Presented at the 2017 Digital Games Research Association conference in Melbourne, Australia.
Please also read the extended abstract here.
Representations Of Queer Identity In Games From 2013-2015. Alayna Cole, University of the Sunshine Coast, email a cole at u s c dot e d u dot a u, Twitter at alayna m cole. Adrienne Shaw, Temple University Philadelphia, P A, U S A, email adrienne dot shaw at temple dot e d u, twitter at adri shaw. Jessica Zammit, University of Wollongong, email j zammit at u o w at e d u dot a u, twitter at Zammit Jess.
Queerly Represent Me website, queerly represent dot me twitter, at queerly rep me
L G B T Q Game Archive website, l g b t q game archive dot com twitter, at l g b t q underscore g a
Representations of Sexuality and Gender. Representation of minority groups in games has several impacts. In a recent survey by Queerly Represent Me in 2017, 1,237 participants felt representation in games is important. Of these, 371 primarily highlighted the importance of being able to identify with characters for themselves, 352 respondents, or for others, 19 respondents. 154 respondents primarily highlighted the ways representation helps people foster empathy, 94 respondents, or has other widespread, unspecified, positive societal effects, 60 respondents. However the highest priority was narrative, with 427 respondents, with people specifically highlighting representation's effects on interesting story, 152 respondents, realism, 150 respondents, and characterisation, 41 respondents.
Diversity in games is important for a range of reasons, as expressed by participants in our 2017 survey.
Queerly Represent Me and L G B T Q Game Archive. Both of these databases collate information about queer representation in games. Share resources and have cross-over in terms of goals. Different approaches and audiences. Queerly Represent Me features over 773 titles and categorises then in a number of ways. Representation found in, protagonist, non player characters, other references. Representation of, asexual / aromantic, bisexual / plurisexual, cross-dressing, gay, intersex, lesbian, non-binary / non-conforming, playersexual, polyamory, trans woman, trans man, other. Picture of L G B T Q Game Archive home page. Picture of Queerly Represent Me home page.
The research that informs this study is based on the author's work with Queerly Represent Me and the LGBTQ Video Game Archive, which share resources and goals, despite having different approaches and audiences. It is based on some of the quanitative categorisation that we work with in the database, and the trends that the process of categorising games has revealed.
Representations of Sexuality and Gender. Queerly Represent Me database, number of games, 773 as of June 2017. Standalone games released between 2013 and 2015, number of games 147. Games as part of a franchise released between 2013 and 2015, number of games 67. Graph showing queer representation per year in standalone game titles. For access to a detailed description of each point on the graph, please click here.
Looking at games released between 2013 and 2015 revealed a significant spike, which warranted further study.
Preliminary Investigation. Research Question 1. Why did the number of games featuring queer content double from 2013 to 2015? Research Question 2. Have the representations of specific diverse sexualities or genders increased at comparable rates? Research Question 3. If some representations have increased at different rates to one another, why has this occurred?
Hypothesis 1. Representation of diverse sexuality are more common than representations of gender. Hypothesis 2. Representations of monosexual identities are more common tahn other sexualities. Hypothesis 3. Most instances of monosexual representaion are from the visual novel genre.
To focus this research, we created a few research questions and hypotheses based on trends we had noticed in our research and gameplay.
2013 and beyond. The significance of this time period. Research Question 1. Why did the number of games featuring queer content double from 2013 to 2015? Different games conference in April 2013 and Queerness and Games conference in October 2013. Hyper inclusive hashtag lost levels un-conference at the Game Developers Conference. Gaymer X convention in August 2013. Increase in coverage of queer game content, players and design. Queer game communities and inclusion of queer representation in mainstream games. Increase in awareness of and therefore research into representations of queerness. Shaw and Ruberg 2017. Increase in coverage of independent game designers who are pushing boundaries and queering the development process. Anna Anthropy's Rise of the Videogame Zinesters in 2012. Increase in accessibility to game development tools Increase in distribution options online allowing consumers to access independently developed games. Shaw and Ruberg 2017.
2013 was a significant year for queerness and games. The intersection became a focus for academics, developers, and consumers alike. This movement could be attributed to contextual factors (such as this push towards queerness being considered in games, or the democratisation of game development tools) or to better distribution and archiving of independently developed games (as opposed to the homebrew games of years past), or a mixture of the two.
2013 and beyond. The significance of this time period. Can we expect this to continue? It feels as though there's a lot of pullback in the mainstream gaming world over the last year or two in terms of support, not just for our event, but other likeminded events. I'm not sure if the current political climate has had a cooling effect, or if game companies saw events like this as a one-time thing, or...something else? If it was just us, I'd say we need to look inwards at how we're running the business, but over the last year or two there's been a total shift in the climate of supporting diversity and inclusion-minded events, where it moved from being an obvious thing, to being seen as a political thing. Matt Conn, personal communication, 2017.
Whether this trajectory continues is uncertain. Actions that were seen as 'right' are now being considered 'political', so acquiring financial and other support for movements such as GaymerX (as spoken about here by Matt Conn) is becoming more difficult. If companies are less likely to put their name next to diverse movements, can this positive trajectory continue? Has the ball already started rolling so that we will continue to see an increase in queer games regardless? Further research (and patience) is required.
2013 and beyond. The significance of this time period. Research question 2. Have the representations of specific diverse sexualities or genders increased at comparable rates? Research question 3. If some representation have increased at different rates to one another, why has this occurred? Monosexual representation has greater instances of representation than representation of other sexualities. Monosexual representation has greater instances of representation than representation of genders. Cross-dressing representation instances decreasing. Playersexuality representation instances have an uncertain trajectory. Few instances of asexuality, aromanticism and intersex representation. Further research required. Graph showing instances of specific diverse sexualities or genders represented between 2013 and 2015. Please click here for access to details of each line on the graph. The article text will summarise details from the graph.
Some representations have increased at different rates. Monosexual representations have increased most significantly, with other sexualities next, and genders last. Asexuality, aromanticism, and intersex representations remain incredibly low. We have seen a decrease in representations of cross-dressing; however, it is difficult to predict from this data set whether that will continue.
What else does the data say? Hypothesis 1. Representation of diverse sexuality are more common than representations of gender. A paired-samples t-test was performed to compare the total number of representations of sexuality per game, mean = 0.92, standard deviation = 0.91, with the total number of representations of gender per game, mean = 0.30, standard deviation = 0.62. The number of representations of sexuality was found to be significantly greater, t (213) = 9.01, p less than 0.001.
Hypothesis 2. Representations of monosexual identities (lesbian and gay) are more common than other sexualities. A chi-square test for goodness of fit was used and was statistically significantly. X squared (10, N = 12) = 336.00, p less than 0.001. This indicates that some diverse sexualities and genders are represented within the data more significantly than others. Further examination reveals that the values for representation of gay men and lesbian women are higher than the expected average.
Hypothesis 3. Most instances of monosexual representation are from the visual novel genre. Visual novel = 28.57 percent. Interactive narrative = 16.22 percent. Role playing games = 15.65 percent. Graph includes primary genres of games and does not factor in the secondary genres of 12 titles. The genres included are. Action adventure, adventure, beat em up, casual, driving, fighter, incremental, interactive fiction, platformer, puzzle, role playing game, simulation, strategy, survival horror, tabletop, tower defence, visual novel. Graph showing queer representation by genre. Please click here to access the percentage value for each genre included in the graph.
A chi-square test for goodness of fit, with a = 0.5, was used to assess whether representation of monosexual identities was more common in one genre than others. The test was statistically significant, x squared (9, N = 147) = 87.218, p less than 0.001. This indicates that some genres were represented with greater frequency than others. An effect size of 0.77 was calculated using Cohen's w, which indicates a large effect.
How does representation of monosexual identities compare to other forms of queer representation? Visual novel = 27.10 percent. This is less than the percentage of queer games as a whole that were visual novels Interactive narrative = 15.42 percent. This is less than the percentage of queer games as a whole that were interactive narratives. Role playing games = 19.63 percent. This is more than the percentage of games with queer representation as a whole that were role playing games.
Representations of queerness are most likely to be present in visual novels, interactive narratives, and role-playing games. These genres are accessible to game makers using tools like Ren'Py, Twine, and RPG Maker, allowing diverse minorities to tell their own stories. This could explain why these particular genres are most evident.
So what? And what's next? Representations of queerness in games increased significantly from 2013 to 2015. This increase may not continue, as the culture shift that inspired this influx has been receiving less support recently. Further study examining 2016 and beyond will see if this trajectory continues. Representations of queerness are not increasing consistently, with monosexual identities commonly featured. Genres that are supported by free, accessible tools have seen the most queer representation in 2013 to 2015. This means visual novels, interactive fiction and role playing games. Further study comparing these figures to genres in earlier time periods is required.
Hypothesis 4. Most instances of implied representation are gay men. 2013 to 2015 data did not include a statistically significantly number of implied representations to warrant this analysis. Further study of implied versus explicit representation of queerness in games
We intend to continue this research. We hope to look beyond 2015 to see how these trends do or do not continue, once we have adequate data. We would like to examine genre in more detail, to see how genre saturation differs in other time periods, and to also see which tools developers are (or could be) using to create titles to see whether queerness is most evident in games that have come from easily accessible engines.
We also had a hypothesis regarding implicit representations that we would like to examine further, but could not find adequately data to test using only games between 2013 and 2015. We plan to look into this further using a larger set of games to see which representations most often appear as 'implied' rather than 'explicit'.
If you have any questions about this work, or anything to do with Queerly Represent Me, please email us.