Milestones in queer video games

The point-and-click adventure "Caper in the Castro" is commonly considered the first LGBTQ game. The protagonist is the lesbian detective Tracker McDyke, who is looking for her friend Tessy LaFemme, a drag queen who has been kidnapped. C.M. Ralph's game was free, but with a request to donate to AIDS Help.

An example of forgotten and missing games is "GayBlade." Ryan Best developed the fantasy role-playing game, in which, as a gay man, a lesbian or a drag queen, you are armed with condoms, tear gas and false fingernails to save Empress Nelda, a character reminiscent of Princess Zelda. The opponents are not mythical creatures, but homophobic TV preachers, Nazis and other hillbillies.

In the science fiction detective game "The Orion Conspiracy," Devlin McCormack tries to investigate the death of his son Danny. His investigations lead him to a space station where he discovers something that he didn't want to: His son was gay. As Danny's boyfriend was also killed, Devlin himself comes under suspicion of murder.

The role-playing game allowed players to develop their own fighting skills and relationships. "Fallout 2" was the first mainstream title that allowed a same-sex marriage. Six years before that, players could also marry whoever they wanted in the 1992 Game Boy role-playing game "Great Greed."

We find ourselves in the 22nd Century. Humans travel through the universe, create alliances and of course deal with alien foes. At the start of "Mass Effect," the player chooses whether he wants to lead a male or female Commander Shepard into battle, and can choose to begin same-sex relationships as well.

The queer game designer Merritt Kopas developed "Lim" in 2012. It's an indie game about force. The player tries to navigate a block through a labyrinth. During this it gets attacked by other blocks and even sometimes forced outside of the labyrinth, so that it has to find the way to the goal in rainbow colors, blinking outside the field.

The young American Kaitlin Greenbrair returns from a semester abroad in "Gone Home" — but no one is there. Neither the parents nor her younger sister. Now she has to find out from letters, diaries and other clues what happened. In doing so, Kaitlin discovers intimate details about the love lives of her relatives.

Fans of the shooter "Overwatch" consider all characters queer. In the game, sexual orientation doesn't play a role. But it does in the fan forums. The developers Blizzard confirmed that some figures are LGBTQ heroes. One of them is Tracer (left), who kissed her friend in one of the game's comics.

Robert Yang's first experimental "Radiator" game about gay life popped up in 2015, followed by a second one two years later. Further episodes are supposed to follow. They explore "gay stuff" such as marriage problems and explicit sex games. While sexual adventures in other games are generally film sequences, players here are required to decide on how the action unfolds.

In the first game, "Life is Strange" (2015), a storm directs the action, and a lesbian love affair is implied. "Before the Storm" is a prequel; it takes place three years before the storm. The player can influence whether the relationship between Chloe and Rachel stays friendly or becomes something more.

The "Dad Dating Simulator" leads the player into a world where homosexuality is totally normal. The core of it is about a gay single dad dating other single fathers. There is no discrimination in it, and features a touching father-daughter relationship, as well as liaisons with men who could hardly be more different.

The follow-up of the survival adventure takes place a few years after the prequel. The teenager Ellie has become a fearless young woman who takes over as the main character who sneaks or shoots her way through a post apocalyptic world. Not much more about the story of the lesbian action hero is known yet.