Glaad (previously often called the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) have introduced their media awards again for the 31st yr, and for the second yr in a row they’re recognising video games “for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community and the issues that affect their lives”.
Last yr, Jay Castello wrote about how these video game awards highlight difficulties in celebrating queer representation, and this yr it’s slighty higher, nevertheless it nonetheless feels a bit prefer it’s lacking the purpose.
This year’s Glaad nominees embrace the likes of Overwatch, presumably chosen for its queer illustration of each Tracer and Soldier: 76 – that’s two characters out of 31 on the hero roster, each of which you wouldn’t know have been in same-sex relationships until you’d learn the comics which have virtually nothing to do with the game.
Apex is barely extra worthy, having two of its eight playable characters being recognized to be LGBT+ from the get go. Even nonetheless, one of many solely nods to Gibraltar’s boyfriend is in his official bio on EA’s website, and Bloodhound’s voice actor had to confirm the character was non-binary via Twitter.
The different nominees are higher nonetheless, with Borderlands 3, The Outer Worlds and The Walking Dead: The Final Season making up the remainder of the record.
The stand out one for me is The Outer Worlds, which was praised for the writing behind the character Parvati. She’s a companion that queer fans adhered to straight away due to her properly written narrative by an asexual author, Kate Dollarhyde. It’s writing like this that ought to be celebrated for awards like Glaad’s, however there are extra locations to search for it than the primary 5 AAA games that come up whenever you’re on the lookout for queer illustration.
Take Heart Of The Woods, for instance. A fantasy visible novel that got here out in 2019 the place all the characters are lesbians. A personality is revealed to be trans at one level within the game, and once I talked to Sin about it, she mentioned: “It only comes up because they’re talking about a friend who knew her before she transitioned, and it was so well done it made me get up and walk around for a while.”
Representation in games is vital, and we must always completely have fun the progress greater games are making. But there are different smaller games too which were making that progress for a very long time, and should be recognised for the way they strategy queer tales. Life Is Strange, Night In The Woods, Dream Daddy, Butterfly Soup and Heaven Will Be Mine are only a few extra which are properly value your time.
