London Gaymers: Where the LGBT+ community come together to game.
London Gaymers were recently featured in a brief article on IGN Germany. You can read the original article here (in German), but we’ve given you an approximate translation below!
People who don’t quite fit into the mold of conventional society, don’t always have it easy. Even when they can’t see their counterparts, LGBT+ gamers are exposed to insults on a daily basis.
And the abuse doesn’t always end up being directed at specific individuals. In multiplayer games, words like “homo”, “lesbo”, “gay” are still often used in a negative context to demotivate and harass other players. Some even think words such as “faggot” are acceptable. Spoiler; they’re not.
There are now groups around the world where LGBT+ people can peacefully play video games together. One example is London Gaymers which was founded in 2012.
Today the group has more than 1,700 members of which around 900 are active on their Discord server.
Founder, Curtis Free told us that for a shy, young gay man that’d just finished university, gaming was still fairly niche and not part of a typical LGBT culture which meant it was very hard to connect with other LGBT groups.
When he heard that there groups around the world where LGBT+ gamers were coming together, he wanted to see what could be done in London. Curtis joined Reddit he found a group led by Matt Hardwick, and together they started to bring the idea to other social networks.
Today, members don’t just meet and play online. There are regular events and meetups which have anywhere from 50–300 members participating.
Curtis himself loves DOTA2 and Overwatch, but one of the most popular games is World of Warcraft with London Gaymers having one of the largest LGBT+ guilds. The Nintendo Switch has also gotten so big, that there are now dedicated Nintendo nights to deal with the demand.
Of course London Gaymers have had to deal with trolls, but the trolls have no easy game. The group have programmed bots in their chat servers to help deal with them.
The London Gaymers is committed to making sure that everyone can enjoy playing together without fear of homophobic insults and agitation.
We say: Perfect, and keep up the good work.
Original Author: Kathleen Hellbarth, IGN Germany
