The following is a list of confirmed

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s with

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

, lesbian, bisexual, or

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

characters, including any others falling under the

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

umbrella term. The numbers in this list are possibly higher due to fact that some characters remained unconfirmed, unsourced or controversial.

History

During the 1980s, characters that can be argued as identifying as LGBTQ+ were rarely shown in a realistic or non-stereotypical context and were often the objects of ridicule or jokes. In the 1990s, games (often Japanese ones) continued to use stereotypical LGBT characters which did not reflect the diversity in LGBT communities. However, more efforts were found to make more diverse and less one-dimensional characters. In 2018, Gamesradar's Sam Greer pored through thousands of gaming titles and found 179 games with any LGBT representation. Of those 179 games, only 83 have queer characters who are playable characters. And of those, only eight feature a main character who is explicitly pre-written as queer as opposed to them being queer as a

character creation Character creation (also character generation or character design) is the process of defining a game character or other character. Typically, a character's individual strengths and weaknesses are represented by a set of statistics. Games with a ...

option.

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

2020

2021

2022

2023 and later

References

Bibliography

* * {{LGBT, state=collapsed, culture=expanded

Video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...