Before Rockstar Games released the updated version of Grand Theft Auto in 2022, Robin Gray, co-founder of Gray Jones Media, led an effort with the nonprofit Out Making Games, urging the company to remove transphobic and homophobic content.
Grand Theft Auto is kind of like the Family Guy of the gaming industry, where they take a piss at everyone. Surprisingly, Rockstar Games obliged.
This example is just one of many revolutionary changes that Gray has influenced in the gaming industry regarding LGBTQ+ representation. Countless queer journalists credit his publication Gayming Magazine as the first outlet to publish their nuanced reporting and hot takes on all things gaming.
After all, Gayming Magazine was the first of its kind—and in many ways, it remains the only one. But let’s rewind.
Before Gray created a home for the gays in the gaming industry in 2019, complete with its own award show, he was having drinks at a bar in London with a friend, the former head of Ukie, a not-for-profit trade body representing the UK games and interactive entertainment industry.
On a call from his UK office with So.Gay, Gray recalls his friend urging him that the world of video games needed more LGBTQ+ content.
“That kind of set me on a little mission,” Gray chuckles.
At this point, he was running the pioneering Bear World Magazine, which he co-founded in 2012 with Richard Jones. They were two bears seeking a visible online space to gather, celebrate, and exchange ideas about the gay bear subculture—often reduced to just sex but encompassing so much more.
“I’ve always been a gamer at heart as well,” says Gray. “And the bear community is quite a nerdy community, so there’s kind of a crossover, like a Venn diagram, really, between the bears and the gamers.
Gray and his business partner decided to apply their tried-and-tested business model to the gaming world; they offered LGBTQ+ gamers the first publication specifically catering to them.
“So representation as a whole, we look at it two ways. One is in the games themselves, and one is in the industry,” he says. “Around one or 2% of games actually have clear LGBTQ+ themes, and yet about 11% of gamers identify as queer. It’s massively underrepresented.”
If a game has a cast of 10 characters, the gay publisher believes at least one of them should be queer. While the dynamics of certain games don’t always allow for an entire queer storyline, he points out that it could be as simple as a racing game like Forza, which allows players to choose their pronouns before character selection.
“It changes the dialog, the commentary, the way things engage in the game,” says Gray.
Ultimately, it makes the player feel seen. But Gayming Magazine isn’t just about hard-hitting journalism and holding the industry accountable; they also champion when things are done right.
Now in its fourth year, the Gayming Awards is the world’s only LGBTQ video game award show. It honors the best games, tastemakers, and players in the industry, according to the community.
Gayming Magazine has made it so the LGBTQ+ community no longer has to settle for crumbs and positioned “gaymers” as a demographic that gaming companies can no longer ignore or tokenize.
Gray says that diversity in gaming makes players more attuned to themselves and better humans. “I find fascinating that people use video games to explore their sexualities, explore other people’s sexualities, explore other genders,” says Gray.
“When you’re embodying the life and role of a trans man in The Sims, you feel all the microaggressions and the subtle side comments. It’s fascinating how, even for me, I learned things and adjusted how I approached the world.”
Although other mainstream outlets have started publishing similar content, Gray doesn’t worry about the competition and is proud to have served as the catalyst. The more the merrier, he thinks.
He believes Gayming Magazine will always go more in-depth and continue pushing the needle of visibility and reflect what it means to be queer in gaming. They will remain the ones to take responsibility for the community’s needs.
“We need to dig more into the intersectionality of the larger LGBTQ community,” says Gray. “You need your asexuals, your pansexuals, your polyamorous, and all those wonderful identities that also identify as gamers.”
