Lesbian Gamers

Jade Empire Xbox Originals release

Jade Empire 2 might not be a reality (yet!), but at least Jade Empire is getting another run at things with an upcoming release on the Xbox Originals service. Jade Empire will be available from July 21 at a cost of 1200 MS Points.

Lesbian RPG fans should enjoy Jade Empire, not only for its pretty graphics and RPG stylings, but also for its lesbian content. Yes that's right, there can be a little lady loving in the empire of the jade. Female characters can romance Sky or Silk Fox (both women), though annoyingly the kiss was cut from the game with the camera panning away. Gods forbid two pixelated beauties should lock lips in front of impressionable minors in true love as opposed to male gaze leanings. Where's that 'rolling eyes' icon.

Harvest Moon Cute DS lesbian love

You can be a lesbian in Harvest Moon Cute DS, at least if you get the Japanese version of the game (Bokujou Monogatari Korobokkuru Sutēshon for Gaaru). Apparently if you have the Japanese version you can partner with a female character, they'll move in with you and you can have a 'Best Friends Ceremony' on the beach. You can also apparently even have a child together.

Annoyingly the 'best friends' feature appears to have been taken out of the US release, with the female playable character only able to court male characters. We haven't played this title to know for sure, but all reports seem to suggest Natsume removed the content for fear of media outrage. Natsume has allegedly declined to comment on the removal of the best friends feature. Can you spell L..A..M..E.

Lesbian Nurses in Silent Hill

Lesbian Nurses in Silent Hill, now there's a headline bound to grab your attention and then swiftly turn your stomach. Doesn't seem to have put Russian artist Mikhail Gluhov off putting paint to canvas though. As well as the lesbian nurses from Silent Hill, Gluhov has a portfolio full of strange and deranged masterpieces, with a few gaming themed pices thrown into the mix.

We can't quite work out if Gluhov is a genius, sexist or loves violence involving women, maybe he's a bit of each. You can check out his full portfolio HERE and those lesbian nurses in full after the jump.

Elizabeta Torres in GTA IV - Lesbian?

Is Elizabeta Torres a lesbian in GTA IV? Seems so. Yes you read it right, we think Elizabeta in GTA is a lesbian (ignoring those nails!). There are plenty of gay characters / references in GTA IV and it seems RockStar might have actually included a big ole dyke character.

Elizabeta Torres is a small-time drug dealer in Bohan. She's a big woman said to stand between 5'11-6'2" tall and weighing between 200-225 pounds. She's seen in game dancing with a woman and giving her a quick kiss.

We'll no doubt be having a few posts on GTA IV given it's the game of the moment and is covered in this weeks upcoming Gay Girls Who Game episode, so if you're not a GTA fan - sorry.

GTA Lesbo - Multiplayer Fun

What's this? Lesbians in GTA? No we're not talking about the "lesbians" you'll encounter in the strip clubs that writhe all over one another to comical effect, we're talking cool, playable GTA lesbo. Seriously.

You can get your pride on in GTA multiplayer just like this. We thought this was pretty cool when we discovered it and thought you gals might too. It also shows that Rockstar actually took the time to not dismiss their mass female following, so grab your baseball caps, glasses, women's pride top and have a blast.

We've been giving GTA a lot of thought recently, given the love / hate surrounding the title [as briefly addressed in our GTA HooHarr article]. Gay Girls Who Game will be bringing lesbian thoughts about GTA in their next episode.

Juno Eclipse - Unleashed

Juno Eclipse is one of the characters in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed game. She's the romantic interest for the player character. We can't find anything on whether you can choose to play a male of female player character, but if you can, you know what that means ladies!

We're assuming however we'll all be 'forced' into playing the usual male lead, which, will be really quite annoying. This completely disenfranchises all of us female mega Star Wars fans who would opt to play a female lead. Still fingers crossed, you never can tell, we've contacted the developer to ask.

Mass Effect 2 - More Lesbians than Dinah Shore Weekend

The guys and gals at BioWare love lesbians. They had a movie night the other night that included Better Than Chocolate, Loving Annabelle, Go Fish, Saving Face and Imagine Me and You... and that was just the beginning. They huddled together and decided Mass Effect 2 needs more lesbians!

It's a win win situation, more lesbians means more negative press, which means more press overall, coverage money just can't buy. More dykes equals more money so they've said "bring it!". They're packing so many lesbians into Mass Effect 2 there may not be any room for male characters! Yes looks like Mass Effect 2 will be wall to wall lesbians of all races!

Lesbian Movie Characters in Video Games - Kim

With gaming news being a bit dead when it comes to actual lesbian content (and we can't take yet another Mass Effect post just now!), we at the LG turned our minds to movies. The movie in this instance is Better Than Chocolate and we got to think just how well Kim from Better Than Chocolate would cope in the video gaming world.

So join us as we take an amusing (we hope) look at the video game incarnation of Better Than Chocolate, with protagonist Kim, a brief levels rundown, peripheral character rundown and even a few choice quotes from the imagined game.
Check out the full article: Lesbian Movie Characters in Games – Kim from BTC

Fatal Hearts is a replayable adventure game by Hanako Games and we’re told allegedly has lesbian content and by lesbian we mean a baby dyke with a crush on her best friend. In Fatal Hearts you take on the role of a teenager named Christina, she’s having some weird dreams lately and young girls are being murdered in her town.

So where’s the lesbian content? Well we played the trial and didn’t see any, but we’re assuming her best friend Lucy is crushing on her, or a full blown baby dyke given she says things like “I don’t want anything in a man” when they’re discussing their futures and the gender neutral chimings of “I don’t imagine some perfect man. The people I fall in love with will be special for themselves.”

You can download a preview of Fatal Hearts HERE. If you get to any ‘lesbian’ content, be sure and let us know the details and maybe take a few screen caps.

The L Word in Second Life

If you’re looking for a truly Sapphic experience in gaming, you may want to consider hopping onto Second Life and heading to The Planet Café located in The L Word area there. Yes, we know, classifying Second Life as gaming is a bit of a stretch since it’s actually just you being represented on screen as an avatar, but it’s still a game of sorts since you’re there to live out your imaginary second life.  If you don’t know what Second Life is, where have you been? It’s an online interactive world where you can immerse yourself completely in living out your fantasies, whatever they may be. Second Life has something for everyone, but for lesbians the main hangout is The L Word.

If you head down to The L Word, you can be guaranteed there are other ladies there to chat to, dance with and have a drink with. Head to the club to get down and do some pole dancing, shop in some of The L Word stores or listen to some educational and interesting guest chats from not only cast members, but also sexperts, social policy professionals and more. There are numerous events there each week and Showtime have invested a great deal of money into creating a realistic representation of what the show is and this is why it’s because one of the most popular and often visited places in Second Life.

Jericho lesbians - Church & Black

Firstly I can’t believe we weren’t made aware of this earlier since it may well be lesbians in a newish videogame. Secondly it’s hard to know whether to be upset or happy that the image in this post was made, since some of you out there will no doubt cry ‘titilation’ and ‘male gaze’, whatever the case I thought it was so cool I’d add it to the site for you all to see.

These characters are from the game ‘Jericho’ by Clive Barker (yes he’s gay just like us). The characters are Church and Black (in that order-and Black always twanged my gaydar). Jericho is a squad-based action / horror shooter set in the Middle-East, where an ancient evil has awoken. It’s essentially a paranormal / gory shooter, with a mix of cool psychic powers thrown in. You can check out the sexy lesbian antics after the jump.. please be aware it is graphical digital nudity. I’ll also pop the trailer in so you can see Black in action.

The Lesbian Fear Effect

I was reading an article at the rather brilliant (and supportive) Destructoid today and something struck me. It wasn’t the happy enthusiasm of the writer as he reminisced fondly about the wonderful characterisation and tough choices in the game he was discussing, or the fact the writer is an apparent Reverend (?!). What struck me was this… if lesbians help sell games, why aren’t there more lesbians in games? The title under review was Fear Effect, a PS1 classic that featured cel-shaded, amoral protagonists and a sequel that featured, you guessed it, a couple of lady lovin ladies.

The comments under the article feature the usual “I liked the sequel for ‘other reasons’”, “I remember it only for the lesbian elevator scene”, I liked Retro Helix better, but only for the lesbians”, “never played the bean flicking sequel” and of course simply “Lesbians!!!”. Sure this isn’t a reason for lesbians in games, it’s annoying! Let’s face it they’re usually there for titillation purposes, but they’re clearly popular, so where the heck are they? I am NOT condoning the use of lesbians and lesbian titillation to sell games to men, what I'm saying is where are they? If they love them so much why are they still mostly invisible. Just a thought.

Jade Empire 2 in development?

Here’s some good news for lesbian gamers and in point of fact most gamers—Jade Empire 2 is presently in development. The original title featured some girl on girl action, thanks to the open gendered romance mechanic. Jade Empire was a hit with many lesbian gamers based purely on that factor.

Given the beauty of Mass Effect and the conversation and story driven game mechanic, one would expect Jade Empire 2 to feature something similar. Here’s hoping BioWare leave in the open gendered romance aspects, so that we can all enjoy the title even more.

No word on a release date or anything else since the ‘news’ was an alleged leak from someone who had seen code for the game and nothing else. Needless to say if it is true it will appear on the Xbox 360. With EA acquiring BioWare maybe it will also appear on the PS3 as well, time will tell.

Lesbian Games and the Male Gaze

When Laura Mulvey first spoke of the ‘male gaze’ in relation to cinema, she referred to the notion that women were positioned in cinematic releases to please men. The reasoning behind this was that men made up the majority of the viewing audience and therefore it made sense from a business point of view to sell to them.

In the gaming industry, this goes a long way to explaining the inherent sexism that has been prevalent over the years where female characters often play the supporting role or that of sexual object. This also explains why titles such as Fear Effect 2, Outlaw Golf 2 and Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude feature such sensationalist lesbian scenes. Lesbian scenes sell to men, but in a time where we’re constantly being told women are now making up around half of all gamers, does this common theme need to continue?

The question remains as to whether for lesbians it is a positive statement to have ANY kind of lesbian content in a video game, or whether it would be preferable to be completely invisible rather than cater to the male gaze. With the recent uproar over Mass Effect’s ‘lesbian’ kissing scene, are we making any forward strides in being accepted as ‘normal’ characters in games or will we continue to be there purely for the male gaze.

Asellus in SaGa Frontier - Lesbianism on PS1

Thought we'd take a look at a bit of a retro title with alleged lesbian content. SaGa Frontier is a title that was released on the PS1 in Japan in 1997 and in the U.S. in 1998. The game is a role-playing title featuring various characters, at least two of which are thought to be lesbians.

Lady Asellus is a character that appears in the SaGa Frontier and is said to have more than a little bit of the dyke vibe about her (if sprites can). She's mentored by a princess in the story and they become love interests for one another until tragedy eventually strikes. Along with this main storyline in which the princess and lady are constant companions, there is also a seamstress named Gina in the game who professes her love for Lady Asellus and some sources suggest marries her in one of the games alternate endings. This content is thought to have been removed from the non Japanese version however (though we're not clear on this, so if anyone knows please add to the comments).

So there you have it, a lesbian in a video game way back in 1997, who'd have thunk it. There also appears to be quite the lesbian subtext running through other characters within the story and Asellus interacts and has many of these women join her along the way.

Matrix Revolutions Invisible Lesbian

Whilst perusing a few articles we came across a snippet over at Gamasutra where they're interviewing gaming great David Perry (founder of Shiny Entertainment) about what he's been up to on his year off. Now although the article is fairly interesting, the bit that got us all agitated was when David was talking about the release of the Matrix title Enter the Matrix.

According to Perry they had problems with the title because of its lesbian kiss. It seems the ESRB weren't overly thrilled with the idea of the kiss appearing. Perry says he got around this by saying the Matrix scene was actually "two computers kissing" - "and the ESRB bought it".

We immediately saw a similarity between this and the recent elimination of the "lesbian" content in Mass Effect by stating the women involved aren't women, they're 'mono-sexual aliens'. So rendering lesbians invisible by stating they aren't women is no biggy if it will get your game published. This is the age old problem of lesbians either being rendered invisible, predatory, single (and thus having no-one to be 'lesbian' with) or pandering to the male gaze. Of course if you happen to be a computer generated mono-sexual alien, you're OK.

Is SSX's Zoe Payne a Lesbian?

Yes we're back with our "Is 'insert cool grrl character here' a lesbian?" piece. You may recall a couple of weeks ago we looked at Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, well today we're going to look at Zoe Payne from the SSX snowboarding series of games. We think our gaydars tweaked more than a little when Zoe hit our screens, let's see why.

Zoe Payne has an interesting bio, her nemesis is Elise Riggs, a tall blonde 'amazon' from Canada (but Elise's favorite thing in the world is men, so strike her off the lesbo list.. even though she's Canadian, into sports.. and female--go figure!). Zoe would like to "open her own bike/coffee shop" if she weren't a pro boarder (strike up the points!), she's also a fan of climbing the worlds largest summits, no doubt because she likes going down afterwards. When asked if she wears boxers or briefs, she coyly replies with "What do you think." So.. what do we think.. is she or are we barking up the wrong snow covered dyke?

Mass Effect Banned in Singapore?

It seems those in Singapore aren't fans of lesbian sex scenes between high ranking commanders and alien species, actually they're not fans of gay people at all. According to some sources, Mass Effect has been banned in Singapore because of the inclusion of those saucy love scenes. Section 377A of the Singapore Penal Code criminalizes even private acts of homosexuality. This year the law was kept, which means homosexuality is 'illegal' in the region.

News then that the girl on girl action in Mass Effect has led to a ban shouldn't come as too much of a shock. Singapore has previously banned numerous games including most of the GTA series and BioShock. Though we believe the BioShock ban was later changed. Yes we are living in the year 2007, sad isn't it.

Mass Effect Lesbian Love Scene

We either slipped into a geek induced coma after seeing this, or we were so pissed our Lara 2022 item never made it onto Kotaku that we just didn't see it. Whatever the case, thanks to 'AHR' we've now got the lesbian love scene from Mass Effect right here for you all to dribble over.. from the lips... on your faces... now now.

Prudes & Children: Avert your innocent eyes... lest they bleed with LRHSEB (Lesbian Related Hot Sex Eye Burn)

Is Jade a Lesbian?

Any lesbian to have played the game 'Beyond Good & Evil', originally released by Ubisoft back in 2003, has perhaps pondered this very question. Is Jade a lady who likes other ladies? This is something we've long pondered, so let's look at what we know about our dark haired heroine and see what we can glean from it.

Jade is single, sassy and likes photography.. hmm.. so are a lot of women. She has a funky short hairdo, doesn't wear much make-up and when she does she opts for the non vaginal lip color of green over pinks and reds. She's 20 years old and owns her own company--Jade Reporting. She has (according to Ubisofts own words) "a marked taste for adventure and justice". She also wants to bring about change and fights against prejudice and propoganda.

How we doing so far? She also likes motor vehicles and adopts the nickname 'Shauni' as her alias. We're not saying that every girl who likes bikes and has short hair is a dyke, even though we'd like to think it.. but come on Jade exudes the lesbian vibe. Whenever I see her on screen, my gaydar goes crazy, much as it does with someone like, oh I don't know.. Jessica Biel for example.. ahem..

Whether Jade is ever outed or not doesn't matter to us here at Lesbian Gamers. In our hearts she will always be the cute baby dyke photographer and that's what imagination is all about.

Portal is for Lesbians - It's a Dyke Fest

Portal is gay, as gay as something really gay, like Christina Cox shaking her booty at Lilith Fair with Carrie-Ann Moss (honest, we don't lie, check your Lilith DVD). So how did this come about? Well Bonnie Ruberg (all hail!) over at Heroine Sheik puts forth the proposal that Portal is for lesbians. How so we hear you cry? According to the article because it's an all female game (we know, we'll get to 'cube' in a moment) and because of the relationship between Chell (female protagonist and playable character) and GLaDOS (silken tongued voiceover mage).

We'd like to take this article a step further and suggest that this deconstruction may be right, but to also suggest that deconstructing Portal may also fall into the 'predatory lesbian' category. We've got the young, innocent Chell, trying to find her freedom and the lying and deceitful GLaDOS leading her astray, why it almost sings The Killing of Sister George and The Children's Hour, doesn't it? As for cube, given he is referred to as 'he', Bonnie suggests he's feminized because of his hearts and appearance. We'd take it a step further and suggest he's not only feminized, but also a euphemism for the vagina.. 'box'. And we could even suggest the more obvious 'love box', given the hearts.. it just goes on and on.

So let's see, we have innocent young girl, predatory position of power woman, a 'box' that opens new doors when it's used in the right way.. and that's without even touching on the phallic portal gun that opens holes for our young innocent to enter, only to be either lost, confused or indeed free.

Amazing what you can make out of something seemingly so innocent isn't it ladies. Now go open some holes, use your boxes to get what you want and don't listen to women who seem to know it all. Rules for life some might say-- not us here at LesbianGamers obviously. ;)

Addendum: Oh and it all takes place in Aperture Laboratories, with a sort of iris valve that looks like the letter 'C' at the start, making it Caperture Laboratories.. or 'Capture Laboratories'.. We're sure we could run with this predatory lesbian thing for weeks - thanks Bonnie lol.

Lesbians in Mass Effect - Xbox 360

On the offchance you all missed this little tidbit of information when it hit the net a few weeks ago (and got all the young boys giggling), BioWare title Mass Effect will feature lesbians... sort of. According to the British games ratings board players using the female character (Jane Shepherd) can enter into a sex scene "between her and male human or a female humanoid alien." The humanoid alien in question though is of neutral gender, so it's a little picky really.

For our gay gaming brothers, male characters can only initiate sex "between him and a human woman or a humanoid female alien" because God forbid there be any boy on boy action, the girl on girl action is okay though because it appeals to the male gamers -all yawn in unison-

MySims Dykes on Ice

We thought this was pretty funny, the women at Thumb Bandits noticed a rather funny thing in this screenshot from the Nintendo Wii title 'MySims' and it's the lesbian server and Violet the goth enjoying a breast ice-cream.

You may have also spotted the dubious looking items behind the server, don't they look like the sex toys Kim and Maggie clear away in the hit film Better Than Chocolate? Well we thought it was funny! We hope you do too as we kick off LesbianGamers.com with a dildo and breast ice-cream store in kiddie looking title MySims... tut tut.