Happy Bi Visibility Day to one and all! I’ll be celebrating this September 23rd in style at EGX in Birmingham, making this a doubly exciting day, which got me thinking that I wanted to write a blog about the intersection of two subjects close to my heart: bisexuality and gaming.
Bisexual Gaming History
I’ve been doing a lot of research into LGBT+ history in gaming recently, which has unearthed seams of interesting information I never knew before. For example, the first appearance of a canonically bisexual character in a video game was in 1992 in Ultima VII - making the “B” in LGBT+ the last letter to get represented in a video game (G, L, and T making their debuts in '85, '86, and '88, respectively). Perhaps to make up for our late arrival at the table, the first ever LGBT+ player character in a video game was a bisexual man (Curtis of 1996’s Phantasmagoria 2), arguably the most underrepresented LGBT+ identity in gaming. And the first ever same-sex marriage option in video games occurred in Fallout 2 in 1998, with bisexual characters Davin and Miria both happy to marry a player character of either sex.
Best Bisexual Games
I’ve also been thinking about some of my overall favourite representations of bisexuality in games. I’ve played a lot over the years, watched even more let’s plays, and gone out of my way to find out about how LGBT+ characters have made their presence known. From this overwhelming amount of data, I’ve identified four games that I want to highlight as either getting bisexuality very right, or just going above and beyond to represent bisexual identities and experiences.
1. The Sims
The Sims has always been somewhat ahead of the curve in LGBT+ recognition: the series introduced civil partnerships in 2004; same-sex marriages in 2009; and opened up gender customisation, allowing for trans and non-binary characters, in 2016 - putting the franchise well ahead of many real-life countries for LGBT+ rights. In the midst of all this, it’s easy to forget that their bisexual recognition has always been strong: since the very first game came out in 2000, technically speaking every character in The Sims has been bisexual, with everyone happy to couple up with anyone of an appropriate age, with emotional compatibility the most important factor in finding partners for your Sims. Even after The Sims 2 introduced a hidden mechanic allowing for gendered romantic attraction, everybody has remained bi to some extent. In a society that still tends to assume heterosexuality as the default, it’s refreshing to see a fictional universe that instead positions degrees of bisexuality as the standard state for its inhabitants.
2. Life is Strange
The first two games in the Life is Strange franchise are popular for the romantic relationships between the three female leads: Max, Chloe, and Rachel. But what I want to draw attention to in particular is the often overlooked nuance with which bisexuality is represented in the franchise. The majority of Chloe’s emotionally significant relationships are with women, but she is obviously attracted to men as well, at least physically; while Rachel’s situation is the inverse, sharing a deep attraction with Chloe but seeming to prefer dating men most of the time. Max has romantic options with both Chloe and Warren, and can downplay either in favour of the other or give them both equal attention, leaving it up to the player how far to take either relationship while making it clear that Max sees romantic potential with both. It’s a huge acknowledgement that, rather than being a one-size-fits-all deal, bisexuality encompasses a wide spectrum of sexual and romantic attractions.
3. Dishonored
Many RPG franchises give you the option to choose your character’s gender and then role-play their sexuality however you want, by choosing from a line-up of possible love interests. This trail was notably blazed by studios like BioWare and Bethesda, but it’s becoming something of an industry standard. Canonically LGBT+ player characters, however, are much rarer. Appreciate, then, the Dishonored franchise’s playable characters, two of whom are canonically bisexual women. Billie Lurk’s bisexuality, hinted at from her initial appearance in the first game’s The Knife of Dunwall DLC, is directly stated in her audio diary in Dishonored 2: “I've loved a number of women, and even a couple of men, but I've never loved anyone like my Deirdre”. Meanwhile, Emily Kaldwin’s love interest, Wyman, never appears on-screen, and their gender was deliberately left unspecified by the writers, allowing the player to fill in the blanks. If the unmissable in-universe possibility of Emily being in a relationship with a man or a woman isn’t evidence of canonical bisexuality, I don’t know what is.
4. Monster Prom
While the other games on this list are all great examples of bi visibility in gaming, it’s hard to deny that bisexual women enjoy far greater canonical representation than their male counterparts. Not so in Monster Prom, which takes care to offer a balanced mix of genders and identities in its cast of canonically pansexual characters. This is important because not only, for example, are punky short-haired Amira, party girl Polly, hipster Liam, and slender pretty-boy Oz all bisexual, but so too are spoiled rich girl Miranda, grungy hunk Brian, and ultra-jock Scott, tapping into aesthetics of bisexuality (and bisexual masculinity in particular) that would usually be ignored in favour of more recognisable stereotypes. It also can’t be overstated how important it is (to me at least, and I suspect to a lot of other people) to see a very LGBT+-oriented game where opposite-sex relationships between bisexuals are treated with equal validity as same-sex relationships, and not sidelined as lesser examples of queer identity. I mean, I love you Dream Daddy, but c’mon, let us decide whether to flirt with Mary as well?
The Future of Bisexuality in Gaming
While writing this, it’s really hit me how little representation there is of bisexual men in contemporary gaming compared to bisexual women. While female bisexual characters tend to be fairly overt, the identity of bisexual males is often relegated to a single throwaway line of dialogue (Javier in The Walking Dead: A New Frontier), or all implicit and only clarified post-facto by the creator (Jacob in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate). The Borderlands franchise is a classic example: while there are many LGBT+ characters and I’m not at all complaining about its inclusiveness, it strikes me how only Mad Moxxi makes frequent references to her bisexual attractions, while the bisexuality of male characters Axxton and Mr Torgue is only really referred to in their absence when others talk about them. Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V would probably be one of the best examples of bisexual men in games were he not also a depraved and violent psychopath, though it is refreshing that his sexuality is never either the proof or the cause of his awful deeds. What Remains of Edith Finch gives a hugely sympathetic portrayal of bisexual man Lewis, but I cannot recommend anything so heartbreakingly tragic becoming the benchmark for bi men in gaming.
The upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey looks promising, with twin protagonists Alexios and Kassandra both given the same romantic options with men and women alike, in-keeping with the Ancient Greek setting of the game. And with little yet known about the details of Life is Strange 2, is it too much to hope that it will do for bi men what the first game did for bi women? Probably - and I’m actually not wanting it to be just a gender-flipped rehash of the original - though there’s no reason you can’t have a queer love story in there just because the focus is elsewhere; in fact, that could be quite a progressive development in itself.
While the games industry, when viewed as a terrifying gestalt entity, hasn’t yet fully grasped all the concepts of bisexuality, I think it’s fair to say we’ve at least arrived now. Bisexual women are being given agency all over the place and taking centre stage in their own stories, which is a huge deal when you think about how recently the concept of female bisexuality was primarily being marketed to titillate (hypothetically straight and male) gamers. I do hope that bisexual men manage to catch up soon, although having at least two members of the Assassin’s Brotherhood on your team has got to be a strong starting point.
To summarise: play Monster Prom! Thank you for coming to my 2018 TED Talk.
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