Video games have been representing LGBTQ people the same way since the ’80s

How media portrays us impacts the way people perceive us and the way we perceive ourselves. Since its inception, video games have been failing to do a good job of portraying LGBTQ individuals.

Adrienne Shaw, a professor at Temple University, is keeping tabs.

Technical.ly Philly reported on the LGBTQ Video Game Archive, Shaw’s initiative to curate LGBTQ video game content from the 1980s to the present.

She’s found that the number of LGBTQ examples have increased, but the depth and quality of characters have remained consistently poor.

(Related: Our comprehensive guide to LGBTQ resources at Philly universities).

“It’s pretty consistently white men are represented,” Shaw told Technical.ly. “It’s pretty consistently that trans people tend to be used as the butt of a joke with very rare exceptions.”