Temple prof’s ‘Queer Gaming History’ retrospective to be displayed at Berlin museum

For the past 13 years, Temple University professor Adrienne Shaw has been tracking LBGTQ representation in videogames, going as far back as late 1980s interactive fiction games like Moonmist.

Now Shaw – creator of the LGBTQ Game Archive – has joined a group of curators working to make history with the first art exhibit focused on LGBTQ culture in videogames, which will open Dec. 13 at Berlin’s Schwules Museum.

But the curation efforts won’t end there: A Kickstarter campaign is hoping to raise around $29,000 to create a digital and print catalog of the exhibit.

https://twitter.com/adrishaw/status/1043334084838215680

“It was really important for people who can’t make it all the way to Berlin to make a catalog of the core content,” Shaw told the Inquirer.

A lesson learned from her documentation efforts, Shaw told Technical.ly in 2016, is that representation over time has remained surprisingly consistent in its portrayal of LGBTQ characters.

“There’s been an increase in the number of examples, but there’s not really an increase in the kind or the quality of those examples,” Shaw said. “Pretty consistently white men are represented. It’s pretty consistently that trans people tend to be used as the butt of a joke with very rare exceptions.”