Over last five years it seems like there has been an influx of queer representation in popular video games. Several people in the gaming community seem to be okay with this, however there’s always going to be a group of people that criticize changes like this. There are lot of people (predominantly straight men) that are very upset over the sudden burst of inclusivity that their favorite games seem to have. They say that its pandering, that it’s a way to exploit queer people and get them to buy their game. I personally disagree with this notion, several of the games that these people are getting upset with have had LGBTQ+ characters in it since their release.  

One game that come to mind when discussing this topic is the popular first-person shooter Overwatch by Blizzard entertainment. The game came out in 2016 and had comics that went along with the lore/story of the game. In one of those comics, they revealed that the poster charter of the game “Tracer” was a lesbian. There was a lot of discourse about this when it came out. A ton of people were excited to see that such a popular company would include them, but some thought that it shouldn’t matter. Overwatch is a game full of very diverse characters, it’s like the whole premise of the game, of course they’re going to continue to add character of different sexualities. 

Apex Legends is another game that has had the misfortune of people attacking it for having a diverse set of characters. They have recently come under fire for announcing that their character “Bloodhound” is non-binary. The amount of backlash that this received is insane. You would not believe how pissed people are over this. They have once again claimed that its pandering, that they just want queer support, but Apex has other queer characters. Even before the whole Bloodhound debacle one of the legends named Gibraltar was confirmed to be gay in his character profile upon the games release. This game also has lore that goes with it, and the developer care a lot about their characters and the story. They don’t care about the backlash and have continued to confirm more and more of their characters to be part of the LGBTQ+ community.  

Something that I feel like I have to mention is the recent ordeal including Call of Duty and their fan-base. In one of the newer COD games, they added a non-binary option to choose when you are picking a gender for the story mode part of the game. Some fans were pissed to say the least, which is a bit ironic since they are famous for telling people that they’re too sensitive. Literally so many people were raving online saying that it was stupid and saying that they were going to boycott the game over it. I personally don’t care because, why would you? Its an option that you don’t have to pick, and it doesn’t affect how you play the game at all. I can see why people might think it’s pandering because Call of Duty doesn’t really have a history of being supper inclusive on that front, but I don’t really think it’s a super big deal.  

I personally think that the people who are getting so upset with things like this are just homophobic. The world is changing, we are becoming more and more accepting so of course there is going to be more representation for minority groups. Though queerbaiting and pandering are an issue, I feel like only people in the community can judge if a company is doing any of those things.