Here Are The 10 Best Gay-Themed Video Games

Looking for a fun time? We’ve gathered some of our favorite video games with queer content here for you to browse.

Now before you get all bent out of shape: yes, we know there are far more than 10 great gay video games out there.

Which ones did we miss? Tell us your favorites in the comments and we’ll reconsider our ranking if a consensus emerges.

1. The Last of Us

It’s been said that zombie stories are allegories for American racial anxieties, but it would be interesting to examine zombie games and movies for subtext about sexual orientation. There’s no need for subtext with The Last of Us and Left Behind, which have explicitly queer characters, frankly depicted and without leaning on stereotypes.

2. Mass Effect and Dragon Age

It’s hard to think of two game franchises that did a better job of handling LGBT love stories. Bioware developed both, and did a magnificent job of giving players options to fall in love with characters of the same gender. As an added bonus, Dragon Age features a great trans character, and also lets you create your own characters with a wide range of gender expressions. Bioware also produced a KOTOR game with a lesbian character named Juhani.

3. Final Fantasy XIV

The latest installment of FF finally lets you craft same-sex relationships. About time, considering just how campy and gay some of those bosses are. This is a far cry from Final Fantasy VII, which featured what might be a pretty problematic depiction of gays in a hot tub.

“Why should there be restrictions on who pledges their love or friendship to each other?” said producer Naoki Yoshida.

4. Succulent

Suck a popsicle. That’s it. That’s all you do in this game. And yet it’s still oddly mesmerizing, with a hunky man in his underwear drawing you closer and closer as his frozen treat melts. Meanwhile, the sexy fellows behind him gyrate and rub themselves, until it’s too late to pull back and you discover that these homogenous gay body types are really a curse.

5. Hurt me Plenty

Created by Robert Yang, who also made Succulent, this game lets you simulate a consensual BDSM experience. You meet a sex partner, negotiate your terms, slap his ass around until it’s jiggly and red, and then engage in after-care. As an added bonus, if you have the right hardware, you can control the game with gestures, actually swatting your hand back and forth as though there’s a butt hovering right there in front of you.

6. Mount Your Friends

In this game, a bunch of floppy marionette-like figures wiggle around and try to climb on top of each other to make a pyramid.

Of course, they’re wearing just speedos, and their genitals are plainly obvious, swinging back and forth. Hot.

7. Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Well, duh. Gay is right in the title. This is an add-on to GTA IV, and it’s a chance to play in a slightly more rainbow-filled world of bad-behavior.

Tony is the naughty gay nightclub-owning member of the crime family we all know and love from GTA IV, and so the plot dovetails nicely with the main game.

You play as Gay Tony’s bodyguard, driving around and shooting people and blowing stuff up in pursuit of a cache of diamonds.

8. Final Fight

A vintage fighting game from Capcom features a lady named Poison in a sexy slinky outfit. For a long time, producers said that it didn’t matter whether the character of Poison was male or female, but she’s popped up in more games since then, and they’ve had to figure out a more specific backstory for her.

Now producer Yoshinori Ono has confirmed that Poison has transitioned from male to female. Her latest appearance is in Ultra Street Fighter IV.

9. My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant

A cute point and click adventure game, this game features lots of chiseled torsos and massages. You get to click around a futuristic spacey world and gaze lovingly on men’s nearly-naked bodies. You can even unlock a special mode in which all of the characters are in their underwear. It looks like Space Ace with all the rippling muscles, but plays like a Sierra game — perfect!

 

10. RuPaul‘s Drag Race: Dragopolis

The superstar queens from the TV show appear in this strangely captivating little iPhone game that’s actually a bunch of drag-themed mini games. You bounce balls around a grid, collect power-ups (wigs, beads, outfits, etc) and read the villainous Apocalypstik (played by Mimi Imfurst) to filth.

 

matt baume

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The Art of Romance

A collection of romantic expressions from our art and photography portfolios last year.

read more

Christopher Harrity

www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/art/2015/02/14/art-romance

A Gay Dad's Open Letter to the School Censoring a Mural of a Kiss

The kiss. For some reason it, and the experience of giving and getting one, is a completely integrated aspect of the high school experience. While puckers may have been planted in earlier years, it is the high school ones that create the milestones to adulthood, the firsts we will remember our entire lives and, in truth, the magic of our adolescence.

One depiction of such a kiss is not folding harmoniously into the tapestry of its school’s life, however. Last week it caused controversy. Kaela Wilton is a 16-year-old student at Onoway Jr./Sr. High School in Alberta, Canada. For an art project, approved by her art teacher and the school principal, she depicted two young men in an affectionate kiss. After its unveiling and subsequent complaints, the school covered the mural and would not allow it to be seen.

They are now deliberating on what to do.

I know what to do: I am writing them a letter.

Dear Onoway Jr./Sr. High School officials,

I am a gay dad, the father of two 12-year-old boys. Next year they will be in a school such as yours. I dearly hope that in that school there is a mural on the wall exactly like the one that Kaela Wilton has created for you.

I write that not as one who is wildly enthusiastic for public displays of affection, nor as one who is anxious to encourage potentially sexually inappropriate behavior amongst teens. I have set standards for my sons in both of those areas, and my expectation is that they will adhere to them.

Kaela’s mural is a gentle image of young affection and blossoming adulthood. While its depiction might make some feel that it makes such gestures too visible, I would remind them that the audience observing it is participating in school dances, first dates, landmark crushes and unforgettable romantic moments on its own. The image, in terms of sexual content, stays appropriately underneath a PG-13 level.

The value of the image far outweighs any offense to even the most overreacting sensibilities.

When I was 17 I buried my instinctual longing for same-sex affection deep inside myself. It was taboo to be gay, and even though my feelings told me that that was exactly what I was, I consciously suppressed it. I suppressed it to the point that I reached a suicidal crisis point.

I will never forget first witnessing a same-sex kiss. I was on a trip into Los Angeles to look at prospective colleges for the future and was parking on the streets of Hollywood. A man was saying goodbye to his partner and, without giving it a second thought, gave him a quick, affectionate kiss on the mouth.

My reaction? The reaction from a young, closeted gay man? I laughed out loud.

It was not a laugh out of derision or condemnation. It was not a laugh because the kiss was funny. It was a laugh because it took me completely off guard, and even though my psyche was bombarded with same-sex attractions, seeing it displayed was completely foreign, and I laughed in the shock of it.

The man shot me a look of disgust, communicating a sense of violation. He was right.

Years later, and on many streets, during different relationships with men I wanted to kiss, I experienced karmic retribution for that laugh. As I wished to innocently reach out and kiss the person I was with, the homophobic world around me rose up and invaded my psyche. I could not give my innocent kiss, because some would react badly around us, and many would react as I did, with laughter, having never seen such a gesture before. Or I could kiss my man anyway and make a statement, a bold move in the face of a disapproving public. As Panti Bliss pointed out in a recent TEDtalk, that option is fine for activism, but my desire to kiss was not to make a political statement but to be romantic, so to make a bold move would ruin my intention. The romance would be gone.

The first kiss I shared with a man was not until I was 21. It was in a disco hidden down a secret alley and populated with only gay men. He was a lovely, young, British man with a perfect smile and a dancing glint in his eye. He put his arms around me and gently kissed my lips, and no one around us made us feel ashamed. It was a beautiful experience that I deserved. It is an experience that your gay students deserve, and they should not have to retreat to a secret and hidden enclave in which to experience it.

Whether they are LGBT or not, your students have been inundated with opposite-sex kisses their entire lives. If not played out in front of them in person, such events are commonplace in all available media, even in commercials, including during children’s programming. They have likely not seen even a single display of same-sex romantic expression.

This mural can change that. For your students who have same-sex attractions boiling up within them, such an affirmation can be lifesaving. It gives them and others the opportunity to witness something warm yet rare as normal and accepted. It allows them to embrace the parts of themselves that they have kept secret and removes a dark excuse for self-harm.

Those who are shocked at the display can react to the unfeeling stone wall so that in the future, when they are in front of real, honest-to-goodness humans, they can react with appropriate support, or at least rehearse how to keep their disdain to themselves.

Ms. Wilton has created something of value, in both its intention and its execution. It should not be kept hidden but unleashed to inspire hearts, love and acceptance. What could be more important than that?

My sons are on the brink of discovering who they are and what deep instincts drive them. If they were going to your school and they were finding that their instincts were heterosexual, I am sure they could look around and see plenty of public displays of affection between other guys and their girlfriends and feel, “Oh, yeah, that is me and what I want.” If it turns out that one of them is actually gay and he looks around and sees no one like him, I would hope that he could gaze upon a mural in one of your hallways and think, “OK, there I am,” and walk on to class with hope in his heart and a dream that a painting on the wall promised him was his to fulfill.

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Follow us on Twitter @ JandJDad.

www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-watson/a-gay-dads-open-letter-to_4_b_6647686.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices