A Gay History of Gaming

Keza MacDonald: "Games take a lot of flak for being a fairly un-inclusive medium, made by young straight men for young straight men and mildly offensive to everyone else. Listen to much popular discourse on video games, and you'll come away with the impression that they (and their players) are overwhelmingly sexist, immature, and unwelcoming to anybody outside of that traditional demographic.

There's a small amount of truth in that, much as we'd all love to deny it. But this image belies the fact that many games are impressively egalitarian, and that gaming has a long history of positive depictions of lesbian, gay and queer characters. From the original Sims to Dragon Age, games haven't been afraid to show and enable gay relationships. Developers like BioWare have consistently stood up for gay players' rights to appropriate romances, just like everybody else. What follows is a brief history of queer visibility in gaming – and an explanation, should it be needed, of why these depictions matter."