Do we need more LGBTQ+ protagonists in video games?

[Supdupadog]

Grand Theft Auto, for example, is weird if you go to a strip club if you're into dudes. I feel like, as a straight man, if I were playing as a character that was forced to be into dicks, I'd be a little bit uncomfortable.

Well, you could always not go into the sausage club if it's an option. I find strip clubs skeevy in general.

And even if it's a more linear, stage kinda of game, (Like all the games with cheese cake strip club stages) well, suck it up. It's video games. We get sent to alien strongholds, caves with giant mutant lizard monsters, and sewers filled with rotting corpses and meat pods. I think you can make it through the segment with some man ass on display.

Not saying that characters should HAVE to be straight/gay/whatever, but the player should be allowed to decide, like with Shepard in Mass Effect.

As opposed to the many characters who have heterosexual inclinations that I don't decide. Joel, Booker Dewitt, Sly Cooper, Chuck green, Nick Ramos, James Sunderland, Nathan Drake, dude from Far Cry 3, ect.

Also, who's to say characters we perceive as straight are actually straight? Perhaps Mario is just in denial, and uses the whole "rescuing the princess" thing to cover up his attraction for Waluigi.

Well for one, that's dumb. Waluigi has nothing on RawkHawk.

Second, that's just dumb personal inflection. I could also say Mario's favorite pasta is fettuccine, and he jumps on goombas to deal with his feelings of having never know his father. But that means nothing, it's just filling in blanks that will probably never get filled with your own head garbage. And it means nothing to the character traits actually written in stone.

 

[Supdupadog]

Oh my god someone can see the representation outside of extremes.

You can have a bit of my ice cream sandwich anytime Fenrox.

 

[Ratty]

Jim Sterling put it pretty well in a recent episode of his show, if the game industry wants a wider audience yes it does need to start having a more diverse character roster. That includes characters of diverse sexuality and gender identity as well as more diversity in terms of race and cultural perspective. The straight white American teen-to-30-something dude market is already covered by the game industry, I doubt there's room for substantial growth beyond what the industry already sees in that market.

If the industry (particularly the AAA industry) really wants to expand it's time it nutted up and tried to appeal to customers outside its comfort zone.

PS- Given that gender identity/sexuality are some of the biggest topics of our time, it's a little sad that the "all grown up ready to tackle mature subjects" artform of games has as its most recognizable LGBT representatives mostly 20+ year old "joke characters" like Birdo and Poison.

 

[lunavixen]

As long as a character is well written and it can be written in without seeming forced in out faces or token (or for fanservice), I see nothing wrong with playing as a homosexual character. It'd be an interesting change from the usual heterosexual brown haired white guys that are in 99.9% of games. HOWEVER, I don't think it should be shoved into games willy nilly.

 

[fenrizz]

No, not really.
But hey, I'm a white, straight male so what do I know?

 

[Supdupadog]

That willy nilly line could apply to a lot of things.

"I sure hope they didn't add in that platforming section all willy nilly"

"I sure hope this ability scales well and wasn't thrown in all willy nilly"

"I sure hope that sniper type enemy wasn't included all willy nilly"

It's like something that really doesn't need to be said or reminded of. Same with "Well written/implemented".

Where we expecting a mediocre implementation?

Nothing is actually being said with those phrases. Other things should probably be said in their place.

 

[Vault101]

No, not really.
But hey, I'm a white, straight male so what do I know?

nothing

...[i/]Jon Snow[/i]

As long as a character is well written and it can be written in without seeming forced in out faces or token (or for fanservice), I see nothing wrong with playing as a homosexual character. It'd be an interesting change from the usual heterosexual brown haired white guys that are in 99.9% of games. HOWEVER, I don't think it should be shoved into games willy nilly.

well....willy has to be [i/]willing[/i] [footnote/]joke stolen from the vicar of dibley....she doesnt mind[/footnote]

 

[Frozengale]

Not anymore then we need another grizzled white dude as a protagonist. A character is only good if they are written and developed well or at least iconic in some way. Just making them Gay or a Transvestite doesn't make them any better or worse then the characters we already have. It COULD add something to them, but just because they aren't what we normally see wouldn't mean they are worth having.

 

[Riotguards]

it would be nice but forcing developers to add more LGBTQ won't help anyone, its better to have a character who stays perfectly within his character than to suddenly change his views

the same way adding more female token characters won't help either

 

[Hieronymusgoa]

well the industry could use more characters like those, but i can imagine it can be somewhat unconfortable for people to take control of a LBTQ character, adding them as side characters would be nice

Don't worry, us gay folks have been taking control of straight white guys for ages now and we're still gaming!

Don't know about the word 'need', but it would certainly be very nice. If only for diversity's sake. I don't need a gay character to identify with, but it's just nice to see once in a while. Just as it's nice when some celebrity comes out. It doesn't change my world profoundly but it's still good.

Amen. I am with you on this one.
I just felt much more immersed into the story in especially Bioware games where LGBT(QI*etc) characters are playable.
It is still not that I need them, but I like that we have them nowadays. And if Bioware can pull it off, then other big companies can do that too. As simple as that.

 

[Supdupadog]

it would be nice but forcing developers to add more LGBTQ won't help anyone, its better to have a character who stays perfectly within his character than to suddenly change his views

the same way adding more female token characters won't help either

I dunno man, since apparently publishers already force devs to keep the grizzled white dudes up front and center, it might not be a big difference.

And not including people out of fear of tokenism is bull crap. One latino person is still more diverse than zero latino people. And if we like the character, no one is going to call it tokenism at all.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I don't think I have ever paid any attention to any romantic plot in a story in a game ever... I played all my favourite JRPGs as a kid, and found that stuff boring, but now I am an adult I find everyone elses relationships fucking boring!

I don't understand how my gaming needs more of this... I don't really get at all how it even remotely matters. I just like to fight monsters or bad guys and leave awkward social interactions to real life!

 

[2xDouble]

To snarkily answer the question: no, we don't need more "other" protagonists in video games. What we need is more "alphabet soup" people to create and to write them... or to stop slapping labels on people altogether, but that's never going to happen - until we become The Borg, anyway.

The problem is, in most scenarios (especially video game scenarios), sexuality is completely irrelevant to the action at hand. Therefore, the character's sexuality/sexual identity is either unsatisfactory fluff detail or outside of the actual game, breaking the flow of action. There are examples of this done well - or at least, realistically - but doing so outside of one's personal experience is next to impossible.

 

[Zeckt]

We could do with a transgender character that's not comic relief or there for attention trying to sell us on an opinion. Would be especially nice if they just acted like normal but that would be too much to ask for.

 

[Ninjamedic]

It would be nice to see more variety but I think all of these OPs about "we need more X" ignore that it's not a problem in of itself[footnote]To clarify, I mean that the lack of specific minorities isn't because of racism/sexism/homophobia[/footnote], but rather a symptom of far greater problems in the industry.

Then again, that's always the problem with these one issue "wars", people just see "I'm right and you're wrong" without looking at the bigger picture.

The often-parroted `But x (sexuality/gender/race) shouldn't matter!`- tends to fall flat in that if it did not matter then there would be no reason NOT to include more of x. So yes.

I imagine this thread will descend into people complaining about "tokenism" though, it always happens when people want a character that isn't the default.

For what it's worth, this thread so far has been agreeing with you, and even those that make the "tokenism" point are saying that writing in general should be improved first before tackling these sort of issues in a constructive manner.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

It wouldn't hurt. It's not really needed but it would be nice to see more of them.

 

[Kingjackl]

Diversity is always good. There are so few games out there that have those types of characters, especially discounting the ones where it's just an optional ego-insert thing ala Bioware games or Saints Row.

Are there any games out there with transgendered protagonists? I honestly can't think of any at the moment. It would be cool if there were, since it's a perspective we see even less of than straight female protagonists.

 

[Tono Makt]

Do we need more LGBTQ+ protagonists in video games?
...
I'm not saying I dislike games with heterosexual protagonists, I mean if I did what would I have to play. I also understand why there are not very many games with protagonists that are explicitly LGBTQ+, video games want to appeal to the core demographic of heterosexual 16-30 year old men and I get that. I just want a little more breaking of the mould.

Anyway, enough of me talking, I want to know the users' opinions on the matter.

Do we need more LGBTQ+ protagonists in video games? It's the wrong question to ask. We don't "need" anything in video games beyond video games being interactive. (Without that interactive quality, they stop being video games and become something else.) So we don't "need" LGBTQ+ protagonists, or female protagonists, or non-white protagonists, or white male protagonists, or protagonists at all. Tetris, Bejeweled and Bubble Bobble type games do gangbusters without having a protagonist at all.

A better question would be "Would video games BENEFIT from having more diverse protagonists?". To me, the answer is a rousing "HELL YES!". Particularly in games with a more role playing aspect to them. (I am hoping that the next series of Mass Effect games have Femshep as their default, and they have the main storyline more suited for a female protagonist than a male protagonist. If they do that, I will likely buy it on launch day even though I'm one of those guys who will go to the bitter end saying that the ending of ME3 devalued the entire series, but that's a threadjack for a different thread) I would love to play a game where the protagonist is a gay male character, even though I'm straight, tried and tested. I would love to play as a woman, straight or gay. I would love to play as an African American, Latino or other minority in a game set in somewhere like America.

I would love to be able to have the opportunity to actually experience - however fake and scripted it may be - an experience that goes on daily for millions of people but which I can never have. Sure, I can play a gay Shepard in Mass Effect (particularly 3), but his being gay has no impact on anything. I hear all the time how difficult it is to be gay in today's society and while I completely and totally accept that as fact, I can't understand it. I can't experience it. There is always going to be a disconnect between myself and the gay community because I'm just not gay and just like how they can't force themselves to be straight, I can't force myself to be gay. So being able to step into the shoes of an interactive character in a video game lets me take a few steps in their direction. I think that's something video games should be striving for.

This is where video games can be so much more effective than other forms of entertainment - movies and TV are passive and linearly scripted. Books are linearly scripted and fairly passive, but they do evoke more thought and imagination than movies and TV. Plays are like movies and TV, only with a bit more of a social aspect as you can't really watch them without being in the audience. (otherwise you're pretty much just watching a special form of TV or movie) But video games give you the ability to choose where things will go. To a very small degree, yes, but far more than with TV , movies or books. You can pick the gist of Shepards speech in ME2, though not the actual words. You can't pick the gist of Tyrion's speech during the battle of Blackwater in either the book or the TV show. You can't choose who Raleigh's partner will be for the Gypsy Danger in Pacific Rim, nor can you make Aragon choose to not take the Paths of the Dead in Lord of the Rings and try to fight Sauron's armies without the Dead. But these are the kinds of choices you can make in video games.

Eventually video games will get there. Quite soon, I would say - we might already be at the tipping point. Independent games can get a great deal of exposure on Steam, so an indy game with a gay protagonist, if done well, can make a great deal of money, showing the larger publishers and development companies that it's not a bad investment. It's not a matter of "If" anymore - it's a matter of "When". It might take someone deciding to absorb a loss for a video game and spend a few million dollars simply making a game with a gay protagonist, then putting the game out there for judgement. Or someone doing the same thing with a female protagonist. Release a game to change the market instead of releasing a game to simply make money.

captcha: Strike a match. Ha. I wonder if the Escapist Captcha could pass the Turing test...

 

[Robert Marrs]

No we don't need more. More COULD be a good thing so long as its the result of creativity and not shoehorning to avoid being demonized by SJWs. Its going to be hard for me to take games seriously in 5 years when every developer has to make sure the fill all the boxes on their equality checklist.