Spotlight on… Adrienne Shaw, LGBTQ Video Game Archive

October is LGBTQ History Month in the US, so we thought what better way to celebrate this month than looking at the queer history of video games in the LGBTQ Video Game Archive.

The LGBTQ Video Game Archive documents the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer content in games all the way back to the 1970s! The Archive is a research project organized by Adrienne Shaw, a faculty member at Temple University’s Lew Klein College of Media and Communication. 

I had the chance to chat to Adrienne Shaw about her work on the LGBTQ Video Game Archive and the wider history of video games.

Adrienne, thanks so much for sparing time to talk with me, when did you first start out researching LGBTQ video game history? 

I started work on the LGBTQ Game Archive in 2015, although my initial list was compiled during a related research project in 2007. That list was just a starting point for a project interviewing people who worked on games with LGBTQ content.

What was it about that specific topic that interested you? 

When I started in game studies, I originally was interested in game players and makers, more than history per se. The more projects I did, though, the clearer it became that we needed a better history of LGBTQ content in games, as we have for other media, to better contextualize changes in representation over time.

What is your academic background that brought you to this field? 

My BA is in sociology, but my graduate work was in communication, focusing specifically on media and cultural studies. My work in games is from the perspective of those fields.

Why do you think it is important to record and memorialise the history of LGBTQ video games? 

It is very hard to contextualize new games and new types of representation without a thorough accounting of what has come before. Similarly, in any type of culture industry, it is hard to innovate without knowing what has come before. Moreover, I think it’s important to remind people that LGBTQ+ people have ALWAYS made, played, and have been in games, as in all media.

When did you start the LGBTQ Video Game Archive? 

The research began in early 2015, and the site was first made public in May of 2016.

What was your aim when you first started the Archive? 

I just wanted to make publicly available the research I was doing anyway. The site itself is distinct from my academic work I publish out of the research, but I felt that a lot of what I was doing was piecing together information across sources and across sites, some of which was contradictory. I felt it would help people generally to have a place to start in learning more about LGBTQ content in games with links to sources of information on specificic instances of LGBTQ content.

What is the scope of the Archive? How much confirmed LGBTQ content does a game need to have to be included? 

None, actually, as the master list contains games people have said have LGBTQ content. If in the process of researching them it turns out I can’t confirm that there was any LGBTQ content in the game or that there is only limited evidence of it, I still post an entry about it. I do that for two reasons: one, if there is more evidence later of that content existing I can update the entry; and two, the rumors of that content existing persist if there is no documentation of the fact that they have not been confirmed.

You include negative LGBTQ references, for example homophobic AIDS jokes, from early games. Why did you think this was important?

I do my best to document homophobic jokes, which don’t just occur in early games, although it is worth pointing out that most people only identify games with LGBTQ+ content if there are named LGBTQ+ characters in them, which is how we compile the master list. So there are likely lots of games with homophobic jokes, slurs, etc. that we haven’t found yet just because fans don’t always document that content. 

What are your future aims for the Archive? 

This is a never ending project, and Sisyphean in a lot of ways. As I, and when I had grant funds research assistants, research games from the master list there are always new games that come out or are discovered or submitted through the comment form. It would take a lot of work, and I have a full time, demanding job, to ever really “catch up” with the list and only have to add new games. But, that’s fine, I will continue to add to it as long as I am able.

In 2018-19 you collaborated with Scwules Museum in Berlin on Rainbow Arcade, the first ever exhibition on queer game history, how did this come about? 

Jan Schnorrenberg and Sarah Rudolph, my co-curators, reached out to me as they were planning on exhibit on LGBTQ+ games for the Schwules Museum. The previous year the Museum had hosted an exhibit on comics, and they decided to continue addressing different kinds of media with games. They had asked if I could share archive resources, and ultimately we decided to co-curate it and I worked more directly in the planning process.

What games were featured at the exhibit? 

There were over 100 different individual exhibits featuring images, videos, or ephemera from a range of games spanning 3 decades. Everything from Street Fighter and Grand Theft Auto to Undertale and Firewatch. In terms of playable games at the exhibit we had: Caper in the Castro, Read Only Memories, Dominique Pamplemousse, Elixir, Lesbian Spider Queens from Mars, This is where I want to die, Dream Daddy, 2064: Read Only Memories, Interactive Portraits: Trans people in Japan, and Radiator 2.

Can this exhibition be found online? 

No, unfortunately it is not available online and the catalog is no longer available through Amazon.De, but can be purchased in German and some neighbouring countries.

Earlier this summer, Netflix released High Score, an amazing documentary series about the origins of video games, and in it we learned about GayBlade. Tell me about the Archive’s contribution to helping find this lost game. 

I originally interviewed Ryan Best, the creator of GayBlade in January 2018. I had found a Village Voice article about the game the previous year while working on research about Caper in the Castro, and hadn’t had much luck tracking down additional information. In 2017, though, working with CM Ralph and Andrew Borman from the Strong Museum of Play, we were able to recover files for Caper in the Castro from the original diskettes. Jason Strong quickly posted the game to the Internet Archive and asked if I needed any other help. I told him I was trying to track down “RJ Best” who had created GayBlade. Through his network, he was able to track down contact information for Ryan, who I was able to interview for the LGBTQ game archive entry on the game.

In 2019, right before he arrived in Berlin for the closing of Rainbow Arcade, Ryan Best had found the original game files. Matthias Oborski, of the Computerspiele Museum and who provided technical support for the exhibit took copies of the files and was able to successfully make the game playable again! And once again Jason Scott of the Internet Archive helped make the game available to the public. 

Are there other games out there that have been lost and are waiting to be found? 

Undoubtedly. We just don’t have a full and complete accounting of all of the games, especially the non-commercial games out there and especially pre-2010. 

LGBTQ representation has grown significantly in recent years, what do you think the main turning points were for this? 

I think the main turning points have been the ease of distribution of independently produced games or even games from smaller companies. Also the general accessibility of game design tools over the years have really made it easier for more people to make games of a variety of types and for a variety of audiences. I think there also has been a greater awareness in the mainstream game industry that not only is there and LGBTQ+ audience for games, but that content about LGBTQ+ people has broad appeal to a variety of audiences. 

What are your hopes for the future of representation in games? 

I would like to see a great deal more attention to the entire world built in the games, not just individual characters. It is one thing to make a nuanced, interesting, LGBTQ+ character with depth. However, too often, those games end up having one, maybe two queer characters in-universe where everyone else is cisgender and straight. They are also often, although not always, white.

One of the things I like to point out to people is that Grand Theft Auto, a series built on being offensive, has a great variety of LGBTQ+ people from various races and various class positions in a universe where there are lots of LGBTQ+ people. Now, that’s in generally very oppressive ways, but I’d like to challenge people who are not trying to be offensive to take a similar approach to imagining their game worlds. Imagining fictional worlds that it is taken for granted that LGBTQ+ people exist, rather than LGBTQ+ people as tokens or exceptions.

Outside of work, what games do you enjoy playing? 

I’ve always been a fan of the Fallout and Assassin’s Creed series, but both have taken out a lot of what I really enjoyed about the earlier editions. I also have a rotating selection of mobile games on my phone, where I play a game until I get bored with it or it feels like a chore and then finds a new one.

What games did you play when you were younger?

It varied a lot by age. When we had the NES I played a lot of California Games and Adventures of Lolo. When we had a Genesis/Game Gear I played a lot of Sonic, Mortal Kombat, XMen, and sports games. In high school and college I played computer-based games, mostly FPSs or puzzle-solving games. I always played games, but I was never the kind of gamer who always got a new console or the latest games. The NES and Genesis were special one-offs “for the whole family” presents, and I actually didn’t own another console until grad school. I often played games I was given until I got a new one, which is sort of how I play now, to be honest.

Where can our readers find out more about you and the Archive? 

The LGBTQ Game Archive can be found here: lgbtqgamearchive.com

For regular updates you can follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook

And my personal site can be found here: adrienneshaw.com