Hello! Eurogamer’s week of features celebrating the intersection of queer culture and gaming continues today with a Pride-themed edition of the Eurogamer Podcast. In the spirit of this week’s festivities, and given this is timely and necessary look at why queerness is important to gaming, we’re making this podcast completely free. So, whether you’re a subscriber or not, please sit back and enjoy a very special chat with actor and writer, Ashly Burch. To catch up on everything you might have missed this year and in Pride Weeks past, you can visit our Pride Week hub.
Hello and welcome to an intimate and honest chat with myself, Dom Peppiatt – deputy editorial director at Eurogamer – and the wonderful Ashly Burch: prolific actress, writer, director, singer.
In a chat that was filmed in June, Ashly and I cover a broad range of topics in this interview – from queerness in games, how that’s changed over the course of her career, her relationship to the LGBTQIA+ identity, and how those elements inspire her work across writing, directing, acting – and even simply engaging with games as someone that enjoys playing them.
Given that Burch has lent her pipes to characters such as Aloy in the Horizon series of games, Chloe Price in Life is Strange, Tiny Tina in the Borderlands series, Mel in The Last of Us Part 2, and many more besides, I felt it was necessary to dive into some of those roles to provide some texture to their queer spirit. And I learned a lot from this chat, too.
Did you know that Burch played an asexual character in Parvati from The Outer Worlds, for example? And that she found out about her character’s sexuality in much the same way that we did? Or that Burch’s racial identity intersects with her queerness in a way that may not be completely obvious?
I think my favourite thing about this talk was the way that, time and again, it became evident that queerness is not just a ‘one-size-fits-all’ thing; that Burch’s understanding of pansexuality is as valid and important as my understanding of bisexuality. There are multiple instances of our chat naturally dovetailing with something we mentioned earlier; how representation of one group can be a benefit to all, how we – as queer people – can claim characters of our own just like any other marginalised group can, and how important it is to use our platforms to educate, promote, and persist.
So, now that you’ve heard me waffle on about the broader strokes of the interview, you can listen for yourself below, or hit the video up top if you want to see us in the flesh (so to speak).
If you’d like to read more from Eurogamer’s Pride Week 2025 celebrations, check out the list of articles below:
- How far have we really come since The Sims? A short, sweet history of being bi in games by Keza MacDonald.
- “The heart has no bounds”: A study of polyamory in games, how it’s done well, and where we should go next by Dom Peppiatt.
- Final Fantasy 14’s queer community and the importance of chosen family by Ed Nightingale.
- Games can be so much more than an escape: they can inspire you to take action by Caelyn Ellis.
