LGBTQ+ Experiences in Online Gaming Communities

By Laura E. Gillin & Margaret L. Signorella

In 2023, online games and the game industry continue to be places where women, persons of color, and LGBTQ+ persons may not be welcome – or worse, may be targets of harassment. Just a few months ago, the annual Game Developers Conference was once again a site for gender-based harassment, according to a report by Alyssa Mercante in Kotaku.

Biases and harassment in gaming aimed at members of marginalized groups are long-standing problems but reached a crisis in 2014 when an online movement known as Gamergate emerged. As Andrea Braithwaite described in her 2016 article in Social Media + Society, Gamergate began as a protest against the increasing diversity in video games and the involvement of women in the industry. Kishonna Gray and David Leonard, in their 2018 book Woke Gaming, recounted how Gamergate then grew and metastasized, partly because of concerns by some of those supposed core audience members about changes in games and the gaming environment as diverse characters and themes were added.

Substantial negative consequences for any members of marginalized groups who speak out against harassment and discrimination may ensue. Karla Mantilla described some of these repercussions in her 2015 book Gendertrolling. Feminista Jones detailed in 2016 her experiences being harassed online: “When you're a woman who speaks up about feminism, race, liberation and the like, you can expect pushback.” In the introduction to their 2017 book Queer Game Studies, Adrienne Shaw and Bonnie Ruberg reported that after Gamergate, writers and journalists who emphasized gender and sexuality issues in video games left the field or became more guarded on social media or in presentations due to the harassment.

Our research on problem behaviors in gaming was motivated by the comparative lack of attention given to sexuality- and gender-identity-based discrimination and harassment, in juxtaposition with the research emphases on misogyny and sexism.

We recruited online multiplayer game participants so that we could ask about the comments they made or heard during gaming. Respondents reported playing popular games, such as Fortnite, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft. We prompted our respondents for examples of positive and negative comments they made or heard about sexual orientation and gender identity. We defined gender identity as transgender, gender-non-conforming, or other nonbinary gender identities, to avoid confusion over how that phrase is used.

Our respondents reported that other players were making many more negative than positive comments about sexual minorities and transgender or nonbinary identities. Even though players said they made positive comments, the comments reported for other players were dominated by negative rather than positive ones.

What kinds of negative comments did our participants report hearing during gaming? We found, in general, that the negative comments tended to be insults or threats directed at a person’s sexuality or gender identity, commonly encountered slurs, general wishes of harm, and denial of a player’s identity. This gaming environment is, at best, a poor model of gaming interactions and, at worst, toxic and traumatic.

What would it take to make gaming welcoming and safe for all? Right now, the solutions are reactive rather than proactive. Anita Sarkeesian, one of the early Gamergate targets, has developed a website with a hotline to support people experiencing game and online harassment. After the 2023 Game Developers Conference, the hotline posted contact information on Twitter for those who may have been harassed or assaulted at or after the conference. Gina Neff and Rumman Chowdhury in Wired contend that technology platforms, in general, are better at handling what they call “acute abuse” but are ill-equipped to prevent or address ongoing harassment (“chronic abuse”). Neff and Chowdhury argue for systemic solutions such as platform-based tools and government policies.

Members of historically marginalized groups are at higher risk for targeting and harassment, as we documented in our report. Expecting individuals to counter antagonistic behaviors is both ineffective and unfair.

Although many LGBTQ+ players are well aware of the hostilities in online gaming, there are also welcoming gaming communities. Jenny Sundén wrote that playing with other LGBTQ+ persons was like finding a space “where you can stop pretending.” Nurturing that feeling of camaraderie within every corner of online gaming seems an action that would benefit all.

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Article details
Attitudes Toward Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Online Multiplayer Gaming Spaces
Laura E. Gillin & Margaret L. Signorella
First Published: January 23, 2023
DOI: 10.1177/00332941231153798
Psychological Reports

About the authors

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Laura E. Gillin recently earned an MEd in Human Sexuality from Widener University. She also holds a BA in psychology and a minor in gender and women’s studies from Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, and online culture. Gillin has been a member of both the American Psychological Association and Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology since 2019.

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Margaret L. Signorella, PhD, is a distinguished professor of psychology and women’s gender and sexuality studies at the Pennsylvania State University’s Brandywine campus. Her major research focus is on the development and consequences of gender and other social stereotypes. In her teaching, she emphasizes involving undergraduate students in research, the incorporation of global issues, and the use of technology. She is the co-editor (with Irene H. Frieze) of the Psychology of Women book series published by the American Psychological Association.