A queer labor of love: the battle to preserve the history of LGBTQ + games

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• A queer labor of love: the battle to preserve the history of LGBTQ + games

LGBTQ + Game Week 2021

(Image credit: TechRadar / R Healey Art) Welcome to TechRadar LGBTQ+ Gaming Week 2021. During this week-long celebration, we spotlight issues and voices within the LGBTQ+ gaming community. Learn more here. Today, queer gaming characters walk our screens with confidence. Playable characters, like Alexios and Kassandra from Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Ellie from The Last of Us, are quirky, but not every aspect of their characters hinges on their sexuality. But how long has this been the case? Who walked so Ellie could run? Exploring the origins and evolution of queer games and characters, and preserving them for posterity, is a task that no one seemed to want to do. In other words, until Adrienne Shaw of Temple University in Philadelphia, USA.

The birth of the LGBTQ + video game archive

LGBTQ Video Game Archive (Image credit: LGBTQ Video Game Archive) “After 10 years, no one had done what I thought was an obvious project, so I thought it was a sign that I had to do it,” he laughs. Shaw "If it ever ended, I'd actually be sad, because that would mean there weren't any new games to find and no one was making new games with queer content."Adrienne Shaw As part of her graduate studies, Shaw began a project to determine why there was little queer representation in video games. She went out looking for game designers working on queer content and created a list of 51 games for her own use. Little did she know that this list would turn into a decade of work. In In 2015, Shaw turned his attention to creating a more comprehensive list, resulting in a growing collection of 151 queer games.This was the beginning of the LGBTQ+ video game archive.With recommendations and advice from volunteers and gaming fans, Shaw is still working on the list in his spare time outside of other research projects, creating a database. online detailing exactly the type of queer content. in every game. While each entry into the database takes time, for Shaw, it's a labor of love. "It's really nice that it's taking a long time to set everything up," she says. “If it ever ended, I would actually be sad because it would mean there would be no more new games to find and no one would make new games with queer content. Shaw's list of 151 games has grown to over 1200 now, dating back to 1976 with Bunnies and Burrows, an RPG based on the novel Watership Down, in which users play as intelligent rabbits interacting with each other. . others and escape from foxes and other threats. The archive focuses on digital games and is managed by Shaw herself and an assistant of hers. But how do they document each queer game?

A collaborative exercise

If found (Image credit: Annapurna Interactive) Many game entries begin with a warning from a fan. Someone may have played a queer game in their youth or seen a dark game released today. They send a note through the archive's website and your hold begins. Any queer representation will do, no matter how small, and that includes negative representations as well; for Shaw, it is equally important that they be documented. Each game in the files can represent between five and 80 hours of work for Shaw or his assistant. “I don't have the resources or the time to play every game that's ever been out there to see if we can find the queer characters,” Shaw says, “but we can have a good documentation of what was said in this content across sites. from fans, tutorials, wikis, and YouTube videos.” This communal aspect of the archives is vital to their survival. Shaw started as a passion project and continues to do other jobs besides paying the bills. Anyone who gets involved with the archive is doing it to preserve games that are in danger of disappearing entirely, and it's a good thing they're doing it, as time is running out.

Countdown for LGBTQ + games to extinction

Caper in the Castro (Image credit: CM Ralph) Documenting digital games presents its own unique challenges: there is little time left before the technology needed to play a game becomes obsolete, or before the memory of a game dies. game. "I think one of the hardest parts is we don't know what's already been lost." Adrienne Shaw Shaw stumbled upon a game, Caper in the Castro, almost by accident while she was researching another game. The mystery adventure game was designed by lesbian game designer CM Ralph in 1989, and was originally released under the name "Charity Ware", with players invited to donate to an AIDS service organization after downloading the game; Ralph was motivated to raise money for the cause after 90% of his close friends in California died of AIDS. Caper in the Castro sees a lesbian detective, Tracker McDyke, trying to find a missing drag queen, and has turned out to be one of the hardest games to keep on file. After tracking down the unit, it had to be retrofitted with an older Macintosh to make its 1980s Mac software readable. Caper's discovery in the Castro didn't just provide a snapshot of one of the first playable queer characters; provided useful lessons on the intricacies of selecting outdated gaming technology. While it was a great find, the fact that Caper in the Castro was discovered by chance is a worrying sign for the preservation of LGBTQ+ gaming. How many games are lost? How many more games could be lost forever if the right person didn't know about them? "I think one of the hardest parts is that we don't know what's already been lost," Shaw says. “We don't know how many games we just don't have records, because the people who made them are no longer alive, or because no one bothered to save copies. "

Worlds to save

The Last of Us: Left Behind (Image credit: Naughty Dog) Losing queer games from the past might not seem like a big deal, especially if they're hard to play these days. But losing any instance of queer representation in the game means we're missing out on cultural representations that are very different from any other medium. Queer characters in video games are not portrayed like the stereotypes that are so common in TV and movies. “The dominance of queer people as villains is actually not quantitatively dominant in games compared to other media. In movies and TV, this was a pretty common theme, but it seems like most LGBTQ+ characters are helpful, neutral, non-player characters. Adrienne Shaw "Queer people's dominance as a villain isn't really quantitatively dominant in games over other media," Shaw says. "In movies and TV, this was a pretty common theme, but it seems like most LGBTQ+ characters are helpful, neutral, non-gamer characters." Also, different snapshots of queer culture stand out in video games than in other media. The HIV crisis, for example, has been featured repeatedly on television and in movies. However, very few queer games in the archives mention it; instead, queer characters often exist as useful non-player characters (NPCs), rather than fill the same well-established roles we see on TV and in the movies. Video games, more than television and movies, offer their players an escape from the real world. They create entire universes that players can immerse themselves in, which is perhaps why the common areas of queer history are skimmed over in digital game storytelling. While some major events, such as the HIV crisis, are largely overlooked, new perspectives on queer culture are offered, showing what other issues were at play in queer communities over time. Queer video game characters were allowed to explore a wide range of topics that were not available to their real-world counterparts. While there are still negative connotations attached to some queer figures, the greater freedom game storytelling affords to delve into themes outside of common queer tropes has often allowed for more vibrant and varied storylines. Whether positive or negative, the nuances and different perspectives that LGBTQ+ gaming brings to the discussion of queer culture is something you don't often find elsewhere. Shaw and his team see these unique qualities, and their work is driven by the belief that everyone should see them too. Queer literature, queer movies, and queer television are well documented, with each genre bringing its own unique angle to LGBTQ+ history. The same meticulous curation must be applied to digital games, before they, by their very nature, are gone forever. Learn more about the LGBTQ video game archive here. Rachael Davies is a freelance queer writer based in Edinburgh, UK, who writes on LGBTQ + issues and technology.