Abstract
Videogames, like other new media, reflect and shape culture and are influenced by societal attitude shifts. We conducted a qualitative close-reading analysis of queer representation in the AAA historical-fiction series Assassin's Creed and the historical antecedents thereof to explore (a) the traditional marginalization of queer-identifying folks in (b) the context of growing societal acceptance within the (inter)national zeitgeist. In our examination of the developer's reaction operationalized as observable shifts in developers’ design choices, we observed an increase in representation that aligns with the shift in social attitudes toward queer folks over the last 15 years. With respect to the historical antecedents, we discovered a misalignment between the in-game portrayal of queer folks and acceptance thereof vis a vis the available historical record.
For decades, gamer culture and the games industry neglected and even harbored hostility toward the queer community (Shaw, 2012). This attitude toward queer folks aligned to a dominant culture of queer erasure, bootstrapped by reluctance on the part of investors to support overt queer representation in videogames (Shaw, 2009). In our capitalist socioeconomic landscape, producing financially successful games requires developers to weigh inclusive narratives they may personally favor against what the wallets of upstream investors and downstream players will accommodate. Recent shifts in the (inter)national zeitgeist have made queer representation in videogames more palatable. In turn, it is observed that developers’ attitudes shifted in response to what some have described as the “Great Awokening” (Fischer, 2018; Rozado, 2022; Rozado, 2023). Journalists use the term “Great Awokening” to describe “institutional trends and related shifts in US public opinion about increasing perceptions of prejudice severity in society” (Rozado, 2023). The Great Awokening originated as a term in parallel to the “post-2010 explosion in prejudice themes in news media” (Rozado, 2022). This is accredited not to a single instance, but to a multitude of factors, including increased representation in higher education, social media incentives to use emotionally impactful content, Gen Z becoming a large population of consumers, and the Trump presidential campaign (Fischer, 2018; Rozado, 2022; Rozado, 2023; Villebrun, 2022). Around the year 2014, activist groups began using new media platforms in an attempt to counteract queer erasure by creating “rapid, sustained change”. To continue to promote change, Millennial and Gen Z consumers began to support products and platforms that aligned with their values “[f]rom ethical sourcing, sustainability, transparency on working conditions and living wages, mental health support, gender parity agenda, showing diversity, defending LGBTQIA+ rights, to fighting body shaming or creating better policies” (Villebrun, 2022). The implications for the queer gaming community were that developers began to recognize that “gaymers” (Sliwinski, 2007) constituted a large portion of the gaming community, which company executives left under-considered (MacDonald, 2022). While prior to 2014, only a small number of queer-inclusive games like The Sims were available on the public market, the Great Awokening has catalyzed efforts to improve representation of marginalized groups in games. Manifestations of this evolution include, for example, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Borderlands 3, Hades, and Life is Strange.
For our purposes here, we examine this phenomenon in Assassin's Creed, an action-adventure historical-games franchise, including 12 mainline entries published by Ubisoft over 15 years. Examining the Assassin's Creed franchise provides us the opportunity to examine queer representation in a major, high-budget AAA videogame before, during, and after the Great Awokening and compare that representation to its historical antecedent. We organize this work by first discussing the theories we deploy and relevant context around videogames and gaymers. We then focus on the literature surrounding queer representation and player freedom and choice, leading into literature on the Assassin's Creed franchise. After describing our methods, we provide an overview of our findings, followed by a deeper dive into our foci installments of the franchise. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and directions for additional research.
Overview of Franchise
The Assassin's Creed franchise is an action-adventure series developed by Ubisoft, which is known for its immersive historical settings. The overarching narrative follows a fictional centuries-old conflict between two competing secret societies: the Assassins, who seek to maintain free will and protect humanity's right to it, and the Templars, who pursue control and order through the subjugation of free will. The franchise prioritizes historical settings with open-world exploration, action-stealth gameplay, and an accompanying modern-day narrative that draws on science fiction and mythological themes.
Each main entry in the series typically transports players to a recreated historical setting, ranging from ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy, colonial America, Victorian London, and beyond. These settings serve as the backdrop for the game's narrative, allowing players to explore iconic landmarks, interact with historical figures, and immerse themselves in the culture and politics of the period.
Part of this immersion is how expansive the open-world environments are. The in-game worlds are filled with side quests, activities, and collectibles. Players can engage in diverse gameplay experiences, such as hunting wildlife, completing challenges, liberating territories, and uncovering hidden secrets scattered throughout the world, offering countless hours of content beyond the main campaign. Assassin's Creed introduced a parkour-inspired movement system that enables fluid and acrobatic traversal through urban environments. Players can scale buildings, leap across rooftops, and navigate crowded streets at will. Each of these features contributed to the broad popularity of the Assassin's Creed franchise.
Running parallel to the historical storylines is a modern-day narrative centered around the conflict between the modern-day Assassins and Templars. Players typically assume the role of a contemporary protagonist who relives the memories of their ancestors through a device known as the Animus, which allows for the exploration of genetic memories encoded within DNA. In the modern day, players interact with a fictional ancient civilization known as the Isu, an advanced precursor race that once inhabited Earth and played a pivotal role in shaping human history. Themes of mythology, technology, and the nature of free will are explored through the discovery of Isu artifacts, cryptic messages, and the ongoing struggle between the Assassins and the Templars to control the fate of humanity.
Throughout its releases, the Assassin's Creed franchise has evolved and expanded, with each new installment introducing innovations in gameplay, storytelling, and world-building. From the naval exploration of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag to the RPG elements of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the series has continually pushed boundaries and experimented with new ideas, ensuring that each entry offers a fresh and engaging experience for players. For the purposes of this paper, we focus on the game's open-world historical settings, choice-driven gameplay design, and how queer characters are represented in the world and explored by the player.
In the context of the Assassin's Creed franchise and its portrayal of queer representation, we have compiled information from various sources, including our own gameplay experiences and a breakdown of queer representation in each game by obeseninjao7 on Reddit (Figure 1). This analysis is contrasted with historical perspectives on societal attitudes toward queer individuals at the respective time periods, drawing parallels to the Great Awokening. We examine the presence and progression of queer representation within the mainline games, choosing to withdraw consideration for side entries or spin-off games due to their lack of popularity and therefore statistical insignificance within the context of the collective social-gamer experience. Being that our main findings come from The Ezio Trilogy (2009, 2010, 2011), Odyssey (2018), and Valhalla (2020), we choose to postpone their discussion in this overview, intending to explore their significance more in depth.
An example screenshot of our living analysis document.
Two games outside of our main findings are to be noted, however. Syndicate (2015) created controversy and sparked conversations among Assassin's Creed fans when it depicted a male-on-male kiss onscreen. This portrayal, along with other aspects, implies the bisexuality of one of the playable characters. While there are differing interpretations regarding the significance of this kiss, LGBT gaming journalist Susana Valdes asserts that it represents the character's bisexuality within the societal constraints of Victorian London: “The LGBT gaming community aren't strangers to the usage of subtext to present LGBT characters. Everything about Jacob's character clicks once you realize that he's a bisexual man in Victorian London, where mainstream society shunned LGBT people.” (Valdes, 2017) This particular development occurred during the peak of “The Great Awokening” and a period when gaymers began expressing their frustration with the gaming industry's gatekeeping practices (Garcia, 2017).
The subsequent game, Origins (2017), revolutionized the series by offering players a vast open-world experience within Ancient Egypt. These games were some of the first in the franchise to have choice mechanics, and developers may have backgrounded historical accuracy in favor of giving players agency and therefore a more immersive and enjoyable experience. While queer representation remains absent, we see a focus on racial representation and racially charged issues in the modern world (Keefer, 2023), still progressing with the Great Awokening, but not completely relevant for our purpose here. In referring to Table 1 and Graph 1, there is an upward trend of queer representation, with the biggest spikes in 2015 and in the most recent games.
Assassin's Creed Game Franchise.
Game genre shifts substantively toward role-playing elements that elevate player choice both narratively and ludically.
Assumptions
In pursuit of the research questions we outline below, we make assumptions. First, queerness is not a modern phenomenon and has always been part of the human experience, though its appearance and the acceptance with which society greets it have shifted over time and across cultures and societies (Kunzel, 2018). By queer, we mean “the desire to live life otherwise, by questioning and living outside of normative boundaries” (Ruberg & Shaw, 2017). We assume queerness is a spectrum, falling under the LGBTQ+ labels or “other, less well-covered aspects” (Harper et al., 2018).
Secondly, while history is constructed, collective agreements or intersubjectivities (Harari, 2015) emerge over time regarding how specific cultures and time periods are understood. For example, Americans often view Ancient Greece as having been a more promiscuous society, or they might imagine most everyone living in the 1920s wore flapper dresses or pinstripe suits and drank at speakeasies. These are a part of our collective imaginations about the past, and they tend to be reinforced through media drawing upon history.
Research Questions
To what extent have queer folks been represented in the Assassin's Creed videogame franchise?
How has queer representation in the Assassin's Creed franchise shifted (or not) amidst the backdrop of the “Great Awokening?”
To what extent does queer representation in the Assassin's Creed franchise align to historical antecedents, and how might this relationship have shifted over time?
Theoretical Framework
Videogames are a communicative form (Gee, 2014) and thus operate according to Berlo's (1960) Sender/Receiver Communication Model. Messages are created (encoded) and sent, received, and processed (decoded). This takes place as part of a feedback cycle within a specific medium like face to face, text message, or media like videogames. How we choose to encode and decode messages in media as creators and audience, respectively, influences the way we understand our cultures. When we refer to the dominant culture, we mean what the media (e.g., videogames) choose to showcase reflects and influences the ideology of a culture (see Hall, 1973). Thus, videogames present both a window through which we may examine society and also a mechanism by which we may (re)shape it.
Videogames are a form of multimodal text. Modes are channels of human communication, interaction, representation, and meaning-making (Jewitt, 2009). Regardless of modality, communication relies on receivers decoding meaning. To do this, readers draw on a set of semiotic resources to complete the work of representation and communication (Kachorsky & Kessner, 2023). Thus, semiotic resources become an indispensable part of how meaning is created, communicated, and understood in videogames.
Semiotic resources are symbolic stand-ins for complex ideas. For example, the face paint and stereotypical indigenous dress present in Horizon: Forbidden West draw on social understandings of these semiotic resources to communicate that Forbidden West takes place within a “frontier” setting. Each semiotic resource within a mode has multiple meaning potentials, which rely on the cultural and social contexts of the creator and the reader (Van Leeuwen, 2005). New media are particularly reliant on the semiotic resources of their medium.
As opposed to books, in which semiotics do exist (e.g., Gatsby's suit, George Milton's dialect), semiotics literally look different and serve a paradoxically, simultaneously more obvious, but less explicit, purpose in new media. Without words and spoken narrative to convey meaning, new media like videogames must lean on other symbolic communicative levers. Red Dead Redemption, for example, communicates a great deal to players about who they are and the world in which they exist through symbolic communication relying on players’ shared social semiotic resources to facilitate decoding (e.g., gruff voice + cowboy hat elicits visions of rugged individualist conceptions of masculinity on the frontier). These semiotic resources are a core tool in the work of creating videogames as designed experiences, and they contribute to the ideological worlds a given videogame constructs for players.
History in New Media
To draw on history as the basis for a videogame is to construct an historical narrative. Constructing a historical narrative necessarily involves making choices about which narratives not to construct. In making these choices, designers mobilize history to do work in the world—to tell some stories at the exclusion of others.
History itself is not simply a record of “what happened,” but is in fact the construction of historical narratives. These narratives, when responsibly constructed, are made leveraging the historian's toolkit: sourcing, corroborating, contextualization, etc. (Kachorsky & Kessner, 2023; van Boxtel & van Drie, 2018). Despite the push in the 19th century for a kind of “science” of history (Collingwood, 1946/2014), it remains difficult to disentangle the construction of historical narratives from the perspective of the person doing the constructing. Thus, historical narratives involve choices—choices about whose perspectives to include or exclude and why. These choices result in constructed historical narratives, which in turn directly influence how we see history and thus how we see ourselves. In these ways, history is mobilized and “put to work” in the world (e.g., Adolf Hitler's disdain for Bauhaus architecture to generate and perpetuate the Aryan mythos) (Nordgren, 2016).
By new media, we mean non-traditional texts like comic books and graphic novels (Kachorsky & Kessner, 2023), films (Stoddard, 2009), and videogames (DeVane & Squire, 2008; Kessner, 2021; Kessner & Harris, 2022). In the present work, we take up videogames in particular. Videogames are a unique medium of historical storytelling and possess a long tradition of thematic alignment to history (Metzger & Paxton, 2016). This tradition includes hallmarks of multiple genres like Age of Empires (real-time strategy), Civilization (turn-based strategy), Call of Duty (first-person shooter), and, as we take up in this work, the Assassin's Creed series.
Videogames are designed experiences, and the coalescence of design choices from which finished videogames emerge generates ideological worlds (Squire, 2006). By designed experiences, we mean that the experiences players have while playing a game are necessarily shaped by the choices made by the development team. Importantly, these design choices are made by people, and every person sees, interprets, and operates in the world according to a perspective or within an epistemic frame (Shaffer, 2006). These design choices made by people result in a procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2010), a “grammar of doing and being” (Squire, 2006, p. 19, emphasis in original). Because learning occurs through doing (Lave & Wenger, 1991), this procedural rhetoric is a critical component of how games operate as teaching and learning environments (Gee, 2003).
From these design choices about what videogames position players to do–and therefore learn–emerge ideological worlds. Videogames respond to players’ actions; thus, players must learn the underlying systems and rules governing the game to navigate the game successfully. These systems communicate important information to players about the world, most importantly about the value systems and ideological outlooks baked into the world. By participating within these rhetorics of doing, players come to understand the game world as a place that operates by these principles; crucially, players may come to overapply this understanding to the real world, as well.
The interactivity of videogames makes them uniquely compelling historical narratives, but they pose unique challenges to readers attempting to interrogate them compared to other forms of historical narratives (McCall, 2020). Academic historians, when they write monographs and research articles, present both the historical narrative they have constructed and the evidence they used to form their conclusions. They walk readers through their evaluation of the sources of this evidence, including why some evidence is trustworthy and how they corroborated this or that claim in this or that source. They attend, too, to counterclaims, considering the corroborating evidence others have levied in support of other narratives. Videogames are held to none of these standards—we are not saying they should be; they are, after all, games and not academic writing. Nevertheless, by deploying history as part and parcel of a popular cultural medium, videogames play an increasingly significant role in the new-media ecosystem in terms of which historical narratives and ideological worlds we come to understand and accept.
Videogames and Ga(y)mers: Queer Representation in Games and Media
As attitudes toward queerness in the Western World continue to shift, queer representation in media shifts in response (Harper et al., 2018; Raymond, 2003; Shaw, 2009 2012; Shaw & Friesem, 2016; Shaw et al., 2019). Indeed, how new media portray queer folks reflects not just the attitudes of writers, directors, and developers, but also the intersubjective understandings of and attitudes toward queer folks, communities, and culture (Gee, 2014) embodied at the intersection of media production and consumption (Harper et al., 2018; Malkowski & Russworm, 2017; Shaw, 2009, 2012; Shaw & Friesem, 2016; Shaw et al., 2019). For years, the representation of queer identities in games has been notably lacking, reflecting a systemic gap in the portrayal of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities within gaming culture (Harper et al., 2018; Malkowski & Russworm, 2017; Ouellette, 2013; Ruberg & Shaw, 2017; Shaw, 2009, 2012; Shaw & Friesem, 2016; Shaw et al., 2019). Recently, there has been an upward trend in discussion and awareness in journalism and social media, with marginalized communities “holding the digital game industry accountable for” lack of representation and discrimination of certain identities, including women, people of color, and queer folks (Harper et al., 2018; Malkowski & Russworm, 2017).
Dominant Culture and Flat Representation
Dominant culture (Hall, 1973) is acutely seen in the narratives and gameplay of popular AAA titles. These popular games can reflect, even reinforce, extant power dynamics and influence social systems as well as the semiotic resources that interface with global racialized and gendered political anxieties. Usually, that power that resides within the dominant culture and games specifically showcase the dominant culture and often sacrifice other cultures and ideologies to support it (Murray, 2017).
In a media landscape that has often presented flat, one-dimensional representations of queer folks, new media offers new opportunities for discussion around and creativity regarding queer representation in conversation with a new kind of audience more open to doing such work (McInroy & Craig, 2017). For example, a flat representation of a queer character could entail the only queer element of a character, as far as the audience is concerned, is that they are gay but they do not fully represent queer lifestyles. As both research and media development improve, the quality of queer representation within popular media may also improve; this will open up discourse channels about queer representation within dominant culture (McInroy & Craig, 2017).
The Gaymer Community
Discrimination of the queer community happened both from online communities and corporate game development companies. When asking gaymers their thoughts on queer representation in games, Shaw (2012) found that they are less concerned with the representation as they are with finding safe spaces online. According to Shaw, gaymer identity is complex and often not considered, ignored, or pushed aside by communities and game developers. Queer players historically have not enjoyed the freedom to explore representative game characters (Shaw, 2012). In the 20th and early 21st centuries, this can be explained by the dominant culture of the time being mostly unfavorable to queer folks, leading to investors declining to financially back games overtly in favor of homosexuality (Shaw, 2009).
Only recently has queer representation in AAA games become more prevalent as the dominant culture has become more accepting of queer folks and lifestyles. For example, the gayming community hosted the first annual “Gayming Awards” in 2021 (Hart, 2021). With this and other instantiations of the inclusive turn as a backdrop, game companies appear to have made meaningful investments in increasing queer representation among development teams (IGDA, 2021), possibly in an effort to cater more to queer gamers and their allies (MacDonald, 2022). This attitude shift is apparent in most forms of the games industry from online communities to game development.
The Role of Player Choices and Projective Identities in Evaluating Queer Representation
While much of our discussion on queer representation in video games revolves around the role of the developer, we need also to consider the role the player can play in certain kinds of games in constructing queer representation. Non-player characters (NPCs) are typically defined entirely by the developers and can be unilaterally made (or not made) queer without player input. For some games, this is also true for player characters. For example, in The Last of Us Part II, the player character Ellie is a gay woman, and the player is not afforded the opportunity to substantially influence her characterization in any way. However, particularly in games where player choice, freedom, and/or agency is prioritized in the design, players may be able to co-construct the identity of their player character within the confines of the game—enabling the development of what Gee (2003) calls a projective identity.
When playing a game, it can be said that the interaction between the player and player character invokes at least two identities—the “virtual identity” of the player character and the “real-world identity” of the player. The virtual identity of the player character concerns who the character is in the context of the game world (Gee, 2003). Though aspects of the player character's identity may be decided by the player, the virtual identity is always constrained by the game's design and writing. The player's real-world identity is, of course, who they are as a person outside of and while playing a game. Each person's real-world identity, at a minimum, influences how they relate to the game and the player character (Gee, 2003). A projective identity only occurs when there is a specific relationship enacted between the real-world and virtual identities. Players are able to construct a projective identity over their player character in a game when they are able to project their understanding of the world onto the player character, and when they are able to view the player character as a project they hold a sense of responsibility for. That is, a projective identity is constructed when a game gives players choices in building and playing their character that allow the player character to become a certain kind of person (Gee, 2003). Sometimes, the queerness or lack thereof of a player character can be contingent on what sort of projective identity the player develops for that character.
The kinds of choices players need to be able to make in order to develop a projective identity are associated with open world and roleplaying games. Even within these genres, games differ in the extent to which players can truly construct their player character. We consider a few examples in the context of gender and sexuality. In Grand Theft Auto V, the player characters (Franklin, Michael, and Trevor) are all depicted as cisgender men and have clearly defined sexual and romantic interests in the narrative. The player can choose to have the player characters interact with sex workers (women only), but otherwise has no influence on their romantic or sexual identity. In The Witcher 3, Geralt is depicted as a heterosexual man, but the player can choose the extent to which he engages in romantic and sexual encounters with NPCs during the narrative. In the Mass Effect trilogy, Commander Shepard can be depicted as either a man or a woman depending on the player's choices. If Shepard is a woman, the player can have Shepard enter into same-sex relationships throughout the trilogy, but a male Shepard can only enter into same-sex relationships in the third game. Finally, in Starfield, the player character can select one of two body types, separately select pronouns (he/him, she/her, or they/them), and engage in romantic interaction with other characters regardless of their body type or pronouns selected. Importantly, as we will discuss in our findings, games in the Assassin's Creed franchise – which have been characterized as both open-world and roleplaying games – differ in where they sit on this spectrum. Some titles offer strictly defined player characters for whom the player cannot influence their gender, romantic, or sexual identity, while others afford the player extensive options to develop a projective identity for their player character.
Assassin's Creed Literature
Assassin's Creed (AC) encourages players to interact with history, “[mixing] a science-fiction plotline with real historical moments which players explore” (Gilbert, 2017). However, we should ask the question: what historical narratives do the games enable players to construct? With AC “are we assassinating our way through history?” (Politopoulos et al., 2019). While McCall (2011) states the games are simply the backdrop to the action, others argue they provide players with a “time-machine” (Casey, 2021) to empathize and relate to a period in history with which they would otherwise be unable to interact (Casey, 2021; Gilbert, 2019; Karsenti & Parent, 2020; Keefer, 2023; Seif El-Nasr et al., 2008). In this view, games constitute a kind of tourist destination, and players can choose which parts of history to engage in based on their interests (Politopoulos et al., 2019). Players choose when and how to identify and engage with the game's version of constructed history (Shaw, 2015), creating their own perceived realism of history (Bello, 2025; Vandewalle et al., 2023) and can contemplate how the game impacted them emotionally (Seif El-Nasr et al., 2008). These players each became “a virtual heritage tourist” in comparison to “a time-traveling murderer” (Politopoulos et al., 2019).
Methods
The Assassin's Creed Franchise
We chose the AC franchise as the site of this study for three reasons. First, AC pulls its theme, location, and other narrative elements directly from history. Moreover, the franchise developers make explicit claims to historical accuracy, excepting of course the fantastical elements of the storyline and avatar abilities. Thus, the AC franchise fulfills a first requirement of our study juxtaposing queer representation in games with their historical antecedents. Second, in studying historical games, we are studying a manifestation of popular history (Chapman, 2016; Chapman et al., 2017). The AC franchise has persisted and succeeded with over 200 million copies sold over a period of 15 years (Strickland, 2022). If someone has played a historical game, it has likely been one in the franchise. Third, the timeline of the games from 2007 to 2020 overlaps with the Great Awokening, the later titles in particular appearing to embrace queer representation. Taken together, these three points illustrate the rich phenomenological space in which we explore how the AAA game company has responded to significant shifts in popular culture regarding acceptance and championing of queer folks.
Positionality
The construction and development of knowledge are strengthened when diverse voices are a part of constructing that knowledge (Gee, 2017; Kozlowski et al., 2022). As the collaborative effort of three scholars of different backgrounds, we accordingly view these differences as a strength. At the same time, we also believe that disclosing our differing positionalities is important in allowing the reader to interpret and relate to our claims. Therefore, we briefly discuss our relevant identities here.
Jess (A1) identifies as a feminine cis woman, bisexual, and “big G” Gamer, meaning this is a core part of personal identity. She identifies specifically as bisexual instead of queer due to personally not always experiencing a sense of belonging in the queer community. In A1's experience, being bisexual can lead to one being seen as “not gay enough” for the queer community. This caused distance with the queer community that has only recently begun to lessen as attitudes have shifted. This afforded A1 the ability to see queer representation from both insider and outsider perspectives.
Taylor (A2) identifies as a cis straight white man, social studies education scholar, and “little g” gamer. On the one hand, identifying as cis and straight positioned A2 as an outsider to the queer cultural milieu we explored within Assassin's Creed. On the other hand, his identity facilitated A2's leveraging of Gee's (2014) Make It Strange tool of discourse analysis. Where A1 and A3 may have taken queer representations for granted, A1 may have been more sensitive to representations outside the hegemonic power structures influencing how gender is portrayed in new media.
Jeremy (A3) identifies as a queer, nonbinary mathematics educator, and “big G” Gamer. Their identification with the words queer and nonbinary originates from their desire to “opt-out” of standard notions of gender, sexual orientation, and romantic orientation. While A3 is not a participant in typical queer community activities like pride or drag, their social circles are primarily occupied by other queer people who are also gamers. Academically, A3's primary background is as a mathematics educator, and they do not have extensive content knowledge in history. Their background positions A3 as an insider in terms of considering queer representation in games and an outsider in terms of considering historical antecedents.
Approach
We examined the main titles in the AC franchise (see Table 1), taking a qualitative approach to our analysis akin to a close reading of the games as text. We played the games ourselves, which allowed us to study the game as insiders (Skalski et al., 2017). Operating as insiders allowed us to develop a level of fluency with the games and their mechanics that is “crucial to an informed analysis of the immersive elements that can only be uncovered and understood through gameplay” (Kessner & Cortes, 2023, pp. 7–8).
We relied on (a) our own previous playthroughs of the games, (b) previous explorations of queer representation in the series on the part of fans (obeseninjao7, 2020), and (c) deeper dives into titles of interest through new playthroughs. Our reliance on fandom as a starting point aligns with scholarship on the topic (see Thomas, 2019). For the purposes of our work here, we consider ourselves both researchers and fans, not differentiating between the two (Hellekson & Busse, 2014). Therefore, we participate in and value the affordances of fandoms. A1 played all games multiple times. A2 invested several hours into Assassin's Creed I, II, III, Origins, and Valhalla without finishing; he invested over 100 h into Odyssey. A3 played Valhalla in depth to bolster his ability to discuss the analysis, and he is broadly familiar with the franchise through its fandom spaces.
We generated a table (see Table 2) to organize queer representation in the games juxtaposed with their historical antecedents, ultimately subtracting the latter from the former to create a rough “accuracy score.” We assigned representation scores through an emergent process of gameplay, reflection, and discussion. Thus, these scores represent our attempt to translate our qualitative observations into quantitative representations as a means of communicating our findings more effectively; they are not by contrast an objective or validated measure beyond the process we describe herein. A2, as a former history teacher with some historiographical training and as a current social studies education scholar, consulted historical and historiographical sources to define the historical antecedent score.
Queer Representation in the Assassin's Creed Game Franchise.
Note. *Denotes entries we focused on during this study.
We based this ranking on Colonial (e.g., Puritan) attitudes in the absence of readily available research regarding Mohawk attitudes.
To illustrate: we gave Odyssey a representation rating of 3 because Odyssey contains frequent and explicit reference to and on-screen representations of queerness. In contrast to this suggestion–aligned incidentally with contemporary conceptions of Ancient Greek attitudes toward queerness in general and homosexuality in general–Ancient Greeks placed non-trivial taboos upon queerness (Zive, 2018), which we represented in our scale as a 1. Queerness was no doubt present, indeed even accepted to a certain extent in certain situations—in contrast to, say, acceptance of queerness and homosexuality in hyper-religious monotheistic cultures such as those found in Christendom and the Caliphate. Nevertheless, real social constraints on queerness persisted. Older men could maintain intimate physical relationships with younger men, for example, provided two things held true: first, the boy in question must be (and remain) devoid of facial hair, and second, the boy must not engage in sexual acts with or for pleasure.
We then subtracted the score for historical acceptance of queerness in Ancient Greece (1) from Odyssey's representation score (3) to arrive at a score of 2. This positive integer offers an estimation of queer representation in Odyssey that exceeds what we expect based on the historical record. A negative integer indicates a game provides less representation than we would expect based on historical sources. Despite our use of these scores–which we are careful to point out is a construction on our part based on our observations–we do not frame the present work as quantitative. Rather, we consider this work qualitative with a secondary quantitative element. We used the construction of these scores as a means of interacting with our observations of queer representation in the Assassin's Creed franchise and to generate a starting point that allowed us to consider trends over time. Moreover, we view this quantitative element as useful for answering our second and third research questions regarding, respectively, how queer representation in the Assassin's Creed franchise shifted following the “Great Awokening” and how historically accurate these representations are. Rather than flattening the data, we view this approach as a useful complement to our primarily qualitative approach.
Findings
We orient this section in the following way: we begin by providing an overview of our findings regarding queer representation and its historical antecedents across all 12 mainline titles in the franchise, allowing us to answer our research questions in broader strokes. We then further focus our findings around The Ezio Trilogy (2009, 2010, 2011), Odyssey (2018), and Valhalla (2020). We do so because they most sharply illustrate the contrast in pre- and post-Great Awokening AC games. In The Ezio Trilogy, we observed that Ezio, the protagonist of the trilogy, has limited interactions with queer characters despite historical evidence suggesting he would have likely encountered queer individuals. Conversely, both Odyssey and Valhalla feature a significant presence of queer characters and behaviors, which (at least in Odyssey's case) may be disproportionate given the historical context. The decision to include or exaggerate queer representation in these games can be attributed to various factors, including the evolving context and player choice and freedom as we touched on above.
Figure 2 illustrates our findings regarding our three research questions. Regarding RQ1, to what extent have queer folks been represented in the Assassin's Creed videogame franchise? We find little representation in the beginning of the franchise. We then found a steady uptick in representation until Odyssey, at which point queer representation spikes significantly. Queer representation then settles between these two poles with Valhalla. Regarding RQ2, how has queer representation in the Assassin's Creed franchise shifted (or not) amidst the backdrop of the “Great Awokening?” Figure 2 shows a marked increase in queer representation immediately following the onset of the Great Awokening, as represented by the vertical line. Finally, regarding RQ3, to what extent does queer representation in the Assassin's Creed franchise align to historical antecedents, and how might this relationship have shifted over time? Figure 2 paints two distinct “eras” of this tension. The first such time period, that is between 2007 and 2014, saw AC games developed, which regularly underrepresented queer folks compared to their historical presence in public life. The second era, accompanied by the Great Awokening and beginning in 2015, tells a mixed story. Queer representation increased significantly beginning with Syndicate, though in such a way that aligns to queer presence in public life historically, earning the game a historical accuracy score of 0—a score indicating in the context of our scale acceptable historical accuracy, neither too much nor too little representation when juxtaposed with the historical record. The same can be said of Origins despite its lack of representation on the whole. It is with Odyssey, however, that we find perhaps the starkest inaccuracy and certainly the most overrepresentation, with a score of +2. Finally, Valhalla marks a return to alignment between in-game representation and the historical record.
Queer representation in assassin's creed franchise before and after the Great Awokening.
Early 2000 Era
The Ezio Trilogy
Ubisoft published the three games constituting the Ezio Trilogy within a narrow 3-year window. As a result, the games share largely the same sociomaterial developmental infrastructure (i.e., stable development team, resources, and so on) and contemporary sociocultural environment. We therefore treat the Ezio Trilogy as one bounded case of the phenomenon under investigation. The trilogy is distinctly regarded as Ezio's narrative, leading to the subsequent amalgamation and release of Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection (2016).
The Ezio Trilogy was set during the years of 1476–1512, the height of the Italian Renaissance. Historical antecedent tells us there would have been quite a lot of public queer activity during this time (Rocke, 1996; Ruggiero, 1985). Pope Gregory XI admonished the Florentines in particular in a public denouncement, stating, “[i]n the whole world I believe there are no two sins more abominable than those that prevail among the Florentines… The first is their usury and infidelity… The second is so abominable that I dare not mention it” (Rocke, 1996). There were entire judicial courts made for sodomy and sexual deviant crimes, mostly consisting of gay men (Ruggiero, 1985).
However, despite the historical context suggesting a substantial presence of queer representation during this time, the Ezio Trilogy exhibits relatively limited evidence of such portrayal. The main illustration of potential queer representation is subtly conveyed through Leonardo da Vinci's character, who remarks that women are not a “distraction.” Furthermore, in the DLC “The Da Vinci Disappearance,” Leonardo's relationship with his apprentice suggests an undertone beyond platonic. Nevertheless, considering the broader historical context, queer individuals remain underrepresented. This resonates with the cultural experience of gaymers during the early 2000s (Garcia, 2017; Saleem et al., 2017; Shaw, 2012).
The Modern Era
Odyssey
In comparison with Odyssey and Valhalla in 2018 and 2020, respectively, we see a spike in queer representation for the franchise (Figure 2). This aligns with the denouement of media-induced shock toward marginalized activism groups and considerable mainstream or normalization of contemporary queer lifestyles (Hart, 2021; MacDonald, 2022). Game research has shown the importance of feeling represented and valued within games and modern culture, and players have increasingly expressed a growing expectation of such representation in games (Di Cesare et al., 2023; Hellekson & Busse, 2014; Keefer, 2023; MacDonald, 2022; Thomas, 2019; Williams, 2020).
The release of Odyssey in 2018 welcomed players to Ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War from 431 to 422 BC. In popular historical narratives, Ancient Greeks are colloquially believed to have lived in a highly sexual(ized) society. This perception is reinforced in the game by the presence of various choices for homoerotic experiences throughout the gameplay. Players have the option to assume the roles of either Alexios (male) or Kassandra (female), and most of the NPCs are open to engaging in romantic and/or sexual relationships with the player, regardless of players’ character choice. It is essential to note that this does not necessarily imply all NPCs are bisexual or pansexual. Rather, in enabling the player to make choices about what sort of person Alexios and Kassandra are, the sexual identities of certain romanceable NPCs are underspecified. In this respect, the NPCs themselves are not deemed queer, but the player's choices can be. Additionally, the game features specific NPCs integral to the main storyline, such as Alkibiades, whom the game portrays as flamboyantly bi- or possibly pansexual, embodying stereotypical traits and quirks associated with gay men in contemporary media. Notably, Alkibiades’ sexuality is common knowledge within the game's society, with no metaphorical batting of an eye from the in-game culture concerning the player's homoerotic choices.
In evaluating the historical accuracy of this, we consider a pertinent article exploring Western homosexuality (Zive, 2018), which sheds light on some intriguing aspects. It points out that pederasty, a homosexual relationship between a grown man and a beardless young boy, was commonplace in Ancient Greece. However, two key points should be highlighted: the relationship adhered to a dom–sub dynamic, with the adult man considered disgraceful for being the passive participant, and once the boy matured into an adult citizen, the sexual aspect of the relationship was expected to conclude (Zive, 2018). These points are in contrast to the relationships players can engage in within Odyssey. For instance, Alexios can have sexual encounters with fellow male citizens, diverging from the historical norms of pederasty, and Kassandra can engage in romantic relationships with other females despite there not being a substantial historical record of societal acceptance of lesbian relationships or the like.
Valhalla
Queer representation in Valhalla is prevalent, but less so than in Odyssey. Male and female romance options are again available to the player, regardless of the gender of their character, so the player is able to generate player-initiated queer representation to the extent they wish. There are also NPCs that the player is not able to romance, but who are in explicitly same-sex relationships, such as the characters of Stowe and Erke Bodilsson, major characters in the settlement of Lunden (modern-day City of London). However, there are some additional nuances to how Valhalla handles gender and sexuality.
While the player is able to choose the gender of the main character, Eivor Varinsdottir, this is not a fixed choice as it is in Odyssey: the player can change Eivor's gender on the fly or “let the Animus decide.” This is revealed in the story to be because Eivor, canonically a woman, is the reincarnation of the Norse god Odin, canonically a man. Accordingly, the Animus is said to see both male and female aspects in Eivor's “genetic memory.” While this is not directly transgender or nonbinary representation, the nuanced representation of gender and identity it presents is relevant to the experiences of transgender and nonbinary individuals. Relatedly, we also note that the romance most relevant to the game's main storylines is with Randvi, a female character; there is no comparably detailed romance with a male character. Taken together with the above, this means that the primary romance in the game is canonically a same-sex relationship between two women. However, player-initiated same-sex relationships between men are not as extensively represented as a result.
Scandinavians in the Viking Age understood categories of sexuality differently than we do today, and social systems relied on fluidity of these categories to function (Bell, 2021). Scandinavians understood two degrees of gender: hvatr (pronounced HVA-ter, bold, active, vigorous, but also a synecdoche for “masculine”) and blauðr (pronounced BLOY-ther; soft, weak, but also a synecdoche for “feminine”) (Clover, 1993). Rather than aligning to a simplified male–female binary, behaviors could be sorted into these categories along a spectrum, and a biological male or female could move along this spectrum based on life stages or actions: cowardice versus bravery in battle, youth versus old age, health versus infirmity, freedom versus slavery (Bell, 2021).
While our observation of queer representation in Valhalla more closely matches queerness embodied in Viking culture, we find that Odyssey and Valhalla are more similar in queer representation to each other than to other games in the series. This shift occurs in alignment with the Great Awokening, as these entries in the franchise would have had almost all of their development cycle occur after 2014. Accordingly, we suggest this is at least one factor in the change. Simultaneously, we also note another factor more internal to the Assassin's Creed series in its shift in genre. While all entries in the franchise are characterized as open-world games, Odyssey and Valhalla are typically characterized as open-world RPGs. The player characters of Alexios, Kassandra, and Eivor contrast with Ezio, in that the player is able to create a projective identity for them through dialogue and romance choices. While Ezio does engage in flirtatious and romantic interactions with women, the majority of his identity is owned by the developers of AC. In contrast, the players of Odyssey and Valhalla co-construct the identities of Alexios, Kassandra, and Eivor with the developers through small dialogue choices, some branching questlines, and of course, romance options. Indeed, given the availability of romance options, players of these games expected heighted agency over their player character's romantic life; see the backlash to an expansion to Odyssey, which railroaded players into having a child (Good, 2019). While this does not explain any increase in explicitly queer NPCs, the choice of the developers to enable the player to create a projective identity for their character in Valhalla and Odyssey–to let them construct who Alexios, Kassandra, or Eivor are–directly plays a role in increased opportunities for player-initiated queer representation.
Conclusion
Our exploration focused on the evolving landscape of queer representation in the gaming industry, highlighting shifts in gamer culture and developers’ choices for queer representation. Analyzing the Assassin's Creed franchise, we observed a notable increase in queer characters and acceptance, mirroring the Great Awokening. This surge in queer representation primarily reflects the society producing these games rather than queer presence within the games’ historical settings. The Ezio Trilogy lacks queer representation, a seemingly peculiar choice for a game set in Renaissance Italy. On the contrary, Odyssey departs from historical evidence, allowing players to engage openly in homosexual relationships, explained by its development during a period when queer representation is in vogue. In contrast to both The Ezio Trilogy and Odyssey, Valhalla aligns more closely with the historical record, showing little interest in binary gender roles and reflecting the increased acknowledgment of queer individuals in its sociohistorical context.
Discussion
Impact
The discussion surrounding queer representation in videogames is significant and actively progressing in contemporary media and gamer culture. As Monahan notes, videogames have emerged as a dominant force, potentially surpassing even music as a key aspect of youth culture (Monahan, 2021). This shift underscores the need to critically examine the role of video games in shaping cultural perceptions and identities, specifically those related to gender and sexuality. Shaw, in Gaming at the Edge, provides an approach that suggests a more nuanced approach and starts with assessing the relevance and significance of representation in games and not categorizing them as positive or negative (2014).
One of the critical implications of this research is how video games can profoundly influence individuals’ self-perception and coping mechanisms (Harper et al., 2018; Ouellette, 2013; Raymond, 2003; Malkowski & Russworm, 2017; Shaw, 2009; 2012; Shaw & Friesem, 2016; Shaw et al., 2019; and others). As highlighted in studies by Thomas (2019), Di Cesare et al. (2023), and Keefer (2023), interactive narratives in games allow players to engage with diverse characters and experiences, which can impact how they view themselves and navigate real-world challenges. Keefer (2023), Malkowski and Russworm (2017), and Shaw (2015), among others, have raised concerns about how these portrayals can inadvertently reinforce problematic ideas about the queer community. This complexity of impact underscores the need to be mindful, on the part of the creators (e.g., developers and researchers) and consumers (e.g., players and audiences), with exploration and implementation of queer representation in games and other forms of new media.
Moreover, videogames possess a unique capacity to “teach” history, or at least shape players’ perceptions of historical events and cultures (Bello, 2025; Shaw, 2015; Vandewalle et al., 2023). Studies show games can serve as educational tools presenting historical contexts to players (e.g., Casey, 2021; Gee, 2003; 2015; Gilbert, 2017; McCall, 2011; Vandewalle et al., 2023). In this context, the representation of queer characters becomes not only a matter of cultural sensitivity, but also a means to challenge or reinforce prevailing historical narratives.
Future Research
As we look to the future, several avenues of research present themselves. First is the exploration of genre dynamics. The most recent game, Assassin's Creed Mirage (October, 2023), is a departure from the open-world RPG genre and a return to the roots of the series; it features a more narrowly defined protagonist who previously appeared as an NPC in Valhalla. This opens doors to further examine the relationship between game genre, player choice, and freedom and the role of the Great Awokening in shaping queer representation. Exploring how different genres and gameplay impact the portrayal and agency of queer characters and player immersion could yield valuable insights.
Second are the ongoing tensions between the historical record and inclusive representation. Further investigating how developers balance historical accuracy or in-game cultural beliefs with contemporary values would be a valuable research direction. For example, Assassin's Creed Mirage is set in ninth-century Baghdad, providing an apt illustration. Given the relevant historical antecedents, we would expect no “public-facing” queerness, as was the case with the earlier games. Yet Ubisoft, as we showed in our findings, has already shown a willingness to stretch the historical record in service of providing a more inclusive experience to players. The effects of such choices remain unclear, however. Further exploration of developer and gamer perceptions of and experiences with this tension between historical accuracy and inclusive representation would be valuable.
Last is comparative analysis. Extending the analysis to other long-standing AAA games and popular works beyond the Assassin's Creed franchise might provide a broader perspective on the trends in queer representation within videogames and new media. Assessing whether the increase in queer representation observed in this study is replicated or contrasted in other major entertainment titles may offer insights into industry-wide changes.
To close, our research underscores the dynamic interplay between video games, culture, and identity, particularly in relation to queer representation. As videogames continue to evolve and occupy a central role in the entertainment industry, ongoing research in this field is essential for understanding the multifaceted impact of gaming and media consumption on individuals and society as a whole.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
