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A growing number of gamers are LGBTQ+, so why is representation still lacking?

Published

2 years ago

February 29, 2024

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A growing number of gamers are LGBTQ+, so why is representation still lacking?

Two of the main characters from the 2015 game Life is Strange, Max Caulfield and Chloe Price.

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Two of the main characters from the 2015 game Life is Strange, Max Caulfield and Chloe Price.

Dontnod Entertainment

Close to 1 in 5 American gamers identify as LGBTQ+, according to new research from GLAAD. But LGBTQ+ gamers often face harassment in gaming communities and games with voice chats that anybody can join — common in multiplayer, team-based games.

The research indicates that 52% of LGBTQ+ gamers faced harassment while playing online, and 42% have avoided a game due to anticipated harassment.

“It’s difficult when you’re trans to hop on voice chat with random people because you open yourself up to criticism or potential harassment,” said Veronica Ripley, also known as Nikatine, a full-time Twitch streamer and founder of the Discord community Transmission Gaming for trans gamers.

Selfie of Twitch streamer Veronica Ripley, aka Nikatine, taken in front of her green screen.

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Selfie of Twitch streamer Veronica Ripley, aka Nikatine, taken in front of her green screen.

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Ripley says that when she goes live, she opens herself up to criticism or harassment for being trans. Her moderators now swiftly remove hate comments and ban offenders almost daily. She says things have improved over time, but one incident from when she first started streaming in 2016 stands out.

“One day somebody showed up with like a thousand people, like a hate raid, all saying the worst possible things they could think of,” Ripley told NPR’s Morning Edition.

So she started to make fun of them a little bit, and some of those people stuck around and became viewers.

“The point of streaming at all is to show the world that there’s more to trans people than just our identity. We’re people… and I think a lot of people can lose sight of that,” she said.

Despite these challenges, video games are important to her partly because they were critical to her understanding of gender. As a kid, she gravitated towards games where she didn’t have to play as “the same gritty dude protagonist” typical of video games.

“The Sims was a big one when I was a kid. It’s still a big game for queer people to this day. You can make an avatar and explore what it’s like to try on a different gender for a little while. Games that allow people to do that are some of the best games for queer folks,” Ripley said.

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“A lot of folks in our community use video gaming to see that representation and want to see themselves in characters,” said Ray Lancione, president of Qweerty Gamers, streamer, and former video game community manager. “Our community [uses] it to find each other … finding people that are like-minded or similar sexualities, genders.”

American gamers are actually diverse

There has been an idea for decades in the video game industry that gamers are made up of a core group of teenage, white, heterosexual boys. But that hasn’t been true for a long time.

In 2022, research from The Entertainment Software Association indicated that 48% of American gamers were female and 52% were male. The same report noted that 71% of American gamers were white, while 29% were people of color.

Until recently, there was little data tracking how many gamers identify as LGBTQ+. In 2020, Nielsen released a report indicating that 10% of gamers identified as such. Adrienne Shaw, a seasoned video game researcher and associate professor in media studies and production at Temple University, said there weren’t good data points beyond that. And that there’s not much data to break down what the LGBTQ+ audience looks like and what kind of games they’re playing.

Shaw collaborated on a study with GLAAD, assisted by Nielsen, surveying over 1500 American gamers. The findings revealed that 17% of individuals who game an hour or more per week and 19% of those who game 10+ hours per week identify as LGBTQ+.

“We do have some data that we’ve shared for a number of years, but really nothing to this extent,” said Stacie de Armas, senior vice president of diverse insights and innovation at Nielsen.

Younger generations are more open about identity

De Armas says that this jump from 10 to 17 percent represents the evolution of society. Recent studies have shown that nearly 30% of Gen Z adults in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ+.

“We have a younger generation of gamers now… the data and research shows [they] are more inclusive about their personal identities. They are perhaps in an environment where they can be more open,” said de Armas.

Tristan Marra, GLAAD’s head of research, says the 17% number shows how much the LGBTQ+ gaming community has grown in just three years.

“That 70% growth in three years is something that gaming developers and the gaming industry at large should take very seriously,” she said.

Real representation is still hard to find in games

GLAAD’s research reveals that despite LGBTQ+ gamers comprising a significant portion of America’s gaming audience, less than 2% of all games include LGBTQ+ characters or storylines. They arrived at this figure by examining games tagged with LGBTQ+ content on PC and console stores such as Steam, the PlayStation Store, and the Xbox Store — stores where the average person typically finds their games.

Only a small fraction of that 2% feature LGBTQ+ main or playable characters, although some games lack romance or human characters altogether. There are a few examples from major studios in recent years. For example, Ellie from The Last of Us serves as a lesbian protagonist, and the game turned into a major, award-winning HBO show.

Ellie and Dina from Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us 2.

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Ellie and Dina from Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us 2.

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The Life is Strange series features several LGBTQ+ protagonists, like Max, who can end up with her best friend Chloe if players choose. Baldur’s Gate 3, which won Game of the Year at The Game Awards, includes LGBTQ+ characters and offers a lot of flexibility in character creation for someone to be whoever they want.

The character creation screen in Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3.

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The character creation screen in Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3.

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But Shaw says the vast majority of LGBTQ+ representation is in the form of optional romances. This means the main player character can have relationships with non-player characters that are a variety of genders, like teammates, villagers or merchants.

GLAAD researchers also collected data on people’s attitudes towards LGBTQ+ content in games, something they said there was no data on before. They found that at least 70% of non-LGBTQ+ gamers are either indifferent or more inclined to play or purchase games with LGBTQ+ representation.

Why game studios hesitate to include LGBTQ+ characters

Shaw says there’s a lot of LGBTQ+ representation in video games from independent companies. “But getting big companies to take a chance on a title that’s going to reach billions of people is very different,” she said.

Concerns about backlash, including negative reviews and social media uproar, complicate things more. Studios may struggle to justify improving representation or not know how.

Life is Strange, developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix, benefited from Dontnod’s origins as an independent game studio. This allowed them creative freedom to craft the desired story and characters, as explained by Michel Koch, the co-creator and art director, in an NPR interview.

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Max Caulfield and Chloe Price from the video game Life is Strange.

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Max Caulfield and Chloe Price from the video game Life is Strange.

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“I feel like each time we start a new story or a new game, we are really trying to find and write the best characters for this story. To make sure that who they are is aligned with the themes of the story,” said Koch.

As they were advancing in development, they started to need funding. So they started to meet with publishers.

“We got some feedback from some publisher that ‘oh no, this won’t sell. We cannot publish this game, even if it looks cool,’” Koch said. “And we found Square Enix who loved the project as it was. They didn’t ask us to change anything… I would say that it was a lot of luck.”

Koch says he hasn’t seen any data like what GLAAD has released, and only knows the reactions Dontnod got after Life is Strange was released. There were players who loved it, and they also saw some who disliked it.

“We know that our core audience are very positive about the games we are making. But there is always this vocal minority that pushes very strongly to say this game is too woke,” he said. “We should make sure that we are not listening too much to the vocal minorities.”

Koch says he also knows that video games are a business — particularly the risk of game bans in certain international markets if certain scenes are included.

“If we were to release the game in Russia, for example, we wouldn’t have been able to include this romance, this arc. And Square Enix … they accepted that we didn’t release the game in Russia at all, which meant that we could keep the game the way we wanted [it] to be,” Koch said.

But Koch says he could see some bigger games or other companies that don’t want to miss out on a market like Russia. And they may end up removing those storylines or characters because it wouldn’t be allowed to be published in that country.

How can game studios improve representation?

Marra says it’s important to be able to put a stake in the ground and measure how much representation is currently available in all forms of media, so the number can start to be moved up to where it should be.

Shaw thinks the report shows “a really strong case you can take to your executives or take to your team and say ‘hey, we have good numbers and a good reason to increase this representation.’”

The GLAAD report, making it clear that LGBTQ+ gamers prefer games with LGBTQ+ content, provided recommendations for the industry and developers. They suggest having a proportionate representation of LGBTQ+ characters in games, making gaming communities more inclusive, consulting LGBTQ+ media experts like GLAAD and hiring LGBTQ+ individuals for leadership roles in the gaming industry.

Phil Harrell edited the audio story, and Majd Al-Waheidi edited it for digital.

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You know the Mayflower. What about the White Lion? Here’s the story of ‘Two Ships’

Published

7 hours ago

July 4, 2026

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You know the Mayflower. What about the White Lion? Here’s the story of ‘Two Ships’

Just in time for a contentious 250th anniversary of the United States of America, historian David S. Reynolds’ latest book, Two Ships, helps us realize that any country that couldn’t agree on its own origin story is destined for divisive times.

Two Ships is about the complicated, conjoined legacy of the landings of the Mayflower, which carried the Pilgrims to Plymouth, Mass., in 1620, and the White Lion, which arrived in Jamestown a year earlier, bringing the first enslaved Africans to Virginia.

As Reynolds demonstrates, it’s not so much the facts of these two voyages, as it is the meanings ascribed to them, that made them such a powerful metaphor for two conflicting visions of American identity.

To simplify, the Mayflower’s passengers were separatist Puritans, dissenters to the reign of the English king, James I. As the United States developed, the Mayflower was credited with carrying the seeds of a radical democracy to the New World, one in which all men (in theory, at least) were equal before God.

In contrast, the European settlers of Jamestown were Royalists, also known as Cavaliers. Loyal to the monarchy, they believed in a strict hierarchy.

The 400 Years Project Looks At Native American Identity Through The Native Lens

But the meaning of the images of the two ships shifted depended on who was invoking them and when. Not surprisingly, the metaphor was deployed most vigorously during the Civil War. In abolitionist speeches and writings, the White Lion or the “Slave-Ship,” as it was commonly called, was condemned for infecting America with the “plague-spot” of slavery.

Reynolds says that Frederick Douglass resorted to the “two ships” metaphor frequently, while Lincoln avoided it, hoping to preserve a unified ship of state. Meanwhile, Southern descendants of Cavaliers invoked the Mayflower to emphasize the intolerance and “cruel, persecuting” character of the Puritans. In a comment that resonates for our own times, Reynolds says:

It didn’t matter to the South that … by the mid-nineteenth century, the North had become a kaleidoscope of religious denominations, …, few of which resembled the faith of the Plymouth colonists. Distortion is intrinsic to cultural memory, especially when amplified by sectional or political bias. For Southerners, the Mayflower had brought Puritanism, which had yielded fanatical movements like abolitionism, now a dire threat to the Union.

In a brief-but-fascinating digression into the unpredictable power of literary fiction, Reynolds observes that the South’s fondness for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s anti-Puritan novel, The Scarlet Letter, and, even more, for the medieval historical romances of Sir Walter Scott, bolstered its nostalgia for a largely-imagined feudal society.

Reynolds quotes the always-quotable Mark Twain, no fan of Scott’s, as saying that Scott “did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote …”

Two Ships is a dazzling survey of some three centuries of American history through a close reading of a metaphor. By the 1890s, Reynolds says, the interpretive tide had turned again: “Southern and Northern whites, feeling threatened by people of color and by an array of European immigrants, were retreating to a cocoon of racial solidarity that Mayflower celebrations helped reinforce.”

By the later-20th century, the image of the Mayflower was depoliticized and commercialized into Pilgrim hats and Black Friday sales. The powerful metaphor of the two ships receded into the mist.

Seven years ago, however, the 1619 Project piloted the White Lion — “The Slave-Ship” — back into view and anchored it at the center of debates about slavery’s place in the national story. The 1619 Project has been faulted for its historiography, and it does lie outside of the chronological boundaries of Reynolds’ book; still, it seems too momentous a reappearance of the White Lion not to at least acknowledge in this book.

That criticism noted, I think reading Two Ships would be an excellent way to observe this particular Fourth of July. It’s wise for all of us to have a more informed awareness of how Americans have understood, misunderstood and, often, flattened each other into stereotypes. Or, as Ernest Hemingway, one of the Mayflower Pilgrims’ more cynical descendants, might say in response to that sentiment: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Lifestyle

A historically hot Paris Fashion Week photographed with a kid’s camera

Published

8 hours ago

July 4, 2026

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A historically hot Paris Fashion Week photographed with a kid’s camera

I took a kid’s camera to Paris Fashion Week, because was it ever really that serious? Yes and no. This men’s season happened during one of the hottest weeks in France’s recorded history, which inspired that specific brand of collective hysteria brought on by living through yet another unprecedented moment together — taking over our brains and ruining our plans to wear boots — and a grander reflection on what we were doing there and why. The throngs of teenagers doing back flips into the Canal Saint-Martin and playing soccer in the street set the mood for the week. If the world is ending, you might as well swim in dirty water and have fun doing it, no?

As far as the shows went, there was the coastal stoner energy of Tokyo-based Auralee — brightly colored leathers and furry flip-flops — that reminded me of the low-key elegance of hanging out in Southern California. At the Rick Owens show, Rick-heads made minimal weather-restrictive tweaks to their usual uniforms — platforms, leather, ground-grazing garments — making you appreciate the beauty in that level of ascetic dedication. Louis Vuitton built a literal beach as its runway, complete with sand and a giant wave that felt like a mirage: Is this a heat-induced hallucination or yet another buzzed-about set design under men’s creative director Pharrell Williams? At the Dries Van Noten show, there was an ice-cold beer fridge and popsicles, a chic and inspired detail only rivaled by a collection that was a breath of fresh air during a week where I Googled the symptoms of heat stroke more than once. The Willy Chavarria show was air-conditioned, pumped with Xinú perfume and felt expensive. Sven Marquardt, a Berlin photographer and Berghain’s most famous bouncer, was sitting in front of me, which I took as an incredibly good omen. The painted blue feet and Oakley collab sunglasses at the Kiko Kostadinov show felt auspicious as well.

A model walks with his hands in his vest

There were conversations floating around about how apocalyptic it felt sitting at a fashion show in over 100-degree Fahrenheit weather, our backs soaked, our minds dizzied, when the industry is responsible for something like 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The cognitive dissonance contributed to the thickness in the air that week.

At the Comme des Garçons show, called “If the War Were to End..,” models danced and ran and skipped out onto the runway for the finale, soundtracked by the joyous sound of children singing “You’re So Good to Me” by the Langley Schools Music Project. In that moment, we were happy, we were clapping, we might have even been hopeful. Humans have the capacity to hold a lot — a fan in one hand while attempting not to completely melt in the front row, and a fantasy that there might still be a future where we get to wear those leopard-print Dries shoes we fell in love with on the runway.

People stand in front of a wall bearing the words "Paris Tourisme"

A model wears Comme des Garçons, head-to-toe.

A person in black shoes, left, and a person in pink shoes

Seated attendees watch a model on a blue carpet

A woman in sunglasses stands in a beach setting

People use their smartphones to photograph a person in a suit and tie

Scenes from the On X Online Ceramics rave.

Five models wearing sunglasses stand together

Lifestyle

After weeks of speculation, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce wed in New York

Published

17 hours ago

July 4, 2026

Press Room

After weeks of speculation, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce wed in New York

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, pictured at a basketball game in May, announced their engagement in August 2025.

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NEW YORK — Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are officially married.

After three years of dating, The pop icon and Super Bowl-winning football player, both 36, tied the knot in New York, according to a statement from Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine.

There were neither bridesmaids nor groomsmen. “Instead, her brother Austin Swift served as Taylor’s Man of Honor and Jason Kelce was Travis’ Best Man. The ceremony joined both families together,” Swift’s publicist said in the statement released Friday evening.

The ceremony was officiated by comedian and a friend of the couple, Adam Sandler, the statement added.

The singer’s rep said that the couple was dressed in Christian Dior Haute Couture.

“The bride and groom’s wedding ceremony looks have been created by Christian Dior Haute Couture. They are designed by Jonathan Anderson, Creative Director of Dior Women’s, Men’s and Haute Couture Collections, in close collaboration with the Bride and Groom,” the statement said. “This is the designer’s first couture wedding dress for a world-renowned celebrity. Their shoes were custom made by Christian Louboutin and the bride wore Cartier jewelry.”

Security around the event was intense, so it remains unclear if the wedding was charming, if a little gauche. But the night before the ceremony the 20,000-person stadium was bathed in a lavender haze.

Details gleaned from a city permit obtained by The Associated Press, showed details of a “special event at MSG” scheduled to begin Friday evening and running overnight Saturday.

As speculation built, fans began gathering in front of the stadium ahead of the expected wedding, despite the couple’s efforts to keep details of the celebration under wraps.

Superfans and sleuths appeared to have their hunches confirmed on Friday, as dozens of black cars dropped off elegantly dressed guests outside of Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Lisa Benham and her daughter, Zara, posed for selfies outside the Garden. They’re visiting from England and both told NPR they’re huge Swifties.

“I just remember always listening to her,” said Zara Benham, age 17. The women said they’ve followed all the ins and outs of Swift’s romance with Travis Kelce, a tight end with the Kansas City chiefs.

“I’m thrilled for her. I love it. I love the whole story,” gushed Lisa Benham, 47, who says she became a fan after her daughter dragged her to a Swift concert. “I’m pleased for them, really pleased for them.”

A woman wearing a white veil stands outside Madison Square Garden in New York City on July 3, 2026. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s official wedding plans are tightly under wraps, but New York is bracing to host the celebrity marriage of the year.

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Swift has a massive global platform, and a tendency to pull back the curtain on her personal life in song lyrics and the occasional documentary. But the shared little about her wedding plans since she and Kelce announced their engagement last August.

“You would think that I had been the type of person who would have obsessed over the idea of a wedding my whole life, but I actually never thought about what I would ever do or what I would want until I met the person,” Swift told the U.K.’s Heart Radio in October, while promoting her last album The Life of a Showgirl.

In the months since, speculation mounted over where and when the wedding would take place. In recent weeks, the theories all pointed in the same direction: New York City’s Madison Square Garden on July Fourth weekend.

Swift loves a good Easter egg, and her fans have been known to crack at least some of them successfully. That appears to have been the case with her wedding, even as some wondered for days whether it was merely a high-profile ruse.

Swift and Kelce celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory in Feb. 2024.

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A recap of their romance

Swift and Kelce began dating in the summer of 2023, during the first year of her record-breaking Eras Tour.

The Kansas City Chiefs tight end admitted on a July 2023 episode of New Heights — the podcast he co-hosts with his brother, retired NFL player Jason Kelce — that he had tried to meet Swift after one of her shows in the area.

“I was a little butt-hurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the [friendship] bracelets I made for her,” Kelce said. “I wanted to give Taylor Swift one with my number on it.”

Swift later told Time she thought that call-out was “metal as hell.”

Within months, she was attending his games — most famously, the 2024 Super Bowl his team went on to win. He was spotted in the crowd — and even onstage — at many of her shows the next year.

Fans got a peek into their chemistry when Swift appeared on New Heights last August to announce her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl (which she said was heavily influenced by their relationship). She said she and Kelce bonded in part over similarities in their careers, in which they both “entertain people for three-plus hours in NFL stadiums.”

Less than two weeks later, Swift announced their engagement on Instagram, with photos of a flower-filled backyard proposal and a massive diamond ring. In an episode of The Graham Norton Show a few months later, Swift deflected questions about her wedding planning but joked about inviting “anyone I’ve ever talked to.”

Sleuths had been eyeing Madison Square Garden

Speculation about a July 3rd wedding at MSG reached new heights this month.

Part of that was through the process of elimination: Swifties descended on Watch Hill, R.I. — where Swift owns a seaside estate — on June 13, but tabloid reports of a ceremony there proved unfounded.

But there also seemed to be a paper trail leading to Manhattan.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani seemed to drop a hint while talking to reporters in June.

“We are used to big events, and we are incredibly ⁠excited for this one,” Mamdani said, referring to the World Cup. “We know it coincides with the Knicks Finals run. We know it coincides with July Fourth, America 250, Taylor Swift’s wedding all happening at the same time.”

Forklifts and trucks were spotted outside Madison Square Garden in New York on Tuesday, as speculation about a weekend wedding grew.

Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images

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Then, The New York Times reported that an event company obtained permits for a gathering of up to 1,000 people at Madison Square Garden on July 3rd (and a smaller event the day before). It also cited unnamed sources with details about plans for street closures in the area, later confirmed by City Hall spokesperson Dora Pekec to Reuters.

CBS News shared video this week of trucks unloading “garden party” themed equipment outside the venue earlier this week. And the venue’s online event calendar is suspiciously empty until July 7.

Mamdani appeared to double down Tuesday, while speaking to reporters about the forthcoming heat wave.

“My recommendation to all New Yorkers is to stay inside and stay cool, and if you happen to be getting married at Madison Square Garden you will be staying inside and staying cool, and I think it’s a good example to set for the city at large,” he said with a smile.

This isn’t the first celebrity wedding celebration to take place at MSG. Sly Stone married actress Kathy Silva there in June 1974. As Stone wrote in his memoir, he was talking to his A&R liaison at Epic Records, Stephen Paley, about wanting to marry Silva, and one of them jokingly suggested he do so before an upcoming show.

“I could do a gig, get paid, and get married at the same time. ‘Go, go, go,’ I told him. He went and went fast,” Stone wrote, adding, “Steve wanted everyone to wear gold to keep the shine high.”

According to a New York Times report at the time, the two married in front of nearly 23,000 people, at a ceremony that turned into a full-fledged Sly and the Family Stone concert.

A closer look at Swift’s engagement ring from the 55th Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala in New York last month.

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Why New York, and why now?

Madison Square Garden, which can hold nearly 20,000 people, may seem like a surprising choice for a singer who prizes her privacy.

But Emma Fitzsimmons, one of the New York Times reporters covering the wedding, told NPR last week that it makes sense for privacy and security reasons.

“It’s sort of this locked box where paparazzi can’t get inside,” she said. “There’s not going to be helicopters overhead. She can release photos of the event and her dress, which we’re all very curious to see, on her own terms.”

Swift, who owns a sprawling Tribeca compound, is famously a fan of New York City. She even has a song about it: “Welcome To New York,” on the album 1989, inspired by her relocation to the city.

And she has a well-documented love of Fourth of July. Over the years, many photos have emerged — some on Swift’s own Instagram — of the star celebrating the holiday weekend in Rhode Island with friends and fireworks.

And it’s not lost on Swifties that she met Kelce shortly after the holiday in 2023, which she celebrated with girlfriends and shared photos of on Instagram.

“Happy belated Independence Day from your local neighborhood independent girlies,” she captioned the photo. “See you tonight Kansas Cityyy.”