avoidant into game obsessed. And so rather than being in conflict, what we found is that queer queer culture and game culture are a highly compatible pairing. This presentation is just a small segment of the stories that we've gathered. We've spoken to 125 people in 19 states, four countries at this point. We've got over 100 hours of footage and a lot more topics to explore. We're still gathering uh first-hand accounts and sharing our findings.

So, what's next for this particular project? Uh is uh you can sign up for updates. You can see more of what we're doing at playingwithpride.com. Uh we're still gathering more interviews and footage um and we'd love to get feedback. There's some uh feedback form uh on what we're doing at playingwithpride.com. Uh and we're also incorporating some of the things that we've discovered in doing these interviews into our D&D show uh Queens of Adventure. Uh that's the it's a live show and a podcast that uh features drag queens playing D&D. Uh and we've been very intentional with that show about crafting something that's responsive to what we learned uh in this project. Uh something that builds community and and makes people feel incorporated or feel included uh and helps people uh feel connected to, you know, a big wide world of LGBTQ heroes uh out there. Um So, you can find that at queensofadventure.com. Uh and so, we've got uh I think about 10 minutes left. So, is uh we could do a Q&A if there's any questions. Um well, thank you.

Uh so, if there are questions, there's the mic right there. Otherwise, like a question that I have just in general for the audience is um if there are games that have included queer content or games that you kind of head cannoned queer content into. Like, what are what are games that you found are doing it right? Um one game I was really surprised about was The Last of Us. Oh yeah, The Last of Us. Fantastic. It's my all-time favorite game. Um something that really surprised me about that game was as I when I uh got to know Ellie, I started This is spoilers straight away. But um as I got to know Ellie's character, there was something about her that just made her kind of feel like me and I couldn't It's like I the the flag in my head, excuse the term, but I guess the AR was going up in my head and I was just like, "No, I'm just thinking this because of me, like I

just I'm just putting this in my own head, it's it's not real." And then when we got to that part where something actually did happen, like that was the first time I'd ever experienced anything and my heart absolutely exploded. Yeah. I don't know, sorry. I'm sorry, but it was just it was really amazing. Also, Life is Strange. Oh, yeah, it Life is Strange. My goodness. Yeah, you know, that and that's something really frequent that we've heard from other people is like, "Oh, it's just me. I'm just making this up. It's all my own baggage that I'm bringing to the game." Uh and I think it's something that we're still like as queer gamers kind of dealing with of like this sort of internalized homophobia or maybe not homophobia, but sort of like our own queer erasure of saying like, "Oh, no, no, no, there's no there's no queer game there's no queer characters in games. I just have to make it up." And then when a game is like, "No, no, it's real. You exist. It's okay. You're real." Uh it's kind of the reverse of Emperor's Emperor's New Clothes of being like, "No, no, no, this this thing that that you thought was pretend is actually a real thing." Yeah, oh, if I may say one more thing. One thing that really surprised me also

about Life is Strange is I I started noticing like early on like I when I was playing the game and making all these different choices I honestly thought it was going to be one of those like joking things. Like I mean, there's a lot of like like I thought it was going to be like, "Oh, haha, this isn't real. This is just me thinking it." And I'm I'm a high school teacher. Uh so I actually spoke to one of my students about this who is bisexual and I was telling him I thought it was a troll thing. So I started like making all of these different choices to give myself a laugh and I'm just like, "Oh, I'll just do this. Haha, this isn't really going to happen." And then it did and I was shocked and again my heart exploded. And I he I mentioned this to my student and his response was, "Well, maybe they're doing that because they want people to realize that it's normal. This is a normal thing. It's normalized." And when he said that, it just my heart just dropped and I was like, that's absolutely he's right. And it was absolutely true. So I'm a little bit shook cuz that whole thing was amazing and I was kind of tearing up for most of it, especially with the crime stuff, cuz that helped me with my own coming to terms with myself.

Um I just want to say with the social mobile gaming scene I work with the Thinking Ape and uh we have a pretty strong queer LGBT community in there that we've been really supportive of. And uh it's been kind of fun working over time to like just build more and more content that just is there and we're just up about up like up front about it and it's been really amazing to have that opportunity as a content creator. So, it's been pretty cool. And yeah, I'm mostly just shook. Thank you for sharing. Well, thanks for coming. Uh and there's a couple people at the microphone, too. Hi there. So, I went to um Muslim uh a how to represent Muslims talk yesterday. And one of the things he said was um you know, include us. It doesn't You don't have to really talk about our religion, but you can include the way we dress and people are still going to identify with it. And we need that, too. So, my question for you is are we at a place or are we moving in a direction where having someone who is

gay, queer, um Yeah, how do I put this? That it's at the forefront of the character and are we moving to a place where it's part of the character and that's acceptable, too, but it's not something that's played forward. Does that make sense? I don't know if I'm I don't know that I'm saying it correctly, but are both of them equally important? Is there one that's more important to right now, we're moving towards something else like That is a great question. Uh and you know, I've been looking at games I've been a games journalist and uh you know, sort of making this documentary project for a long time. And so, I have to say like it seems to like games as a medium are maybe lagging 10 ish years behind uh TV and film. And if I'm understanding your question, it sounds like the question is like there's there's two ways that queer can be represented. One is this is a story about queer and also this is a story about something else and queer is just an element of it. And is one more important or where are

we at with that? And I have to say you know my impression from speaking to people is that there's kind of an equal need for both of those still. It certainly reminds me of going back even further where we were in the 1980s with TV and film where every show or movie that had a queer character was it was a huge crisis of like mom I'm gay and it's tearing the family apart. And so there was a need then for a lot of stories that were very much about like what is the queer experience. Because it was something that hadn't been spoken about and I think my perception of the games of games media is that we are not entirely at a place where it's no big deal and I think there's a lot of value to explicitly addressing what is queer, what does it mean to be queer, let's talk about it, let's foreground that. That having been said, there is a huge relief when you can just play a game and have a gay character there and it's no

big deal and it's not even part of the game and it's just life. Because I think that's how a lot of people want to live and not always be like you know I'm kind of as a reporter and a producer and all the different hats I wear I'm sort of a professional gay. And there are times when I'm like oh man I just want to like you know go on a hike or like I just want to pet a cat or something like that and like it doesn't always have to be about queer all the time. So it's a real relief for example when I play Stardew Valley and I'm like okay I'm going to be in a queer couple in this play through and that's just how I'm going to play it. And you know Stardew Valley is certainly not about the queer experience. So I would love for us to get to the point where it's just no big deal and you've got a gay character there and it's nothing. Um, that having been said, I it feels to me as though games media is still is sort of in a state that is is kind of pre-Glee, uh, if that makes sense, where like Glee was kind of a catalog, the TV show was kind of a catalog of all the different ways somebody could come out of the closet. Um, and I don't know that games have had like their Glee moment

where it's like gay gay gay gay gay and now we're done. Are we done? Are we done? Okay, we're done. Okay, good. And now let's move on. Uh, so I you know, I'm waiting for that point, uh, that that we could just like kind of move on and just have like gay characters and I don't know, the next the next Dragon I mean, actually, it's interesting that I that's the first one I thought of because Dragon Age is a game where you've got gay like same-sex relationships um, and nobody comments on it. It's no big deal. Uh, and that's something that we've been very deliberate about with Queens of Adventure is we've got queer characters in there and at no point are they like oh, and I had this difficult coming out or oh, and I had this, uh, you know, my family rejected da da da da. Um, because you know, uh, uh, there comes a point where you're like I just I I don't want any more like the angst of being queer stories. I just want to go on an adventure. Um, and now that I think about it, there is a in Dragon Age Inquisition a whole storyline about the the angst of being queer with spoilers, sorry, uh, for with Dorian. Uh, I mean, he's got a whole storyline

about his relationship with his family. So, um, I I I guess Dragon Age kind of straddles the line in a way that that is very nice, uh, cuz a lot of people talk about we we don't have the clips in here, but a lot of people talked about Dragon Age as an important game. Uh, and I think that one splits that balance uh, in a way that's really nice. Great. Thank you so much for expressing all that. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for coming. Hi, my name is Daryl. Um, from what I've mostly observed, it seems like it takes that mature rating for these, uh, you know, issue to be really tackled so transparently in a game and so I don't know if anybody has any example where there is something that's more targeted at a younger audience that still is, you know, unapologetic about it. Well, you know, um So, in our in this presentation we have uh some clips from Kitty Powers uh who's a drag queen. She's based in the UK. Uh when we interviewed her initially, I thought, "Oh, this is great. This game company hired a drag queen to be the face of, you know, the the mascot of their game." No, it turns out Kitty Powers is the CEO of the company uh is a

drag queen who started her own company. Which awesome. Um and her game is extremely family-friendly. It's very kid-friendly. It's uh so she's got two games uh Kitty Powers Love Life and Kitty Powers Matchmaker. Um and they're it's a dating sim and sort of a life sim and they're just super like pure and lovely and adorable. Um and so there's a like, you know, I don't actually know what the games are rated, but um I can't imagine anybody having an objection to any of the content other than like if somebody wanted to make trouble about there being same-sex couplings in the game. Um so I don't think it's necessary that games have that mature rating. I I do think that there is still a a lingering stigma. Um you know, that there's sort of people are put on red alert when they see like same-sex couples or uh we're talking about trans identity. Um sort of a stigma of like, "Oh, well, this is inappropriate for children." Uh but I think that's fading very fast. Um faster I think in games than it than it took to fade in TV and and film. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Um

I just wanted to contribute to the list of uh games that I think handle it really well. Um Night in the Woods has uh the uh couple Greg and Angus. They're like there's obviously a like a storyline with them or sort of a backstory involving their situation, but they're not really the ones that I'm talking about. It's actually at some at a point in the game May, the player character, hits on a girl and you don't even really realize until like afterwards that that's what it was and it was just like, oh, sweet. Like it's so not an issue. And so you've got your like this is the like the the sort of focal relationship where like Greg and Angus are dealing with the the towns' idea of them, but then like you you get that extra um identification in the the player character, also. Yeah, and it's very similar to what Laura um was bringing up in her interview. She was the person who had blue hair um

about how you can kind of like sneak some queer content in the game sometimes and catch people by surprise and say, oh, here's just something fun. Uh she made reference to a podcast that I actually don't know if she's doing anymore called Gaming Butts where she just talked about butts in games. Uh cuz it's so much of what you see of your character sometimes. Um and so, you know, it's just a goofy little podcast that she was doing. And then, you know, she's she's trans and uh she has a lot of uh colleagues that are trans. And so, they would incorporate that, you know, you're already friends with these people through the podcast as much as you can be friends with someone through a podcast. And then you throw in some inclusive content and people are like, oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, that's actually okay. I don't I don't have I I don't have a problem with that after all. Yeah. Hey, I also wanted to contribute a little to the list is uh Robert Yang's portfolio of games is just incredible. I mean, talk about going to the extreme. Like, I really love that one comment in the video you said where they were like, it the representation was great, but they only got to like uh have sex once. You can have a

lot of sex in Robert Yang's games, which I think is like really important when we're talking about sort of reaching this point that you're talking about. Uh I mean, it's a lot of like cis male gay stuff, but um from that perspective, I think he's really doing incredible things um and also confronting a lot of those like censorship and rating things head-on. I mean, like one of the interesting things he did with the tea room is like they wouldn't let him have uh penises on Steam, so he replaced all of them with guns, which is allowed. So, just like really clever. Um but yeah, I just wanted to shout out uh to what he's doing cuz I think it's really amazing. And also, how he handles consent in one of his games actually, if you It's like a kind of a BDSM sim, and if you go too far with uh the NPC, you literally are locked out of the game. Uh so, really exploring a lot of issues like I think within our own community in a way that like doesn't feel like, "Oh, I'm just

checking some sort of like token box." Or, "Yay, I get to like hit on or like make out with this cute dude." But like actually experiencing, you know, an element of life in in queer history that uh a lot of other games don't do. So, I really appreciate Yeah. Yeah, I I I love all like Robert's games. They're fantastic. Robert Yang, if you I highly recommend checking those out. They're really uh challenging games. Uh and we're um running up on time, but uh I just want to get one more question from the from the microphone. Uh hi, my name is Carter. Uh I'm actually a student uh a little while south of here. Um for one thing, this is a great talk. Uh I'm actually working on creating my own VR experience right now, and I was wondering if you would have any advice to I want my main character, the player character, to be non-binary. And I was wondering how I would be able to explore that in a setting where it's a first-person game.

That's a really interesting question. And um I think that's something hmm I don't know that I have like great advice for that just off the top of my head. Uh but I bet like I know there's like an overflow room where there can where we can do Q&A like after the panel, and I bet like if folks have thoughts on that that would be a great place to pick that up. Do we just GDC folks like where's that where's that room? Do you know where the overflow room is? Okay. Cuz I'd love to like give that like two or three more minutes of thought before I answer that. Just you know off the top of my head I think you know just having those moments where you look in a mirror or you see your hands or something like that as an opportunity to you know inhabit a body that um is not the body that you're used to seeing or maybe reflects the body or affirms the body that that you that is more natural for you. Um that's I guess where I'd start. I mean just like making people aware from the beginning this is this is an option. I think Dream Daddy did a really interesting thing in their character creator where binders were an option

like right from the start like when you're creating your character which like was I've never seen that in a game before it was really profound. Um so just like being clear like you can be non-binary you can be any gender you can be any orientation. Um but let me let me think about that for a few more minutes and then where The wrap-up room is straight back so 2022. 2022? Okay. Yeah so like wait back that way 2222 uh that's where we'll do some like wrap-up conversation. Thank you again everybody for coming please leave feedback. All right.