Let’s Come Out! On Gender and Sexuality, Encouraging Dialogue, and Acceptance

This article presents the board game Let’s Come Out and the ludic enquiry about its effectiveness in dealing with the issues of gender (LGBT) and sexual orientation stereotypes in a society that does not completely accept non-heteronormativity. Conceived in the Italian context, where the idea of male + female as “the only family” is still deeply rooted in the common sense and civil unions between people of the same sex became legal just in February 2016, Let’s Come Out faces a particularly critical and problematic topic. Tackling the issues of gender and sexual orientation stereotypes, and arguing the consequent discriminations of being considered diverse, it creatively distrusts the norm of binarity and heteronormativity, inspiring players to reflect on labels and prejudice biases. With the support of an empirical, multidisciplinary investigation we compared the designers’ expectation with the players’ experience. The study shows the results gathered from 22 subjects playing this game, collected via rapid ethnography, pre- and post-game-experience quantitative questionnaire, short semi-structured interviews, and focus groups. Findings are noteworthy because they confirmed the design and research hypotheses, showing how players were able to take advantage of the spaces of openness and receptiveness that Let’s Come Out encourages, investigating the discrimination issue within the safe, blurred boundaries of its magic circle.