This pride month, here is a reminder to the younger queer people out there or anyone who apparently needs the refresher:
Games that depict transphobia and homophobia realistically are not bad.
Games that refuse to pull punches when dealing with triggering material are not inherently bad.
My name is Robin. I am nonbinary, 32, game dev sensitivity reader and script editor for multiple titles, but today we're talking about one dear to my heart:
What is it I can't remember?
Mare is an RPGMaker Horror game about trauma.
It is covered in trigger warnings and tells you each of them extensively. On the game page, when you start. And in the read me.
Horror games about trauma will depict trauma. Feels self explanatory, no?
Well, last night, someone went across my sister's social media pages, telling her to die, because she depicted transphobia in the game.
Some major spoilers, but they'll be brief.
At the climax of the game, the Pov shifts to show that the events of the game transpired due to a suicide attempt by a transwoman named Chiyo.
In this brief gameplay segment, you have the option to interact with her PC where you can see online hate she has received, one of which is "a tranny is still a tranny".
This segment was co-written by myself and fully vetted and approved unanimously by all of us, a team composing of multiple queer and trans individuals. We are all horror fans and the realistic depiction of our struggles and the abuse we face was cathartic, but as a result, we also made it clear to not interact with the game if you could not handle heavy subject matter.
This was, ironically, the tamest version of the scene I suggested but the best one, I believe.
I should note, this scene is five hours in. After multiple child deaths, suicides, abuse, etc.
But someone came to my sister, @zmakesgames and told her she should die for including a Trans main character and portraying that they deal with transphobia.
If you don’t find this type of media cathartic, that's okay, but you don't have the right to police those of use who do, especially when it's coming from an ally inspired in part by listening to the struggles of her older sibling and friends and trying to help give them a voice.
If you can not handle triggering content in your media, do not engage with media that contains those triggers, but it is never, ever acceptable to stalk or tell a dev to kill themselves because you willingly engaged with media you knew would be harmful to yourself.
If you got through this, hi, @zmakesgames is the kindest person I know and all her games are a flavor of rainbow because she is also a lesbian. Please support your queer game devs this June and all year.
