Game on!
LGBTIQ+ youth organizing, fundraising, solidarity, and cooperative wellbeing through gaming
An ILGA World Conference special
By Shane Bhatla, Equal Asia Foundation
Introduction
Over the past two years, the gaming industry has peaked and grown faster than ever before because of the pandemic. Once a predominantly entertainment medium, gaming has now found its way into education, mental health, fundraising, sports, and even advocacy. This multi-billion dollar industry has only gained in popularity as the world went into isolation and moved to virtual spaces.
Representation in gaming
According to a survey conducted by MrQ, gaming is currently the most inclusive medium of entertainment. The average representation of LGBTIQ+ people in video games comes out to 1.9% as compared to a low 0.1% from movies and overall 1% from novels. Super Mario Galaxy currently stands at the highest amount of LGBTIQ+ characters at 24 characters. According to the Nielsen Games 360 survey, about 10% of gamers identify as LGBTIQ+. The majority of LGBTIQ+ storylines that do exist on Steam, a gaming platform to purchase games and play games, currently target those over the age of 18, since the content is explicit and often sexual.
Gamers have also acknowledged that representation in video games can be optional. For example, if a player’s character was interacting with an NPC (non-player character) and didn’t choose the ‘right’ dialogue option, that player would not be able to see the LGBTIQ+ storyline at all. As Anna Anthropy, a game designer, calls it the “gay button”, is performative representation at best. While representation in gaming is getting better as demand grows for representation, gamers will still have to wait to see main protagonists in games openly accepting their SOGIESC status rather than just NPCs and side characters.
DONTNOD, the creators behind “Tell Me Why” (a well-received game with a transgender protagonist), say that they worked closely with transgender staff from GLAAD to ensure that they had enough guidance to do justice to a transgender character. The consultants from GLAAD built the foundation for the developers on the story, character, casting, and even script reviewing. The developers have often highlighted that their casting of August Black, a trans masculine voice actor, also shaped the way Tyler Ronan’s character was built, all the way from August’s personal experiences to changes in dialogues. This show of attention to detail and work put it was welcomed and received positively by gamers and critics. The game currently stands at a 7/10 rating from IGN and a “very positive” rating on Steam.
LGBTIQ+ Streamers
Twitch is currently the leading game streaming platform with a total of 5.79 billion hours watched and 222.9 million hours streamed in the third quarter of 2021. While other platforms, such as Facebook Gaming and Youtube Gaming, try to compete with Twitch, it has still come out as the most preferred platform. In 2021, the Amazon-owned company, Twitch, added over 350 new inclusive tags that streamers can add to their live streams for viewers to filter the content creators they want to watch or support. Some of those tags are “transgender”, “bisexual”, “black”, and “disabled”. This change came about as many streamers and viewers requested for it and Twitch agrees that they should’ve made this change sooner. The majority of Twitch’s users demographic are aged 13 to 34 and they watch up to 73 million hours daily.
However, not everyone agrees with Twitch’s decision of prioritising the release of the tags. In 2021, Twitch was dealing with the controversy around “hate raids” that were targeted mostly at its BIPOC and LGBTIQ+ users. The ‘raids’ come in form of attacks that overwhelm a streamer’s chat with offensive messages. To hold the company accountable, users started a campaign called #TwitchDoBetter and streamers even boycotted the platform in solidarity with hate raid victims. In response to this campaign, Twitch sues users for harassing streamers with hate raids. Twitch acknowledges the harm caused on Twitter stating “We’ve seen a lot of conversation about botting, hate raids, and other forms of harassment targeting marginalized creators. You’re asking us to do better, and we know we need to do more to address these issues.” More recently, to combat these issues, Twitch introduced chat verification which gives another layer of protection. Even with all the changes that Twitch makes, streamers are still wary of their actions and believe that Twitch’s advocacy for LGBTIQ+ streamers is at best performative and an attempt to do enough.
Gaming and Fundraising
In July 2021, an LGBTIQ+ developer named MidBoss hosted a month-long online gaming ‘festival’ that featured 70+ queer streamers to raise funds for charities like Trans Lifeline and The Trevor Project. The event in 2020 raised 25,000 US dollars while 2021’s event raised about 30,000 US dollars in donations for various LGBTIQ+ charities.
Charities have jumped on the alternatives of traditional fundraising and accepted fundraising through gaming and streaming with open arms. The Trevor Project, for example, now has a dedicated landing page that guides streamers through how to fundraise for their cause. The use of gaming culture to raise money for causes created a need for a specific platform that was made for fundraisers and that was filled by Tiltify. Tiltify quickly got picked up by streamers across the world and is now one of the most preferred platforms for fundraising. The company works with a 5% platform fee that the charity pays when receiving contributions. Tiltify also works as an add-on for Twitch and can be integrated with multiple different tools like StreamElements, Streamlabs, and more.
Games Done Quick is a series of events that features high-level gameplay by speedrunners to raise money for charity. This is event series is only one example of many that have popped up to proactively fundraise for causes that are important to gamers and the hosts. Awesome Games Done Quick took place in January of 2022 and raised 3.42 million US dollars for Prevent Cancer Foundation. Games Done Quick has raised over 30 million dollars to date. This shows that the demand for gaming consumption is high and organizations and charities are using this to their advantage. Fundraising through gaming is quickly becoming an asset and growing every year.
Another charity e-sports event was created as the pandemic hit to raise money for COVID-19 vaccine distribution for marginalized communities and those in need. Gamers Without Borders attracted some of the biggest e-sport teams from around the world to compete in popular games like Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, Rocket League, and Rainbow Six Seige. UNICEF got nearly 4 million dollars in donations from Gamers Without Borders in 2020. They have donated 10 million US dollars to fight against COVID-19, as claimed on their website.
Mental Wellbeing and Gaming
Mental health impacts of gaming have been a long-running conversation. Arguments on both sides, those who believe that video games do more harm than good and those who oppose, have been backed up with years of research. The takeaway from publications that have been released is that excessive gaming can be harmful, however, the benefits of gaming have proven to improve the quality of life of gamers. Pre-pandemic stance on the impacts of gaming adapts with the ever-changing demand of virtual activities.
In recent years, gaming developers have begun portraying mental illness in games in a less stigmatized way than they’ve done so in the past. This representation and allowing gamers to experience the struggles of mental health can help raise awareness to people living with mental illnesses and cognitive disabilities. It has been noted by multiple authors that while video games have a positive impact by filling the void that gamers have been missing, for people with severe mental illness, gaming can prove to be counterproductive and instead flood the gamers’ minds with self-defeating narratives. However, authors have also noted that the negative experiences with gaming are rare since video games give you constant positive feedback and rewards for progress. Online gaming with loved ones online during the pandemic has also been a way for people to connect during isolation. While this has increased the population of gamers, many of whom are new gamers and haven’t grasped the etiquette of online behaviors, the popularity has caused an influx of toxic gamers in the community.
Modern-day challenges have forced mental health practitioners to become more creative with the services that they provide. Hence, play therapy was coined to help children and gain insights into a child’s problem. This concept still is used to this day and especially more so during the pandemic to help children open up to their therapists and/or counselors online.
Studies have shown that video games have an indisputable positive effect on gamers. Those who play video games have shown growth in personal relationships, a higher sense of accountability, increase in empathy and confidence. The negative impacts such as anxiety aren’t often directly caused by gaming but are caused as a reaction to gaming. Excessive gaming can lead to gamers being unable to perform day-to-day tasks to keep their financial and mental health in order. The gaming culture also comes with a lot of toxicity. Competitors in e-sports have been known to receive harsh toxic comments from other competitors or from the community itself. This is often referred to in the gaming community as “bming” or “bad mouthing”. More recently, behaviors like this have been condemned in E-sports and treated as bullying rather than just “part of the competition”. Many professional e-sport athletes have spoken up about the impacts of toxic gaming culture affecting their mental health negatively. Unfortunately, while there is change, the much-needed positive progress to combat this is slow.
Gaming can be particularly beneficial for marginalized communities. A study reveals that almost half of UK’s LGBTIQ+ gamers find friends online and this helps queer youth feel more affirmed in their identities especially when they can’t be themselves around their families or aren’t out to their loved ones. Studies referring to Asian LGBTIQ+ gamers are limited and studies around general gaming don’t discuss LGBTIQ+ gamers specifically. According to a market research agency Synchronix Research (the research looked into gaming habits of players in the UK aged 16–64), 36% of LGBTIQ+ respondents enjoy how gaming helps them connect with people all around the world. This allows them to find areas and spaces to express who they truly are, especially in the shape of online multiplayer games. Having these spaces in an already toxic environment helps young queer gamers improve their mental health. Virtual spaces also make it accessible for disabled queer youth to interact with others during the pandemic without putting their physical health at risk.
BIPOC and gaming
It is important to discuss all intersectionalities when we have a conversation about queer folks in gaming. With rising violence, police brutality, and systemic racism against BIPOCs all around the world increasing, it has sparked gaming companies to make public statements in support of the BIPOC community, this includes Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Sony Interactive, and more. It has been noted by Quartz that 57% of video game players in the U.S. specifically between the ages of 6 and 29 will be people of color in less than 10 years. However, with these rising numbers, the representation of BIPOC characters is at less than 15%. These representations aren’t always positive as historically we’ve seen that Black characters are often portrayed as violent, the help, or a sidekick. This has been true for both films and video games. Sports games are added in these statistics which masks how infrequently Black characters are seen in video games. One academic study finds that white participants often associate Black faces with negative words after playing a violent video game as a Black character rather than the other way around.
It is also important to note that BIPOCs make up only 9 percent of all game developers as opposed to their white counterparts who make up 81%. A lot of developers and game creators draw their inspiration from their experience as stated by Kishonna Gray (a professor at the University of Illinois), which is why we see such low representation of BIPOC characters. Gray also noted that an important step by game developers is to allow gamers to report other players for racist behavior since a lot of BIPOC gamers are often the target of abuse and online games are full of racial slurs and racist jokes.
Conclusion
The pandemic has transformed how the world views virtual spaces forever. The gaming community has only grown over the pandemic and we’ve seen a record-breaking amount of people playing video games. All the resources point to one conclusion, how adaptable the medium of video games is that it can be used for anything, all the way from a fundraising tool to a medical tool. The gaming industry seems to be growing very quickly and the acceptance of gaming as a positive thing will only act as a catalyst for that growth.
