Proud Pixels - Let's Plays, The Wasteland And Finding My Queer Confidence
Playing games on the internet is wack. Not ‘wack’ in the way an uncool parent thinks about the phenomenon of people making a living playing games online, that would be a really terrible article idea - a good kind of wack. Video game content creators have dominated the last few generations of young people and their social reach is massive. I want to talk about the content creation industry because it was formative for me as a queer gamer and because I feel I have seen content creation grow alongside myself. The journey of this industry has a significant amount of queer breadcrumbing in its origins that lead to the massive queer creators we see today.
Before I delve further I want to clarify, this is my experience, and this is part of my queer story. It is by no means perfect. Any discussion or criticism of content is purely based on the time it was made and the tools available to the people involved. As a queer person growing up I understand trying to make the best of your situation only to realise that you may have been insensitive years later, I write this piece with no ill will.
I want to start by talking about the Yogscast - they’re a content creation company that started out in the early two-thousands, developing from a World of Warcraft clan. The Yogscast is a much bigger organisation than it was in 2010 when I started watching, expanding in multiple directions including game publishing, so when I talk about the Yogscast I am pretty much only thinking of its founders; Lewis Brindley, Simon Lane and Hannah Rutherford. I originally did not watch the Yogscast for queer content, I was not aware of my queerness when I first found them, nor did they create queer heavy content. However, there were moments when the Yogscast acted as a vessel for LGBT+ themes my brain was looking for.
No he is not part of “a California biker gang”…
The two examples I can point to were a few moments in their Fallout: New Vegas series and one arc of their Minecraft series, Shadow of Israphel, that revolved around a queer couple, Skylords Jasper and Lysander. Said queer couple had a pastel decor mansion with a bespoke sex dungeon, as well as an overall camp vibe which rings somewhat stereotypical. In this sense, the Yogscast exposed a tiny, baby gay Jamie to the concept of being queer. It was not perfect - the representation was flawed, but it never felt malicious in nature. One half of said coupling, Lysander, was a key character for a majority of the series. While the queer bit was somewhat a gag (there was literally a ball-gag, that was a pun), the actual character involved had a storyline outside of that arc, and was a fully fledged character within the overall narrative of the series. Was this perfect? No. But it was there, in front of me, when I needed it!
I mean, they are a very cute couple.
Queer rep in media around that time always came from cut-and-paste coming out stories that lasted, at best, three episodes of a TV show or the people involved literally died. Queer rep overall in this period was, for lack of a better term, shit. However, it did mean something to me. As a young queer person who enjoyed games, having the two combined in any way was a significant thing. The fact that Lysander didn't die or get written out of the show immediately after being sprinkled with digital glitter was better than most other media out there - This is very much a ‘what you make of it’ scenario that pales in comparison to the queer representation we have today, but having that queer rep in games content was the crutch I needed to start exploring my own identity. It gave me something to latch onto - Lysander was a queer character who had other interests outside of being queer, as well as purpose and motivation. I didn't consciously construct this idea of Lysander at the time, I was around fourteen, but having that queer representation as an influence definitely had an effect on me.
In addition to this, games have always been free of many of the expectations of stereotypical, gendered society. Video games have never been a queer utopia, don’t get me wrong, but as a young queer person being able to play games was my confidence. I was an equal on that playing field, unlike the P.E. field where I played football with the same dexterity as Gex on the N64. Games, for me, were free of judgement - having that open space, and the occasional queer moment dotted in the video game content I watched, allowed me to start to cobble together some kind of identity I could be happy with.
Going to go out on a limb here and say Veronica is probably the most likeable Brotherhood of Steel person in any Fallout game.
Again, this wasn't what I would describe as good representation to form a queer identity out of, but it was what I had - imagine trying to make brownies with ostrich eggs and the occasional slur instead of flour and you can get an idea of I was working with. For example, when the Yogscast introduced me to Fallout: New Vegas, I was also introduced to that game’s rough and ragged queer representation. This open-ended RPG allowed players to roleplay their own selves but still contended with drips and drabs of early 2010s homophobia knitted into its writing. This is even though most of the known world got nuked in that series. You’d think blowing up all of known society would make everyone a little less uptight. However, similar to Lysander, this was an early example of a game with pockets of ok queer representation. Arcade Gannon and Veronica are some of the first examples of queer companions in games and both are well written and transparent in their queerness, which was more than enough for me to latch onto.
Queer content creators in the games industry are far more prevalent and mainstream now than during my formative years. I was recently introduced to the newest generation of Minecraft content creators, many of whom are openly queer people. In exploring their communities and their dynamics, I also found a massive queer following around this content. One of the content creators, Ranboo, whom I started following, recently ran a poll on their viewers asking, literally, “GAY?” and over thirty-eight thousand respondents said “Yes”, with around seven thousand saying “No”. It was around an 80% majority. Even if half of those people were lying or joking that is still a lot of queer people. Like a lot. All in a space that supports them and their identity.
You know, usually when I discover a new youtuber I never heard of before with millions of followers automatically assume they are terrible but I am getting pretty good vibes just off of these two posts.
I can't help but envy the people growing up with this kind of representation because it is leagues beyond the kind of representation I got - these are openly queer people, creating content from a queer perspective, for a queer following and it’s all brilliantly queer. However, I have slowly realised that this new form of content is a continuation of my own journey. What these kids are experiencing is an evolved form of the content I watched, and if I can grasp even the slightest crumb of queer confidence out of what I was given, imagine what they can do with this new stuff.
Queer people, like myself, often find our identities in unlikely places. Video game content creators were my unlikely place. This strange new world of gamers on the internet is so hotly debated in terms of validity and purpose that I wanted to write this piece to highlight the unintentional effect it had on me. Representation is never perfect, this industry certainly isn't perfect and my journey was not perfect in the slightest, but some good has come from it.
