LGBTQ Video Game Exhibition Opens In Berlin

Berlin’s Schwules Museum has opened a brand new exhibition named “Rainbow Arcade” to celebrate the history of LGBTQ culture and stories in video gaming.

The exhibition was co-curated by curator and PR for the museum, Jan Schnorrenberg; German game journalist Sarah Rudolph; and Dr Adrienne Shaw. Dr Shaw is a professor and author with a specialism in queer studies, sexuality and gender in gamer culture, and LGBTQ game history. She is also the founder of the LGBTQ Game Archive.

The exhibition, designed by German art director Nicolas Simoneau, is themed around the rainbow—a symbol of the LGBTQ community—and directs visitors through the exhibits by colour.

The indie game section, which features Anna Anthropy’s Queers in Love at the End of the World and Dietrich Squinkifer’s Dominique Pamplemousse, is bright yellow. The blue area deals with discrimination and hatred towards queer creators and gender-inclusive storylines. The section dedicated to Robert Yang, NYU professor and prolific game developer with a specialty for games about gay culture and intimacy, is Barbie-pink.

At the end of it all, the purple area is for contemporary games, like Brianna Lei’s dating game about chaotic bisexual teens, Butterfly Soup.

Rainbow Arcade will be shown in the Schwules Museum until May, 2019. You can read more about the exhibit on The Guardian website.