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Catalyst for Conversation: Trans Representation in AAA Games

This week Apex Legends announced the next season’s new playable character: Catalyst. We don’t know her abilities just yet (or at least not the official details), but that doesn’t mean that she hasn’t already been the centre of a lot of discussion.

Catalyst is a trans woman. This isn’t exactly surprising coming from Apex. The game has a wide range of communities represented in its playable roster. She’s not even the first trans character in the game. Bloodhound, themself nonbinary, has been in the game since release and is still incredibly popular. And yet this announcement has still captured the attention of a lot of assholes in the way any kind of development like this tends to do.

I already prepare myself for shit in online games. I don’t use a mic when I play because I’ve already gotten enough shit for being trans online, and generally leave my coms muted when I’m not in a ranked game or with people I know just as a precautionary measure. It’s tiring seeing all this shit online, but I already know that it’ll mostly pass. The rabble, as usual, seem to be mostly people who aren’t actually part of the community; and those who are have celebrated it, or at worst, met it with indifference. It certainly helps that to those who are actively in the community, again, this is not a surprise. We have a bunch of gay characters, and, as mentioned, another trans character. But one of the ways that this reaction is disappointing is in how this shapes the conversations that we can have around Catalyst and what representation really means.

I am incredibly excited to get to play as a gay trans woman in a game that I really enjoy. And from what I’ve read of speculation on her abilities, she even seems to fit my playstyle pretty well, being able to both influence enemy movement and seek off angles. I’m already strongly considering maining her, and I’ve been following more and more fan artists because I’m excited to see their takes on her design. Being able to see someone like me be celebrated like this is really, really cool. But I also have other, more conflicted feelings.

As much as I enjoy Apex, it has some unbelievably predatory business practices. Loot boxes alone are incredibly scummy, and the way they rotate expensive and limited cosmetics preys on the vulnerable. It’s well documented how these practices can really harm vulnerable people who do not have money to blow on 160$ skins. What then does it say about the game when they deliberately market themselves to marginalised groups who statistically have even less to give and are even more vulnerable? One of my favourite characters is autistic, but loot boxes and collectables are known to prey particularly effectively on neurodivergent people. What does that mean for its representation? Is it still a net good? What are ways to be mindful of this in game development? Is it possible for AAA games to be progressive, let alone liberatory? EA has a documented history of crunch. How does that factor in to our assessment of their games? What about the community building that happens with those who play these games, who find others like them, and build outside of the game from there? I certainly can’t say I wish they’d stop this all together. I mean, I’ve met people who mean a great deal to me through queer gaming groups focussed on AAA games; I sure as hell don’t want that to go away. But do they get credit for making that possible?

But because the conversation immediately goes black and white because of assholes who don’t play the game anyway, we never get to have these conversations. We have to retreat inwards to protect ourselves from the shitstorm, as often even so much as saying the characters’ names on social media will invite jerks into your mentions (this has literally already happened to me with Catalyst and she was announced barely a day ago). And what talk we do make publicly is focussed on just defending the games and characters from this crap. And understandably so. We’ve seen a lot of roll back of our rights and our place in society in recent years. It’s not inconceivable that studio execs could stop this sort of representation all together in order to avoid any further backlash. But the conversation rarely goes beyond this, at least not publicly.

I’m not exactly lamenting that we don’t get to “enjoy” twitter discourse. I’m sure whatever these conversations would look like, they’d have their fair share of pettiness and drama. But because we never get to have these conversations on a larger scale, we never see any progress either. We still see things like Blizzard’s diversity matrix (not as cool as it sounds), and we rarely see representation in AAA games that has much meaning beyond that which we make for ourselves. And every single new announcement goes through the exact same exhausting cycle. As frightened as we all are of losing what we have, we still deserve a hell of a lot more.

I don’t even really have solutions to this. As always, if you want really deep, engaging representation, look to indie games made by people from your communities. And for online discourse, just block the assholes instead of engaging with them. But even then, I'm still generally very hesitant to post much about these things, as even with my tiny, tiny social media presence, I’ve still received hate from strangers. But I don’t know. I also think it's worth talking about AAA games, and that it's fair to seek more from them than this push and pull between tokenization, representation, and exploitation. Off and on I’ve been working on a post about actually analysing representation, and exploring how to evaluate it. I don’t think my tiny blog will exactly change the larger conversation, but I suppose I can start with practising what I’m preaching here. Until then, have fun and look after yourself.