Video: How to make your games more inclusive and LGBTQ-friendly

"Talk to other people. Don't just have your one lesbian friend that you base everything off of."

- Developer Zoe Quinn encourages developers to talk to as many people as possible in order to design games that reflect the breadth and depth of human experience. Drawing on the expertise of game designers, writers, critics and scholars, this GDC 2014 panel offers suggestions on how developers can, in a number of small and easy ways, work LGBTQ characters and themes into their work. Each panelist -- Samantha Allen, Mattie Brice, Todd Harper, Christine Love and Zoe Quinn -- offers their own practical advice to developers looking to make their games more inclusive and more representative of the world at large. One of the biggest takeaways seems to be that when players -- queer or not -- encounter queer-friendly characters and themes in your games, they open their eyes to new possibilities that will add up to gradual but important change over time. It's an excellent talk that every developer should see, so we've gone ahead and embedded the free video of "How to Subversively Queer Your Work" above. You can also watch it here on the GDC Vault.

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