Hades won two awards at the 2021 Game Developers Conference this week: Best Audio and the highly coveted Best Game award. This is fantastic news, not only for developers Supergiant Games, but for queer indie games everywhere. Hades’ win has shown that games don’t need to be built by a team of 200 people or have million dollar budgets to be great – there’s room in this industry for games about family drama and queerness, made by small and dedicated teams.
If you feel like the gay agenda is being shoved down your throat, you’re not entirely wrong. Queer representation is steadily growing within the video game industry, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to the number of heterosexual romances to be found on screen. When I realised Zagreus had been in a relationship with Megaera, I was happy for them both, and entirely unsurprised. But I was ecstatic when he and Thanatos started awkwardly flirting like a pair of teenagers. Getting some bisexual representation is very reaffirming, but really, I was probably just jealous of all of them.
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As well as Zagreus, Than, and Meg’s queer little throuple, there’s the tale of Achilles and Patroclus – two lovers separated by death, bound to different realms within the underworld. Zagreus can eventually reunite the two, bringing even more queer joy into the game – joy makes Hades’ win especially significant. The game didn’t have to kill its gays or focus on queer pain, like The Last of Us does – it allows queerness to flourish.
I love SuperGgant’s games. Transistor is my favourite game of all time, so even though I knew Hades would be high quality, I didn’t expect the game to be sweeping so many awards. Hades is the latest indie game to continue a growing trend of indie recognition. Journey, Stardew Valley, Minecraft – at least when it was first developed – and Celeste have all shown that indie games can be just as special as triple-A titles, if not more so. Hades is now also the second indie game in a row to win best game at the GDC awards, after Untitled Goose Game won in 2019. Prior to that, the only other indie game to win the big prize was Journey in 2012.
What’s most touching about Hades’ win isn’t just the fact it won Best Game, but that the award was voted for by the people who make up the industry itself. The games industry can be a toxic place, as recent reports reveal, so it’s a step in the right direction to see games made without crunch and prominently featuring queer characters and themes be considered the best of the best by industry veterans.
I hope that Hades’ win at GDC inspires more developers to include queer narratives in their games, but mostly I hope this shows companies that queer narratives sell, and queer people deserve to lead the field just as much as straight white dudes do. Even though representation is good, and the representation in Hades is great, there’s only so far it can go without meaningful industry changes.
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