What’s next?: the LGBTQ video game archive

ABSTRACT

This essay describes the author’s new project: a digital archive documenting the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) content in video games. The LGBTQ game archive covers approximately 30 decades of game content at present, and nearly 500 games. This essay describes the project’s origins, the methods used to research the game content, and some initial findings. Finally, some particular surprises from the project are discussed, which point to areas for future LGBTQ games research.

KEYWORDS:

• Video games
• LGBTQ
• queer
• gender
• sexuality

Notes on contributor

Adrienne Shaw is an Assistant Professor in Temple University’s Department of Media Studies and Production, a member of the School of Media and Communication graduate faculty. Her book Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (University of Minnesota, 2014) won the 2016 Outstanding Book Award from the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association. She also recently co-edited a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication with Katherine Sender and an edited collection, Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), with Bonnie Ruberg.

ORCID

Adrienne Shaw http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5526-1839

Notes

1 A full list of relevant work can be found at: https://lgbtqgamearchive.com/further-reading/.

2 Everyone who has contributed to this ongoing project is listed here: https://lgbtqgamearchive.com/who-we-are/.

3 Information about this aspect of the project will be made available on the main archive site.

4 Perhaps, however, someone could find a way to teach a computer program to not only play digital games (like Google’s DeepMind researchers have) but also recognize queerness … (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31623427).