Gaming

VIDEO GAY-MER | Why do we love visual novels so much?

What do queer gamers/developers love the visual novel platform so much?

Coming Out on Top game trailer

Visual novels are an art form, and when done right, they are an amazing storytelling tool. We've seen a lot of good, queer visual novels in the past years - or games that are about as close to visual novels as you can get. Just last year, we had two instant classics: Butterfly Soup and Dream Daddy, take the world by storm. Not only did they showcase incredible queer stories, but they managed to do it without any ounce of mockery or depressing melodrama.

So, I got curious.

What makes these kinds of games so incredible? And why are there so many? On Queerly Represent Me - a large back log of games with some sort of queer representation within them- 215 games are listed as visual novels. That's the largest genre of games on the list, clocking in at 20%. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is - and that's significant. What draws queer gamers and developers to these specific type of game? I think that visual novels not only provide a simple, fun escape from the harshness of modern queer depiction, but they are also accessible, and cheaper than most other video games on the market.

In my last article, I wrote about a game called Butterfly Soup - a beautiful visual novel that covered the lives of four queer, Asian woman going through high school during Prop 8-era California. I gushed about it, and talked about how it's unabashed happiness just made me smile. And that's not something that happens in a lot of major games or successful indie games. Even a beautiful game like Gone Home, is mired with intense drama, reminding the audience about how much it can suck to be a queer person. That doesn't exist in games like Butterfly Soup.

There's an inherent layer of sexuality that exists in a lot of these kinds of games.

A huge example is a gay dating sim, Coming Out on Top, a very NSFW visual novel about a young, freshly out, college senior who is looking for love and sex. This game has a huge selection of guys you can seduce, and even goes the extra mile to have you come out to your friends and actively maintain your friendships. All the while, you are treated to some saucy pics and scenes of your gay character actually having/enjoying sex.

It's liberating, because even when queer people are depicted having sex - it's never correct. There's always that one scene where the guy doesn't use lube - and then you cringe, cause you know they got hurt. The visual novels I've played don't have that problem - because they're made by queer developers.

I think queer visual novels exist in such volumes because they can be easier to make than other games like RPGs of even exploration sims.

I can't say I'm an expert on game development, and visual novels definitely have their own set of challenges, but they can be made easily thanks to user friendly game engines. This accessibility allows young, queer game devs the opportunity to start making their own queer stories - and in an industry where people are starving for queer characters, they're bound to find an audience!

Visual novels are also cheaper for queer gamers to buy. Even a game like Dream Daddy, produced by the incredibly popular Game Grumps, went up for only 14.99. And Butterfly Soup is still free. This is worlds cheaper than most AAA games that include very basic forms of queer representation. So, there's a level of financial accessibility available for these types of games that don't exist in other places in the market.

In the end, visual novels make queer characters more accessible to a starving audience by being cheap - and they can empower their audience by giving them an escape from the misrepresentation they receive from mainstream media. These games are about queer characters, and made for queer people - and I only hope that the rest of the industry can follow suit. Until they do though, I'm just going to go and replay Dream Daddy for millionth time and cry about how beautiful Robert is.

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Gaming

VIDEO GAY-MER | Butterfly Soup is the Fun Portrayal of Queer Teendom We All Need

It's so hard to find queer games that are not only accurate portrayals of gay teens, but are also hella fun. This is one of them.

Oh man.

Not going to lie guys, I'm kicking myself in the head for not getting to this title sooner. Most of you have probably heard of Brianna Lei's Butterfly Soup, a visual novel that took the gaming world by storm last year. For those that haven't, it's about four queer Asian-American teens attending their first year of high school in California.

It's astounding writing, characters, and overall depiction of Asian American queer teens have led to other sites like Polygon, PC Gamer, and Kotaku calling it a stand out game of the year. And, after playing through most of it, I can see why.

Listen. I don't like visual novels half the time. Even something like Dream Daddy, which I loved, gets incredibly boring. I suffer through them, because it's where a lot of queer content gets produced It's not because they're bad, I just have a specific taste and I don't want to spend three or four or ten hours just reading text on a screen. But, I was happy to do it with Butterfly Soup, because it's just so fun.

And that should be a given, right? Dream Daddy was fun, wasn't it? And so was Gone Home (which isn't necessarily a visual novel, but close enough)? And Life is Strange (which also isn't necessarily a visual novel, but again, close enough)? That's true, but I think what separates Butterfly Soup from them is that has a sense of honesty without taking away the humor and light-heartedness at all and making it either super campy or super depressing.

As much as I love Gone Home, it focused a lot on the negative experiences of queer youth. You hear a lot about how it's main character struggled with both her identity and helping her partner. While this is a very honest representation of what a lot of young gay folks through - it's not the only experience that we have.

We have a community and we have a lot of queer friends, and often times we surround ourselves with other queer people. That's what happens during the entirety of this game. You are dropped in on the life of a young queer girl and her other queer friends. You see how they interact, and how they find love - and while it does have moments that can be on the serious side - it never gets sad or weepy. We never see these characters go on long monologues about how they can't accept themselves and how they'll never be happy.

This is accomplished through Lei's decision to give the player no control over the story. You occasionally get a few dialogue options, but in the end, you see what Lei wants you to see. You are on a guided tour of the story - not a participant in it. So, you aren't mired in finding extra stuff here or there (although, there are some extra observations you can make when prompted). So, while I did find myself getting bored, Lei managed to reel me back in with some pretty choice story-telling techniques that even AAA titles can learn from.

Throughout the game, you are treated to flashbacks, which show the four main characters' friendship through the years, instead of just one specific point of time. Each one makes the characters more dynamic and provides and insight that informs previous scenes. It's not disjointed and it's all connected.

And aside from the main cast, we are treated to actual diverse characters of different races and sexualities. You have people of color, you have a trans character, bisexual characters - and even if they aren't big, they're still real. Even in a lot of queer-themed visual novels, you usually only get a lesbian or a gay man's story - and while this story does focus mainly on a relationship between two women - we still get a solid cast of fleshed out characters that are not exclusively gay and cisgender.

As I play through - I'm just smiling and relating. I don't feel sad and I don't feel that same sense of, "Man it's so hard being gay," that so much media gives me. That kind of media is important, we should always remember/be reminded of the struggle that people - especially young people - in the community deal with. But it's also important to show that it doesn't always have to be that way. It is possible to be young and happy - even if you're struggling, you can find people who loves and accepts you.

Butterfly Soup is a special game - it uses fun characters and brilliant storytelling to give you an honest and non-sad portrayal of a diverse group of young, queer women in a time where it's very difficult to be a young, queer woman. While it doesn't offer a huge variety in terms of gameplay, it weaves something that leaves you smiling and cheering and laughing.

Please, please, please go play it. You can get it for free right here - and make sure you leave Brianna Lei a damn good review when you're done.

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Gaming

VIDEO GAY-MER | Creating An Experience All Your Own

In a world where queer people don't have experiences of our own, we have to create new ones.

Games are an escape.

Games are an escape from your struggles, whether they be personal struggles or the terrors of the world, they allow us to take a step away and focus on a reality that isn't our own. And as a queer kid growing up in the Southern United States, I retreated to video games for most of my young life. And I've spoken in length in many other articles about how, despite my love for video games, the lack queerness has soured me to them a lot of the time.

Instead of giving you yet another example of the lack of representation present in games, I'm going to talk about a very specific aspect of queer gaming culture. It revolves around a very specific part to a lot of games across many genres: Character creation. We've all done it - whether you've created a Mii or played through Dark Souls III, you've most likely created a character of your very own. Often times, these characters have little to no real back story and are largely designed to be a catalyst for the player.

So, why is this important to queer gamers?

Because these characters can be whatever we queer gamers want them to be. A major, more recent example is that of the Sole Survivor of Fallout 4. After the game came out, I saw a large amount of different players across the internet posting their OCs. They gave them very specific storylines, and a lot of them were queer. They had entire lives not spoken about in the base game. Some of them three the base game out entirely.

The same thing happens across many different games from Dragon Age: Inquisition to Terraria to Sims (on a grander scale). We have to work harder to build a world in which we can escape to - so we project ourselves onto characters that we are allowed to create. For instance, my characters are always good natured gay men, who become heroes in a world that previously didn't accept them.

In Fallout 4, this was the reason I was drawn to the Minutemen and the Railroad. Unlike the Institute and the Brotherhood, the other factions were underdogs. The Minutemen, a militia of the Commonwealth dedicated to the people, starts out the game barely existing and disgraced after what happened in a town called Quincy. The Railroad, a band of ragtag fighters seeking to free the much feared Synths (synthetic humans) from their tyrannical creators.

My character fit so well into these groups, because I wanted to create a queer character that fought for people who got shat on all the time. It wasn't what the game intended, obviously, but one of the very few good things about Fallout 4 was that it didn't matter. You could make your character do ALMOST whatever you wanted (so long as it stayed in their very specific factions, but that's neither here nor there).

Not only could I, a queer person, be a hero to an entire group - but to an entire society. In this game, my character makes history and changes the world for the better. This cathartic experience is one of the reasons I still play Fallout 4 to this day. I do the same thing with Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect, etc. There's something so powerful about being able to look at this queer character that you, a queer person, created and saying, "You're a hero to all the people in this world."

That level of freedom is so important to a queer audience, because we're so used to hearing straight people tell us that things have to be a certain way. That's why more linear games can often leave a queer gamer bored or annoyed, because we're forced to sit through this character living out another straight fantasy that we always see. Does this mean we hate these games? No, of course not. I love Final Fantasy X as much as the next guy, but it's romance bores me to tears.

When I escape, I don't want to escape into a straight person's fantasy romance or a straight man's power fantasy. If game developers won't give me my own characters, then let me play the games where I can create my own fantasy. Let me make the Inquisitor a gay Elf; Let the Sole Survivor be a queer secret-Synth who has a harem with literally every romanceable companion because they all fell in love along the way; Let ALL OF MY SIMS GET GAY MARRIED!

Sure, it's not the same as giving me real characters, but it's something to keep me going until I get to play next great queer game. So, I guess I'll take it.

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FILM & TV

South Park: Fractured but Whole's surprisingly positive queer relationship

Who would have thought that a game based on the worst show ever would have a surprisingly sweet gay-centric side story.

So, listen...

I don't watch South Park. I will never watch South Park - and honestly, I don't think that my life will be missing out a lot from not watching South Park. My problems with the series and even the game which I am talking about today are endless. Do I take the show too seriously? Maybe. Yeah, I definitely do, but I have my reasons. Still, despite all of that I would be a liar if I said that Fractured but Whole managed to cover some pretty deep topics with a surprising amount of care - was it perfect? No. But there was definitely something there.

When I bought Fractured but Whole during this past Steam sale, I didn't expect to walk out of it with this odd amount of respect I now have. I expected to play a decent RPG with a mildly annoying amount of jokes - and it definitely delivered on that part. However, not having watched the show, I was surprised to learn that two central characters - Tweek and Craig (pictured below) - were dating and currently facing some relationship turbulence.


I proceeded with their quest line cautiously - after all, the few times I've encountered South Park, I was unimpressed (couch-cough Big Gay Al cough-cough Mr. Slave). In the beginning, you have to help Craig get his laptop back from Tweek, who requests their shared pet hamster in exchange. This struck me as funny and definitely reminiscent of the kids of childhood relationships that kids would have together. After you do this, you are given a note from their father - and you have to convince both of them to get some counseling.

They agree, but only if you go with them. After this, you have to go through the rest of the game before you can continue their storyline. It's very sweet, and I won't reveal too much more. I just kept waiting for the ball to drop and for it to take a gross turn. I kept expecting their relationship to be the butt of some sort of joke, or for their friends to make some sort of comment, but they seem to be okay. Even their parents are worried for their kids happiness - there's nothing mean spirited or offensive. You are just a friend helping out your two gay friends.

Of course, it wouldn't be South Park without that odd layer of creepiness. Craig's dad, whose name I didn't bother to learn, gives you a strange side quest of finding yaoi fan art of his son and Tweek throughout the town of South Park. It's not a huge part of the game, but there's something off about it. It may have been a throwback to the show, but it still really rubbed me the wrong way.

Luckily, the positive LGBTQ+ content in the game doesn't stop with Craig.

There's a pretty good bit in the game where you're able to decide your character - The New Kid's - sexuality and gender. It's played kind of like a joke, but it didn't really land and instead managed to be just a really good little section of the game. You basically pick both your gender and your sexuality through a slider. It only affects the game a little bit with dialogue options from your parents when they go home.

The best part is that every time you make a decision, a group of rednecks come up in a truck and you get to beat the crap out of them. It happens multiple times over the course of the game, and it never stops being satisfying. I don't know what Stone and Parker were thinking when they made this game, but honestly, they managed to make some parts of it cathartic. When you weren't beating up these red necks, you were playing as a character who could be a non binary pansexual.

Does it make up for the rest of the game? Not really. It's still South Park, and a lot of the other jokes tend to be more misguided and just plain unfunny. But I can say that these specifically queer moments manage to be a speck of gold in the mud - and at least added some limited enjoyment to my experience.

If you want my advice, just watch the YouTube compilations of Craig and Tweek's scenes in the game - you won't be sorry. Or if you really want to play, you can pick it up on any console. After all, we do need to support positive queer content. Even if it takes place in an annoying little mountain town.

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Gaming

VIDEO GAY-MER | Can you believe Fallout was this ahead of the game?

How many of your faves can say that they had gay marriage in their franchise since '98?

Oh Fallout...

I have so many opinions about you - and not all of them are totally positive. Hell, some of them are just downright negative. But even I have to admit that you are an iconic franchise. You took the gaming world by storm, introduced the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, agility, and luck) system, and provided a much needed escape from the fantastical fantasy worlds of other RPGs of the time (okay, Wasteland did it first). Your characters have always been interesting, your lore has always been a delightful mixture of zany and serious - you're a great franchise.

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Gaming

ROLE PLAYGROUND | West of Loathing is a whole new can of beans...

Think Witcher III if Witcher III was an incredibly funny, stick-figure fantasy western.

I honestly don't know what this game is.

Asymmetric Production's West of Loathing is nothing if not unique - it's world is fresh and vibrant despite the stick figured, black-and-white design. It's characters manage to be simple, but real enough for you not to care. And it's story is like the large desert with which it takes place: A huge mystery, just waiting to be solved.

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