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No Time To Play5 years ago

You are correct. Creators chose this tag, early on, not anyone from the Itch.io staff. Still, if there was a compelling argument, and sufficient community consensus, it wouldn't be a big deal to change the database so that "LGBT" is renamed to something more inclusive. The question is what. "LGBTQIA+" is unwieldy, arguably off-putting to some people, and probably still leaves a few letters out. "Queer" would be my favorite, but some people still think it's a slur (mistakenly, by the way; there's a whole story behind that, too). Other attempts at inventing a more general acronym failed entirely.

For better or worse, "LGBT" caught on because it's, well, catchy, and also reasonably short. Much like we're stuck using the term "game" for a lot of interactive works that don't really meet any dictionary definition thereof. People are welcome to try and change the situation, but frankly, that seems likely to take a while if it will happen at all.

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Fenreliania5 years ago(+1)

Queer has absolutely been used as a slur that contributed to the repression of several people I know personally, for one.

For two, "it's unwieldy" isn't really a good enough reason to shortcut on representation - the reason LGBT caught on is because it started as LGBT, and the QIA+ was added as it became apparent there were people who should be together under the umbrella but weren't represented. It's also simply not unwieldy in the context of a game tag - the full tag will come up when you type LGBT while adding a tag, and it will be a suggested tag if you search LGBT. I don't know how the itch search actually works but I wouldn't be surprised if just searching for LGBT also matched the LGBTQIA+ tag. So it really isn't unwieldy in this context, and the more it's used in common situations like this, the less "unwieldy" it'll be in normal conversation - it'll just be "correct"

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gayming5 years ago (1 edit)

Seconding the q*r thing - from very personal experience - but I don’t think that the LGBT tag also covers the games tagged LGBTQIA. You can search LGBTQIA as a separate tag and then filter out the games tagged LGBT (which then only leaves like, two games rip), and you can also tag your game BOTH LGBT and LGBTQIA. I’m pretty positive that searching a tag only gets what’s SPECIFICALLY tagged with LGBT, and not games that have tags that INCLUDE LGBT (such as the tag LGBTQIA, LGBT themes, etc).

This is just from my own time spent messing around with the search/tag filters, because I’ve been trying to find every game that fits under the umbrella and make collections for them, but yeah.

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Fenreliania5 years ago

When you search for "adve" it suggests the tags for "adventure" and "action adventure" up the top. It won't suggest LGBTQIA+ because it's not one of the official/endorsed/suggested tags, whereas LGBT is, hence the desire to rename.

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No Time To Play5 years ago

I don't think the "LGBT" tag is given any special treatment by the system. The "adventure" tag is because it denotes a genre, and genre is specifically tracked. But tag popularity also factors in searches; one that's only used for a few games might not be returned. "LGBT" happens to be frequently picked by creators, because it's been around for a while. If you can convince people to use "LGBTQIA+" more, I'm sure it will start showing up as well.

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EnbyKaiju5 years ago

At this point I'd argue that LGBTQIA (or any variation thereof) is practically a genre in itself now. The number of different games and stories we have coming through from the community on an almost daily basis in different forms speaks to that.

Maybe we need to have these games as their own genre now???

Anyway, I've made a push to have folks tag their games with LGBTQIA and/or queer to help boost visibility. Does anyone know how many games need to be tagged with something before it will show up in the search bar?

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No Time To Play5 years ago(+2)

I asked, and it seems my information was wrong. Tags have to be vetted by an admin before they are picked by free-form searches. To quote the official answer: "there's no automatic promotion of a tag (to prevent abuse)". Your proposal is now under consideration. Sorry for the delay and confusion.

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EnbyKaiju5 years ago

Thank you thank you thank you <3<3<3

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