At the Ford Foundation in upper Manhattan this morning, representatives from inside and outside the game industry spoke to the issues that LGBT gamers face and how best to fix them in the first ever "Full Spectrum" event. From online interactions filled with offensive language to games that don't represent LGBT relationships, those issues are myriad and varied. It's an unprecedented event, actually -- despite the wide-ranging demographics of gaming in the modern world, no such event has been held before, nonetheless hosted by one of the game industry's largest publishers (Electronic Arts teamed with the Ford Foundation and the Human Rights Campaign for today's event). As Entertainment Software Association VP of media and events Dan Hewitt reminded attendees during the first panel, the game industry is an (annual) $24 billion business that spans 50 percent of American homes, and the average gamer is 31-years-old. So why are we still seeing such an underrepresentation of diversity in gaming, despite a diversity of gamers?
