How Video Games Helped Me Find and Embrace My Authentic Self

LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) Pride Month is celebrated in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals raises funds to ensure all kids receive the best care. During Pride Month we are celebrating the efforts of those who help kids and families in the LGBTQ community have the care they need when they need it most.

Sometimes you pick up a controller and a game just changes you. Interacting with a story and world crafted out of code and your own actions cab reveal ourselves in ways that other mediums can’t match. This might account for why a slightly larger percentage of LGBTQ people play games than folks who identify as cisgender and straight. Games can provide gamers with a safe way to grapple with their gender identities and sexualities.

I’m a transgender woman, but it took me a long time to be able to understand that fact about myself. Wrestling with the feelings and coping mechanisms I experienced over the years proved to be difficult, especially as a kid whose only real exposure to publicly out transgender people was on daytime television programs like Maury or Jerry Springer. In my young world, trans people were jokes or meant as reveals to gross out the audience. Of course, something about those people resonated with me, despite the hostile framing. It hurt, even though I didn’t understand why.

All I knew was that I wasn’t a joke or something to inspire revulsion in people. This caused me to reject the possibility that I could be transgender. Despite turning my back on that prospect, the feelings never went away no matter how I tried to bury them. That’s how I found myself fascinated by an incredibly small portion of Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town for the Game Boy Advance.

To sum up Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, players receive the task of making the family farm profitable again while pursuing a slew of side activities. One of the major side activities revolves around courting a number of eligible lads and lasses, something that was restricted to heterosexual options only back in 2003. In the upcoming remake, both lads and lasses will be receptive to romance regardless of the player’s gender.

As a young teenager, having a game that allowed the exploration of relationships in a simulated small town felt exciting. What resonated more than that for me was one of the smallest of small details. In Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, players can watch television. Turning on the TV allows the player to watch any number of randomized shows. These play out largely in text, and mostly were forgettable moments that worked as small jokes or in-game hints.

However, one of those programs told a story about two teenagers who swap bodies, one a boy and the other a girl. That small, throwaway part of Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town fascinated me in a way I couldn’t have possibly articulated at the time due to how uneducated I was on transgender topics. All I knew is that I would sit, staring transfixed at the unlit screen of my Game Boy Advance for incredible lengths of time – all because it allowed me, in some small way, to question my gender.

Long before games like Shadow of the Colossus or Transistor caused me to more seriously ponder my place in the world and my relationship with my body, a strange quirk in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town sent my mind racing in ways it would take over a decade for me to understand.

Games have power. The discoveries we make in games are all the more personal because we made them. For a lot of LGBTQ people, those moments of discovery stand out as precious. We are uncovering difficult secrets about ourselves in a world where such exploring gender and sexuality sadly still remains a dangerous activity.

Organizations like Extra Life help give LGBTQ gamers a safe community where they can be themselves around a multitude of different people from a wide spectrum of backgrounds. The LGBTQ members of our community don’t have to stare at their screens hoping to see small, warped reflection of themselves in games. Maybe, and I hope this with all my heart, the next little girl who begins questioning her gender because of the upcoming Friends of Mineral Town remake won’t have to do it alone.

Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals are a safe place for LGBTQ youth to find healing from whatever medical issue they are facing. Check out this recap of our hospitals who earned HRC’s highest honor for LGBTQ equality in 2019. Join Extra Life in celebrating Pride in June (and year-round). Check out our Pride stream overlays to plan your Pride-themed stream today.

Don’t forget to sign up for Extra Life to help sick and injured kids in hospitals around the US and Canada by playing games!