Make All The Games Queer

I cried while playing through Sayonara Wild Hearts. It’s a good-ass game, and you should pl- no, you know what, go read the review, this isn’t a rehash.

I didn’t really talk about why this game made me cry, though. And honestly, I didn’t know if I should talk about why, because, well, this is Video Games we’re talking about, and Gamers don’t like it when you talk about feelings as they relate to their lifestyle. But I would have stopped writing years ago if I gave a shit about Gamer opinions, so here we go.

I cried because I realized this was the first brazenly queer (non-visual novel) game I’d played in a while, and it was being featured prominently in at least two storefronts — Apple Arcade and the Nintendo E-Shop. I realized that I’d been playing nothing but nonstop “gruff hetero dude must accomplish military or police goal in a variety of genres” games and it was giving me brain constipation.

We gotta get more queer representation in games y’all. In fact, queer folks should be in every game. Fuck it. Let’s do this. Hey video game industry: put queer people in your fucking games, you cowards! You don’t have to write the ludic equivalent of a Very Special Episode to include us. Just, fuckin, IDK, understand that we’re already out here and living lives, that we’re in your circles already, that we like and play video games too. Take that understanding and apply it to the worlds you make. If you don’t know how, hire some fucking LGBTQIAP+ people to help write or design your game, shit.

I should say that there are some games, good ones, that feature queer folks. Most of them are indie games. Some are pretty up-front about their queerness. Others are more subtle – like Celeste – but still nice. But no, I’m talking about queerness everywhere. In every game. Did y’all know there are queer people in sports? That queer people like to solve mysteries? There are queer fighters and queer soldiers, if you’re more into military shooters. YO CHECK THIS OUT: there were queer people in Old Times too. It’s kind of wild when you think about how media has almost exclusively focused on a very specific subset of person forever, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s a narrow view of the world!

I’m not even gonna bother bringing up more existing examples of queerness in games, because I’m not just asking for a few more crumbs from developers. It’s time for the whole plate, motherfuckers.

And while we’re at it, get some goddamn accessibility settings in your games.

(Also to the people who make visual novels with lots of queer characters I will play them forever, keep doing the thing because I love the thing.)

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