Homosexuality and Games

[GunFlame]

I honestly don't think there are that many characters that are deep enough, or stories that go deep enough, where the sexuality of the character would be revealed.

 

As far as we know, a lot of main protagonists could be gay if they haven't specified or shown that they are straight. And when they do show that they are straight, it's far from subtle. It's smack in the face innuendo, or more common now; sex. Even though you could be gay in Mass Effect, there's hardly depth in the character.

 

Master Chief could be gay, Joanne Dark could be gay, Doom guy, Jill Valentine, Ryu, Cammy, your Dragonborn, any character who hasn't had it clearly defined.

 

Video Game characters are still so shallow; their likes, dislikes, preferences, feelings, moods, really don't matter. They barely have an impact. They go from character moment, to gameplay moment, shattering any possible personality consistency or relatability.

 

Maybe this is actually a positive for games in an odd way, maybe Grey Fox is gay, but he just gets treated like anyone else regardless of his sexuality.

Edited January 4, 2012 by GunFlame

[Masonvrocks]

I think Dean and I share fairly similar views, and he's summed them up fairly well but just thinking about the idea has reminded me of kids cartoons. Now this may just be a Canada thing, I'm not sure, but a lot of Canadian made cartoons go out of their way to be inclusive. Many shows will have be sure to include an even number of males and females, at least one white kid, black kid, Asian kid, middle eastern kid, and occasionally a French Canadian kid, not to mention a large number of them include a wheelchair bound kid.

 

And again, these are kids shows so we're not exactly talking about the pinnacle of characterization here but even when I was young this stuck out to me as weird, you could tell they had been forced in their for the sole purpose of representation and it felt off.

 

I think a big chuck of it simply comes from the age and maturity of games, we're simply too young as a medium. We're still busy exploring the possibilities and I feel that tackling these social issues would be better tackled by a more mature medium such as film until such a time in the future when games are prepared to take on such a challenge.

 

I mean even Catherine (Granted it's Atlus so perhaps this should be taken with a grain of salt) couldn't see a heterosexual relationship through all the way, deciding instead to use the huge copout

of Catherine being a succubus and therefor Vincent not "actually" cheating.

 

. For a game who's marketing largely centered around games taking a more serious look at relationships and sex, to not even able to see that through...we're just not ready.

[Hot Heart]

I've had to skip ahead, so I'll need to read the rest afterwards but your novel analogy is completely flawed, MasterDex. You are talking about suddenly making a character gay in a sequel. Therefore, as with Drake, it would seem forced or shoehorned. That is not the point at all. The idea is that we can have these characters who take centre stage from inception. (Although, I think it's interesting to look at an example like Willow in Buffy. Was there such a backlash when she was revealed as gay despite appearing straight earlier in the show?)

 

EDIT: And I think it's important to clarify, no one is saying that all current developers should suddenly start writing gay main characters. Or at least, that's not the viewpoint of Patricia, who has the most balanced opinion here. I perceive this as more a 'call to arms' and, in some ways, a bit of optimistic urging. There's not some homogenous 'game developing factory' that's being asked to start increasing the number of different cultures shown in games. That would be the Saturday Morning Cartoon model.

 

Videogames are part of our culture and it still plays a part in affirming our identities, no matter how subtle and whether we like it or not. Films, books and television have come a long way forward in these regards. It's time the videogame industry started doing the same.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Hot Heart

[MasterDex]

I've had to skip ahead, so I'll need to read the rest afterwards but your novel analogy is completely flawed, MasterDex. You are talking about suddenly making a character gay in a sequel. Therefore, as with Drake, it would seem forced or shoehorned. That is not the point at all. The idea is that we can have these characters who take centre stage from inception.

 

My novel analogy was meant to reflect the current situation i.e. Rowling making Dumbledore gay after the fact and Meade and Sterling's suggestion that Drake be revealed as gay. It was intended to show how clamouring for representation from an industry dominated by hethrosexuals, in particular hethrosexual males, would inevitably in most cases lead to the feeling of a forced or token LGBT character and how that wouldn't make anyone happy in the end. It was also supposed to put across the idea that characters with no defined sexuality as in the case of the character from my imaginary novel, Dumbledore and the many asexual characters littered throughout our games don't need to be defined for representation's sake and allow the player to project their own sexuality onto those characters should they so wish. Feel Freeman seems dry without a defined sexuality as a transgendered woman? Now Gordon used to be Gerta!

 

I know that's not the crucial point and I wholeheartedly support the idea of LGBT characters who take centre stage from inception but that's the sort of thing you're going to get when you cry for representation with the industry demographic as it is. That's why I don't believe that idea is a real possibility right now. For LGBT characters or interests (or indeed the interests of any under/misrepresented group) to be represented to an acceptable level, more members of the aforementioned groups have to enter the industry proper. That's my ultimate point.

 

As it stands, like I said in my comment above, it comes across to me as members of the LGBT community and female gamers (in relation to "sexism" in games) saying "Stop making the games that you want to play and make the games that I want to play." without anyone, to my knowledge, standing up and saying "If they (the current industry professionals) can't do it right then I'm going to." It seems a bit like getting angry at butchers for not carrying a wide assortment of vegetables to cater to vegetarians. Sure, it's possible, and there are butchers out there who do carry vegetables but they're butchers. Their primary market is meat-eaters and as such, they're going to cater to the meat-eaters primarily and carrying vegetables will just be an afterthought. That was probably an awful analogy but I'm running on the fumes of fumes right now so forgive me. You should get what I'm trying to say though.

 

I agree with the intent but not the current application.

Edited January 4, 2012 by MasterDex

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

See, while I share your concerns about portraying the LGBT characters well, I also recognize we need to try to make the leap at some point, or else it will never get better. You can't just say "Oh, we shouldn't build this house because no one's built it before"; be the first to build it, lay the proper groundwork down, and even if you do a shitty job, the others that come after you (or even yourself) could improve and build on your original attempt.

 

But nothing's going to get done if we all just stand there, waiting for someone else to take the plunge.

[MasterDex]

I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it because no one has done it before. To keep with the house analogy, the foundations are already there, and they're already looking pretty shakey, which is understandable for early attempts, especially when those early attempts are coming from what I'm assuming are straight designers. Developers and publishers have dipped their toes, if they haven't taken the plunge and the results aren't anything to write home about.

 

For me it boils down to this: if you're happy to accept hamfisted LGBT characters and portrayals that will likely conform more to stereotypes than anything else then so be it and although I think accepting such characters doesn't help the cause, I have no problem with accepting such if that's all you want. If however you find you do have a problem with such portrayals then don't complain about it. Don't begrudge and bicker the developers for not representing you properly because they're likely just including such portrayals out of a sense of duty rather than pride. The same goes for "sexism" in games - you can either accept that women will often be designed to titilate, even if there's more to them, or you can try and do something about it. Expecting people with no interest or a workable knowledge of an under/misrepresented group to do justice to said group isn't going to work out in your favour most of the time.

 

It's worth keeping in mind also that the majority of videogame characters are asexual and their sexuality never enters into the picture so rather than crying out for more gay characters in games, perhaps what we should really be crying out for right now is the presence of sexuality in games in the first place. As Strangelove said earlier, there are a lot of things that games do poorly, if they even do them at all and some of those things are going to have to be improved first before any LGBT representation is done justice, as one begets the other.

 

TL;DR of all my posts: I'm happy to take the leap, I just don't think that leap is going to be anything any gamer will be proud of for some time to come.

Edited January 4, 2012 by MasterDex

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

Many shows will have be sure to include an even number of males and females, at least one white kid, black kid, Asian kid, middle eastern kid, and occasionally a French Canadian kid, not to mention a large number of them include a wheelchair bound kid.

Burger King Kids' Club anyone?

 

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

Those are some excellent points. You're probably right; it might be better to wait for proper representation than some cliche, offensive stereotype.

[Thursday Next]

Sorry to lower the tone but...

a game focused on being gay would suck ass.

 

Made me lol.

 

On topic. I agree with Dean to a large extent. Since games (in broad strokes) either (1) tell a crappy story with flat characters, or (2) tell no story at all and leave the main character as a blank that you fill, I don't think games (in general) are (1) ready or (2) needing more gays.

 

As someone else stated, an indie developer will probably do something amazing with this that will change the story telling landscape in games for the better.

 

Until then the driver in Forza 4 can be gay if you like.

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

http://kotaku.com/5812460/the-struggles-of-a-gay-xcom-scientist

Totally forgot XCOM is going for a gay character. Let's see how well it goes...

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

As bad as videogames do straight characters... I really don't think they should be doing gay characters just yet.

[TheMightyEthan]

I agree that adding gay characters for the sake of adding gay characters is bad, because you end up with token characters that don't actually mean anything. But I do think it's sad that the industry is still at a point where even the idea of having gay characters at all is controversial.

 

That's all I'm really going to say, because I think everyone else has pretty much covered it. Though I would like to add that Master Chief is straight. He's got a romance going on with Cortana. And if you think I'm making stuff up go replay Halo 3 and imagine that everything's the same except Cortana is a masculine AI and tell me that wouldn't have super gay overtones.

[Hot Heart]

Yeah. As TFG already pointed out, there is usually a constant affirmation of heterosexuality that we don't always notice. You may be able to imagine yourself in MC's armour but some of the relationships have already been established to some extent.

 

And, yes, it's the idea that having a gay character would probably be so controversial that is the problem. It's not so much that you must have a gay character but that it shouldn't faze people and you don't get there by shying away from the subject. Same goes for any diversity really.

[deanb]

I wouldn't say it would be controversial to add in a gay character. There have been gay characters before. And the controversy doesn't tend to centre on there being LGBT characters, but that they were generally terribly done. For example Dragon Age the issue most had wasn't that there was a gay romance option, but that the romance stuff kinda sucked. For example.

 

 

With the fact there have been quite a few LGBT characters in games I am wondering why it's spoken of as a "if they were to add gays in games" kind of way.

Gay

 

Bi

 

Transgender (okay I admit it's pushing it a bit, but it is rather frequently commented on in game)

 

Bi (and iirc the controversy wasn't that she was bi, but that she was nekkid)

 

Gay

 

(As well as technically you the player character. Oh and yes there's many more, this is just top of my head stuff)

 

Personally I think Quina is maybe the best example. It's never made a huge thing, and if anything is pretty openly mocking the limited binary look on gender western society has with the whole "s/he" thing. Veronica is pretty chill too, it's never made a huge thing. Whereas stuff like Zevran is way OTT and 80% of his dialogue is him flirting with you.

[Hot Heart]

With the fact there have been quite a few LGBT characters in games I am wondering why it's spoken of as a "if they were to add gays in games" kind of way.

Because, if you recall, the original point was to have an equivalent to Nathan Drake. Not only a protagonist but one that 'men want to be'.

[Thursday Next]

With the fact there have been quite a few LGBT characters in games I am wondering why it's spoken of as a "if they were to add gays in games" kind of way.

Because, if you recall, the original point was to have an equivalent to Nathan Drake. Not only a protagonist but one that 'men want to be'.

 

Sort of a Jack Harkness of video games?

[Hot Heart]

Sort of a Jack Harkness of video games?

I'm not too familiar with the character or Torchwood but, from what I can glean, that seems like an excellent example, yes.

[MasterDex]

With the fact there have been quite a few LGBT characters in games I am wondering why it's spoken of as a "if they were to add gays in games" kind of way.

Because, if you recall, the original point was to have an equivalent to Nathan Drake. Not only a protagonist but one that 'men want to be'.

 

Sort of a Jack Harkness of video games?

 

That's exactly the kind of gay/bi character gaming needs. Hell, get Barrowman behind the voice for it too! That man has charisma in spades. If I was gay, I totally would.

[deanb]

So a guy on r/gaymers is doing a survey. Not the best made survey in the world (few duplicate questions), but one worth filling out if you're into this topic maybe

http://kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=LIIHOG_9b771dba

[Hot Heart]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/423849/20130114/star-wars-old-republic-sgr-gay-planet.htm

 

Oh, dear...

[TheMightyEthan]

lmao. Laughing my sad, sad ass off.

 

I'm not angry with you, Bioware, I'm just... disappointed.

Edited January 14, 2013 by TheMightyEthan

[deanb]

"As we have said in the past, allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of."

 

..as long as you pay for the privilege, and only do it on that one planet way out of the way in the outer rim(heheh).

 

Bioware and their "we're going to homosexual relations in, but in such a way we might as well have not bothered and in a way that draws attention to our game" as usual.

[Mister Jack]

Pussies! Do it right or fuck off!

 

I think if anything, this might actually deter gay players, not make them more comfortable. I mean, they're being segregated to a gay planet. Wouldn't that make you feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole? They were asking for gay relationships, not Fire Island.

[TheMightyEthan]

I feel that in any conversation about sex or sexuality all references to pegs and holes must be puns. Failure to do so should be a bannable offense.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I demand that us straight gamers bitch enough until we get the planet version of Whore Island