Thread Topic - LGBT and Video Games

[communist gamer]

I really really dont give a damn, i dont mind playing different characters, in fact i tend to play as females more often then males (and they tend to be lesbians, but thats just my dick doing the thinking for me from time to time), and if i have the option i never play as a boring human, im into games because either A they challenge me in some way (thats why i play strategy games) or they draw me in with their characters and story. The thing i am worried about is how the pressure a lot of gamers put on developers to have more "diverse" characters (give us gay dudes, give us women, give us trans people etc. in games) that the developers will cave in and indeed give us more diverse characters, that will have one characteristic. You know the "look at this, our game has a gay dude in it, LOOK HOW PROGRESIVE WE ARE". We all ready saw this in the last of us, they introduced a very well done gay dude. The gay part of him was mentioned and they did not dwell on it too much, he was a recherche who's being gay was part of him not all of him, on the other hand we had the add on where they pretty much said " OCH LOOK ELLIE IS A LESBIAN AND WITH A BLACK CHICK, WE ARE SO PROGERSIVE, WE ARE SO COOL, BUY OUR GAME OR YOU ARE A HOMOPHOBE", the whole lesbian plot felt very forced in and pointless (the game dose not expand on it what so ever, there is no recherche building on it, and it seems VERY out of place) so i dont give a damn, i just want well made characters, if they are gay/what ever i dont give a fuck, just make them believable and not nonsensical

Personally, i'd rather have tokenism than nothing at all, at least it's a start and it increases visiblity for minorities, and then we can work up from. Also i never understood the ideea that a character being a minority needs to have a well established reason within the story to even exist, especially since straight, white, cis, etc characters don't need to.

maybe i phrased it wrong, i dont think that minorieties need a good reason to be put in games, i think that we need good cherecters overall. I dont want tokenism because i see it as something that is more hurtfull then not haveing some of said minorety in a game. Just look at what making token cherecters has done to the white man in games, everywhere you look all you see is 30 something, uneducated, full of themselfs white men with brown hair and brown eyes, its not a good represantesion of white people, the same way that a gangsta from teh ghetto is not a good representasion of black people, or the mastermind mathemtisian who speaks poor english is a poor representasion of asian people. I dont like things forced in, and i fell that in the example i gave the homosexual aspect was forced in, we had no idea what orientesion was ellie (or what ever her name was) and no one had a problem with it. To be frank if i have to pick between the token minoriety cherecter or a well rounded straight white male, ill pick the latter, because I considere it a beter option then forcing in a steryotype. There is indeed need for change in games, but change that has to be done well and over a longer pieriod, not within two or three months

 

[grassgremlin]

Think about what? The random things you stated and how we think about your opinion? The broad subject itself? You didn't really present a coherent question to reply to honestly, you just had a stream of concousness post.

I think this is one of those threads that went nowhere.
I honestly just wanted to talk about something other then gamergate and feminism.
It kind of ended up being a fragmented stream of consciousness about nothing.

 

[Gestapo Hunter]

If your looking for gay romance game theres a couple of Japanese visual novels out there.

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

>Wants Gay DOA

The Recent Jojo Bizarre Adventure release & Fist Of the North Star Ken's Rage 1 & 2



There you go, all you had to do was ask. Enjoy Male on Male gazing

 

[Malpraxis]

Maybe you should check out the Call of Duty series, I think there's a new version every year. It's about a bunch of dudes who go watching each other backs, having an implicit bromance and there's absolutely no women allowed in the club. Think Top Gun in video game form.

But on a more serious note, I'd be for more gay protagonists, as long as they don't make "being gay" their defining trait, otherwise we might end up with the gay version of Duke Nukem Forever, and nobody, gay or straight, wants that.

 

[grassgremlin]

Maybe you should check out the Call of Duty series, I think there's a new version every year. It's about a bunch of dudes who go watching each other backs, having an implicit bromance and there's absolutely no women allowed in the club. Think Top Gun in video game form.

But on a more serious note, I'd be for more gay protagonists, as long as they don't make "being gay" their defining trait, otherwise we might end up with the gay version of Duke Nukem Forever, and nobody, gay or straight, wants that.

I agree 100% with this. Actually well written lgbt characters would be a godsend. Anything with a bit more effort then "My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant."

 

[Jennifer Valentine]

I'm with you on this. There needs to be more inclusion in games of more than the usual buff, white, often well off/middle class, cisgendered men. I also agree that this can't just be tokenism or some weird thing where the developers go out of their way to say it's important to the story for your CoD character to be gay.

But really it's about visibility. All minorities (racial, gender, sexual orientation, etc) need to be more strongly represented and more often. I would say Mass Effect as a series did decent at that. There was a wide color palette of people with people of color being represented in leadership roles. There were women in charge. There were even gay characters, which if you are showing Shepard in his off time (or any crew member) then yes their love life will pop up, and yes some may be gay. I found Stevens (I think), guy down in the loading bay repairing the shuttle and doing procurements, to be well done with an ok story. It's little threads like that that are important along with eventually gay/bi/lesbian main characters even if them doing "gay" things never comes up. I mean is there a homosexual way to fire a gun and reload????

One area that needs a lot more work is with transgender characters. They seem even more woefully under and misrepresented.

 

[Silvanus]

I understand and agree with what you're saying.

In terms of games that emphasize romance/relationships, though, are you thinking something like Mass Effect and Dragon Age? I remember reading an interesting topic before about the sexuality of romance-able companions. Some people argued that in the interest of player choice that most/all companions should be bisexual.

In your opinion would that count towards greater diversity and openness, or does it do more harm than good by limiting heterosexual/homosexual/asexual characters?

I think it's a pretty good approach for some games. It would suit games with a large focus on customisability (is that a word?) and freedom, like Skyrim, or maybe MMOs.

It wouldn't suit all games as well, though. In Mass Effect, the romance-able potential partners are fleshed out and characterised a lot more than they are in Skyrim, for example, so I could see the value in having different crew-members with different interests and different availability (as they did it in the latter ME games).

That would be my take on it, anywho.

......Well the thing was I wasn't quoting anyone except you hence my use of the quotation tags. I'll break this down for you;

Recently I spent all the time defending straight person's interest. After all if I want to have my fuck toys they can have theirs right.

Here the OP talks about how and why he stood-up for Heterosexuals even though he does sound cold, he mentions that he only does it because of his sexual interest in males per se.

That's not the same thing. You've taken your own meaning from it.

He said that he's sticking up for others because "they can have theirs". He's not doing it "because of his sexual interest in males". Those are two transparently different sentiments.

But, I'm taking up the task of trying on the gay defense for a change.

And here for some reason his motivations have changed and he is re-correcting his attitudes for one side. It's almost like he's trying to bestow heterosexuals to feel privileged for his help.

Again, your interpretation. The only meaning inherent in his statement is that he's taking a different approach. Anything else is what you've take away from it.

 

[Silvanus]

This is a good point actually, since it does give a means of a encouraging inclusivity on the 'player input' end of the spectrum. Skyrim and mass effect and such are predominantly player-driven, but are also pretty good with inclusivity. So on the player input end we have that, and on the character-driven end we can have diverse protagonists. Probably a good mental starting point for making games inclusive and how you want to approach that in an effective and meaningful manner.

Aye, and nobody loses out. It's no surprise that RPGs (ones that put narrative or world-building front-and-centre) are the trailblazers in this regard, either.

 

[Nimcha]

I'm on board with the positivity here! I also agree it's getting better in this regard, and quite quickly! I mean, I don't need a character to be gay to be able to identify with him/her but it's sure nice to see a gay person in a game once in a while!

Or a bisexual person even, they're always woefully underused.

 

[the December King]

I'm happy that you want these things, it seems only normal.

As one of the few straight, white, male, older gamers posting here that actually doesn't particularly want sexuality brought into any of my games, I'll probably steer clear of them. But I certainly want them to exist, for the sake of inclusiveness, and I want those who have less representation racially to have more.

 

[kilenem]

Borderlands is pretty much talked the rainbow. I think pretty a lot people are represented in that game. Even Axton is like a parody of the Great White hope.

 

[Skatologist]

Great, absolutely great. I'm completely supportive with all of this. I'm also a bit weird, despite technically sort of/kind of being a straight male, I kind of prefer the idea of gay guys making out more than straight couples or lesbians for some reason. Guess I just kind of wanted to share that.

heterophobia

Wait, wait, I've got a better one...cisphobia! Hahahaha![footnote] Seriously though, it's not that these things don't exist, but they DEFINITELY aren't institutional and an actual problem yet, or they probably will never be.[/footnote]

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

more diversity in games would be nice but including gay character be but into everything is not exactly a good thing. There such thing as poorly made and and lazily done token characters just fill out a check box to meet diversity standards.

I would rather see more actual characters that are well made gay characters makes sense, as opposed many tokens jammed in everything.
More playable characters in general that are not the same old straight gruffy white dude, would nice just for the sake of variety.

i like the way Path of Exile has gay characters. it's never the focus of the game but it's heavily implied/obvious if you pay attention. Also the gameplay. that matters a lot too.

there gay characters is path of exile? well I will take your word for it since the story and lore never caught my attention in the game. The thing that matters most to me in that game is gameplay.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

You can split this into a number of different issues I guess and if I try to split it I will probably miss some.

One is that character creation and customisation is a huge thing in games now in a way that it wasn't 20 years ago. And all those customisation options cost time and effort to put in. Making a bulky male character wear a floral dress because people find it funny is one thing but being able to customise the same game so it's a skinnier man with different animations looking good in a dress is a different challenge with a different appeal. It is hard to say how this is worth it but since customisation is one of the things that can be monetised, maybe pioneered largely by second life, then you can expect it come to down to money rather than ideology. An exception to this would be games run on consoles where the dev might have strong guidelines where they don't want to risk more controversial content.

Gay plots and dialogues in story games is another thing. I know that many are uncomfortable with characters in game talking to them as if they might be gay. But to me the bigger problem is when story games cut out a lot of other things or generally make very light uninteresting games and then use the concept of "inclusiveness" to defend what they are doing as an unchallengeable defence against criticism. But this is where trends in game development clash and it is more about ideology.

But for sure a lot of gay men are very horny and want to see sexy men.