Dear World,
Welcome to GaymerConnect.com and the GaymerBlog.
We are a group of geeks who love to game and consider ourselves a part of the emerging gamer community, but feel like there is a lack of diversity and choice in that demographic. We know that there are many LGBTQ, women, and minority gamers out there, but they are not well represented in gaming media and culture.
This is why we are creating GaymerX and GaymerConnect.
Our goal is to provide a safe and fun place for gamers to congregate and celebrate gaming and geek culture from the prism of the LGBT, minority, and female perspectives. We respect all views and understand the viewpoints of those who are against this cause, and hope to work very hard to assuage worries and concerns that you may have, but we would love to hear from you either way!
GaymerX is important because gaming is a HUGE industry, one that is larger than movies or TV at over $11B per year spent, and yet, for example, there has never been a major release of a game that has had a gay or lesbian main protagonist, and games that have tried to provide even simple options (like Mass Effect 3) have been met with heavy protest.
We believe that there is a huge segment of LGBT, minority and female gamers who are not represented in the gaming culture well and although conventions like PAX have been extremely open minded and welcoming (and are fucking awesome), the gamer culture, overall and as a whole, is still very focused on the middle class, young white male demographic which seems to dominate all marketing and product decisions. We want to break through some of those walls, and show the true spectrum of gamers that exist. Our hope with GaymerX is not to split the LGBT, minority and female population away from the main group, but instead provide a safe space for discussion and dialog.
We also know that there are objections that some people (maybe you!) have to our Con. There is criticism that we may be excluding ourselves or, that these issues have no place in the public dialog in gaming. We feel that the fact that many of these issues have never been publicly discussed in mainstream gamer media makes GaymerX important if just for the dialogue and debate that can come with the growth of the Con. It’s also important to note that we don’t wish to impose onto the lifestyles of those who are perfectly happy with the current state of being – we are focused on supporting and educating, not forcing political statements down throats.
Thank you for your interest in helping make the world a safer, better place for all gamers. We love you and appreciate your support.
– Team GaymerConnect