I’m queer. And if you’re reading this, maybe it’s because you’re queer too. There is an undeniable reality to queerness, and it seeps into every part of life. Not because of some deep agenda, but simply because it exists. And in existing, it expresses itself in many different forms, and that includes video games.
On a large scale, it can be rare to have a game that unequivocally allows you to be queer. It usually takes the form of words that go unsaid, or simply side-stepping facts that could allude to queerness. That’s not the case in these games. Here, queerness is front and center, shown in the multitudes in which it truly exists.
Fextralife Wiki
We’ll kick it off with the most obvious one. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an incredibly troubled game, but it has some heart in it. When it comes to queerness, Bioware has always had a strong track record, even with the occasional misstep. This has mainly manifested in showcasing same-sex love, though has rarely extended to deeper expressions of queerness, such an in gender.
Veilguard takes a stab at this. And it is at times clumsy, using real-world terminology and beating you over the head with it in a way that feels incredibly unnatural. But at least it is unapologetic in allowing you to express yourself. There is no limit to it. The way you look, the body you have, the pronouns you go by. It is all uniquely you, and it does not force you into a binary system to define that.
Pyre is not strictly a queer game in overt ways, though in many ways Pyre is a game that defies typical explanation. While Supergiant’s later Hades and Hades 2 are much heavier on more direct expressions of queerness, you also play as a pre-set character in Zagreus and Melinoë. Pyre has you playing as The Watcher. Or, well, yourself.
In this sense, you get a fair bit of control. How the story progresses, who gets freedom, some direction in your own personality. But a small touch the game offers you right at the very beginning, and one of the early examples I’ve seen of a game doing this, is the ability to choose your pronouns. For me at least, this felt like the first crack. The idea, softly and without much fanfare, you could fall outside of the standard, and it didn’t have to mean much.
Queerness takes many forms, too many to ever articulate. By time I listed it all, we would have new ways of expressing ourselves. And with Date Everything, well, even the things you wouldn’t ever give a second glance has a new way of expressing themselves too. Date Everything is queerness as standard.
Everyone can romance everyone. You with the objects in your home, and those objects with each other. Yet in seeing all these other characters, queerness is shown in a way that is not just love, but in how we present ourselves. Failing to meet the expectations of those around us, the confines of the world in which we dwell, and how to make peace with it, or even surpass it. All presented with love.
Really, very few games from Nintendo are ever something you could call a queer paradise, but Animal Crossing has always inhabited a specific space. It is about cultivating a community and carving out your own spot in that world. Your home away from home. There is no romance, but there is you, and New Horizons takes a big step in the right direction.
Gender is no form. No choosing your body type, no pronouns. Nothing at all. You simply are yourself and your name, and the relationships you build with the people around you. Clothes can be mixed-and-matched, hairstyles are open to all, and no one uses specifically gendered language on you. Sometimes, it’s in the empty space that you can build yourself. And at the time in which the game launched, it was probably exactly that. I know it was for me.
Back in 2008, after all the boisterous claims of Peter Molyneux about real-time tree growth and other such spurious statements, came Fable 2. A far cry from the original Fable, it also introduced something astounding not just for a game of the time, but for a game now as well. You could play as a woman finally, but you could alsoget married and have children. Regardless of your gender or orientation.
In Fable 2, every single character had a sexuality. This was defined at the time they came into existence, and you could not change it. They were who they were. And even in a same-sex relationship, anyone could become a parent through adoption. As a child, it was a shot straight to the heart. Queerness is not just OK, it is normal. The world is not centred around a protagonist. We are all exactly who we are.
Fable 2 also came with a one-off potion that let you change your gender, so you could even be transgender if you wanted. You just needed to be rich first.
Where triple-A games often, but not always, play it safe in terms of queer representation, indie games tend to pick up the slack. Even in small ways, queerness is welcome. You do not need millions of dollars to show queerness as it is just another part of life. And Stardew Valley, in its wonderfully soft ways, allows you to be queer with a second thought.
In Stardew Valley, you can get married to any of the lovely villagers in the valley that are up for love, regardless of your gender. But for some characters, such as Sebastian, there will be small acknowledgments of this queerness. The small ways in which even you, the new farmer in town, can help the people around you express themselves.
And in later updates, you could also change your gender at the Wizard’s tower. Magic can achieve anything!
The Sims is a funny one, likely being one of the earliest triple-A games to actually let you be queer. While this didn’t extend to gender until later updates to The Sims 4, from the very first game, you have been able to be in same-sex relationships. Even this got better and better with each game, turning roommates into unions, andunions into marriages.
Adoption came too, and eventually restrictions on clothing by gender eased, too. Later, The Sims 4 finally let you be formally transgender, allowing any character to become pregnant and changing the way they walked and used toilets. Some of these changes are big while others are smaller, but giving you that granularity to actually be who you want to be in a game all about simulating life is so incredibly important.
1Milky Way Prince: The Vampire Star
It’s Not Always Perfect
What the vast majority of the games listed here so far have in common is that they let you be queer. This is wonderful, and an incredible act of freedom for players. But what about those stories that deserve to be unapologetically queer no matter what? Not a chance or choice of being queer, but in-your-face queer.
That’s Milky Way Prince: The Vampire Star. You do not play as yourself but as Sune, a gay man who gets so deeply absorbed into a relationship with Nuki that is reminiscent of a binary star, leading closer and closer to an implosion. It is not a happy game, but sometimes life isn’t. And it is only fair that queer relationships get to be shown in the full gamut of life, even the sad parts.
