This article won’t be much of anything really. I’ll write a better article about queerness in games with more academic prose and backing from sources later on. Which I’m sure AI content farms will steal anyway, but whatever. Queerness, gender, and sexuality are topics that mean a lot to me, and I want to do them justice. But I think for now, as I am really struggling to come to terms with not just myself but how much the world seems to loathe and detest “the other”. That ever-elusive but ever-convenient scapegoat, always lurking just out of view, never doing any actual harm. But it is the perception of harm, the shifting of the blame – that’s how the person you used to never think about becomes othered. That’s how I’ve felt in a variety of interpersonal relationships, as people pull away or retreat or misunderstand who I am and who I want to become.

Video games have played an important part in self-discovery. I have discussed many times the importance of embodiment in a space. People often discount the physical qualities of video games, and in doing so forget how we can be empowered by them in new ways. Many people consider “empowerment” in games to be “power fantasy”. I have recently been writing about Fallout in my personal studies, and I have been grappling with the duality of a narrative and a navigable space that proclaims war to be awful and horrible, while providing gameplay that endorses, supports, and reinforces cycles of violence by offering a character that grows ever more powerful as they kill more and more creatures and people. The irony present within the gameplay is made obvious in some titles in the series, while others obscure it. But the ever-increasing power curve of exploring and dominating space is not the only way to see space.

I grew up not really knowing anything about queer culture or what it meant to be queer. I still have questions and insecurities about myself based on how I expected the world to see me – or even how I expected to grow up. Video games, however, facilitated not just a new and vibrant way of thinking, but an empowering space in which to engage with myself. I think where I began to realize queerness appealed to me was within the boundaries of BioWare games in the mid-2010s. Dragon Age: Inquisition (despite being a game I haven’t played since) felt foundational to me in terms of what I actually wanted from myself. All of a sudden I could play as a gay man that could have a substantive gay romance with a character, Dorian, who had a clearly defined sexuality. For a person who had not had much exposure to queerness, being able to explore a well-written and touching relationship meant everything to me. In the context of the game, at one point, a court advisor approaches to voice her growing concern with the way I flirt with Dorian. There was a genuine moment of halting hesitation as I struggled to think about the pressure others put on me to conform. The fact the game offered this moment – and allowed me to wholeheartedly reject that pressure – was as empowering as punching through a brick wall. But I did not have to hurt anyone to do it. I did not have to kill or to maim, I did not have to destroy – I built. That was empowering.

Exploring space is done hand-in-hand with concepts of time or temporality. Both of these concepts are tied to what we can call “chrononormativity”, which is often assumed to have a cisgender, heterosexual perspective. There is also the idea of “queer temporality”, which posits that queer people experience time differently to heteronormative measurements. I find myself agreeing with this. I can trace my history as a man very easily, and so can everyone else. I am, patently and obviously (at the moment of writing anyway), a cisgender man. I had a pass or two at trying other things earlier in my life, but always felt shut down. Neither the space I was in, nor the time I had experienced these feelings over, felt like enough. Now, finally, perhaps, at this awful juncture in history, I finally feel enough.

A cornerstone of the previous chapter of my gaming life (before I found Pathologic) was the original Life is Strange. This was a game that further opened my eyes to the depth and possibility of queer relationships, despite its dodgy “bury your gays” stuff going on. The community that I found as a result of that game was the most important thing – all of a sudden, video games were facilitating a space and a way of thinking that felt more “myself”.

When the opportunity arises, queer play in video games is the form that tends to appeal to me. Games that weaponize or critique the male heteronormative gaze are always interesting, even if they do fail at it (the survival horror game Haunting Ground being genuinely effective before unlocking Fiona’s bonus Dominatrix and Cowgirl costumes come to mind). Even if it is not my direct field of expertise, I will always have an eye to gender studies.

It was absolutely lovely to play through the otherwise kind of middling Obsidian Entertainment RPG The Outer Worlds and help asexual mechanic Parvati figure out how to go on a date with someone. The Outer Worlds does the rare thing of allowing characters to have their own sexualities and stories, rather than putting the player’s sexual or romantic needs first. That is not how the world works. I will always prefer these nuanced stories over the playersexual (that is, every character is attracted to the player regardless of gender or sexuality) options of many roleplaying games. Because they reflect my stories of self-discovery. It means more to me to learn about another person and to be their friend, or to maintain a relationship, rather than just trying to get into a character’s pants. Sex in games is fun and all (another topic for another day), but can you imagine a game solely about maintaining a relationship, rather than getting into one?

I remember being ecstatic playing through The Last of Us Part II, which features a wholly imperfect queer woman in a vibrant and tumultuous gay relationship, and going on the internet to see if there were any other big games like it. And there just… weren’t. Queerness is a relatively rare thing in video games, especially outside of the indie space, and while of course it is growing larger and more important the louder our voices get, there is still a long way to go. A lot to do. I am sick of people being shouted down just because they want to be themselves. Because people who don’t want to hurt anyone finally want to feel comfortable in their own skin.

Running down a street in Silent Hill 3 as Heather Mason was a weird experience when I did it for the first time. I felt a stronger connection to her than I ever did James (as much as I love him as a character). I remember wanting to be as effortlessly confident and cool as she was. I remember playing through Haruspex’s campaign in Pathologic for the first time. I remember enjoying what felt to me like gentle queer subtext in the dialogue between him and the Bachelor. I remember making a female Commander Shepard in Mass Effect for the first time and somehow finding her more compelling than the standard straight male I’d made when I was much younger. Then I went back and played a queer male Shepard too. These small options, these little glimmers of representation – they might feel few and far between, but they really did mean everything to a kid growing up confused and scared about who they actually were. Looking back, they’re even more important and meaningful now than they were at the time. I am, in part, attracted to survival horror as a genre because of how women are often allowed to play a central role. In Crow Country, for instance, having the playable character be a woman contributes at times to how she is treated and occasionally misjudged. In Signalis, the playable character is a queer woman, who does not have a human body. Again, the experience of embodiment and the exploration of hostile spaces in these games is something I am coming to understand is ingrained into my brain. Perhaps my affinity for survival horror is based in the fear I feel around certain people and in certain spaces – but often in survival horror, reclamation or defiance is the point. Survival against impossible odds. I am drawn to playable horror because I can be the one who is in charge of my own fate, no matter how disempowered I feel. I can claw myself out of the hole I am in. I can defy those who would destroy or control me.

Right now, I have felt no small amount of despair. Despair for the fellow queer people all around the world. Despair for women who will be disenfranchised and disempowered by various repressive and regressive regimes.  I might not be a very big fish in the sea. And I am not capable of making much of a splash. But I want this article to stand as a small beacon, for now. I stand with you, for all that it is worth. I will never stop speaking my mind and providing a supportive space for people to come to. I will not stop doing what I can in New Zealand to fight for queer rights, for women’s rights, for the rights to protest and to vote. I will also be using as much of my YouTube profits (ha) as I can to donate to queer people in need.

I am Horror Game Analysis, I am transfeminine nonbinary, I am pansexual, I use they / she pronouns, and I am proud to be here, sharing what I love with all of you. My own gender identity and expression may evolve further, but for now I know one thing: video games are cool, and if you are reading this, so are you.