When I first heard about HavenCon last year, it was after a pretty awful year in the gaming industry on the issue of inclusiveness. It felt like an industry that had been built up over decades to go from an outsider hobby to a mainstream pursuit was suddenly coughing up years of bad phlegm in the form of hatred toward the idea that video gaming is for everybody, not just early adopters.
This spilled out as hatred toward women, but there was plenty of anger left for gays, minorities and anyone else who doesn’t represent the (very outdated) profile of what gamers are supposed to be. (If you aren’t to speed on what happened and want to waste a lot of time on the Internet today, do a search for “#Gamergate”; prepare for your soul to shrink a bit.)
It was nonsense, really, and still is. Which made me thrilled to hear that a new convention devoted to creating a "Judgment-free zone" for LGBTQIA gamers was happening in Austin; organizers said it's the first convention of its kind in Texas.
Our videographer Reshma Kirpalani was there and shot the above video. It looks like a fun time, which is what games are supposed to be in the first place, right? Here’s hoping HavenCon returns next year.
Screenshot from video by Reshma Kirpalani
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