Homosexuality in games

[Kermi]

Sexuality in games is either irrelevant and therefore doesn't need to be defined, or you have a love subplot - and the standard in life is still your typical heterosexuality, so people will accept it without thinking about it. Homosexuality is still considered irregular so if you're going to make a homosexual relationship a key part of a game's narrative, it needs to be justified otherwise you're just throwing in gay characters for the sake of doing so.

Unless sexuality becomes a slider you can toggle during character creation, there's no way to do it right. Fable 2 at least gave you the option to pursue whatever relationships you wanted, but this had no effect on the story whatsoever.

 

[Talon_Kale]

I'm all for gay characters, as long as their sexuality isn't their defining feature. Gay is a sexuality, not a type of personality.

Here Here

 

[redjolt]

At the risk of being universally hated, it sounds a bit too much like a pointless liberal excursion to me. Like in Robocop 2.
Sorry!

 

[Legion]

I'm all for gay characters, as long as their sexuality isn't their defining feature. Gay is a sexuality, not a type of personality.

I agree with this.

Most people just want their masculine and cool characters, being all manly, making out with all the girls and stuff.

Besides, there are many games not talking about love at all, alot of the people in games like that could be homosexual for all I know.

Well strictly speaking there are few things more manly than two guys making out.

 

[LordSnakeEyes]

I'm all for gay characters, as long as their sexuality isn't their defining feature. Gay is a sexuality, not a type of personality.

So true, it's quite rare for a character to be homosexual without the flamboyant voice and flailing wrists

Florian in GTA4 is gay. Unfortunately, he is depicted as over-the-top flamboyant. He was so over-the-top that it was almost hard to find offensive; but he wasn't very funny either.

Anyway, I'd like to see a major gay character that isn't a stereotype. Maybe something like the video game equivalent of Omar from The Wire.

A character that fits that description is Kanji from Persona4, he doesn't come off as gay (well, he over-compensates a little bit but whatever) the only reason we get to see his flamboyant homosexuality is that whole "Jumping into the sub-conscious" thing

The Best Example Of A Homosexual In A Game: Marcus Fenix (yea that's right, I outed his over-conpensating ass) XD

 

[Shycte]

As long as there is hatred against gay people it will be hard to make more games with homosexuality.

I have nothing against gay people and I'd like to see more of them.

On a side note, I think that Rios And Salem from Ao2 is kindy... You know

 

[Jovlo]

We need more not-straight characters. And as many people have said before, we need well defined characters, who just happen to be gay.
Would be nice if you only got to know they aren't straight halfway through the game and you didn't see it coming. Element of surprise.

Also I loved the options for Gay relationships in The Sims and the Fable games.

 

[Eipok Kruden]

I wish there were more RPG's that gave you the option to be a gay character, but alas, there aren't too many recent ones. I usually just pick the female character if there isn't an option for a gay one.

 

[superpoo92]

Volgan from mgs3 was gay but other than that there isn't any other games which have a gay characters that i can remember

 

[Falseprophet]

Unfortunately, videogames are lagging behind, and poorly. Sex is an issue that is treated childishly in videogames, and even the best representations rarely go beyond the James Bond film standard. Making that step towards proper queer relationships that are presented respectfully and meaningfully will take a while longer. Maybe ten years from now? That's a pretty enthusiastic estimate, but it could happen. This is one industry that develops quickly.

In its defense, video games as a storytelling medium is rather immature. Theatre is thousands of years old. The modern novel is well over 200 years old and based on even older works. Film is over a century old; television about 60 or so. Look at comic books: they've been around for about 80 years, and yet just over 20 years ago, Watchmen was held up as a radical event in the medium, largely for having narrative techniques and depth that novels and films had been doing for decades already!

Compared to this, video games are, being as charitable as possible, less than 50 years old, and the concept of a detailed story in a game (as opposed to just a simple premise to explain why you're shooting or punching everything on screen) is maybe 20 or so years old. Even with that twenty years, how many games fall back on the two most ancient premises: 1) fight the alien invasion and b) save the princess?

I think your estimate might vary based on what happens with society at large. Surveys show younger people are far more tolerant of alternate sexual orientations than older people, and more and more "normal" people are becoming gamers through the casual games route (I just heard yesterday online gaming is up during this recession), so eventually the gamer dynamic will look similar to society as a whole, and not just the "hardcore" gamer demographic. For a while, game protagonists will still be straight white manly males and buxom third-person seductresses (hey, even films are having trouble getting away from that), but I think a lot of secondary characters will be more diverse.

 

[ae86gamer]

I'm pretty sure that Vega from Street Fighter is gay.

 

[Iron Mal]

Given that I play mostly shooting games I am more often concerned with the weapon I am holding than what the protaganist thinks of that cute guy/girl standing next to me.

Homosexuality isn't an issue to me since it really doesn't strike me as relevent to anything most of the time (in some cases it just feels like it's been thrown in to generate interest, like in Drakengard 2) in which case I don't care one way or the other.

In short, I think that we should approach games with an asexual view rather than a hetro/homosexual perspective.

 

[JaguarWong]

Most video game characters are so thinly written that they could be gay and you wouldn't know.

Heterosexuality is assumed rather than indicated in nearly all cases.

 

[Arassar]

The problem with Mass Effect is that you cannot have a male/male relationship, but you can have a female/female one. It demonstrates that as far as this stuff is concerned, the mass media is far more comfortable with lesbians than it is with gays - especially when that lesbian relationship culminates in a sex scene that can be validated by the male gaze. Technically the asari only have one sex, but are identifiably female, and highly sexualised in this role - we don't see any sort of discussion about, perhaps, conflicting sexual identities that the asari may have, or see them presented as asexuals or even pansexuals. It's hot, oiled up, blue lesbian women and nothing more.

Maybe it just means that Kaidan isn't gay.

Most video game characters are so thinly written that they could be gay and you wouldn't know.

Heterosexuality is assumed rather than indicated in nearly all cases.

Yeah, well, in 99.9% of games it doesn't really matter who they want to sleep with.

 

[Hexadecimal16]

Given that I play mostly shooting games I am more often concerned with the weapon I am holding than what the protaganist thinks of that cute guy/girl standing next to me.

Homosexuality isn't an issue to me since it really doesn't strike me as relevent to anything most of the time (in some cases it just feels like it's been thrown in to generate interest, like in Drakengard 2) in which case I don't care one way or the other.

Precisely.

 

[quiet empire]

Volgan from mgs3 was gay but other than that there isn't any other games which have a gay characters that i can remember

I would describe him more of a sadistic bisexual, tbh.

 

[Snikburz]

Of Course, we have Zhang He from Dynasty Warriors, who is at the least extremely effeminate...In the books he was very masculine, so KOEI has turned him around somewhat.

 

[Talendra]

Fiona and Mickey in the longest journey are gay. I quite enjoyed listening to Fiona talk with such fondness about how they met and their relationship with each other at te start of the game.

 

[J.E.T.]

OMFG if thats true I'm gonna kill myself, fable was bad enough that I didnt buy it for that shi-, but seriously geezuz I dont want to offend anybody but at least in most games I dont have to worry about it. When games become a public speaking ground for lifestyles [gay's mostly dont wanna be a prick but seriously] I might have to quit buying, its bad enough that people go around getting buttf***ed but if your protagonist starts getting that way I might stop buying games period, and that'll suck.