Categories of representation: Improving the discussion and depiction of diversity

Abstract

Videogames commonly represent dominant identities as a default: white, male, cisgender, heterosexual, and able-bodied. But with greater acceptance of game texts as artefacts worthy of analysis, and increased accessibility of game-tools so that marginalised creators can use the medium to tell their story, diversity in games has been increasing. Discussions around this resulting diversity often highlight whether a depiction is ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, which does not allow creators or consumers to consider identity in a nuanced way. This paper proposes six categories that can be used as lenses for examining representations when writing and analysing videogame texts: central and incidental; explicit and implicit; and fixed and player-centric. By using examples of the ways my creative output represents queerness within games, and comparing these to other existing texts, this paper demonstrates how nuanced narratives can be produced at the intersections of these categories, and how this framework can be used across multiple mediums to increase and diversify representation.