Fitting in and feeling comfortable has never been easy. Struggling to find an identity, surrounded by people who just do not understand, always feeling like the odd one out – it’s a challenge to find a place of true belonging.
Cal Poly’s Gender Inclusive Gaming, also known as GIG, aims to provide this type of safe space for people who feel out of place. Formed in 2021, the club members value their tight-knit community and try to provide an open and comfortable environment for anyone looking to join. And it’s not only for gamers.
“Creating a space where anyone who identifies as anything who plays anything from the cozy to the psychologically terrifying is something that GIG welcomes with open arms,” Wafiqa Farhana, a junior computer science major and president of GIG, said. “It can be difficult to find people to connect with if you feel like you have interests too niche or an identity too ostracized.”
Farhana said creating a safe environment for oppressed groups is a key motto in the club. In the gaming community specifically, they make up a much smaller percentage compared to other “standard” groups like men and women. In a recent survey by GLAAD, a non-profit LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, less than 2% of all games feature LGBTQ+ characters or storylines, while about one in five American gamers identify in that way. Additionally, GLAAD found that 72% of LGBTQ+ gamers say that seeing game characters with their sexual orientation or gender identity “makes them feel better about themselves.” When looking at the demographic of those ages 13-17, that number increases to 78%.
Bowie Cowan, a freshman public health major who serves as the publicist for the club, said GIG leans more towards casual gaming and does not revolve around one specific game, unlike the other gaming clubs on campus. Additionally, Farhana said that one of the more fun and engaging aspects of the club is PowerPoint parties, where a prompt is put on the screen such as romance or horror. Participants can then have an open discussion about the prompt, whether they have an interesting story about it or can recommend a game in that genre.
“It’s just nice to have this niche thing you’re into and then people will like to listen to you present and talk about it,” Farhana said. “So the club’s like an umbrella for everyone who likes an interest in anything compared to other clubs who are very niche.”
However, GIG continues to struggle in terms of getting as much respect and fairness as other clubs on campus. Cowan, who attended the Esports council meeting, remembers the atmosphere of the room when GIG came up to present.
“They were looked down upon and it was really hurtful to see so many people laughing or talking and I was in the crowd. I could hear people talking bad about the club and as someone who was interested in the club, it was really disheartening,” Cowan said.
The feeling of exclusion and not being on the same level causes many members in the club to feel “not normal,” according to Farhana. And the historical exclusion of LGBTQ+ members and other oppressed groups specifically in gaming has been continues to be an issue due to the lack of representation and involvement. Although Valorant and Overwatch have made strides towards resolving this issue by releasing nonbinary playable characters, the state of gaming continues to be male-dominated.
“In my opinion, fixing a lot of this exclusivity you see in gaming culture needs to come from the gaming industry itself,” Sarah Kula, a sophomore architectural engineering major who has been a member of the club for the past two years, said. “Normalizing that gaming isn’t just a male-only activity.”
Kula said the gaming industry can be something that breaks down barriers and creates connections when it historically has not. However, it does require these spaces to be safe, which ultimately comes from systemic change in the industry itself.
According to an article by Forbes, their 2020 Global Gaming Gender Balance Scorecard found that out of 144 executives in the Top 14 companies, 121 were men. If the important people regarding gaming companies mostly consist of men, it creates a sense of exclusivity and lack of representation for those groups who are not men, Kula said.
According to Cowan, the gaming industry is largely influenced by society as a whole since society sees the industry as a subsection of society overall. However, Cowan does believe they are two separate entities and that one does not move forward if the other does not. And while there has been more positive change towards these minority groups of gender and sexuality, Cowan said, society still faces some barriers.
The Center for American Progress found that more than one in three LGBTQ+ Americans faced discrimination of some kind in 2020, including more than three in five transgender Americans. While change can be recognized and put forward, there still remains a lot of progress to be made.
But GIG presents an environment for those who wish to be included regardless of what they are worried about.
“That shared fear is why the space exists in the first place is because we wanted to create a space where that doesn’t need to be a concern anymore,” Kula said.
For those interested, join their Discord server here.