Shaw, A., & Friesem, E. (2016). Where is the Queerness in Games?: Types of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content in Digital Games. International Journal Of Communication.
Shaw and Friesem created a database compiled of video-games that have LGBTQ content because they felt that the connection between the two has never fully been cataloged.
When building the archive, Shaw and Friesem first found sources that claimed certain games contained LGBTQ content and would then find articles that validated that content was present. They then did everything they could to experience each game by reading game wikis, watching playthroughs, playing the actual game, and researching articles that focus on any particular game’s LGBTQ content. They then took their findings and created an algorithm that separated the games into nine different categories: characters, relationships/romance/sex, actions, locations, mentions, artifacts, queer games/narratives, and homophobia/transphobia. The characters group was split into two categories, explicit and implicit.
Their research supports the idea that games have struggled with main or playable LGBTQ characters and that not a lot of games include any sort of LGBTQ content (they found only 500 games). What percentage of the 500 games fit into the homophobic/transphobic category? There are a majority of implicitly gay characters in video games, but when have the greatest rises in explicitly gay characters taken place?
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