For my research project, I have been looking into asexuality (with a bit on the rest of the a-spec just due to overlap) and its appearance in video games. (And by appearance I mean lack there of.) Upon referencing the LGBT Game archive I have been able to find some references to asexual characters in more main stream titles such as Borderlands and Persona. Which sounds great, but the main issue is that in these tittles the characters are not explicitly stated to be on the a-spec and are just heavley implied to be. While it is nice to see characters who’s dialogs and personalities make them appear to be on the a-spec, it in the end does not do much to help with visibility and education of the public on these orientations. By not making these orientations explicit, it is much easier to sweep them under the radar so that they can still be marketed to unaccepting or unknowledgable audiences with out them ever knowing that a game might contain queer characters. This form of representation, while it is nice to see relatable characters, is disingenuous and sometimes feels as though it is used to artificially make a game seem accepting, when the game itself still hides it as to avoid backlash. Do games with queer characters need to go out of their way to go into every aspect of that character’s identity? No. But, when a game makes a queer character, it should be more explicit than one line about not doing romance. Yes this does get across the point that this character is probably under the a-spec but it can be easily swept under the rug. Things such as characters having pride flags in their rooms (or in the case of the ace community black rings and aro community white rings). While these are still small elements, they are at least elements that once found are indisputable.

While there is historical precendece for hiding queer character to avoid backlash. Or even completey rewriting games to hide queer representation. (For expamples of this read into the Rainbow Arcade about the history of queer games). Are we not supposed to be striving for better? The time for hiding queer representation or putting it in small segments that can be easily edited out and forgotten for unaccecpting audiences is over. I want my representation to be explicit and undeniable. (There are also a few other demands but that’s another blog rant)

References:

https://lgbtqgamearchive.com/category/characters/asexual/page/1/

Rainbow Arcade