Adrienne Shaw
Adrienne Shaw is a game studies scholar and Associate Professor at Temple University. She is known for her work on queer theory and LGBTQ representation in video games, She has a wealth of research published all of which has been very informative.
Counting Queerness in Games: Trends in LGBTQ Digital Game Representation, 1985‒2005
This is a meticulous study of queer representation in video games between the years 1985-2005.
Contained within is a wealth of resources and data that has helped me build a much clearer understanding of how the games industry has developed and grown from its inception. It has detailed graphs showing the exact numbers of queer characters in gaming.
I found her work incredibly helpful as it’s very similar in nature to the subject of my essay and helped my create a factual basis for my work. By seeing the exact number of queer characters demonstrated I was given a very clear picture of the growth of the industry as a whole.
Representations of Queer Identity in Games from 2013–2015
This was a very informal journal detailing statistics of positive representation between the years of 2011 – 2016.
It had a wealth of resources and charts detailing the sudden growth of representation mainly due to the growing indie markets.
This journal helped me understand how the indie gaming market has helped change the nature of representation in gaming by influencing the medium as a whole.
It also showed me how the indie market has given the opportunity to independent developers to tell their own stories. By giving them the tools to create their own games, the independent market has created room for queer developers to create there own positive representation.
It certainly paints a much brighter future for queer representation in video games and will help me end the essay on a much more positive note.
citations
Counting Queerness in Games: Trends in LGBTQ Digital Game Representation, 1985‒2005
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/9754/2611 Adrienne Shaw
2018 05 28
Representations of Queer Identity in Games from 2013–2015
Presented at the 2017 Digital Games Research Association conference in Melbourne, Australia
2-6 July, 2017
http://digra2017.com/static/Extended%20Abstracts/12_DIGRA2017_EA_Cole_Queer_Identity.pdf Adrienne Shaw
Queer representation in Digital games 