Spend any amount of time on any popular gaming message board when the issue of LGBT+ representation raises its head, and you can guarantee there’ll be someone waiting in the wings to, at the very least, remind LGBT+ players that it’s 2020 and ‘nobody cares they’re gay anymore’ – oh, and ‘would you mind keeping your sexuality out of my video games?’. It’s not exactly surprising then that countless LGBT+ gamers around the world are still seeking the comfort of like-minded individuals and social spaces, both in-game and in real-life, where they’re free to be themselves without abuse, judgement, or fear of repercussions – and to simply enjoy the games they want to play.
“I think in mainstream culture there is this wishful idea that because we’ve had too many seasons of Will & Grace…things are just fine and dandy for the queers in our society,” Benjamin Bon Temps, founder of the long-running Rough Trade Gaming Community tells me, “Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. While things are better, and the average Bubba Beercan Gamer might be more open-minded and respectful, there is still the same slew of tired asshats firing off verbal fag bombs and ‘this stupid dungeon is gay’ type bullshit.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Matthew Hardwick, co-founder of the on- and offline LGBT+ community London Gaymers; “Online spaces can be generally quite a negative experience for minorities as it is,” he says, “but with insults like ‘fag’, ‘queer’, and ‘gay’ often thrown around in a derogatory manner, it can be particularly hard for LGBT people.” By way of illustration, Hardwick relates one of his own experiences, when someone he’d played online with for over a year immediately bombarded him with abuse on finding out he was gay in party chat. “[He] said I should ‘die of AIDS’ and ‘ass cancer’ before threatening to come to my home to murder me.”
