Do we need more LGBTQ+ protagonists in video games?

[Darkmantle]

No. How many games even have the protagonist even mention their sexual orientation? No Mass Effect and the like don't count because you choose it. The Last of Us or whatever it was did, and that's all I can think of other then that really dumb one, it was a movie about a sad lesbian or something but everyone made it out to be an amazing game.

I'd rather have a game focus on an interesting story rather then who the character likes to bone. I mean at best such an addition would be a footnote.

"Captain, the bad guys are doing things!"
"Holy shit balls! what are they doing?"
"I don't know, but I'm a transsexual."

Seriously? Is that what you want? That's how it's gonna end up if you keep asking for crap like this. If a developer feels like doing it because it's part of an interesting story then cool! If it's forced in because people kept bitching then it's not cool, and will probably cause more bitching and they won't try it again.

Well that's the main issue isn't it? Homosexuals are a non-visible minority. You usually can't look a person and say "they're gay" with any kind of accuracy. And for all this talk of the prevalence of heterosexuals in games, how many are just assumed straight because it never comes up? Look at Gears of war, we know Dom is straight, he has/had a wife, but marcus? Never brings up his sexuality. How do we know "Soap" MacTavish (of COD fame)isn't gay, it's never mentioned (and frankly he kinda looks like my gay roommate). or what about Alex and Reznov from CoD:BlOps? Again, never mentioned

I think this is part of the problem when people hear "I want more gay protagonists" it sounds like you want to have it mentioned in game merely to be name checked. I'm almost more interested to know what percentage of protagonists are non-oriented (IE sexuality never brought up)

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I don't quite buy this line of thinking.

For one, it seems for many a game, the publisher was the one being very adamant on which kind of character needed to be in the game and front and center. Diversity in devs is nice, but it seems like we also very much need a diversity in publisher thinking or else every video game out of norm still has to fight tooth and nail to get things put in.

And publishers are very rarely creative types. They are money managers, and they are more interested in market trends.

And second, I don't like this idea that the only way for more diverse characters is to have diverse people behind them. Like the only way a female protagonist gets written is if a girl wrote her apparently. Or that the creative director has to be black to get a black protagonist.

I think we can ask more of the creative types. If they can create characters who are dragons, elves, aliens, anthropomorphic turtles, we can ask for female or even queer characters.

Very good points actually.

1) I agree, although I think it was more bad wording on my part than us disagreeing. Substitute "publishers" for "devs" and I think we're more on the same page. Obviously developing a more diverse game is useless if it won't be properly funded or marketed to find an audience who appreciates it.

2) I totally agree with you here and I don't mean to imply that the only way to get diverse CHARACTERS is to have a more diverse group of people making them. I've seen a lot of games with great non-white, non-straight or non-male characters, in games that are directed by white male developers.

However, I've made the point before that if you have videogame makers who are influenced by stuff that's outside what we'd consider the "traditional" sphere of videogame creators, the stuff that they come up with is going to be more diverse - be it characters, settings, mechanics, etc. That's why I'd argue that a lack of diverse characters is a symptom, not a problem in itself. Other such symptoms include repetitive mechanics, settings, etc. Just look at the criticisms levelled at the "modern military shooter".

(It's also worth mentioning that very often game mechanics don't fall into this category. For example, it'd be foolish to re-invent "WASD" as the default direction keys in first-person games. People don't keep using this same configuration because of a lack of creativity, they keep using it because it just works. The same can't often be said for characters, settings, and other aspects of a game though.)

 

[simple64]

This is why I love the Escapist board. You can't have this discussion at this level of maturity anywhere else.

Incidentally, I'd love to see more LGBTQ characters in games. There are so many stories that needs to be told, and America is a diverse country. It's a crime that we are getting so many of the same things.

 

[Skratt]

As a heterosexual male, I wouldn't mind a protagonist being LGBT (Q+?). As long as I am playing a game about space aliens, or zombies or random medieval setting game, I don't care what the protagonist is sexuality speaking. Once you start forcing love interests as required plot drivers, hetero or otherwise, you lose me. I don't want to play a dating sim.

Mass Effect was okay and I enjoyed pursuing Liara through all three games as a love interest for my character but I would have zero interest in doing the same thing for an LGBT character in that type of game where I was asked to go out of my way to pursue the interest.

I would however, play a game where the protagonist was LGBT and had an already established love interest that I got to interact with. Say a detective who was gay, came home to his partner and they interacted as a hetero couple in the same game might. Or two mech pilots who had the aforementioned established relationship, etc. Bring on the diversity and I'll happily play in that sandbox. Just don't make sex or sexuality the focus and I'm in.

 

[Darkmantle]

More specifically, I'd like to see more characters that are 'out and proud.' Mainly because it seems to me that there's this logic that the quality of a queer character can be directly tied to how 'out' they are.

Practically abstinent gay man who is so out of touch with his sexual identity it's hilarious? Great character!

Effeminate gay man who's a total queen and loves having sex with other men? Bad character!

You know that the instant a developer puts your "out and proud" ideal character into a game, they would get a huge wave of controversy for "stereotyping" gay people. It's lose-lose really. What are devs to do?

Well, 'sexual deviancy' is still a very common trope for video game writing, so I wouldn't blame people for possibly being apprehensive at first (once again, I would like everyone to know that if Far Cry 4 does anything of the sort with Pagan Min, I fucking called it).

However, queens are just as much a part of the gay community as less effeminate gay men, so if someone writes a guy whose flaming puts forest fires to shame, I see no problem with it as long as he's a well-adjusted person whose possible foibles can't be directly linked to his homosexuality.

Oh I get that queens are just as much a part of the gay community, but that doesn't change the fact that a ton of people would call the developers homophobes and attack them/try and get people to boycott their game. So as a dev, would you want to take that risk? Even more unlikely, is a publisher going to want to greenlight a game that could be such a hotbutton issue?

This is the bed we've made, and now we are lying in it

 

[Saltarius]

So uh, why do people automatically assume that LGBT characters HAVE to be well-written with deep character to be something worthwhile, when we have plenty of characters already who are the same straight white male with not much to add but different inflection from the same pool of male voice actors?

 

[Saltarius]

So uh, why do people automatically assume that LGBT characters HAVE to be well-written with deep character to be something worthwhile, when we have plenty of characters already who are the same straight white male with not much to add but different inflection from the same pool of male voice actors?

Because minorities have to be held on a pedestal for some reason. Making a generic lead character that just so happens to be gay, or a woman, or an ethnic minority, is apparently tokenism by itself.

God forbid the LGBT be held to the same standard and criticism levels of majority works without having any additional hoops for their representation to be 'valid.'

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Because minorities have to be held on a pedestal for some reason. Making a generic lead character that just so happens to be gay, or a woman, or an ethnic minority, is apparently tokenism by itself.

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner here!

It's maddening when people think that every character who isn't a heterosexual, white male has to be a special snowflake. I'm pretty vocal on this forum when it comes to my passionate desire to see more diverse protagonists, but let's be honest: inclusivity isn't going to magically usher in the Shakespearean Age of video game storytelling. If exclusion continues out of a fear of quality discrepancies between minority and non-minority characters, then meaningful diversity will never occur.

Truth is, some games will /still/ be written as tightly as a Neil Gaiman novel, and others will /still/ appear to have taken their inspiration from something that the writing team found written in feces on the wall of a highway gas station restroom.

So let's shake it up and bring on the diversity, already! If your characters are shitty, I guarantee that we're mature enough to realize that they would have been shitty regardless.

 

[Branindain]

Well that's the main issue isn't it? Homosexuals are a non-visible minority. You usually can't look a person and say "they're gay" with any kind of accuracy. And for all this talk of the prevalence of heterosexuals in games, how many are just assumed straight because it never comes up? Look at Gears of war, we know Dom is straight, he has/had a wife, but marcus? Never brings up his sexuality. How do we know "Soap" MacTavish (of COD fame)isn't gay, it's never mentioned (and frankly he kinda looks like my gay roommate). or what about Alex and Reznov from CoD:BlOps? Again, never mentioned

I think this is part of the problem when people hear "I want more gay protagonists" it sounds like you want to have it mentioned in game merely to be name checked. I'm almost more interested to know what percentage of protagonists are non-oriented (IE sexuality never brought up)

This is roughly my problem with this topic as well. The majority of protagonists are not straight, the majority of protagonists are of unspecified sexuality because the majority of games don't go there to begin with. It reminds me of, I think it was Boondock Saints, which has a gay character and if it wasn't for one 20-second sequence of him being woken by a phone call with his partner next to him, you would never know. Having played Halo 1 & 2, Master Chief (or Sergeant Johnson, or whoever else) could be straight, gay, asexual or a paedophile for all I know. You don't want to be rewriting the story in order to crowbar in a reference to someone's sexuality.

Having said that, it would be particularly impactful to "out" the protagonist of one of these major franchises when you're three games in and have a following built up. No company is going to take that kind of chance though.

 

[Xman490]

Yeah, sure. Whatever. Doesn't matter to me if more show up, unless they become stereotypical.

 

[trlkly]

So uh, why do people automatically assume that LGBT characters HAVE to be well-written with deep character to be something worthwhile, when we have plenty of characters already who are the same straight white male with not much to add but different inflection from the same pool of male voice actors?

Because minorities have to be held on a pedestal for some reason. Making a generic lead character that just so happens to be gay, or a woman, or an ethnic minority, is apparently tokenism by itself.

The objection is not to tokenism, but to the reason why tokenism is decried. It may not be tokenism, but it's still minority status being used a gimmick. In both, a minority is added to make people stop complaining about them not being there. But that's not the ultimate goal.

This need not be about minorities. Let's say you want the Kinect to be incorporated into more games. Would you want it to be just a gimmick that doesn't affect gameplay at all, like maybe making your character move funny? Would that satisfy your urge to have better Kinect games?

Having something you care about just be a gimmick just doesn't satisfy. Minority inclusion is not special in this regard

 

[Darkmantle]

Well that's the main issue isn't it? Homosexuals are a non-visible minority. You usually can't look a person and say "they're gay" with any kind of accuracy. And for all this talk of the prevalence of heterosexuals in games, how many are just assumed straight because it never comes up? Look at Gears of war, we know Dom is straight, he has/had a wife, but marcus? Never brings up his sexuality. How do we know "Soap" MacTavish (of COD fame)isn't gay, it's never mentioned (and frankly he kinda looks like my gay roommate). or what about Alex and Reznov from CoD:BlOps? Again, never mentioned

I think this is part of the problem when people hear "I want more gay protagonists" it sounds like you want to have it mentioned in game merely to be name checked. I'm almost more interested to know what percentage of protagonists are non-oriented (IE sexuality never brought up)

This is roughly my problem with this topic as well. The majority of protagonists are not straight, the majority of protagonists are of unspecified sexuality because the majority of games don't go there to begin with. It reminds me of, I think it was Boondock Saints, which has a gay character and if it wasn't for one 20-second sequence of him being woken by a phone call with his partner next to him, you would never know. Having played Halo 1 & 2, Master Chief (or Sergeant Johnson, or whoever else) could be straight, gay, asexual or a paedophile for all I know. You don't want to be rewriting the story in order to crowbar in a reference to someone's sexuality.

Having said that, it would be particularly impactful to "out" the protagonist of one of these major franchises when you're three games in and have a following built up. No company is going to take that kind of chance though.

That bit at the end about risk speaks to a larger point too. "Risk", why is it a risk?

I can tell you why, long story short, still a lot of homophobic people out there that the gaming industry fears losing the cash flow from. I think the better solution is to work on reality and the real people with these views, and the other pieces will fall into place. Stop attacking a symptom, destroy the disease.