I’m going to start off stating the obvious — I am a 41-year-old white cishet man. I am, quite literally, the person that video games have catered to for decades. I realize that the average gamer in 2020 is in their 30’s, but my age puts me in the category of players that grew up with the NES and text adventures, and now has the financial stability to keep up with the current console generation, or upgrade a PC without it causing too much hardship.
I say these things in order to underscore the fact that I am a member of one of the most privileged groups in gaming culture. Probably in American culture as a whole, as well. People like me are terribly, terribly over-represented in video games, and we need to be the ones to make some room.
Jenny Shi’s article on Medium makes a compelling economic case for increasing representation and inclusion in games. I know that she addressed more than just economics, but as an employee of EA, that’s really what it comes down to — that inclusion, beside just being important is good business. And she isn’t wrong! Reducing gatekeeping in the community, handling toxicity within the playerbase, and making sure that characters in games are more varied than square-jawed, stubbly men, are more likely to increase the reach of games to people who aren’t white cishet men.
Beyond just making gaming spaces safer for marginalized players, the desire for people to see themselves in the media they consume can’t be underrated. It is important for characters to be LGBTQ+, women, nonbinary. Humans don’t fit into a binary, and there is zero reason for games to not reflect that. And even more important than just representation, there need to be games that actually center people who normally play a supporting role. Two of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in single-player games were Gone Home, an exploration game about a young woman who comes home to her parents’ empty house during a college break, and discovers through clues that her younger sister — who never makes an appearance in the game, but is always very clearly present in it — has left home to pursue a relationship with another young woman. The second was a serial game called Life Is Strange, an episodic graphic adventure game in which the main character discovers throughout the game that she may, in fact, be gay.
Both of those experiences are foreign to me. I had opinions about how people in the LGBTQ+ community should be treated (spoiler: LGBTQ+ rights are human rights), but they’ve never been personal to me. Playing those games were learning experiences. That said, they also catered to me. As a player, my experience was being centered. By that, I mean that both of those games were really about teaching the straight dudes.
Contrast that with some of the games being produced and sold on independent marketplaces like itch.io, where people are making things that actually celebrate and center their own experiences. I think that, if you’re a person that thinks equality and equity in the gaming sphere important, then it is incumbent upon you to not only push for inclusion from the AAA game developers, but also to support marginalized communities financially for the things that they make.
And, if it isn’t clear, even though I leaned heavily into games made by, for, and about LGBTQ+ people, all of these opinions apply equally to race and gender. There’s room for everyone in the gaming. People like me can afford to scooch over and make some space. I can handle having a little less influence in the public sphere if it means that others can have some at all.
I Burn Everything 