Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters have been depicted in video games since the 1980s. In the history of video games, LGBT characters have been almost nonexistent for a long time, reflecting the overall heteronormativity of the medium. While there has been a trend towards greater representation of LGBT people in video games, they are frequently identified as LGBT in secondary material, such as comics, rather than in the games themselves. In 2018, Sam Greer of Gamesradar+ found only 179 games commercially released games with any LGBT representation, only 83 of which have queer characters who are playable characters, and only 8 of those games feature a main character who is pre-written as queer as opposed to them being queer as an option.
Depictions of LGBT characters
A number of recurring tropes, themes and archetypes have developed in the gaming industry in regard to LGBTQ+ identity. These are similar to how other forms of popular culture, such as Hollywood films and TV shows, dealt with LGBTQ+ themes.
As in other media, LGBT characters in games often suffer from the "bury your gays" trope, a long-lasting narrative convention that requires that LGBT characters die or meet another unhappy ending. According to Kotaku, these characters are "largely defined by a pain that their straight counterparts do not share". Facing challenges that "serve as an in-world analogy for anti-LGBTQ bigotry", they are defined by tragedy that denies them a chance at happiness.
Comical gender confusion
A common method of introducing LGBT characters is to reveal their sexual orientation through gender inversion. A male character's homosexuality is often indicated by making him a sissy character with effeminate or flamboyant mannerisms, dress, and speech. The underlying assumption is that homosexuals are also frequently transgender and, therefore, possess mannerisms stereotypical of the opposite sex. This technique has been widely used in Hollywood movies (to circumvent the Production Code's ban on "sexual perversion"), as well as in Vaudeville. Although mainly used in video games for its comedic value, gender confusion has also been used as a tool to offer social commentary about sexism or homophobia. The censorship codes of Nintendo and Sega limited the usage of gender inversion to exclusion of cross-dressing until 1994.
Transgender characters in video games
Capcom created Final Fight for the arcade in 1989. The game involved players choosing among three fighters on a quest to save the mayor's daughter, who was kidnapped by a criminal gang known as Mad Gear. In 1990, Capcom presented Nintendo with a version of the game for the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). According to David Sheff's book Game Over, Nintendo stated that Capcom could not put a female enemy in a video game published for the SNES, as that violated Nintendo's ban on violence against women. Capcom countered that there were no female enemies in the game, revealing that the female characters Roxy and Poison were transsexuals. The characters were nevertheless removed from the international versions of the SNES port (the Japanese Super Famicom version retained the characters). However, in 1993, Sega obtained the rights to release the game for their Sega CD. In a sign of Sega's more liberal policies, Poison and Roxy could remain in the international versions, but with less-provocative clothing, and there could be no indication of their transgender status. (Sega of America later removed a homosexual boss and unlockable playable character called Ash from the international versions of Streets of Rage 3.)
In the 2016 role-playing video game Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, there is an optional dialogue tree in which the cleric Mizhena mentions that she was raised as a boy, indicating that she is a trans woman. This, along with a reference to the Gamergate controversy, attracted contention resulting in online harassment and insults towards the developers, especially against the game's writer Amber Scott. The game's Steam, GOG and Metacritic pages were bombarded with complaints that the transgender reference constituted "political correctness," "LGBT tokenism", "SJW pandering" and pushing a political agenda. On an April 2016 post, Beamdog announced they would expand Mizhena's story, saying in part, "In retrospect, it would have been better served if we had introduced a transgender character with more development." Paul Tumburro of CraveOnline termed this as "spineless and disappointing" stating that Beamdog's founder Trent Oster refused to acknowledge the transphobic criticisms leveled at the game.