Cerise Magazine

I first learned of LesbianGamers.com through the Iris Gaming Network forums. From there I started reading their blog and occasionally popping into the forums. LesbianGamers.com is run by Angela Simpson and Tracy Whitelaw and they are based on the Gold Coast of Australia. Tracy Whitelaw, the PR Representative, talks to me about this new site made by and for lesbian gamers.

Regina Buenaobra: How long have you been into gaming?

Tracy Whitelaw: I have been into gaming since my dad first brought me home a Binatone when I was a kid. Since then I had various Space Invaders, Game & Watch and Pong games until moving onto old cassette games on the Commodore Vic 20 and Amstrad CPC464. The first console I bought was the Sega Master System and since then I’ve had pretty much all of them to where I am now with an Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, [and] PSP.

RB: How did LesbianGamers.com get its start?

TW: Lesbian Gamers came about because myself and my partner Angela Simpson (who does all the daily running and content for the site) realized there wasn’t an overt lesbian gaming site on the web. We have been involved with Thumbbandits.com for many years and that focused on females in gaming, but we wanted something for the lesbians out there.

RB: Do you work on the site full time or is this a labor of love for you?

TW: My partner Angela Simpson works on the site almost full time and it’s a labor of love for her. She works on it everyday and doesn’t get paid to do so… yet. It’s basically something she believes in very strongly and so she puts in the hours. She is the one who creates most of the content, organizes the creative aspects of it and does a lot of the research and behind the scenes stuff.

RB: What do you do for a day job?

TW: I work for a technology company that creates advanced artificial intelligence for consumers. I am officially known as the Team Leader of the Knowledge Engineers. We write extensive character content, are involved in psychological research and of course all the tech stuff that comes with using software to create artificial intelligence.

RB: Why do you think it’s important to have a lesbian-oriented gaming site and community?

TW: I think it’s important for lesbians to feel safe and comfortable in an online community. We actually started ThumbBandits.com for exactly that reason - there were a large group of us who were part of a predominantly male gaming forum and we were given a ‘ladies only’ section. We then found out the male mods were in there reading everything and discussing it. So, I think as far as lesbians go, this is even more important. In a culture where lesbians are often overlooked or there for male titillation, it’s nice to know you’re surrounded by people who are in the same situation as you.

RB: Do you consider yourself to be a feminist/pro-feminist?

TW: Yes I would say I’m definitely for equality for women. I wouldn’t consider myself an activist, but I’m a proud lesbian who believes that women should be equal to men in all areas, particularly those that are lacking at the moment.

RB: How does this perspective impact your work on LesbianGamers.com?

TW: Lesbian Gamers.com is a very fun site. It’s there to be entertaining and to provide an area for lesbians to hang out and chat about games and anything else they feel like. It’s main focus is to be a little tongue in cheek at times and not always take itself too seriously. Yes, there are important barriers to be broken when it comes to lesbians in gaming, but we don’t have to always be pushing an agenda, gaming is about fun and that’s how it should be.

RB: What is the approach you’ve decided to take with LesbianGamers.com?

TW: We want people to find it interesting, informative and fun. Ideally, we just want the larger monopolies out there to recognize that there’s a sizable number of females involved in games and a good percentage of these are lesbians. If we can find interesting information on lesbians in games and share this with our visitors, then that’s great. Overall though, it has to be fun and has to keep entertaining people. A lot of our content is written with a humorous slant at times and that’s important to us.

RB: How did the video blogging show on AfterEllen.com come about?

TW: We are blessed to have that show! We’ve been long time supporters of what they do at AfterEllen.com and thankfully Sarah Warn, the editor, saw our site and liked what we were doing. She invited us to do the weekly video blog and we are adoring being able to do it.

RB: Do you find that you have a different audience on AfterEllen.com than you have on LesbianGamers.com? If so, how are they different?

TW: We don’t really find there’s a huge difference between the audience we have on AfterEllen and on Lesbian Gamers. They’re all passionate about games and want to talk about them. They also are very kind and ask for advice on certain games and consoles. We have been really lucky with the support we’ve received from the video blog and we are always trying to keep it interesting. In a perfect world, we would of course get some more support from the larger games developers and publishers so that we can speak about their games more on the video blog.

RB: On your blog you devote a significant number of posts to commentary and analysis of female characters in games and other media. What do you think about gender-inclusive game design? Do we need to see more of it, or is what we have now all right for everyone?

TW: There are NO excuses for not having a female playable character in all video games now. Developers should always be creating games that are gender-inclusive. We should have the option of which sex to play and regardless of the genre of game, it’s important to see a strong female character there if there’s a strong male character.

RB: What do you think about the portrayal of women characters in videogames today?

TW: I think they’re definitely getting better than they once were, but there’s still a long way to go. Lara Croft of course is both a male fantasy figure to some and feminist icon to others, but regardless of where you stand on that position, she did bring female gaming characters to the forefront of gaming and that’s a positive change. There are some strong female characters out there - Nariko from Heavenly Sword, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, and Commander Shepherd from Mass Effect.

RB: What do you think can be done to help encourage more women to enter the games industry?

TW: Most game advertising, perhaps with the exception of Nintendo DS and Wii at the moment, is aimed at young males. This is hardly conducive to encouraging females into game development. In my experience, most of the women I deal with in the games industry are PR and there’s a high proportion of men in development. That doesn’t mean there are no women, there are and it does seem to be getting better, but there’s still a huge gap. Marketing games towards males and females may help more women feel that spark of interest about getting into the games industry, but there are a ton of other factors too.

RB: What do you think of the gaming blogosphere? Do you feel like you’re a part of that community?

TW: You know, blogging is an odd world. There are some great people out there who will happily share ideas and information, advertise what you’re doing out of the goodness of their hearts and because they believe in it.. and then there are others who are jealous and just want to rip everything you say to shreds. We’ve had our dealings with both and from our perspective we’re all about fun gaming and lesbians in gaming. We’re not out to write academic papers (regardless of our own personal academic achievements), we’re out to provide something entertaining and we love sharing that with other like-minded people.

RB: What are your favorite blogs and/or who are your favorite bloggers?

TW: I like to read a lot of different blogs. I don’t always subscribe and stick with one; I float.

RB: What sort of atmosphere do the LesbianGamers.com forums have? How is it different from other gaming communities?

TW: Our forums are very laid back and social. They’re not all about gaming, although that is the original reason most women join them. They’re a fun environment for women who see gaming as part of their life, but don’t necessarily only want to talk about that. They want to mix with other women who enjoy gaming, but learn about new things too. I think it’s a very positive environment to be in.

RB: How important do you think it is to have separate spaces for women and LGBT gamers to socialize on the Internet?

TW: I think it’s very important. It’s a difficult situation because you don’t want to aim for exclusivity and most lesbians themselves would feel outraged at being excluded from other places. Still, I think it’s very important to have a safe space to be who you are and to know that you won’t be judged on that or feel ostracized for it.

RB: Women, homosexuals, and other minorities are marginalized in the gaming world, which is predominantly made up of straight males.The queer community in general has a history of marginalizing bisexuals and transgendered people. How inclusive are current gay-oriented gaming communities of people who are queer, but not homosexual? Can you talk about this issue with regard to LesbianGamers.com?

TW: It’s an interesting situation. As I said, we try to be inclusive, we actually have a few straight males who enjoy the site too and they’re not ostracized for taking part, but it is ultimately a site aimed at lesbians. Of course in the beautiful kaleidoscope world of queer diversity, it’s important to show support of anyone who falls into the bracket of queer, whether that’s bi, transgendered or anything else we can think of. We want everyone to have a say, whilst maintaining our focus on lesbian issues in gaming.

RB: What are you most passionate about as a writer on LesbianGamers.com?

TW: I am most passionate about giving people news with a lesbian slant. Whether it’s a full story on lesbian characters in games, or an amusing take on how certain characters should be a lesbian, it doesn’t matter to me. The whole point is that we talk about gaming from a lesbian perspective and are creative and entertaining for our visitors.

RB: Could you explain a little bit more about what “gaming from a lesbian perspective” means to you?

TW: Sure. For us at Lesbian Gamers, it’s about highlighting lesbian characters, strong female characters, finding examples of women who are portrayed negatively for no other reason than being a woman… all that sort of thing. Gaming from a lesbian perspective basically comes down to the obvious fact that lesbians will generally see the world through their own constructed reality, just as anyone does. So we look at games and how lesbians might view aspects of these games or characters within them.

RB: Do you have any plans you can share about the future of LesbianGamers.com?

TW: We also have a sister site named Lesbian Geek where we discuss all the geeky things that we love - RPG, Sci-Fi, Anime, Manga, Comics, Gadgets, Horror, TV/Film etc. Similar to Lesbian Gamers, we offer a place for lesbian geeks to get their daily news fix and to read about everything that’s important in the lesbian geek world. The future of LesbianGamers.com looks good, we’re getting a lot of support from the community and have been featured as a cover article in a recent Australian magazine so things are working out well in such a short space of time. Our next goal is to secure sponsorship for the site so we can work on it full time and take it to the next level.

RB: Was there anything else you’d like to discuss that we haven’t covered here?

TW: I think that’s pretty much it, but if you have any other questions for me just let me know okay? Hope that helped.

RB: Thank you so much, Tracy!