The Surge in LGBT rainbow characters - AKA: The New Demographic and why its happening.

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I literally had no idea one of the characters was gay (nor have I played it) until someone started talking about those who was in opposition to said gay character. The devs didn't make it a blaring, blazing thing. It was only brought up because someone asked whether Kung Jin was gay. So I fail to see how it's shallow? It just seems to be a case of 'doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.'

The characters could have made him blazingly obvious he was gay and MKX's first gay character, people would have ripped into him. Or they could have made it subtle, playing into the background of not really finding acceptance in a Shaolin organization, given that homosexuality is deemed 'sexual misconduct' in most East Asian Buddhist circles --- Which they did --- and they still got ripped into for it.

The only manipulation here seems to be people investing into a story of MKX commodifying homosexuality, when in truth it seems to be people writing for or against that seem to be making this bigger than it is. Is it badly written or expounded on? Maybe ... but then again, this isn't the video game equivalent of Lord of the Rings.

(Edit) Also, remember, MK is BIGGER than just video games. Maybe this will be explored in the comics ... who knows? What if there is a stroyline about how Kung Jin struggled with self imposed celibacy, and forcing himself into a culture that takes a dim view of homosexuality ... only to find that he wants to blaze his own path with his lover all along ... etc etc etc. Being hunted by people considering him a traitor, or maybe one of Earthrealm's enemies, whilst trying to keep himself and his partner safe. Lots of things could be done with a gay character that won't be considered 'token' in the expanded MK universe with the comics, movies, etc.

Perhaps that might be how they want to play it. But the way they expounded it was the same way they did it with Korra, and that by it self seems a bit shallow. If you have to confirm outside the fictional universe that a character is gay then I have a difficult time seeing any point to it except for the PC brownie points. Also there is a difference between subtle and vague, and Kung Jin seems to come off on the vague side as far as I can tell. It's like they didn't want to actually come out and admit it. That's what makes it feel on the token side to my mind.

MK's expanded universe is something that puzzles me. Are there really people that into the story of a game series that's so blatantly silly?

Edit:

I had to check, but apparently Birdo is now listed as female. Poison, however, is officially trans (also, Poison got replaced by Sid in America so the whole beating up trans people thing is kind of a non-issue at least as far as Final Fight goes. She didn't appear as Poison until she was playable, at least to the best of my knowledge.)

Poison started as female actually before she was named. But was changed to futanari(or trans more accurately as they are not the same thing,) due to the north American market sensitivity to fighting women. Specifically so they could get final fight ports on western market SNES consoles. In the official cannon she's now left with an intentionally ambiguous gender, but she did start out female.

In both cases the characters started in their Japanese appearances as female, but were changed for western audiences.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I literally had no idea one of the characters was gay (nor have I played it) until someone started talking about those who was in opposition to said gay character. The devs didn't make it a blaring, blazing thing. It was only brought up because someone asked whether Kung Jin was gay. So I fail to see how it's shallow? It just seems to be a case of 'doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.'

The characters could have made him blazingly obvious he was gay and MKX's first gay character, people would have ripped into him. Or they could have made it subtle, playing into the background of not really finding acceptance in a Shaolin organization, given that homosexuality is deemed 'sexual misconduct' in most East Asian Buddhist circles --- Which they did --- and they still got ripped into for it.

The only manipulation here seems to be people investing into a story of MKX commodifying homosexuality, when in truth it seems to be people writing for or against that seem to be making this bigger than it is. Is it badly written or expounded on? Maybe ... but then again, this isn't the video game equivalent of Lord of the Rings.

(Edit) Also, remember, MK is BIGGER than just video games. Maybe this will be explored in the comics ... who knows? What if there is a stroyline about how Kung Jin struggled with self imposed celibacy, and forcing himself into a culture that takes a dim view of homosexuality ... only to find that he wants to blaze his own path with his lover all along ... etc etc etc. Being hunted by people considering him a traitor, or maybe one of Earthrealm's enemies, whilst trying to keep himself and his partner safe. Lots of things could be done with a gay character that won't be considered 'token' in the expanded MK universe with the comics, movies, etc.

Perhaps that might be how they want to play it. But the way they expounded it was the same way they did it with Korra, and that by it self seems a bit shallow. If you have to confirm outside the fictional universe that a character is gay then I have a difficult time seeing any point to it except for the PC brownie points. Also there is a difference between subtle and vague, and Kung Jin seems to come off on the vague side as far as I can tell. It's like they didn't want to actually come out and admit it. That's what makes it feel on the token side to my mind.

MK's expanded universe is something that puzzles me. Are there really people that into the story of a game series that's so blatantly silly?

The problem is that if you don't put a neon sign above the character's head informing the world that they're gay, then people will complain about how there is no reason to make the character gay in the first place, since it doesn't have any relevance to the plot. If you do make it explicit but irrelevant, people will whine about how it's "a token characters shoved in our faces for them dastardly SJWs". And if you make it obvious and integrate it into the plot, then it's "politically correct propaganda pushing the gay agenda".

No matter how it's done, the same people will be opposed to it.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Perhaps that might be how they want to play it. But the way they expounded it was the same way they did it with Korra, and that by it self seems a bit shallow. If you have to confirm outside the fictional universe that a character is gay then I have a difficult time seeing any point to it except for the PC brownie points. Also there is a difference between subtle and vague, and Kung Jin seems to come off on the vague side as far as I can tell. It's like they didn't want to actually come out and admit it. That's what makes it feel on the token side to my mind.

MK's expanded universe is something that puzzles me. Are there really people that into the story of a game series that's so blatantly silly?

Alright, I don't get the argument here. So on one hand, you think it was shoehorned in. But it would have been okay if he was utterly flaming and wearing his homosexuality on his sleeve? How is that any better? If you're talking about the average combatant in MK why exactly would he be anything other than dour? It makes sense this aspect of the character would be brought up in something exterior to the sombre nature of the setting.

There is a sociological reason why he doesn't belong to the Shaolin order in the backstory, he's gay. This is how it's introduced in the story.

And evidently yes, given that we've spent 4 pages of thread talking about largely a moot issue. I think the fact that he is gay shouldn't be considered 'tacked' on until we see how/if it's covered in the expanded universe when they can actually get to grips with fleshing out his story.

 

[chuckman1]

Gay people are real, in theory gays should be about 10 percent of characters, with bis making up more.
Having more lgbt characters is probably good.
Hell just the inclusion of Kanji in Persona 4 (a possibly bisexual character) seems to have moved Japan's idea of gay people further ahead than it was before.

I say not every gay character is a SJW bait.

Now when Anita releases, "Fight the oppression. LGBQT UNITE with the power of FRIENDSHIP AND MALE TEARS"
then I will see pandering.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

The problem is that if you don't put a neon sign above the character's head informing the world that they're gay, then people will complain about how there is no reason to make the character gay in the first place, since it doesn't have any relevance to the plot. If you do make it explicit but irrelevant, people will whine about how it's "a token characters shoved in our faces for them dastardly SJWs". And if you make it obvious and integrate it into the plot, then it's "politically correct propaganda pushing the gay agenda".

No matter how it's done, the same people will be opposed to it.

A bit of a straw man when my point was exclusively that they had to do it outside the established mediums in which MK exists. They just couldn't come out and say it in the game. So they're effectively playing both sides of the field at the same time. They can claim they're not shoving it in peoples faces, while at the same time they can claim the pat on the back for a gay character. Maybe I'm just cynical, but the way they did it, seems to be intentionally politically sensitive as possible. So as not to offend anyone which kinda makes it seem like they didn't make Kung Jin for anything but the brownie points. But that could just be cynicism, but the way they're using the character seems cynical to me.

With issues like better homosexual/trans representation in games, I'm honestly thinking that there are basically no good solutions. Though characters like Krem give me some hope.

Perhaps that might be how they want to play it. But the way they expounded it was the same way they did it with Korra, and that by it self seems a bit shallow. If you have to confirm outside the fictional universe that a character is gay then I have a difficult time seeing any point to it except for the PC brownie points. Also there is a difference between subtle and vague, and Kung Jin seems to come off on the vague side as far as I can tell. It's like they didn't want to actually come out and admit it. That's what makes it feel on the token side to my mind.

MK's expanded universe is something that puzzles me. Are there really people that into the story of a game series that's so blatantly silly?

Alright, I don't get the argument here. So on one hand, you think it was shoehorned in. But it would have been okay if he was utterly flaming and wearing his homosexuality on his sleeve? How is that any better? If you're talking about the average combatant in MK why exactly would he be anything other than dour? It makes sense this aspect of the character would be brought up in something exterior to the sombre nature of the setting.

There is a sociological reason why he doesn't belong to the Shaolin order in the backstory, he's gay. This is how it's introduced in the story.

And evidently yes, given that we've spent 4 pages of thread talking about largely a moot issue. I think the fact that he is gay shouldn't be considered 'tacked' on until we see how/if it's covered in the expanded universe when they can actually get to grips with fleshing out his story.

No you're jumping to extremes. Lord I freaking hate online arguments like these, because it's jumping from one extreme to the other constantly.

All that it would have taken for this not to feel tacked on or token would have been for Kung Jin to say that he's gay. Failing that than for the doubt to be removed by another character who at least took the vague nature away from it. Not some vague linguistic dance around the issue, and a totally outside the universe "official conformation."

Can people please understand why that seems like a cynical, ass covering, self serving way of having a homosexual character?

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

Poison started as female actually before she was named. But was changed to futanari(or trans more accurately as they are not the same thing,) due to the north American market sensitivity to fighting women. Specifically so they could get final fight ports on western market SNES consoles. In the official cannon she's now left with an intentionally ambiguous gender, but she did start out female.

dude, you kinda missed the point a bit there: She did start female, they considered making her trans to sneak past Nintendo America's standards but in the end replaced her with Sid in America. But every quote since then, especially from Ono who created the game, is that Poison is Trans. The only ambiguity is that in Japan she still has her p*nis and in America she's post-op.

May not have been for the best reason, but Poison is very much officially transgender and didn't appear as such in America until she was playable.

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

And they aren't going to buy Mortal Kombat! That game is just one huge trigger warning!

Considering the amount of people complaining about Jin who clearly haven't played MKX, or seemingly an MK in a couple of generations at least I'd say people in glass houses and all that.

Valid criticism, but I think my original point still stands that the demographic in question is not likely to play or enjoy Mortal Kombat. And that this isn't a sudden surge of LGBT characters, it's just being reported more due to certain loud groups of people.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

No you're jumping to extremes. Lord I freaking hate online arguments like these, because it's jumping from one extreme to the other constantly.

All that it would have taken for this not to feel tacked on or token would have been for Kung Jin to say that he's gay. Failing that than for the doubt to be removed by another character who at least took the vague nature away from it. Not some vague linguistic dance around the issue, and a totally outside the universe "official conformation."

Can people please understand why that seems like a cynical, ass covering, self serving way of having a homosexual character?

Sorry for misunderstanding you, then. But I still think we should wait to see how it's handled in the expanded universe before we jump to conclusions whether it is something just 'tacked on'. It would have been worse if they did a expanded universe thing about him and his family and it was written about ONLY THERE. Because one side of people would have been; "Why were you hiding his homosexuality if it was something of an issue in his backstory?" Or; "Why did you just decide to make the character gay all of a sudden?"

Personally I think it's a bad reason, but it's still a reason. I wouldn't, however, call it cynnical. Not at least until it's fleshed out more. At the moment it seems about as competent as any other character portrayal, which is to say 'MK' competent, not actually good. Could be worse, could be about as cringeworthy as the entire Poison thing when that was first brought to light during localization in the US.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

The problem is that if you don't put a neon sign above the character's head informing the world that they're gay, then people will complain about how there is no reason to make the character gay in the first place, since it doesn't have any relevance to the plot. If you do make it explicit but irrelevant, people will whine about how it's "a token characters shoved in our faces for them dastardly SJWs". And if you make it obvious and integrate it into the plot, then it's "politically correct propaganda pushing the gay agenda".

No matter how it's done, the same people will be opposed to it.

A bit of a straw man when my point was exclusively that they had to do it outside the established mediums in which MK exists. They just couldn't come out and say it in the game. So they're effectively playing both sides of the field at the same time. They can claim they're not shoving it in peoples faces, while at the same time they can claim the pat on the back for a gay character. Maybe I'm just cynical, but the way they did it, seems to be intentionally politically sensitive as possible. <color=red>So as not to offend anyone which kinda makes it seem like they didn't make Kung Jin for anything but the brownie points. But that could just be cynicism, but the way they're using the character seems cynical to me.

With issues like better homosexual/trans representation in games, I'm honestly thinking that there are basically no good solutions. Though characters like Krem give me some hope.

They seem to have done a pretty poor job at not offending anyone if this thread is anything to go by.

And I don't see how it's a strawman when my point was that no matter how they handle gay characters people will find some excuse to be opposed to it. Why should it matter whether it's confirmed in-game or not?

Honestly though, why is anyone bothered by this at all? It seems whenever a gay character appears people descend on them and begin going down their check-list of questions to make sure their sexuality is being handled just right, all the while muttering about which check-list spawned them in the first place. Are people really so paranoid that letting a few gay characters with sub-par characterisation in will tarnish gaming's reputation for stellar writing?

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Poison started as female actually before she was named. But was changed to futanari(or trans more accurately as they are not the same thing,) due to the north American market sensitivity to fighting women. Specifically so they could get final fight ports on western market SNES consoles. In the official cannon she's now left with an intentionally ambiguous gender, but she did start out female.

dude, you kinda missed the point a bit there: She did start female, they considered making her trans to sneak past Nintendo America's standards but in the end replaced her with Sid in America. But every quote since then, especially from Ono who created the game, is that Poison is Trans. The only ambiguity is that in Japan she still has her p*nis and in America she's post-op.

May not have been for the best reason, but Poison is very much officially transgender and didn't appear as such in America until she was playable.

I thought Poison was always trans, as the concept drawings with the term 'New Half' beneath them?

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

What is that demographic though? What is an SJW besides what you've built up in your head? I've thought that there's issues with representation in videogames for years now. Does that make me an SJW? Because I bought MKX at launch. In fact, I've bought every MK at launch since Deadly alliance (I was 8 when four came out so I'd played every MK but I did not own them). In fact there's a lot of people on this site that people consider SJWs, I'm pretty sure they play games.

Maybe there isn't a surge in gay characters but how many people complain that Poison is token? In game there's even less reference to her LGBT status than there is Kung Jin's. Whenever a gay character is introduced there is a large number of people accusing the dev of tokenism or shoving homosexuality in their faces. Yeah maybe there are SJWs who take it too far, but there are people on the otherside taking it too far to but you only seem comfortable using massive generalisations for one side.

>.> this appears to have taken a dramatic turn somewhere. I don't particularly like the term SJW but it is useful for defining somebody who believes that their moral viewpoint is more important than anything else and will employ overly aggressive tactics to achieve this (the 'warrior' part). Obviously, social justice and representation are important but the methods used to achieve this defines the SJW part, wanting representation in games and supporting devs who you feel are advancing this is not being an SJW, doxxing someone who disagrees with you is (at least, this is my perspective).

Nevertheless, there appears to be a number of people who right now campaign about video games and their representations who do not play them. From my perspective, it's the same as Jack Thompson with GTA unless you believe he was completely valid in his criticisms. Perhaps most pertinent, I will need to find the old topic for it, but someone pointed out how Anita Sarkeesian praised a game for it's portrayal of women with 20,000 watches and the games sale did not register any significant increase (I'll need to find the topic to see if that information has since changed) but this is another example of what I'm referring to.

Also, I agreed your point was valid, which you seemed to gloss over. I just wished to emphasise I'm not going to back down that there are a lot of people who will cite a large vested interest in what games do or do not include who are unlikely to play said games. Anyone complaining Poison is tokenism has a) probably not seen how she came to exist which was very much not to appeal to a market that Capcom (if we're honest) likely had no idea existed; and b) is unlikely to have played the games. This has thus far been my experience.

I've got no problem with gamers wanting representation, my problem is people who don't play games claiming we don't have gay or LGBT characters because they haven't played any of the myriad games in which they exist.

 

[JimB]

The problem is that a token poorly written white male character doesn't tend to get white males beaten and murdered because some crazy had justification that white people as a whole are terrible.

So...video games cause violence, or at least the specific kind of violence that is hate crimes?

 

[VaporWare]

Anyone who cares about Social Justice is a SJW? Nice to see the threshold is so low.

A lot of people on either side of a lot of fences seem to have trouble discerning 'Social Justice' from 'Social Vengeance'.

OT: Representation is good, tokenism is bad, pandering and clickbaiting are tactics we should not reward if we want people to give more of a damn about the contents of our character than the contents of our wallets.

How do you judge whether a given company and product are weighing in constructively or just pandering for attention? For yourselves, really. There isn't going to be a perfect litmus for 'did they do it right' that applies to every script, character design, etc.

There are going to be times when a sincerely written message is garbaged up on the delivery, and when a shallow token strikes an unexpected chord because at least one person, even if it was only a VA pouring their last damn into a line, had that damn to give. The trick is not to support something just because it looks like something you'd support. Don't be afraid to /be/ judgmental about something someone is trying to sell you, no matter how much you might agree with them on the face of things. Having an open mind just means being open to the idea that something that looks like what you /wouldn't/ normally support might actually turn out to be something you would.

Beyond that, I'm not sure it's worth getting into too many specifics. You could have a game entirely about being gay if you wanted to, and it would be as valid as having a game with a different scope that included gay people, or whatever demographic you wanted to talk about or include that day. The question is always going to be: how does this fit into the larger narrative? Taking a chapter break halfway through saving the universe from the Terrible Spraunch to have a serious talk about gay rights in a story that has nothing else to do with civil rights is going to come off as clumsy and half-baked as injecting a chapter break into Rent about assault rifle handling during the Spraunch Wars.

Context is Key, y'dig?

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Can people please understand why that seems like a cynical, ass covering, self serving way of having a homosexual character?

I understand why you think it's cynical, although I disagree with it. What I'm not understanding is why it matters at all.

There are plenty of cynical things the game industry does that bother me (micro-transactions, restrictive DRM, ridiculous DLC practices, etc), but the reason why they bother me is because of what they may lead to. What exactly are you concerned the inclusion of gay characters whose sexuality is only established in canon will lead to?
You have mentioned multiple times that they are trying to please all parties at once and covering their arse in the process, but I don't see why pleasing everyone is cynical, while rocking the boat is some noble cause to aspire to. Unless you feel they should have made it explicit to make some kind of point, but that just seems like politicising the issue, which is fine by me, but hardily an obligation.

Overall, this entire issue just seems to be born of the on-going war with the "SJWs". Perhaps it would be good to take a step back and figure out whether this social justice related problem is actually a problem.

 

[loa]

Overall, this entire issue just seems to be born of the on-going war with the "SJWs". Perhaps it would be good to take a step back and figure out whether this social justice related problem is actually a problem.

This site, here, refuses (refuses!) to cover dawngate shutting down but will make an article every time league and heroes twitches.
Because it wasn't high profile enough.
Dawngate was the most inclusive game in recent memory I can think of but it didn't use that as marketing.
You had to actually play the darn thing and be invested in the lore to know.

That leads me to believe that those most vocal about about it don't actually care about gaming, they just want something to sink their teeth into.
So, while I do abhor the term, there may actually be something to this whole "sjw" thing.

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

-snip-

Sorry but I think this was going to get INCREDIBLY long if I quote the entire thing and I actually agree with nigh on everything you're saying to an extent.

I think my major problem is that I've always taken the stance that I've known about these characters from a young age so my personal experience colours it and I kind of assume other gamers are aware so those complaining about lack of characters or of gaming being homophobic are ill-informed (much like I assume those complaining about gay characters even being in games are dicks and bigots, assumptions on both sides really). So as a result it can be difficult to be objective (it's difficult for everyone ofc but it's where my dilemma comes in)

I respect that the J.T situation was different so the situations aren't that comparable but it's kind of an easy touchstone for media vs gaming so I jumped to hyperbole, which was also a dick move, so I apologise for that.

And unfortunately I have very little to go on for the argument that the bulk of people making a song and dance about this aren't going to be gamers. It's kind of the difficulty in all of these, I don't have statistics (or I don't know where to get them) to back up my case so I was operating on the assumption it was a little self evident (which it clearly isn't since you rightly assert that gamers may have similar concerns to those I label non-gamers and it's very hard to distinguish them, especially while making the case on a gaming forum.)

While I don't believe I'm wrong that there are a number of whatever-we-want-to-call-the-group people who are being critical and attacking gaming for not fitting their world view, I am arguing from a place of emotion rather than statistics so I actually cannot back my points up unless I spent hours trawling twitter for examples which I just... I really do not want to do that.

So, I think I actually agree that my points were slightly unfounded statistically (and I did neglect to acknowledge that the other side is no better) but I still feel my original point was valid which is probably a little hypocritical. Still my stance though, unfortunately. It was a unique experience having this stay fairly civil though, you made your case very well.