The gaming subculture isn't always the most welcoming place to have a minority sexual orientation. From casual homophobic language in Battlefield 3 to unexpected homophobic tirades from Blizzcon musical acts to the extremely common use of homophobic slurs used as trash talk in online game matches, many portions of the gaming community seem to do their best to alienate anyone who doesn't conform to a heteronormative ideal.

That's where GaymerCon comes in. The "first gaming and tech convention with a focus on LGBT geek culture" is set to take place next August in San Francisco after reaching its modest $25,000 Kickstarter goal earlier this week, just four days after launching. Over 2,000 people have already registered to attend the conference, according to Kayce Brown, a member of the large team of organizers for the event. The effort has drawn support from industry veterans including GLaDOS voice actress Ellen McLaine, Team Fortress 2 sniper voice actor John Patrick Lowrie, and Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins.

While the lineup of events and appearances at the conference hasn't been finalized, Brown said that music and fashion will probably be big parts of the show, and that everything from the panels to the game demos on hand will have "not just gay undertones but gaming undertones."

That doesn't mean straight people won't be welcome, of course. "We hope that everybody comes to this," Brown said. "Our mission statement is 'Everybody Games.' We're not just targeting gay people. We're hoping that we get a fair number of straight people, bisexual people, transgender people. It's very important for us to feel everyone has a space at this convention." She added that she hopes women will be interested in the show, because "even moreso than men, [they] are met with a lot of hate in terms of gaming."

At the same time, Brown said she hopes that members of the LGBTQ gaming community will feel especially welcome at the conference. "It's not as if we're calling ourselves out in a way where we're stomping around and banging drums and we need to be heard," she said. "It's more about creating a safe space for LGBTQ members to come, be exactly who they are, and be gamers, and meet other like-minded people… It's not necessarily that we need some place to call our own because we want to separate ourselves and not be part of the mainstream, it's because we want people to be able to come and feel safe."

Brown compared the value of a special conference for the LGBTQ gaming sub-niche to Palm Springs' annual Dinah Shore weekend, which attracts lesbians from all over the world to meet and mingle. "There's a lot of people who live in Minnesota, in Idaho, in all of these various places who, in their daily lives, can't live the way that they want to live and do the things that they want to do and feel like they can be themselves," she said. "So something like this, in a place like San Francisco, that's very LGBT tolerant, creates a space where people can come and it's their vacation. I don't want to call it their sanctuary, but it's a place where you can just be yourself."

Ignoring the backlash

Despite the overwhelming outpouring of support from Kickstarter backers, registrants, volunteers, and the press, Brown said the GaymerCon organizers have had to deal with their fair share of hate mail and harassing comments around the Internet. The level of vitriol among some in the gaming community is somewhat shocking, she said, given that gamers often know the pain of being part of an often marginalized group themselves.

"It could go back to the bullying," Brown theorized. "With any sort of bullying, whether on the playground or at home, they sequester themselves in gaming. It sort of becomes their world. When I try to think about it and what the bigger issue is and where this is coming from, I feel like they've been met with some sort of hate in their lives and they just sort of project that back."

But despite the haters, Brown said she and her fellow organizers are inspired to continue on, thanks to stories like that of a young lesbian who used an LGBT gaming group to help drag herself out of a suicidal depression. The desire to inform and educate people about the size and scope of the gay gaming population is also a driving force inspiring the organizers to ignore the pushback, Brown said.

"We're there for a reason," she recalls telling her fellow organizers when they were getting upset about the level of opposition to their efforts. "If we want to be considered mainstream and if we want to be a part of this, we can't segregate ourselves in the way we have already. If we're in the mainstream, we're always going to have haters. There's always going to be hate mail, there will be protestors outside our convention, there will be people who picket us, throw things at us, say things to us, and my response to that is 'fuck 'em.'"

"It's going to be a hot topic for a while. It's going to be hotter because there's an awareness that we've built around it that people may or may not have paid attention to before, but you have to start somewhere for anything to get better," she continued. "All we can do is keep going forward and the hope is that it gets better."

"It wasn't so long ago that our parents were not just reading about—but actually living through—the end of segregation, and that's a non-issue now. So at some point I'd like to think that this won't be an issue in the gaming community anymore."