The UK-based gaming magazine Gayming magazine is behind the initiative The gayming awards.

The gaming gala is to promote the games that include some form of LGBTQ representation, the founder Robin Gray tells Kulturnyheterna.

- In recent years, there have been many cases of great efforts in LGBTQ in games that have been rewarded at mainstream galas.

But then they are always put in one and the same category, the diversification category.

We are more than one compartment and our stories can not be boiled down to fit in a small box, so we started the gala, says Gray.

He adds that the representation can take different forms, but that it can be about, for example, the possibility of choosing pronouns for their game character, or that one or more of the game's characters are gay or bisexual, transsexual or queer.

Do not want to take away from the work that has already been done

The gala was organized digitally for the first time in 2021 and was well received by the audience, which consisted of 150,000 people, on social media.

The second edition of The Gayming Awards kicks off in London on April 25.

This time in physical form.

Why the gala is only arranged now in recent years has nothing to do with the fact that no one has previously worked for gender equality in the gaming world.

According to the organizer, this is a lack of an organizer until 2021.

- As long as there have been video games, efforts have been made by various groups in the industry.

Maybe we just needed to organize everything.

But the work has always been done in one way or another, says Robin Gray.

Development on the right track

As for the representation historically, it has been small.

In the study The double-edged sword of online gaming from 2021, Geena Davis examined the institute on gender in media and the Promundo-US gaming industry.

Of the 11,657 characters included in the survey, only 4 were LGBTQ, which corresponds to 0.03%.

What was examined was 684 game sequences of 15 minutes on the livestreaming service Twitch.

However, the material examined does not completely match reality, as only the largest streams and games with the largest audience have been watched.

That is the opinion of Gabrielle DeBourg, who is a method developer at Sverok, the gaming hobby association.

She notes that the numbers give a picture of the mainstream games but overlooks many smaller bets where the representation is more present.

Even small changes in games are important for representation and inclusion, according to DeBourg.

- We have a long way to go, even though it appears in larger games like Overwatch and Forza Horizon 5. But at the same time we see several smaller titles that have characters that are written as queer, and we see more games that let the player choose to be non-binary.

She continues:

- A summary wording for the whole thing is: It is good that it has gotten better, but it would be better if it was good.