Happy Pride Gaymers!

What does Pride even mean and are these games LGBTQ enough?

Author

Cameron Huppertz
June 14, 2024

“What does Pride mean to you?”

This week at the day job, I got asked to answer that question to kickoff a monthly team meeting. That same day I got to join an amazing virtual presentation my friend John Voss gave about queering design. That day was also the 8 year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. It’s tempting to want to keep the personal, the political, and the professional each in their own separate segment of our lives, but for many of us, especially queer folks, those realms are inexorably linked and in constant conversation with each other. 

On one level Pride month is exhausting. There’s this pressure to have fun. To get your “Pride body” ready for the fabulous outfits you’ll wear to your packed agenda of events you purchased tickets for months in advance. You have to endure trivial statements about acceptance and love from well meaning allies while you worry about the changing landscape of threats to physical safety and legal rights across the country for you, your close friends, and the wider LGBTQ+ community. And you better look cute doing it. 

Being asked to talk about Pride at work triggers my curmudgeon impulses. I just wanna log on, do my work, and log off to enjoy my life. Don’t ask me to represent my community or educate my coworkers over zoom before I’ve even had a full cup of coffee. I don’t want to be seen like that. Except being seen is kinda the point.

Choosing to be seen is a political act. 

❝

Gay brothers and sisters,...You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions.

For me, it’s not just choosing to be seen that holds power, but choosing to be visibly joyful. Pride month always has beats of anger–the logical response to injustice–and sorrow–remembering the queer people we’ve lost to injustice–but the dominant emotion is always joy. Once we needed to come out to break down the myth that we didn’t exist. Today we celebrate joy to break down the myth that our existence is inherently painful or wrong. So when a friend makes an insensitive joke, or your pastor says certain relationships are a sin, or a politician wants to limit access to gender-affirming care, you know what’s at stake. You’ve seen the joy that comes from queer people celebrating our joyful queer lives, and you’ll help us protect that. 

So even when the parties and corporate events brush up against my personal discomfort, I’m choosing to be seen this year. And I’m choosing to do it with joy. 

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

The Rest of Meta 

TikTok

YouTube

Google 

Apple

 Discord

Pinterest (disclosure: I’m currently working as a contractor at Pinterest) 

BeReal

Twitter, Sorry X

The Product 

The Dumpster Fire

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

Music 

Publishing 

Gaming 

The Vatican 

AI 

Misdirection 

Elon Musk dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI right before a hearing with a judge on the case this week and one day after Elon got mad about Apple’s deal with OpenAI. Anecdotally, I saw way more articles about Elon’s big mad Apple tweet than I did about the lawsuit. 

Also this week, SpaceX works are suing Elon for sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment. No wonder because and we learned that at SpaceX, “Elon Musk allegedly had sex with a former intern and an employee. He asked a third woman to have his babies.” Aaaand Tesla shareholders voted on, and ultimately approved, a massive new exec comp plan for him this week.

“Is this game gay enough?” 

A close cousin of visibility is representation. Seeing people who share your status as part of a marginalized or minority group in media is really powerful. Quality representation also gives people the opportunity to learn about and develop greater empathy around how other people experience the world. 

In the spirit of promoting LGBTQIA+ representation like clockwork every June, companies start putting out their lists of music/shows/games/etc made by, for, or about queer people. Today I want to zoom in on one way this shows up in the conversation around games that bothers me. 

I love role playing games that let you design your own player character. They give me the opportunity to live out the fantasy of still having hair, and in some games the fantasy of dating hot wizard boys. That’s right, I’m a sucker for a good character romance storyline. Little closeted baby gay Cameron was too afraid to make his boy Sims date in the original game, but pretty soon same-sex romance options became part of the action RPGs I was playing like Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls. 

For the non-gamers reading this, here’s how romance typically works in these games. As you meet different characters in the game, you’ll be able to build up a relationship with them over time by talking to them, choosing different dialog options, and performing actions in the story they like. You talk to the lady barbarian a lot, pick the flirty dialog options, and save the villagers she cared about to get her to like you. You typically have to commit to the relationship at some point, and sometimes there’s some awkward computer animated kissing and/or implied sex. 

There are two routes games take for gaying up this mechanic. Option one, you make it so any player character (regardless of gender) can romance any romanceable NPCs. I call this the the bi by default approach. The issue here is that not everyone in the real world is bi or pan. The “everyone’s sexuality is the same approach” flattens these characters and removes the opportunity to tell stories about uniquely gay, bi, pan, or straight experiences. Not to mention, players can totally avoid any queer content and play the game as if everyone’s straight. It’s an LGBTQ optional approach. Which is why I like the route in games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Inquisition, where some characters are bi (and romanceable by any player character), but some characters are actually straight or exclusively gay. 

This approach really shines with a character like Dorian in Dragon Age: Inquisition. He’s estranged from his traditionalist mage family, mirroring the way gay people can often have fraught relationships with conservative families. Slowly getting to know his character, learning more about his family, and watching the romance develop, felt so authentic for me (even though I was playing as a devilish looking Qunari). His mannerisms and backstory felt like a realistic gay male experience, and that specificity made the story more immersive and compelling. The bi by default approach would undercut that specificity. 

Now back to the game marketing part of this. I’m going to be way less excited to see the upcoming installment of Dragon Age on Pride lists next year. While the game looks great, and I’m already crushing on a few of the new characters, the developers have announced they’re unfortunately returning to the bi by default approach for romances. Maybe they’ll surprise me and write some characters that feel really queer despite this gameplay mechanic. Baulder’s Gate 3 did this (Karlach reads so sapphic despite her trying to hook up with my male-identified character). But if we get a Dragon Age where a bi by default just feels like everyone’s straight and the game’s just ignoring your character’s gender, I’m not going to count that as representation. 

*I’m very dyslexic, and this is a largely free project/hobby. I do not set aside the same time for proofreading that I do for other professional work. If you spot a typo that would cause a communication error, please reach out to gently let me know.