Social Gayming: Sydney Gaymers

Sydney Gaymers is an inclusive non-profit community for geeks, gamers, and allies no matter their gender or sexual orientation. They focus on several monthly events, giving gamers of all stripes an opportunity to come together in a safe space to make new friends, discover new interests, or share their hobbies with like-minded folks.

Running for over 7 and a half years, the group has grown from purely digital form as a Subreddit group into organising regular monthly meet ups with nearly 3000 members!

I had a chance to meet three of the organisers, Evie, Aaron and J, to find out more.

Robin: Hi everyone! Let’s start with you introducing yourselves to our readers.

Evie: Hello my name is Evie. I am the Head of Sydney Gaymers, I volunteer to help run Sydney Gaymers with a team of seven fantastic people. I deal with the overall running of Gaymers to make sure what needs to be done gets done! I started coming to Gaymers events in 2015 and found it to be such a safe space and welcoming community to come to. Then a year and a bit later came an opportunity to help out the admin team to run events for the group. I wasn’t sure at first that I would be suited to help out but I convinced myself otherwise. Three years later and I am now the Head of this fantastic community and couldn’t be more proud of how far our group has come!

Aaron: My name is Aaron, and I’m an event organiser and Vice Head for Sydney Gaymers. I first started coming to the groups events 4 years ago, and began organising their regular events a year after that, moving the venue and  introducing Drag Performers, trivia and more gaming set-ups. Gaymers was the merger of two of my favourite activities, gaming… which I did too much, and hanging with the Sydney Queer Community… which I didn’t do enough of, and it’s been a wonderful experience seeing it flourish over the past few years.

J: Hey there readers, I’m J. On paper, my role as a Sydney Gaymers admin is ‘Community Leader’, which is a fancy way of saying that I post memes to the group. Sometimes, the memes are even original content! I started coming to gaymers events two years ago as a researcher from the University of Sydney. I’m writing about Sydney’s queer gaming communities and at that time I was conducting my fieldwork. Being a queer gamer myself, it wasn’t long before the Sydney Gaymers became my community as well and, less than a year into my fieldwork, I took on a more active role as an admin. Now, with so many of my closest friends in the group, I couldn’t even imagine my life without the gaymers in it.

How long has Sydney Gaymers been running for? 

Aaron: Sydney Gaymers as a group has been active for 7 and a half years, though it’s changed a lot from its inception.

How did it start? What was the inspiration?

Aaron: Gaymers started as a subreddit then we all decided to meet-up one day, and about a dozen queer Sydney-based gamers came along to start what we know as Sydney Gaymers today. Our main inspiration was to create a safe space for queer and non queer people to meet like-minded folks and talk together about video games and nerd culture.

How many members do you have? 

Aaron: As of right now, we have 2874 members in our group, which is run and managed by an organising team of seven.

What’s the group’s mission?

Aaron: Our aim with Sydney Gaymers is to provide fun and inclusive spaces for gamers of every gender and sexuality, both online and through our events; to help build the community and provide social experiences for our members. Gaymers, really helped me get out of my introvert shell and interact with more members of the LGBTQI+ and we hope to provide that for anyone.

How often do you meet?

Aaron: We have a few monthly events, a Board Games event, our SideQuest events on Oxford St and we also host video game competitions, speed-friending events, and three major ticketed Pixel Parties every year.

What types of events do you run?

Evie: We run several events throughout the month, our Board Gaymes event happens the second Thursday of every month and it is an all ages event where we come together to play a selection of tabletop games. On the last Friday of every month we have SideQuest which is a free event run at Gingers a bar in the heart of LGBT+ Sydney on Oxford Street. At SideQuest we have local queer artists perfom, a selection of video games and board games set up and a raffle set up for people to win cute video game related prizes. We also run our big dance party 3 times a year called Pixel Party. At this event we have several local Queer artists perfom, several DJs playing through the night, video games set up throught the venue and our classic raffle set up for people to win cute video game related prizes.

We also run our community favourite Speed Friending 3 times a year, our Gaymer Girls event on and off throughout the year, as well as Trivia Quest and a few other  community events as well.

What was your most recent big event?

Evie: Our most recent event was Pixel Party we had over 100 people attend at the iconic venue in the heart of LGBT+ Sydney: The Oxford Arts Factory. We had several amazing local queer artists peform as well as local DJs mixing throughout the night. A lot of time and energy from the organising team went into putting the event together. It ran so smoothly and I am  very proud of how well the night turned out! 

What has been your proudest moment to date?

Evie: Our proudest moment to date would have to be being sponsored by Final Fantasy XIV in this years Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parde. It was the first time we had been sponsored by a video game company for our Mardi Gras float and the first time a video game company had sponsored a float in the Mardi Gras parade. When I  first saw the float I couldn’t believe how amazing it looked! The sound, the lighting and visuals for everything came together like a dream, it was really a sight to behold, we had really made it in LGBT+ community to be sponsored by a videogame company for Mardi Gras!

How important is it for the LGBTQ gamers to have a group like yours?

J: Spoilers, it’s very important! Mainstream gaming spaces, both online and offline, can be uncomfortable or even outright abusive for LGBTQIA+ gamers. Unfortunately, the lack of diversity in mainstream games and the conservative nature of the broader gaming community has left many queer, especially non-male gamers, feeling excluded. Broadly, gaming culture could be characterized as exclusionary, but the Sydney Gaymers strive to create a welcoming environment where diversity is embraced. The group is run by queer gamers, but the community welcomes everyone, yes even non-gamers! Loneliness and isolation are two major issues that came out of my research with queer gamers, but groups like this commit to combatting this with connection and community support. From my perspective, I think its working.

What is the LGBTQ community in Sydney like as a whole?

J: Sydney is a beautiful mess of intersecting and sometimes opposing groups. There are many who come to Sydney Gaymers and marvel at how welcoming the group is when compared to the gay social circles they’re used to. They say these more conventional gay circles can be uncomfortably ‘cliquey’. There is talk of more welcoming, alternate LGBTQ groups in the inner-west which is often compared to the more conventional ‘Gay Sydney’. Often, members of Sydney Gaymers will say that their community has more in common with the inner-west queer community because they feel less judged and more inclined to be themselves. The city of Sydney is going through massive changes, with the fallout from the lockout laws still being felt; many LGBTQIA+ people are banding together to build safer and queerer spaces. After mixing with many of the queer groups that make up the LGBTQIA+ community of Sydney, I managed to find my queer family, so I guess that’s a pretty solid review.

What would you say to someone who is thinking of joining?

J: I’d say that joining the Sydney Gaymers is just what you make of it. There are no expectations or requirements; you could come to every event or none at all, make lifelong connections or just like the occasional meme. It’s a choose your own adventure. I know people who joined just to form tabletop roleplaying parties and vanish, I assume they lived happily ever after! Others who came only for our tournaments, foolishly thinking they’d have easy wins, and some who come mainly to our SideQuests and take home raffle prizes… every time! My point is that we’re just a bunch of queer nerds and if you’re game, there’s a controller here for you.

What have you got coming up?

Evie: Over the next few months we will be having our usual monthly events coming up: Board Gaymes and SideQuest. In October we will have one of our favourite events of the year, our much loved Halloween party. It involves our community coming together in their spooky cosplay for dancing and gaming well into the night! This will be at Gingers on the 25th October.

Shortly after that we will have another Pixel Party in November for our End of Year Party! This will be at the Oxford Arts Factory on the 23rd November.

Over the next few months the organising team will also be working on incorporating Sydney Gaymers, which will bring us into a new era of running events and creating an ever expanding community! 

That all sounds amazing, so how do people find out more?

Evie: You can find Sydney Gaymers online at sydneygaymers.net/, through Facebook (facebook.com/groups/SydneyGaymers and facebook.com/SydneyGaymers), Twitter (twitter.com/SydneyGaymers) and Instagram (instagram.com/sydneygaymers).

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