LGBTQ+ people have always been the trendsetters. We operate on the fringes out of sheer necessity, occasionally bleeding into the mainstream with representation we cheer on to the point of obnoxiousness, knowing that to feel seen is to make enough noise that you cannot be ignored. Ever since I was a child, I’ve gleaned subtext from the media I grew up with and clung onto stories and characters who I felt represented the person I didn’t yet know who I wanted to be. Looking back, these moments only hold more value, and speak to bold steps forward in the medium that heteronormative narratives just aren’t capable of providing.
When I think about the past decade of video games, all the defining moments in romance come from a place of queerness. Life is Strange, The Last of Us, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Horizon Forbidden West, Gone Home, Tell Me Why, Undertale, Hades, Night in The Woods, Stardew Valley, and several more stories where straight romance might be possible, but as we distance ourselves from them, it’s the queer instances that leave behind the most impact.
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Straight romance is the norm, and something we’ve begun to treat indifferently after decades of it being forced down our throats while queerness is sidelined or ignored completely. It’s a clear abnormality for some audiences, and given modern video games must appeal to wider and wider demographics, daring to put two girls kissing or a trans character front and centre presents a risk that not every storyteller is willing to take.
So we grew accustomed to sitting in the background, easily erased for worldwide release as companies tried to act like there was a reason to be grateful that we were invited to the party at all. But as a queer person, I want to dominate that space, or at least let the world know I deserve to stand alongside everyone else without ridicule. But where did this journey begin in the realm of video games, and where does it stand in the modern day?
I was a closeted trans woman when Life is Strange first released in 2014, cooped away in university halls playing video games with friends when I should have been at parties. As I stepped into the shoes of Max Caulfield for the first time, I felt my shell begin to crack as a newfound identity started to make itself known. Then I met Chloe Price, a poignant symbol of queer rebellion who wasn’t afraid to flirt with girls, smoke in front of her parents, or kick up a fuss to make things right. Max fell in love with her, and thousands of players slowly began to see themselves in her. She was a person they wanted to be and wanted to root for, a queer character in a queer story released by a major publisher who never wanted to beat around the bush.
While it’s impossible to read Life is Strange as anything other than queer, internalised homophobia prevented me from properly embracing it for years. It wasn’t until Don’t Nod’s Tell Me Why, which featured a trans protagonist and a gay romance, that my brain finally began to piece everything together. On both occasions, the queer aspects of each game were celebrated by press and fans alike, while also becoming points of controversy, because how dare video games celebrate progressive romance and identities.
But still, we moved the needle forward for all the right reasons, and still remember them to this day. The same logic can be applied to the original Mass Effect, which originally launched in 2007 into a world which wasn’t ready for fully-fledged queer romance, but happily explored it regardless. Commander Shepard couldn’t pursue man-on-man action until the second title, but when outrage was sparked across conservative news outlets about the relatively tame sexual scenes, all the attention was on FemShep and Liara. BioWare was poisoning the minds of children by showing two women kissing with a small helping of sideboob, framing queerness once again as an outsider that needed to be quelled. At the time, though, I felt seen even if I didn’t know it yet. Two women could kiss in video games, so why couldn’t they in reality?
More recently we’ve seen indie efforts like Undertale, Night in the Woods, Hades, and I Was A Teenage Exocolonist present more honest and grounded queer love, many of which have taken on lives of their own in celebrated fandoms that are still active today. LGBTQ+ players tend to form more meaningful emotional connections with queer characters and relationships because, despite increased prevalence in the mainstream, we are still the minority. Failure to speak up or express our passion means we risk allowing this representation to fade away, or to be treated with indifference.
Flipping back over to the mainstream, it’s hard to overstate how much of an impact The Last of Us Part 2 had on both the depiction of powerful women, queer romance, and trans people in blockbuster video games. While it might be afraid to label them in honest ways, there’s yet to be a game like it that wants to depict the messy reality of being queer, while also surviving in a brutal post-apocalypse. When I think back to the groundbreaking love stories in gaming from the past decade, every single one of them is queer, and that’s no coincidence.
LGBTQ+ people are always pushing boundaries both in the real world and throughout the media we consume, whether that is standing up for who we are and what we believe in or providing our identities with a chance to shine. An opportunity to be seen and respected even in the face of guaranteed scrutiny. That doesn’t matter when the end result sticks in the social consciousness years after the fact, something we have achieved in video game romance for good reason.
