Abstract

This article is the culmination of a study conducted by the author on players of five Western Role-playing Games (WRPGs) who participated in the romantic subplots of those games (n=1001). Influenced by Sherry Turkle’s The Second Self (2005) and publications from Adams (2015), Dym (2019), and McDonald (2015), this study investigated the relationship between participants’ sexualities, player motivation types, and universal diversity orientation (UDO) scores. This study found data to support significant relationships between these variables as well as (a) the frequency with which player sexuality influences their in-game romantic decisions, (b) the perception of how different sexualities are portrayed in WRPGs, and (c) the perception of how diverse sexualities fit along the games’ critical narrative paths. These results contribute to the body of work that advises the industry to spend the energy and resources on more inclusive narratives and better portrayals of the sexuality spectrum.

Degree Date

Spring 2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.I.T.

Department

Production

Advisor

Elizabeth Storz-Stringer

Second Advisor

Mario Rodriguez

Number of Pages

33

Format

.pdf

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Available for download on Saturday, April 18, 2026

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