Define "A Well Writen Gay Character" in Gaming.

[Lieju]

Let's start with getting a few well-written characters, period. Let's face it, the gaming industry doesn't exactly do that often. Get that down, then we'll talk abotu well-written gay characters.

But isn't discussion on how you should depict things like sexuality something that hopefully leads to better writing?
'Just write better' is kinda vague.

I pose a question to you, dear escapists. What makes it okay/not okay to give a character such as Morinth (again, from the Mass Effect series) a rampant sexual appetite and not a gay character such as Cortez a similar trait? Why do we let our sensitivities and social compass drive us to making decisions on what is and is not okay in modern society?

It has to do with stereotypes. If a straight character has a 'rampant sexual appetite', no-one is going to define him/her as a straight person who has this trait. If it's gay, people will immediately link that with the stereotype that gay men are promiscuous, and it will strenghten that stereotype.
While it's unlikely anyone is going to go 'That's what straight people are like, lol, always sleeping around'.

(Also some people would be complaining about the gay character pushing their gayness down their throats)

You should, of course, be able to write a character that has traits associated with the stereotypes, but you better give them depth.

I guess what I'm trying to stab at here is: Who the fuck cares what sexuality someone in a game is? The majority of games don't actually have a whole lot to do with sexuality and therfore it's very rarely going to be relevant.

It might not be relevant, but it's often present. How many games have a heterosexual love-interest for the hero, for example? That's an example of heterosexuality right there.

 

[Stu35]

In my head, Marcus Fenix is gay.

Despite the fact he's supposed to want to get in the pants of Stroud, he doesn't really do a whole lot about it - He seems very reluctant to show affection for this 'love' of his. Now, I'm sure this is an attempt to show how gruff, and manly he is, but really, I think he's just struggling with his own sexual attraction to Dom.

So yeah, there's a gay character right there, not really well written, but then who in Gears of War is?

...

I guess what I'm trying to stab at here is: Who the fuck cares what sexuality someone in a game is? The majority of games don't actually have a whole lot to do with sexuality and therfore it's very rarely going to be relevant.

 

[peruvianskys]

What are you talking about when you say a 'straight character who's gay'?

Dumbledore is a well written character who is gay, but it's not the standout trait of the character.

Because Dumbledore isn't gay. He acted straight in every possible way, free from any behavior that could have even possibly been based in any element of LGBT culture or expression. Just because he was given a token sexuality that was literally never referred to, doesn't mean he is a "gay" character. Dumbledore is a straight character 99% of the time.

A truly well-written character who is gay will behave in ways that are informed by the LGBT experience. They will not simply exist as heterosexual-looking, heterosexual-acting, heterosexual-speaking characters who happen to get the "stamp of gayness" put on whenever the story has to get some momentary diversity. That's what I mean by a "straight gay character": one who is the picture of heteronormativity but every once in a while mentions a husband instead of a wife.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

A well-written gay character is one that isn't some kind of ridiculous stereotype, and whose personality isn't completely defined by homosexuality.

 

[MorganL4]

Cortez sounds like a good example to me. A well written gay character is just a well written character who happens to be gay.

I was going to post this, but you beat me to it, so I guess I'll just say: "Ditto"

 

[Relish in Chaos]

A well-written gay character would be someone who?s sexuality isn?t their defining personality trait, and that their sexuality is alluded to in implications but is otherwise unimportant to the plot, or it?s somewhat relevant to the storyline, like in some RPGs.

So many answers in this thread have been along the lines of.

"A good gay character is a character you can't tell is gay until they tell you."

Why?
There are plenty of guys who you can tell are gay(or at least guess they might be) from talking to them for a while. Not every gay man is like that, so not every gay character should be. But to completely ignore such people really doesn't seem very fair to me.

Well, I think it's just that people don't like characters that do seem to be so obviously pandering to stereotypes. I can't tell you how much I, as a black man, cringe whenever I see a stereotypically black character on TV, baggy trousers and all. It just kind of proves the racists/homophobes right, so to speak. I mean, not really, since one person doesn't speak for an entire race/sexuality, but it contributes to the underlying problem.

It's better if it's subtle, basically. That kind of represents real-life. There are more gay men that are subtly effeminate than there are almost in-your-face flamboyant, like Louie Spence, because that's when it gets to the point of "annoying".

But of course, none of that matters if the character is well-written and, if they?re a protagonist, you like them. That?s what?s important.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

A well written gay character is a character who's sexuality doesn't define him. And it's definitely not Steve Cortez from Mass Effect 3. Bioware jumped at every chance they got to show us that he's gay. They even made him into a possible romance option. Being gay was what defined him.

 

[StriderShinryu]

A well written gay character is one that when everything is said in done, being gay isn't the defining point of the character. When gay sexual preference is treated the same as straight sexual preference, that is when the good characters come out...but we have to wait till society as a whole stops finding it weird.

This is pretty much my thought on the matter. I don't have any issue with a characters sexuality being either subdued or fairly prominent. As much as the extremely flamboyant gay male is viewed as a stereotype, it is a "type" of gay male that does exist just as gay males who are not overtly flamboyant do. The same distinctions can also be made for homosexual females.

What it really comes down to for me is not how overt a character is in portraying their sexuality (heck, we get more than enough blatantly womanizing straight men in games) but what the character has to do/say once you move beyond their sexuality. Flamboyant gay guy can be a perfectly serviceable starting point for a character as long as that's not all he's there to be.

 

[TheTim]

I thought Steve Cortez was a great gay character


he was just like a normal character who just had a different preference

 

[Thespian]

-snip-

Okay, this is a misconception (or I believe it is) that I seem to spend a lot of time in threads like this attempting to clear up.
Cortez IS a well written gay character, this is true. He is an adequately written character. Also, he is gay. The two don't really have anything to do with each other.

You see, gay people experience different things to straight people. Just the same as most minorities when compared to their majorities. That's really all there is to it.
Gay people experience different things to straight people.

Thus, a story with a gay character would ideally focus on some of the things unique TO a gay person. Well, not unique, but you get the idea. For example;
1 - Sexual insecurity is more common among gay people than straight people
2 - It's more common for a gay person to fall for a straight person than a straight person to fall for a gay person. Instant unrequited love tale and complicated character relationship.
3 - Gay people can often experience complex familial issues as a result of their sexuality.
And et cetera.

I know, I know that being gay is not a defining characteristic. I myself am a genuine man-loving homo and people tend to be surprised by it because I literally ooze masculinity because it isn't obvious due to all of the other character traits I have.

I'll use myself as an example again - No, being gay is not all there is to me, I'd like to think that there are layers upon layers of enigmatic complexities to my character, but it is pretty darn significant. Yeah I mean, if I were telling someone about myself the fact that I'm gay would probably come up pretty soon. Not the first thing, but soon. Some of the most difficult, poignant moments of my life are tied in with homosexuality. And I've had it pretty good, too.

So my point in all this rambling is that gay characters seem to always be one of two things.
a) Stereotypical and badly written. You know the type. They prance around and squeal with their girlfriends, only not the sex-having type of girlfriend.

b) Almost too tentative to use gayness as an even slightly prominent trait

So while Cortez is a great character, he sort of doesn't... Hmm. He doesn't capitalize on the writing potential of a gay character, or very well represent that lifestyle.
Don't get me wrong, there's no real OBLIGATION for bioware to have done either of those things with Cortez. It'd just be nice if someone did, sometimes.

So yes. I believe it's a misconception, albeit a good-natured one, to think that you shouldn't have a character's sexuality be one of their major traits.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Me in Skyrim(?) Does that count?

Oh well... Alistair from DA2 was pretty good I guess and you had the option to romance him as a male (I think)

 

[Something Amyss]

But isn't discussion on how you should depict things like sexuality something that hopefully leads to better writing?
'Just write better' is kinda vague.

And I think the discussion misses the point that there aren't many well-written characters, period, so trying specifically for well-written gay characters is more or less pretending the medium as a whole is far more developed than it is.

the point being, there needs to first BE well-written characters before there can be well-written gay characters. Looking at the issue of homosexuals being well-written is sort of like looking for dolphins in the desert. There's something else missing, something big. Something important.

Gaming characters tend to fall flat in the gaming medium. Even the ones that are considered "deep," like the Mass effect cast, tend to be as cardboard thin as any action movie. I know people site Mass Effect 3 as having a well-written gay character, but he looks like so much paper stock to me, and I can't help but think it stems more from an attempt to legitimise the medium than it does from actual character depth.

The problems with portraying gay characters, black characters, female characters, etc., in part all stem from the inability to create characters who are fleshed out and nuanced in the first place.

1 - Sexual insecurity is more common among gay people than straight people

I hope you're joking there. There are entire empires built around the sexual insecurity of the heterosexual male.

 

[Thespian]

1 - Sexual insecurity is more common among gay people than straight people

I hope you're joking there. There are entire empires built around the sexual insecurity of the heterosexual male.

1 - No, I am not joking.

2 - You may notice that I certainly didn't say there is no sexual insecurity in heterosexual people.

3 - I didn't specify male.

4 - The message I meant to get across didn't pertain to sexual insecurity in general. I should have been more specific mayhaps, but I thought context implied it. What I perhaps should have said was this:
It is more common for gay people to be insecure with their sexual orientation than for straight people to be.

In other words I'm not talking about all forms of sexual insecurity which can come in a myriad of shapes and sizes, but rather just a reluctance to accept one's own sexual orientation which is powerful, dangerous and common due to the view many parts of society hold.

 

[Nadia Castle]

"The title of this thread should probably be 'Define a 'Well-written LGBT character"' ."

Nah, us transgenders are just waiting for the damn gays to finish hogging the 'No one can actually write us properly' crown. The bisexuals will have to wait their turn we've been queuing too long already!!!

 

[Vkmies]

You write a good gay character like you would any other good character. Why should making a good gay character be any different from just a good heterosexual character? I don't really see the conversation here, but guess that's my 2 cents.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I decided to make this topic in response to a topic that I (and a lot of you, my fellow Escapists) posted in the other day that questioned why there aren't more homosexual characters in games.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.387320-Poll-Games-arent-gay-enough?page=1

In particular, the OP brings up this point:

I mean, I'm not exactly a champion of political correctness, but that kind of horrifies me that 2012, we only have ONE well-written gay guy in the whole mainstream gaming spectrum. 0 well-written lesbians.

Actually, I posted a bit in that thread (before derailment) that I rather disagreed with the OP - that there are a number of well written gay and lesbian characters in gaming.

I'd like to see more, since the gay characters currently in gaming either tend to be minor characters (Cortez is excellent, but he's not a squad member, meaning that we see a lot less of him than we do of other characters) or background. Or characters are implied to be gay without it ever being stated, leading to disagreements within the fandom. Only a few characters like Kanji are well written, have their sexuality upfront in the plot, and are main characters in their game.

Anyway, to the actual topic - well, to be a well written gay character, a few things need to happen:

1) Good quality characters. You can't have a good gay character unless the rest of the characters in the game are also well written, so good characters in general (and good writers to write them) are the first requirement.

2) Openly gay. At least to the audience/player. If we don't know they're gay, then it's hard to call them a gay character without half (or more) of the fandom going "no! he/she isn't gay!"

3) Being gay isn't their only character trait. This is an important one. Cortez and Kanji are both good examples of this. There has to be more to the character than just their sexual orientation. Otherwise they're either a Soapbox character or a Stereotype.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.

 

[Agow95]

They very nearly achieved the same thing with Traynor in ME3, she wasn't in your face about it to the point that if you ignored the one comment about her finding EDI's voice attractive you can fail to notice it at all, then, because the writers were blokes, they made a lesbian shower scene...

 

[Vkmies]

"The title of this thread should probably be 'Define a 'Well-written LGBT character"' ."

Nah, us transgenders are just waiting for the damn gays to finish hogging the 'No one can actually write us properly' crown. The bisexuals will have to wait their turn we've been queuing too long already!!!

The amount of transgendered people in the industry and gaming community is something that has honestly taken me by storm when I became active on the internet. It's weird, but I really do applaude that. Especially the work of Anna Anthrophy is something that really made me see how active you people seem to be in the industry. You seem more visible than in other mediums. That strikes me as interesting.

Through that, what strikes to me even more interesting, is thus the lack of proper transgendered characters in video games. I mean, even though I am a boring male heterosexual, I found Dys4ia to be very enjoyable and striking game and would very gladly see your side of the story much more often in video games.

Here is to hoping that everyone will be equally represented in video games some time in our future!

CAPTCHA: No-brainer
It really is, Captcha. It really is.

 

[Agow95]

Me in Skyrim(?) Does that count?

Oh well... Alistair from DA2 was pretty good I guess and you had the option to romance him as a male (I think)

I think you mean Anders, he was intentionally made similar personality-wise and physically to Alistair, but Alistair is straight and was only a team-mate in DA:O, while Anders and every other romance option in DA2 is bisexual because then no-one could complain that X couldn't be romanced as a certain gender.

 

[Of-the-Lion]

The obvious answer is being said over and over again: a good gay character is a good character who is gay. What should be discussed is how that character should be brought into the game. Will they be accepted in their world? Are they single? Do they want to be single?
I think it would be interesting to see a game in which you play as a character who does all sorts of cool heroic good guy stuff, but upon meeting a gay character just stops being a lovable hero and starts being a bit of a bigot. Now you're stuck with a character who you may want to like, but who's morals go against yours. He's still saving people, but he's not necessarily as spotless as he used to appear.