Hello! All this week Eurogamer has been celebrating Pride with a series of stories examining the confluence of LGBT+ communities and play in its many different forms, from video games and tabletop games through to live-action role-play. Today, for the last of this year’s Pride Week features, Eli Cugini explores the way trans creators have embraced Twine interactive fiction.
Last summer, I read a tweet telling me that Ronald Reagan can use they/them pronouns for you while ordering you to do war crimes in the new Call of Duty. This was, of course, a boon for me, seeing as the only thing keeping me from a £59.99-with-microtransactions, time-to-shoot-some-commies FPS was the lack of gender-neutral options.
Jokes aside, as a gay who has played a lot of games by straight people, including straight people who think they can write convincing lesbians, I’ve been thinking a lot about this kind of surface-level representation. Honestly, Cyberpunk and COD can put in cosmetic trans options if they like, but I don’t really care. If I want to play a triple-A game in a trans or lesbianiacal fashion, I can probably make up a better way to do so than the developers can.
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