LGBTQ game history is fleeting — that’s why curation is necessary

In December, the world’s first exhibit of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) digital games history will open at the Schwules Museum in Berlin. This exhibit will cover the 1980s to the present day, include playable games, and showcase mainstream and independent development, LGBTQ game communities, and key themes from this part of media history. As curators for the exhibit, we have spent over a year finding the best way to synthesize nearly 40 years of technical and industry shifts, as well as community and cultural changes.

However, perhaps the most pressing issue we have faced in terms of putting together this type of exhibit is the perennial problem of the ephemerality of digital content and the resultant loss of very recent cultural history. Here we offer a some specific examples of how we plan to represent it within the limitations of the materials available to us.