I dunno, perhaps I just can't get into games as much. I can never put "myself" into the character's shoes. Probably why I don't have much affection for silent characters, outside of a very rare few.
Im not calling for any sort of prejudice or segregation, but why should there be gays in games. I dont like that sort of 'forced' equality. By pointing out that there arent enough gays you create a situation where you are assuming they are not equal. If you truly believed both groups to be equal it wouldnt matter if either was represented.
The trouble right now is that they aren't equal. I can name loads of well-developed, deep heterosexual characters. I can name two well-developed, deep homosexual characters. That's not equality. Am I saying "Every straight character must have an equal and opposite gay character"? No, because that'd be retarded. I'm saying "Hey, how about some gay characters that aren't blatantly offensive stereotypes."
But, why should there be an equal amount of gay characters. Surely, if that was the case many of them would be token gays because the real world population would no be an accurate reflection.
Sure, perhaps at the moment it is a little imbalanced. But are you saying that, say, in the next Bioware RPG a character should be gay for the sake of it? What if the plot doesnt fit, or what if, quite frankly, the devs dont want it to be a gay character. Not out of homophobia or anything sinister, but merely as a matter of choice.
That said, I do agree they are under-represented at the moment. But to think that at one point in the future there would be a 50:50 balance of gays to straights in games as characters is ludicrous. Homosexuals will always be a minority, and by trying to force the issue to get more and more gay characters will only make it worse in my opinion, as most of the characters will not be well rounded, developed or a good representation of the gay community, but probably a cheap stereotype and put in there for the sake of it.
I mean, you go around any minority, african americans, gays, the disabled etc. They are always going to be under represented, thats a fact of life.
I cant remember the last video game character I saw in a wheelchair.
I think that disputes of minority representation are always going to be there. Its best to kind of 'ignore' the issue, as there is nothing wrong with a character not being gay, or a thousand being not gay either. It becomes an issue when someone takes offense that they arent being represented equally, when in fact by wanting to be represented equally will probably cause more harm (through sterotyping and token inclusion in plotlines).
I think the ideal scenario is a KOTOR/Mass Effect type of game. Where the main character really has no sexual preference, and has the option to pursue either.
I dont look at Revan in KOTOR and think 'hes gay', I think 'hes straight' because I can relate to myself. But a gay person might feel a closer connection to Carth or someone. I think Games are catching up on social issues like this.
Dont forget, its only been, what, 10 years, 11 years since the first true 3d games came out. Its been even less with full speech characters and deep, meaningful plotlines.
Video gaming is still in its infancy when compared to say, cinema or TV. And look how long it took them to 'come around' as it were to the issues of race and minority equality. Complaining that now, 20 years in, that there are problems with race or sexuality is a little harsh. The industry is developing, give it time I say.
The main guy in Final Fight was in a wheelchair, and Revan was a female for me.
I think all video game characters should be green asexual blobs. Only then will people stop trying to quantify characters that fit their race/religion/sexual orientation/handicap/whatever to feel more like their character is an appropriate avatar of themselves.
Hell, as a male, I usually play girl characters because I enjoy looking at a nice ass when running around for 100+ hours in a game instead of some big burly guy's backside. I also enjoy playing as hedgehogs (well, not recently), Italian plumbers, giant transforming robots, preteens who abuse woodland critters, vampires, aliens, and so on, even though I am none of those things in real life.
I am an Injun (Native American for you PC people), and I never feel more empathy or comraderie for Indian characters just because they're Indians. That's just silly, especially when the game requires my in-game character to kill Indians on requisite Wild West levels or when playing against Chief Thunder in Killer Instinct. When I loaded up Prey, I didn't think "Oh Great Spirit, finally!!!!!! A game for ME!!!" If my role in the game is a time-travelling assassin, you'd better believe those natives are going to be slaughtered so I can get the jewel to beam to the next time zone.
I play as whatever avatar the game gives me, and if I have a choice (or a nice character editor), I usually go with avatars which aren't like me in the least bit.
If you think any race, religion, or whatever is under-represented in video games, just use your imagination to make them whatever you want. Mario could easily be a Satanic gay pastry fetishist. He saved Peach in Mario 64, not for some lovin', but so she would make him a cake, for god's sake. Many games now have editors, so you can always make black, white, green, or yellow people with red eyes and purple hair, and if you want them to be gay, go right ahead. It's your game. Sexual orientation and religion isn't usually touched on in the vast, vast majority of games, and it's vague even when mentioned. Lara Croft could like boobies as much as the rest of us.
Maybe it's because I grew up playing games on the Odyssey and the Atari VCS, where your imagination really comes into play to figure out that the square shooting lines at the rectangle was really an epic battle between huge starships hurtling through deep space, but even today, video game characters have very different "attributes" than the ones dictated by the game when I play. Hell, the LOTR trilogy was a huge sausage party between all the Hobbits for my friends and I when we were watching it, and we were enjoying the movies much more than we would have otherwise because we were using our imaginations to "enhance" the story.
Too many people are assholes with too much time on their hands, so they look for things to bitch about just so they can feel that their worthless life is validated. Complaining that gay people aren't represented enough in video games is the stupidest argument ever. How do you know 90% of all video game characters aren't gay if the game doesn't explicitly state that they like the vagina (or the cock)? Unlike ethnicity, you can't just look at a gay character and say "They're gay", unless they're a stereotype, which will make the same people bitching about lack of gay people bitch about unfair stereotypes.
You can't win against people who will always find something to bitch about, and in an industry where a player's imagination fills in all the holes and backstory that isn't painstakingly written (which would make games boring as hell to read through), you can make every video game character gay if you want.
OK, I'm done bitching, and I think I've gone off on too many tangents.
My point was not that left handed people have a harder time, or that gay people are just complaining louder.
My point was the underrepresentation, of which left handed people are probably worse off.
But I agree with you, and if it came off wrong I apologise. As I said I am friends with some gay people and the last thing I would want would be to cause offense to them or anyone else. Sorry.
My point was, just to clarify, it was just simple numbers. I was just pointing out that left handed characters in games are probably more uncommon than gay characters. I wasnt making a point on the real world 'importance' of their causes, just pure numbers. I was just making the point that while yes, gay people are underepresented, they are hardly the one anomaly. The lefty thing was intended as light and a funny analogy, it came off wrong perhaps or someone misinterpreted it. I was just saying that yes, gay people have issues, but they arent alone. I just used the left handed thing as an analogy because yes, as you said, I couldnt think of any lefty game characters. I did not intend to cause offense. And I am not ignorant of the issues at hand. Again, sorry if I came off that way. I just find this topic interesting and have thought about it.
I think the optimal solution is, as with the film industry, simply to accept that sterotypes and hatred will always exist somewhere, but to rise above it and be proud of where the genre is going. I mean more games like Mass Effect and the Sims will do wonders for gay equality in gaming, but I resent the idea that some have proposed of 'forcing' the issue, as in chucking any 2 dimensional gay character into a game for 'the sake of it'.
I completely agree with you jclast. A well rounded, well written gay character would be great, and much more preferable to a poorly written one in higher numbers. That said, as you said, most devs are probably straight.
In my opinion, having thought about it, I think we should just 'bide' our time as it were. Sure, the situation at the moment is less than optimal. But signs are looking like it will sort itself out soon enough, much sooner in comparison to the film or TV industry. This is a good thing.
I think I'd put characters' sexuality (be it the "main" character I'm playing, or supporting characters) firmly in the realm of things I don't give a shit about.
Most characters in most games might be assumed by default to be heterosexual, but really, there just isn't anything going on to determine that.
Was Doom marine gay? I don't know, and I don't care, as it's a non-issue. Is Gordan Freeman gay? Again, I dunno, and I don't care.
The only time I can imagine it even remotely being an issue is in a game where you're more firmly "role-playing" and making choices, where I do feel it'd be more interesting with some non-conventional choices to make. I'm not sure about male/male relationships, but I definitely recall Fallout 2 allowing female characters to have sex with/marry female NPCs, and it was a cool addition, even if it was largely inconsequential.
I suppose if games were to become more "realistic" and featured more interactions with sophisticated AI, perhaps the "player" being gay could reasonably turn off straight people, but I can't imagine it'd bother me.
It's ridiculous to target video games as not having enough gay characters. No form of media to date allows a player as much choice as some video games do. It's true that most games where the character is heavily formed for you come from a heterosexual point of view, but what about the games where they leave out the issue of sexuality for the most part, such as Beyond Good and Evil? Does nobody else see how ambiguous the lead in that game is?
So many games let you design your own character with absolutely no reference to what they go home at night and think about. How many movies can you say that for? Or books?
Electronic entertainment is way ahead of the curve just by giving the player choice. It will never be the "conservative" form of media. What is it going to take to satisfy some people? Would it really make the game "better" if Kane and Lynch got a motel at the end of the game and fooled around in a cut scene? Unless the shooting mechanics are directly tied to what gets them off, I honestly don't give a damn.
Well, it's certainly been an interesting discussion. I'm glad we've all agreed that the term "Gaymer" is punch worthy (seriously, who came up with that one?)
It's ridiculous to target video games as not having enough gay characters. No form of media to date allows a player as much choice as some video games do. It's true that most games where the character is heavily formed for you come from a heterosexual point of view, but what about the games where they leave out the issue of sexuality for the most part, such as Beyond Good and Evil? Does nobody else see how ambiguous the lead in that game is?
It's ridiculous to target video games as not having enough gay characters. No form of media to date allows a player as much choice as some video games do. It's true that most games where the character is heavily formed for you come from a heterosexual point of view, but what about the games where they leave out the issue of sexuality for the most part, such as Beyond Good and Evil? Does nobody else see how ambiguous the lead in that game is?
Some of the most interesting results seem to be the "reverse bell curve" of the results determined by the Kinsey report; Kinsey (played by the devilishly handsome Liam Neeson, I might add) theorized that the sexuality of most of us can be represented as a bell curve with the majority falling in the middle between heterosexual and homosexual (the vaunted state of "bi-sexuality").
Gamers, on the other hand, seem to cluster towards either extreme - associating as either hetero or homosexual with very few identifying as bisexual.
I'd like to tackle this aspect of the study; I'm not sure it did provide accurate results. It gathered data via a self-administered cattle-call survey. I'm not sure we can trust the members of the sample, particularly a sample that skews so young and is relatively sexually inexperienced, to gauge and report their own sexuality accurately.
ETA: ah, another thing - the survey URL was promoted in a LGBT magazine while it was still ongoing. As respondents are self-chosen, the survey's not representative. (Blows my "younger sample" thing out of the water, but still.)
The macho atmosphere in the hobby we've discussed also polarizes matters. Even with anonymity, the strong "oh lol like I'm gonna say I'm gay" reaction isn't going to go away instantly, hence all the "yep, I'm a 1. No doubt about it. No gayness at all" reactions. On the other side of the coin, gay respondents might either a) already have acquired a strong sense of identity to be in a hobby that has so many homophobic jerks or b) understood the point of the survey, felt that it was goddamn time someone acknowledged gay gamers exist, and put down a strong 7. There's a lot of room and a good amount of incentive for 3's and 6's to report on the extreme ends of the scale.
As for the "I can't identify with a character or game that doesn't play to my sexual tastes" thing, well. Welcome to what heterosexual female gamers have put up with for years on end.
ETA: Ah, just discovered - the survey was promoted in a LGBT magazine while it was still ongoing. Another thing to skew the results in a study where participants are self-chosen. (Takes away from my "younger and less experienced sample" thing, but still.)
Well, it's certainly been an interesting discussion. I'm glad we've all agreed that the term "Gaymer" is punch worthy (seriously, who came up with that one?)
Probably the same people that came up with grrrrl and leet speak.
I would argue that Jade Empire is a good example of handling homosexuality well in a game. Its tangled, open-ended romance subplots allowed the player to choose straight, bi, gay or (!) threesome, without stereotyping other characters based upon their sexuality, nor flagging this feature up as something of awesome importance; if your character was gay, that was it. No big hoo-har about how the character should then behave.
Jade was designed to be racially ambiguous. It's not a surprise that she'd wind up being ambiguous with regards to her sexual orientation as well.
That being said, I didn't really thing about her race or sexuality; I was busy saving Hillys.
I guess like a lot of other writers here will probably attest, I get a little wrapped up in analyzing a character. The only thing Jade really cares about is protecting her loved ones and getting out the truth. Sounds like a surefire seller that won't offend any demographic.
It may have backfired though, as BG&E just didn't sell. I got it a month in to being new and it was already a budget title. Maybe having an ambiguous character just doesn't put butts in the seats, so to speak.
Jade was designed to be racially ambiguous. It's not a surprise that she'd wind up being ambiguous with regards to her sexual orientation as well.
That being said, I didn't really thing about her race or sexuality; I was busy saving Hillys.
I guess like a lot of other writers here will probably attest, I get a little wrapped up in analyzing a character. The only thing Jade really cares about is protecting her loved ones and getting out the truth. Sounds like a surefire seller that won't offend any demographic.
It may have backfired though, as BG&E just didn't sell. I got it a month in to being new and it was already a budget title. Maybe having an ambiguous character just doesn't put butts in the seats, so to speak.
It didn't help that there wasn't much advertising. I don't remember seeing one ad for it.
Phantasmagoria 2 had a Bisexual main character and a gay love interest (who died horribly, but then, so did most of the characters).
It also had a fetish dungeon. With a dominatrix. Who did things to the main character.
Anyway, as a gay guy, I usually just ignore love stories in RPGs, etc... My sims are always gay though. So are about half my characters in City of Heroes.
-Edit-
and my main Villain.
-Double Edit-
Also, the artwork in that Joystiq article? That guy is working with gaygamer.net on a webcomic. Should be interesting.
MuddBudd on
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Anyway, as a gay guy, I usually just ignore love stories in RPGs, etc... My sims are always gay though. So are about half my characters in City of Heroes.
-Edit-
and my main Villain.
A friend of mine (straight, but still funny) has a pink-clad hero named Rapthcallion (lisp on purpose), who has powers of flaming.
Anyway, as a gay guy, I usually just ignore love stories in RPGs, etc... My sims are always gay though. So are about half my characters in City of Heroes.
-Edit-
and my main Villain.
A friend of mine (straight, but still funny) has a pink-clad hero named Rapthcallion (lisp on purpose), who has powers of flaming.
I usually just put it in their ID. So very rarely does anyone notice.
My villain had a story about losing his boyfriend in an attack and turning to necromancy to avenge him. Nothing says true love like enslaving the souls of your attackers. Also the two chump heroes who beat the attackers but never take a victim to the hospital. (I never understood that in COH, but then, usually the victims just run off I suppose). The lich was gonna be the soul of his beloved but I never got to that high a level.
Only one person ever actually commented to me about it.
MuddBudd on
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I, as a person of Hispanic descent, feel underrepresented in video games. In 10 years, I will be the largest minority in America--yet I have little, if any, representation as the main protagonist of a video game. Frankly, I couldn't care less.
Also, that 10% number is bunk--that came from a study of <2000 people, all living in New York. Actual estimates range from 4-6%, and I believe the Kinsey scale is a more accurate identification method.
breakz on
Now Playing - GRAW, FFIII DS, Ninja Gaiden Black, Phoenix Wright
For whatever reason I always feel weird making gay Sims.
My sims always end up as bisexual polyamorous nymphos, because it's fun to see how many relationships you can sustain before they start fall apart.
Well I made gay Sims to disrupt the existing relationships in Happytown or Pleasantville or whatever the starting neighbourhood is, but I never make serious gay Sims.
Jade was designed to be racially ambiguous. It's not a surprise that she'd wind up being ambiguous with regards to her sexual orientation as well.
That being said, I didn't really thing about her race or sexuality; I was busy saving Hillys.
I guess like a lot of other writers here will probably attest, I get a little wrapped up in analyzing a character. The only thing Jade really cares about is protecting her loved ones and getting out the truth. Sounds like a surefire seller that won't offend any demographic.
It may have backfired though, as BG&E just didn't sell. I got it a month in to being new and it was already a budget title. Maybe having an ambiguous character just doesn't put butts in the seats, so to speak.
I think I made a thread out of this earlier, but there really aren't any women in games. (In the same way that there really aren't any women that play MMOs, they're all men in dresses).
Ok, huge generalisation aside, there really are very few games where the women are actually women, and not just guys in dresses. I do think it's because it can be... I want to say uncomfortable, but I feel that might have more negative conotations than it ought to. But it was still kind of weird when Zoe Costello from Dreamfall was falling for uhm, some weird irish guy in a away that it's never is in a movie.
Jade was designed to be racially ambiguous. It's not a surprise that she'd wind up being ambiguous with regards to her sexual orientation as well.
That being said, I didn't really thing about her race or sexuality; I was busy saving Hillys.
I guess like a lot of other writers here will probably attest, I get a little wrapped up in analyzing a character. The only thing Jade really cares about is protecting her loved ones and getting out the truth. Sounds like a surefire seller that won't offend any demographic.
It may have backfired though, as BG&E just didn't sell. I got it a month in to being new and it was already a budget title. Maybe having an ambiguous character just doesn't put butts in the seats, so to speak.
I think I made a thread out of this earlier, but there really aren't any women in games. (In the same way that there really aren't any women that play MMOs, they're all men in dresses).
Ok, huge generalisation aside, there really are very few games where the women are actually women, and not just guys in dresses. I do think it's because it can be... I want to say uncomfortable, but I feel that might have more negative conotations than it ought to. But it was still kind of weird when Zoe Costello from Dreamfall was falling for uhm, some weird irish guy in a away that it's never is in a movie.
Why is Samus just a guy in a dress? If the character was male, could he be described as a girl in a tuxedo?
Just means, like the real world community, homosexuals are in the minority, and as such this will be reflected in the games.
But if games were TRULY representative of the real world, 10 percent of all characters (be they main or secondary) would be gay. As it stands right now, the only ones people can think of are self-generated or parodies.
The fact that gay gamers exist isn't really interesting, but the treatment of sexuality in games certainly is, I'd say.
I don't think it's any surprise that so few video game characters are anything other than run-of-the-mill hetero. If you want to sell a lot of copies of your game, you go out of your way to make it appeal to as many people as possible. You don't want to make any design decisions that might actively deter people from buying your game.
I dunno. I'm sure there were quite a few hetero males buying
You also have Morrigan and Lilith, arguably the most popular characters to come out of the Darkstalkers series.
I'm not sure about Zangief. Capcom Fighting Evolution says he has a girlfriend.
There's also a lot of gender confusion going on between Japan and the US, with originally transgendered characters being changed as they cross the Pacific. Aside from the already mentioned Flea, you have Birdo from SMB2 and Vivian from Paper Mario: 1000 Year Door, among others. And this is from so-called "kiddy" Nintendo.
KotOR's Juhani is a recent example of this (although maybe she was bisexual; all that came out was that she had feelings for the female lead).
Looks like she is a lesbian.
In the original version of KotOR it is possible for both male and female characters to have a romantic conversation with Juhani. A patch then corrected the conversation to so it could only be accessed by female characters, as the designers intended. If one looks at the programming of the game, it can be seen that the conversation is only accessible by female characters. Cut content indicates that there was at one point supposed be a full romantic subplot, but it was removed, due to concerns that explicit homosexuality was not appropriate in the Star Wars universe. The remaining conversation takes place at the end of the game where Revan and Juhani express their feelings for each other and agree to discuss it more fully later, presumably after the game ends.
In a galaxy far, far away, everybody was heterosexual.
Hullo. I'm gay and play games a whole bunch. Would I like to see more gay characters? Sure, it'd be nice. Do heterosexual characters bother me? Nope. The oversaturation of exagerrated female characters as sex objects does bother me, if only because I would like to see deeper female characters and protagonists. Does the homophobic tendency of gaming culture bother me? Only as much as normal homophobic tendencies do- I see it as immature sophomoric, and I honestly think less of you if you have such tendencies.
Also, I would consider the fact that the majority of games are currently developed in Japan. Japan has strange views on homosexuality, and in games we often see two extremes- the pretty boy, and the flamboyant whorish creep. Both of these can be funny or cute, but I'd much rather see a more normal gay character.
And lesbians only count if they aren't catering to a heterosexual male audience.
Jade was designed to be racially ambiguous. It's not a surprise that she'd wind up being ambiguous with regards to her sexual orientation as well.
That being said, I didn't really thing about her race or sexuality; I was busy saving Hillys.
I guess like a lot of other writers here will probably attest, I get a little wrapped up in analyzing a character. The only thing Jade really cares about is protecting her loved ones and getting out the truth. Sounds like a surefire seller that won't offend any demographic.
It may have backfired though, as BG&E just didn't sell. I got it a month in to being new and it was already a budget title. Maybe having an ambiguous character just doesn't put butts in the seats, so to speak.
I think I made a thread out of this earlier, but there really aren't any women in games. (In the same way that there really aren't any women that play MMOs, they're all men in dresses).
Ok, huge generalisation aside, there really are very few games where the women are actually women, and not just guys in dresses. I do think it's because it can be... I want to say uncomfortable, but I feel that might have more negative conotations than it ought to. But it was still kind of weird when Zoe Costello from Dreamfall was falling for uhm, some weird irish guy in a away that it's never is in a movie.
Why is Samus just a guy in a dress? If the character was male, could he be described as a girl in a tuxedo?
Yeah, Samus (as much as I'm aware of the metroid series) is pretty much genderless. I think the same arguement could be made of mario. It really wouldn't be that different if mario wore a dress and peach wore the trousers. Essentially they're gender neutral. It's only when you get into games like Dreamfall that gender really becomes important to who a character is. Zoe Castille is most definitely a woman. Jade from BG&E could just as easily be a boy as a girl. Very few games will come with female leads that actually do anything womanly.
I think it's going to be a long time before we see a game like Half-Life2 but instead of the Alyx being kinda flirty with you, Barney is.
How would games handle gay characters to make them obviously same-sex-oriented? All of the gay people I know are not telefags (IE Jack from "Will & Grace"), but rather people who look, talk, act, and even dress like everyone else I know. Assuming the game did not involve overt personal relationships, why couldn't the characters just as easily be gay?
Take Contra. Two guys in skintight leathers running through a jungle... maybe they're lovers? BAM! There's a game for you. Samus had a thing for athletic chicks? BAM! Another game for you. Haggar from that side-scrolling game who's name elides me right now was a bear who liked younger, lean, smooth guys? BAM! Another game.
I mean, you go around any minority, african americans, gays, the disabled etc. They are always going to be under represented, thats a fact of life.
I understand you're not from the U.S., but that was a very misinformed statement. There have been estimates of blacks and Hispanics/Latinos coming very close or even outnumbering the white population in America within the next 50 (or even 30) years.
Regardless being a minority has little to do with actual numbers and is more about representations in positions of (and access to) power within a said culture.
Despite the raw numbers of racial and ethnic minorities in America there is a large disproportion of white males that are Fortune 500 CEOs, High powered politicians, and are of favorable representation within the media.
Jade was designed to be racially ambiguous. It's not a surprise that she'd wind up being ambiguous with regards to her sexual orientation as well.
That being said, I didn't really thing about her race or sexuality; I was busy saving Hillys.
I guess like a lot of other writers here will probably attest, I get a little wrapped up in analyzing a character. The only thing Jade really cares about is protecting her loved ones and getting out the truth. Sounds like a surefire seller that won't offend any demographic.
It may have backfired though, as BG&E just didn't sell. I got it a month in to being new and it was already a budget title. Maybe having an ambiguous character just doesn't put butts in the seats, so to speak.
I think I made a thread out of this earlier, but there really aren't any women in games. (In the same way that there really aren't any women that play MMOs, they're all men in dresses).
Ok, huge generalisation aside, there really are very few games where the women are actually women, and not just guys in dresses. I do think it's because it can be... I want to say uncomfortable, but I feel that might have more negative conotations than it ought to. But it was still kind of weird when Zoe Costello from Dreamfall was falling for uhm, some weird irish guy in a away that it's never is in a movie.
Why is Samus just a guy in a dress? If the character was male, could he be described as a girl in a tuxedo?
Yeah, Samus (as much as I'm aware of the metroid series) is pretty much genderless. I think the same arguement could be made of mario. It really wouldn't be that different if mario wore a dress and peach wore the trousers. Essentially they're gender neutral. It's only when you get into games like Dreamfall that gender really becomes important to who a character is. Zoe Castille is most definitely a woman. Jade from BG&E could just as easily be a boy as a girl. Very few games will come with female leads that actually do anything womanly.
I think it's going to be a long time before we see a game like Half-Life2 but instead of the Alyx being kinda flirty with you, Barney is.
I kind of like the whole more or less 'genderless' gender thing. I mean, I like female characters that don't have their gender be the whole defining part of their characteristic. It isn't an emphasis with male characters, and I don't like the whole "I'm a girl, yay girl power!!! I can do it too!" mentality. Makes me vomit a little in my mouth.
Same with gay characters, I suppose. Save for the one aspect, (sexual orientation), they really shouldn't differ too much or be recognised solely for that 'feature'.
Of course, those are just my preferences. It'll take some time before we can move away from the stereotypes and get to some consistently serious character development.
I mean, you go around any minority, african americans, gays, the disabled etc. They are always going to be under represented, thats a fact of life.
I understand you're not from the U.S., but that was a very misinformed statement. There have been estimates of blacks and Hispanics/Latinos coming very close or even outnumbering the white population in America within the next 50 (or even 30) years.
Totally true. Ann Coulter was right to point out that 100% of the NFL coaches in this year's Superbowl... WERE BLACK! 100%! ALL OF THEM!
Posts
The main guy in Final Fight was in a wheelchair, and Revan was a female for me.
I think all video game characters should be green asexual blobs. Only then will people stop trying to quantify characters that fit their race/religion/sexual orientation/handicap/whatever to feel more like their character is an appropriate avatar of themselves.
Hell, as a male, I usually play girl characters because I enjoy looking at a nice ass when running around for 100+ hours in a game instead of some big burly guy's backside. I also enjoy playing as hedgehogs (well, not recently), Italian plumbers, giant transforming robots, preteens who abuse woodland critters, vampires, aliens, and so on, even though I am none of those things in real life.
I am an Injun (Native American for you PC people), and I never feel more empathy or comraderie for Indian characters just because they're Indians. That's just silly, especially when the game requires my in-game character to kill Indians on requisite Wild West levels or when playing against Chief Thunder in Killer Instinct. When I loaded up Prey, I didn't think "Oh Great Spirit, finally!!!!!! A game for ME!!!" If my role in the game is a time-travelling assassin, you'd better believe those natives are going to be slaughtered so I can get the jewel to beam to the next time zone.
I play as whatever avatar the game gives me, and if I have a choice (or a nice character editor), I usually go with avatars which aren't like me in the least bit.
If you think any race, religion, or whatever is under-represented in video games, just use your imagination to make them whatever you want. Mario could easily be a Satanic gay pastry fetishist. He saved Peach in Mario 64, not for some lovin', but so she would make him a cake, for god's sake. Many games now have editors, so you can always make black, white, green, or yellow people with red eyes and purple hair, and if you want them to be gay, go right ahead. It's your game. Sexual orientation and religion isn't usually touched on in the vast, vast majority of games, and it's vague even when mentioned. Lara Croft could like boobies as much as the rest of us.
Maybe it's because I grew up playing games on the Odyssey and the Atari VCS, where your imagination really comes into play to figure out that the square shooting lines at the rectangle was really an epic battle between huge starships hurtling through deep space, but even today, video game characters have very different "attributes" than the ones dictated by the game when I play. Hell, the LOTR trilogy was a huge sausage party between all the Hobbits for my friends and I when we were watching it, and we were enjoying the movies much more than we would have otherwise because we were using our imaginations to "enhance" the story.
Too many people are assholes with too much time on their hands, so they look for things to bitch about just so they can feel that their worthless life is validated. Complaining that gay people aren't represented enough in video games is the stupidest argument ever. How do you know 90% of all video game characters aren't gay if the game doesn't explicitly state that they like the vagina (or the cock)? Unlike ethnicity, you can't just look at a gay character and say "They're gay", unless they're a stereotype, which will make the same people bitching about lack of gay people bitch about unfair stereotypes.
You can't win against people who will always find something to bitch about, and in an industry where a player's imagination fills in all the holes and backstory that isn't painstakingly written (which would make games boring as hell to read through), you can make every video game character gay if you want.
OK, I'm done bitching, and I think I've gone off on too many tangents.
Can't it be both?
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My point was not that left handed people have a harder time, or that gay people are just complaining louder.
My point was the underrepresentation, of which left handed people are probably worse off.
But I agree with you, and if it came off wrong I apologise. As I said I am friends with some gay people and the last thing I would want would be to cause offense to them or anyone else. Sorry.
My point was, just to clarify, it was just simple numbers. I was just pointing out that left handed characters in games are probably more uncommon than gay characters. I wasnt making a point on the real world 'importance' of their causes, just pure numbers. I was just making the point that while yes, gay people are underepresented, they are hardly the one anomaly. The lefty thing was intended as light and a funny analogy, it came off wrong perhaps or someone misinterpreted it. I was just saying that yes, gay people have issues, but they arent alone. I just used the left handed thing as an analogy because yes, as you said, I couldnt think of any lefty game characters. I did not intend to cause offense. And I am not ignorant of the issues at hand. Again, sorry if I came off that way. I just find this topic interesting and have thought about it.
I think the optimal solution is, as with the film industry, simply to accept that sterotypes and hatred will always exist somewhere, but to rise above it and be proud of where the genre is going. I mean more games like Mass Effect and the Sims will do wonders for gay equality in gaming, but I resent the idea that some have proposed of 'forcing' the issue, as in chucking any 2 dimensional gay character into a game for 'the sake of it'.
I completely agree with you jclast. A well rounded, well written gay character would be great, and much more preferable to a poorly written one in higher numbers. That said, as you said, most devs are probably straight.
In my opinion, having thought about it, I think we should just 'bide' our time as it were. Sure, the situation at the moment is less than optimal. But signs are looking like it will sort itself out soon enough, much sooner in comparison to the film or TV industry. This is a good thing.
Most characters in most games might be assumed by default to be heterosexual, but really, there just isn't anything going on to determine that.
Was Doom marine gay? I don't know, and I don't care, as it's a non-issue. Is Gordan Freeman gay? Again, I dunno, and I don't care.
The only time I can imagine it even remotely being an issue is in a game where you're more firmly "role-playing" and making choices, where I do feel it'd be more interesting with some non-conventional choices to make. I'm not sure about male/male relationships, but I definitely recall Fallout 2 allowing female characters to have sex with/marry female NPCs, and it was a cool addition, even if it was largely inconsequential.
I suppose if games were to become more "realistic" and featured more interactions with sophisticated AI, perhaps the "player" being gay could reasonably turn off straight people, but I can't imagine it'd bother me.
So many games let you design your own character with absolutely no reference to what they go home at night and think about. How many movies can you say that for? Or books?
Electronic entertainment is way ahead of the curve just by giving the player choice. It will never be the "conservative" form of media. What is it going to take to satisfy some people? Would it really make the game "better" if Kane and Lynch got a motel at the end of the game and fooled around in a cut scene? Unless the shooting mechanics are directly tied to what gets them off, I honestly don't give a damn.
Jade was designed to be racially ambiguous. It's not a surprise that she'd wind up being ambiguous with regards to her sexual orientation as well.
That being said, I didn't really thing about her race or sexuality; I was busy saving Hillys.
Where's a link to the "before" and "after" pictures of Jade. Didn't they "up" her a bit?
I'd like to tackle this aspect of the study; I'm not sure it did provide accurate results. It gathered data via a self-administered cattle-call survey. I'm not sure we can trust the members of the sample, particularly a sample that skews so young and is relatively sexually inexperienced, to gauge and report their own sexuality accurately.
ETA: ah, another thing - the survey URL was promoted in a LGBT magazine while it was still ongoing. As respondents are self-chosen, the survey's not representative. (Blows my "younger sample" thing out of the water, but still.)
The macho atmosphere in the hobby we've discussed also polarizes matters. Even with anonymity, the strong "oh lol like I'm gonna say I'm gay" reaction isn't going to go away instantly, hence all the "yep, I'm a 1. No doubt about it. No gayness at all" reactions. On the other side of the coin, gay respondents might either a) already have acquired a strong sense of identity to be in a hobby that has so many homophobic jerks or b) understood the point of the survey, felt that it was goddamn time someone acknowledged gay gamers exist, and put down a strong 7. There's a lot of room and a good amount of incentive for 3's and 6's to report on the extreme ends of the scale.
As for the "I can't identify with a character or game that doesn't play to my sexual tastes" thing, well. Welcome to what heterosexual female gamers have put up with for years on end.
ETA: Ah, just discovered - the survey was promoted in a LGBT magazine while it was still ongoing. Another thing to skew the results in a study where participants are self-chosen. (Takes away from my "younger and less experienced sample" thing, but still.)
Probably the same people that came up with grrrrl and leet speak.
Talking of gay stereotypes, Deep Fear
It may have backfired though, as BG&E just didn't sell. I got it a month in to being new and it was already a budget title. Maybe having an ambiguous character just doesn't put butts in the seats, so to speak.
It didn't help that there wasn't much advertising. I don't remember seeing one ad for it.
It also had a fetish dungeon. With a dominatrix. Who did things to the main character.
Anyway, as a gay guy, I usually just ignore love stories in RPGs, etc... My sims are always gay though. So are about half my characters in City of Heroes.
-Edit-
and my main Villain.
-Double Edit-
Also, the artwork in that Joystiq article? That guy is working with gaygamer.net on a webcomic. Should be interesting.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
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I usually just put it in their ID. So very rarely does anyone notice.
My villain had a story about losing his boyfriend in an attack and turning to necromancy to avenge him. Nothing says true love like enslaving the souls of your attackers. Also the two chump heroes who beat the attackers but never take a victim to the hospital. (I never understood that in COH, but then, usually the victims just run off I suppose). The lich was gonna be the soul of his beloved but I never got to that high a level.
Only one person ever actually commented to me about it.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
My sims always end up as bisexual polyamorous nymphos, because it's fun to see how many relationships you can sustain before they start fall apart.
Also, that 10% number is bunk--that came from a study of <2000 people, all living in New York. Actual estimates range from 4-6%, and I believe the Kinsey scale is a more accurate identification method.
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I think I made a thread out of this earlier, but there really aren't any women in games. (In the same way that there really aren't any women that play MMOs, they're all men in dresses).
Ok, huge generalisation aside, there really are very few games where the women are actually women, and not just guys in dresses. I do think it's because it can be... I want to say uncomfortable, but I feel that might have more negative conotations than it ought to. But it was still kind of weird when Zoe Costello from Dreamfall was falling for uhm, some weird irish guy in a away that it's never is in a movie.
Why is Samus just a guy in a dress? If the character was male, could he be described as a girl in a tuxedo?
I dunno. I'm sure there were quite a few hetero males buying
You also have Morrigan and Lilith, arguably the most popular characters to come out of the Darkstalkers series.
I'm not sure about Zangief. Capcom Fighting Evolution says he has a girlfriend.
There's also a lot of gender confusion going on between Japan and the US, with originally transgendered characters being changed as they cross the Pacific. Aside from the already mentioned Flea, you have Birdo from SMB2 and Vivian from Paper Mario: 1000 Year Door, among others. And this is from so-called "kiddy" Nintendo.
Lesbianism can be handled maturely.
KotOR's Juhani is a recent example of this (although maybe she was bisexual; all that came out was that she had feelings for the female lead).
Looks like she is a lesbian. In a galaxy far, far away, everybody was heterosexual.
*cough*
Also, I would consider the fact that the majority of games are currently developed in Japan. Japan has strange views on homosexuality, and in games we often see two extremes- the pretty boy, and the flamboyant whorish creep. Both of these can be funny or cute, but I'd much rather see a more normal gay character.
And lesbians only count if they aren't catering to a heterosexual male audience.
Yeah, Samus (as much as I'm aware of the metroid series) is pretty much genderless. I think the same arguement could be made of mario. It really wouldn't be that different if mario wore a dress and peach wore the trousers. Essentially they're gender neutral. It's only when you get into games like Dreamfall that gender really becomes important to who a character is. Zoe Castille is most definitely a woman. Jade from BG&E could just as easily be a boy as a girl. Very few games will come with female leads that actually do anything womanly.
I think it's going to be a long time before we see a game like Half-Life2 but instead of the Alyx being kinda flirty with you, Barney is.
How would games handle gay characters to make them obviously same-sex-oriented? All of the gay people I know are not telefags (IE Jack from "Will & Grace"), but rather people who look, talk, act, and even dress like everyone else I know. Assuming the game did not involve overt personal relationships, why couldn't the characters just as easily be gay?
Take Contra. Two guys in skintight leathers running through a jungle... maybe they're lovers? BAM! There's a game for you. Samus had a thing for athletic chicks? BAM! Another game for you. Haggar from that side-scrolling game who's name elides me right now was a bear who liked younger, lean, smooth guys? BAM! Another game.
Dismayed By Humanity Since 1992.
I understand you're not from the U.S., but that was a very misinformed statement. There have been estimates of blacks and Hispanics/Latinos coming very close or even outnumbering the white population in America within the next 50 (or even 30) years.
Regardless being a minority has little to do with actual numbers and is more about representations in positions of (and access to) power within a said culture.
Despite the raw numbers of racial and ethnic minorities in America there is a large disproportion of white males that are Fortune 500 CEOs, High powered politicians, and are of favorable representation within the media.
Hahahaha
I kind of like the whole more or less 'genderless' gender thing. I mean, I like female characters that don't have their gender be the whole defining part of their characteristic. It isn't an emphasis with male characters, and I don't like the whole "I'm a girl, yay girl power!!! I can do it too!" mentality. Makes me vomit a little in my mouth.
Same with gay characters, I suppose. Save for the one aspect, (sexual orientation), they really shouldn't differ too much or be recognised solely for that 'feature'.
Of course, those are just my preferences. It'll take some time before we can move away from the stereotypes and get to some consistently serious character development.
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Dismayed By Humanity Since 1992.
See above post about prettyboys. This is the worst offender, no doubt.