LGBTQ Game Characters are Making a Major Push — are Korean Devs Behind the Times?
The image you see above isn’t the product of fan art or a ‘shipping’ Tumblr. It is the mascot of one of the biggest games on the planet, Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, getting a sweet Christmas kiss from her significant other.
Slipping it non-chalantly into their newest Christmas comic, the panel confirms that our favorite chrononaut, Tracer, is in a relationship with a woman.
It’s been a pretty big half-decade for LGBTQ characters in the US nerd-industry as well as media in general: Iceman is gay. Sulu from the new Star Trek is Gay. Korra: the Avatar is Bi. Nissa and Chandra of Magic the Gathering are shaping up to be female romantic interests.
A tide is clearly turning when it comes to the representation and normalization of different gender and sexualities in video games. A tide that seems to have been completely missed when it comes to the Korean game industry. The silence is pretty much deafening here and it’s a little hard to tell where it’s coming from. Talking to some of our Korean co-workers, as far as we can tell, there are no LGBTQ characters in Korean games. When you compare that to the Japanese game industry, which has a long history of including gay characters (problematic as those representations have been) it’s even more stark.
So let’s explore this issue together: the past and possible future of LGBTQ representation in Korea and the Korean game industry.
The Past and Present of LGBTQ representation in Korea
It’s not difficult to lump the past and present of the LGBTQ scene in Korea into the same category — at least for a short article like this. You see, the strides made in Korea in the past 10–15 years have been so enormous that they virtually dwarf everything that came before. Like many other countries, Korea has had an up and down relationship with the acceptance of LGBTQ lives and spaces. Some historical periods seem to embrace it, some reject it. Unfortunately, gay history and culture in Korea, from around 1850 to 1990, is kind of a black hole. Obviously it’s not that gay culture didn’t exist, but with Japanese occupation, a war, and a suddenly divided country — accounts written or oral are difficult to come by. What filled the vacuum seemed to be a generally accepted attitude that homosexuals just…didn’t exist. Like a weird rumor that simply couldn’t be true.
What changed was a subtle but consistent increase in LGBTQ spaces, literature, and media in the 90’s, coinciding with the “opening up” of Korea [before which, outside travel was forbidden for most of the populace]. All of this subtle change culminated in a coming-out story that rivaled US media darling Ellen.
In 2000, Korean Comedian Hong Seok Cheon came out publicly and caused an absolute fire storm.
His story is representative of LGBTQ acceptance in Korea in general. Mr. Hong, initially completely black-listed, has trudged back from infamy to become one of the most successful restaurateurs in the country. Korean media has followed suite with several movies focusing on L & G relationships (BTQ… not so much just yet) many of which are AAA releases.
So in terms of media, here we are. A burgeoning queer culture in the public sphere and in general media, but an absolute absence in a massive sector — the games industry.
The Present and Possible Future of LGBTQ Representation in the Korean Game Industry
Because the Korean media in general is only very recently opening up to LGBTQ representations, it’s maybe a little premature to say that the absence of diverse characters in the Korean game industry is it’s own problem. But there’s a lot going on here that’s reminiscent of the US and Japanese industries in the 80s and 90s:
- The Korean gaming industry is generally very male-orientated and very nerdy.
- Because of this, most of the games, especially on mobile, are meant to titillate and overwhelm rather than tell an intricate story.
- Speaking of story, most Korean games tend to lack a coherent one.
In this backdrop, the picture becomes a lot more clear: we’re not likely to get any nuanced depictions of LGBTQ characters in Korean games any time soon. So far this year we haven’t seen any Korean games on the horizon that truly focus on character-to-character relationships at all not even to mention Queer characters.
But…maybe all it takes is for one brave developer to make a breakthrough. Think about it. The first game to have a truly heart-felt inclusion of L/G relationships was Mass Effect from…2007. It’d be pretty disingenuous to jump all over the Korean game industry without recognizing that the US has been pretty darn late to the party. In either case, GG awaits a game industry that tells ALL stories!
