The context is that it's different when you are crafting a fictional character and creating them with your own artistic vision, as opposed to real life, where you aren't really given a choice on your gender, your parents, your sexual orientation, your social class, etc.
It might be better if the game starts out with the ability to select sexual orientation and potential romances (including the "all" and "none" options) at the beginning during the creation, but then it breaks some of the expectations and story flow. Often, the audience expects romance to begin spontaneously and organically, rather than planned (at least, in Western culture. There are cultures that "matchmaker" planned romances are the norm rather than the exception).
Since most video games are essentially power fantasies anyway, and character creation elements in RPGs offer a lot of author-level insertion, perhaps it's best if we allow everyone to be romanced/fuckable by anyone regardless of gender. A game that lets you indiscriminately kill whoever you want, steal from whatever you want, should probably let you love whoever you want (or at least, offer valid choices to do so). But then you get into the whole question of resources used to make video games (time, writing talent, money, etc.).
I don't think there's an easy answer other than "video games aren't real life", and leaving it at that.
My point is, design a an actually character.
In a story where sex is even relevant, then design your character so its actions and reactions to sex are consistent.
I think complaints about underrepresentation of homosexuality in popular culture will decrease as homosexual protagonists increase.
I don't think arbitrary player choice as to whether or not a protagonist is homo/hetero/bi/omni is remotely helpful. I think it is actively hurtful.
But that kind of goes against the grain of what the Bioware RPGs do.
There are lots of characters in their worlds that are bi, straight or gay. Well defined, will rebuke you if you try hitting on them and you aren't their type... and they have gotten better at it in later games like Inquisition.
But the main character is your character, and everything from the color of your skin to the way you fight to who you like to sleep with is a personal decision.
It sounds like you have a problem with games that let you define the lead character as opposed to having one that is fully scripted and planned in advance?
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Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
your character, no matter female or male, is simply an indiscriminate pervert who will fuck everyone
except keith davis, who's not down for it
Yeah but in all honesty I feel like "being perverse" and "being homosexual" have an unfortunate conflation already.
i feel like this is something western society has started to move away from except for people who still call anything but vaginal sex sodomy, and those voices are getting ever quieter
The context is that it's different when you are crafting a fictional character and creating them with your own artistic vision, as opposed to real life, where you aren't really given a choice on your gender, your parents, your sexual orientation, your social class, etc.
It might be better if the game starts out with the ability to select sexual orientation and potential romances (including the "all" and "none" options) at the beginning during the creation, but then it breaks some of the expectations and story flow. Often, the audience expects romance to begin spontaneously and organically, rather than planned (at least, in Western culture. There are cultures that "matchmaker" planned romances are the norm rather than the exception).
Since most video games are essentially power fantasies anyway, and character creation elements in RPGs offer a lot of author-level insertion, perhaps it's best if we allow everyone to be romanced/fuckable by anyone regardless of gender. A game that lets you indiscriminately kill whoever you want, steal from whatever you want, should probably let you love whoever you want (or at least, offer valid choices to do so). But then you get into the whole question of resources used to make video games (time, writing talent, money, etc.).
I don't think there's an easy answer other than "video games aren't real life", and leaving it at that.
My point is, design a an actually character.
In a story where sex is even relevant, then design your character so its actions and reactions to sex are consistent.
I think complaints about underrepresentation of homosexuality in popular culture will decrease as homosexual protagonists increase.
I don't think arbitrary player choice as to whether or not a protagonist is homo/hetero/bi/omni is remotely helpful. I think it is actively hurtful.
But that kind of goes against the grain of what the Bioware RPGs do.
There are lots of characters in their worlds that are bi, straight or gay. Well defined, will rebuke you if you try hitting on them and you aren't their type... and they have gotten better at it in later games like Inquisition.
But the main character is your character, and everything from the color of your skin to the way you fight to who you like to sleep with is a personal decision.
It sounds like you have a problem with games that let you define the lead character as opposed to having one that is fully scripted and planned in advance?
I think sexuality is very close to personality. I think action does not define sexual preferences, I think sexual preferences define action. So, yes, Bioware'a approach is bizarre to me because I don't think it remotely emulates reality.
like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have handled romance very differently.
Mass Effect 1 allowed only for straight romance options, with two exceptions: You could have sex with two different Asari characters as a female Shepard, although the game went out of its way to try to explain how that's not really gay because Asari aren't really women despite using female pronouns and whatever blah blah blah.
Mass Effect 2 continued this trend of only straight dudes, and female Shepards had another couple bisexual options. You could romance your Yeoman, Kelly Chambers, regardless of gender, and if you had Lair of the Shadow Broker and you romanced Liara in the first game and nobody in 2, you could keep that going.
Mass Effect 3 was when the series added two actual outright gay characters in the form of Steve Cortez and Samantha Traynor, who are exclusively romance options for male or female Shepard respectively. They also revealed that Kaiden is bisexual (if you play a male Shepard) and that he has a thing for male Shepard, which you can choose to pursue as a romance option finally.
In all instances, none of this matters in any sense beyond "these are the characters you are romantically involved with". Nobody has any opinions on your relationships, there's no controversy or commentary, socially it's a non-issue. This can be attributed to Mass Effect taking place in the space-future, where humanity has other things to be jerks about (like fantastic racism, Ashley) and doesn't give a shit about such things anymore.
on the other end, there's Dragon Age
Dragon Age: Origins included some gay and bisexual minor characters you could hook up with, and it also included two bisexual party members that are romance options: Leliana and Zevran (who is a horrific bisexual stereotype). There's no gay party members, so your only same-sex relationship options are these two, who are explicitly written as bisexual (and promiscuous and generally non-committal, because biphobia is awesome in video games :? )
Dragon Age 2 does this incredibly weird thing I've not really seen a game do before, where every romanceable party member (which is almost every member of your party that isn't your sibling) is... protagonisexual? Like, their sexual orientation is simply whatever is compatible with the gender of the protagonist, Hawke. They're not necessarily bisexual (although Isabella explicitly is, and is a frown-inducing stereotype once again), they just happen to be down for whatever you got goin' on. This actually leads to a really unfortunate moment of bisexual erasure for Anders' character that actually really makes me mad.
Dragon Age: Inquisition finally gets it right, I think. It just includes something for everybody. Straight characters, gay characters, bisexual characters, who are romanceable and their sexual orientation matters to the story (which in previous Dragon Age games, it weirdly didn't, despite people in Thedas being discriminatory about class and race and gender and everything else!)
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
"Yeah yeah, dinosaurs, whatever. I'm a little hungover, I hope nobody notices."
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I only ever played FemShep, and regarding Steve Cortez, I thought it was a really, really good portrayal of a gay man in mourning, something I don't remember anyone ever doing.
I agree with the one poster who said Vega should have been gay, though.
The context is that it's different when you are crafting a fictional character and creating them with your own artistic vision, as opposed to real life, where you aren't really given a choice on your gender, your parents, your sexual orientation, your social class, etc.
It might be better if the game starts out with the ability to select sexual orientation and potential romances (including the "all" and "none" options) at the beginning during the creation, but then it breaks some of the expectations and story flow. Often, the audience expects romance to begin spontaneously and organically, rather than planned (at least, in Western culture. There are cultures that "matchmaker" planned romances are the norm rather than the exception).
Since most video games are essentially power fantasies anyway, and character creation elements in RPGs offer a lot of author-level insertion, perhaps it's best if we allow everyone to be romanced/fuckable by anyone regardless of gender. A game that lets you indiscriminately kill whoever you want, steal from whatever you want, should probably let you love whoever you want (or at least, offer valid choices to do so). But then you get into the whole question of resources used to make video games (time, writing talent, money, etc.).
I don't think there's an easy answer other than "video games aren't real life", and leaving it at that.
My point is, design a an actually character.
In a story where sex is even relevant, then design your character so its actions and reactions to sex are consistent.
I think complaints about underrepresentation of homosexuality in popular culture will decrease as homosexual protagonists increase.
I don't think arbitrary player choice as to whether or not a protagonist is homo/hetero/bi/omni is remotely helpful. I think it is actively hurtful.
to offer a contrasting point of view to what you are saying
when I'm playing a RPG I don't always know everything about the character I'm playing when I create them
this goes for video games as well as tabletop games
details sometimes get sussed out through play, and come about organically as a result of circumstances
these details basically exist as fuzzy grey blanks until something comes along to fill them in with what matters
it means I don't go into the story with a clearly shaped vision in my head "this is who my character is, this is where he's from, this is what he's all about, this is how he reacts to everything"
I allow the story to sculpt the character
I understand where you're coming from on this, Drez, you don't like promoting the narrative that sexual orientation is somehow a choice
but at the same time, when I'm playing a roleplaying game, I like for some of my character details to be hazy until I actually start playing and know what some of my options are and how I want to play it is
I don't want to sit there for half an hour at the character creation screen, working out my sexual orientation, hometown of origin, religious beliefs, etc.
I want these things to come out organically in the story, because they only exist within the confines of the story
The context is that it's different when you are crafting a fictional character and creating them with your own artistic vision, as opposed to real life, where you aren't really given a choice on your gender, your parents, your sexual orientation, your social class, etc.
It might be better if the game starts out with the ability to select sexual orientation and potential romances (including the "all" and "none" options) at the beginning during the creation, but then it breaks some of the expectations and story flow. Often, the audience expects romance to begin spontaneously and organically, rather than planned (at least, in Western culture. There are cultures that "matchmaker" planned romances are the norm rather than the exception).
Since most video games are essentially power fantasies anyway, and character creation elements in RPGs offer a lot of author-level insertion, perhaps it's best if we allow everyone to be romanced/fuckable by anyone regardless of gender. A game that lets you indiscriminately kill whoever you want, steal from whatever you want, should probably let you love whoever you want (or at least, offer valid choices to do so). But then you get into the whole question of resources used to make video games (time, writing talent, money, etc.).
I don't think there's an easy answer other than "video games aren't real life", and leaving it at that.
My point is, design a an actually character.
In a story where sex is even relevant, then design your character so its actions and reactions to sex are consistent.
I think complaints about underrepresentation of homosexuality in popular culture will decrease as homosexual protagonists increase.
I don't think arbitrary player choice as to whether or not a protagonist is homo/hetero/bi/omni is remotely helpful. I think it is actively hurtful.
to offer a contrasting point of view to what you are saying
when I'm playing a RPG I don't always know everything about the character I'm playing when I create them
this goes for video games as well as tabletop games
details sometimes get sussed out through play, and come about organically as a result of circumstances
these details basically exist as fuzzy grey blanks until something comes along to fill them in with what matters
it means I don't go into the story with a clearly shaped vision in my head "this is who my character is, this is where he's from, this is what he's all about, this is how he reacts to everything"
I allow the story to sculpt the character
I understand where you're coming from on this, Drez, you don't like promoting the narrative that sexual orientation is somehow a choice
but at the same time, when I'm playing a roleplaying game, I like for some of my character details to be hazy until I actually start playing and know what some of my options are and how I want to play it is
I don't want to sit there for half an hour at the character creation screen, working out my sexual orientation, hometown of origin, religious beliefs, etc.
I want these things to come out organically in the story, because they only exist within the confines of the story
Again, a really solid point in the favor of Inquisition.
I liked how they waited to have you define elements of your character backstory until you were capable of having an opinion things like faith in this setting.
I ended up not liking Inquisition all that much, but I absolutely adored a lot of what they did regarding the protagonist and the cast. If Mass Effect 4 carries those lessons into something that wasn't so needlessly and terribly padded and gated, it could be a contender for best modern RPG.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
The thing about the actual creating of your player character in an RPG like Mass Effect or Dragon Age is the orientation of that character absolutely is a choice. It is your choice, as is that characters skin colour, eye colour, height, weight (sometimes), etc. Genetic information that is normally defined at fertilization is decided upon by you, and so sexual orientation, where a character's sexuality plays a role in the story, is going to be one of those choices.
But all the NPCs? Their orientation should be established and consistent by the writers.
I was offering some advice to a buddy of mine with an old AM2 socket motherboard for an upcoming CPU upgrade on a lower-midrange budget. Considering he's already sitting pretty on an AM2 socket that can accept AM3+ processors with a BIOS update, I figured he'd save a good bit of money by just buying an FX-6300 and potentially overclocking it for the time being. That way he could avoid swapping to a new board entirely, which when also factoring in the local vendor price premium on intel processors with roughly comparable performance (and quadcore capacity) would start costing a great deal more.
I think I stand by this train of thought. Even though a better budget dual core alternative G3258 would technically be cheaper, he'd still need a new board which would double the cost and then some.
Zephiran on
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
The context is that it's different when you are crafting a fictional character and creating them with your own artistic vision, as opposed to real life, where you aren't really given a choice on your gender, your parents, your sexual orientation, your social class, etc.
It might be better if the game starts out with the ability to select sexual orientation and potential romances (including the "all" and "none" options) at the beginning during the creation, but then it breaks some of the expectations and story flow. Often, the audience expects romance to begin spontaneously and organically, rather than planned (at least, in Western culture. There are cultures that "matchmaker" planned romances are the norm rather than the exception).
Since most video games are essentially power fantasies anyway, and character creation elements in RPGs offer a lot of author-level insertion, perhaps it's best if we allow everyone to be romanced/fuckable by anyone regardless of gender. A game that lets you indiscriminately kill whoever you want, steal from whatever you want, should probably let you love whoever you want (or at least, offer valid choices to do so). But then you get into the whole question of resources used to make video games (time, writing talent, money, etc.).
I don't think there's an easy answer other than "video games aren't real life", and leaving it at that.
My point is, design a an actually character.
In a story where sex is even relevant, then design your character so its actions and reactions to sex are consistent.
I think complaints about underrepresentation of homosexuality in popular culture will decrease as homosexual protagonists increase.
I don't think arbitrary player choice as to whether or not a protagonist is homo/hetero/bi/omni is remotely helpful. I think it is actively hurtful.
This is talking about two different design philosophies.
While I agree that making it an ARBITRARY choice is hurtful (since sexual orientation is not an arbitrary choice for many people, although I can definitely imagine SOME people where this is true), the player is often not making an arbitrary choice when they choose the sexual orientation for their character. Again, author-insertion power fantasy is at play here, or at least, one where the author attempts to play a role that is author-created rather than developer-created. You see a lot of "My FemShep wouldn't do that" or "My Inquisitor is an Iron Bull fan".
Some people really like playing games where you are allowed to mold the characters to your liking. The Sims is the largest PC game franchise because of this.
The second problem is that if developers were to, right now, abolish all games involving player choice in character creation (ridiculous hypothetical here) and all create games with specific characters that have specific sexual orientations, I feel that the homosexual ones will be woefully underrepresented.
The industry doesn't even have the right proportions of strong female protagonists headlining video games. I'm reminded of an awful comic that someone posted in a D&D thread about a bunch of male gamers listing off a bunch of women in games to "prove" that there are enough "strong female protagonists" in gaming, and the punchline being "STOP RAPING ME" (it was an AWFUL comic). And that totally misses the point... the point is that you CAN list all of them off in a single comic because there aren't enough of them, and the ones that exist are often not designed from a woman's perspective.
Or maybe, if we actually go by demographics (which are around 2-5% gay people in the population), it would still feel underrepresented because there would be so few gay protagonists for gay gamers to relate to. That's 1 in 20 or 1 in 50, which would be a woefully low percentage... I'm fairly certain that animated furries would outnumber them as protagonists.
It's a tricky problem. I really hope that people who are designing games are looking for solutions.
The context is that it's different when you are crafting a fictional character and creating them with your own artistic vision, as opposed to real life, where you aren't really given a choice on your gender, your parents, your sexual orientation, your social class, etc.
It might be better if the game starts out with the ability to select sexual orientation and potential romances (including the "all" and "none" options) at the beginning during the creation, but then it breaks some of the expectations and story flow. Often, the audience expects romance to begin spontaneously and organically, rather than planned (at least, in Western culture. There are cultures that "matchmaker" planned romances are the norm rather than the exception).
Since most video games are essentially power fantasies anyway, and character creation elements in RPGs offer a lot of author-level insertion, perhaps it's best if we allow everyone to be romanced/fuckable by anyone regardless of gender. A game that lets you indiscriminately kill whoever you want, steal from whatever you want, should probably let you love whoever you want (or at least, offer valid choices to do so). But then you get into the whole question of resources used to make video games (time, writing talent, money, etc.).
I don't think there's an easy answer other than "video games aren't real life", and leaving it at that.
My point is, design a an actually character.
In a story where sex is even relevant, then design your character so its actions and reactions to sex are consistent.
I think complaints about underrepresentation of homosexuality in popular culture will decrease as homosexual protagonists increase.
I don't think arbitrary player choice as to whether or not a protagonist is homo/hetero/bi/omni is remotely helpful. I think it is actively hurtful.
to offer a contrasting point of view to what you are saying
when I'm playing a RPG I don't always know everything about the character I'm playing when I create them
this goes for video games as well as tabletop games
details sometimes get sussed out through play, and come about organically as a result of circumstances
these details basically exist as fuzzy grey blanks until something comes along to fill them in with what matters
it means I don't go into the story with a clearly shaped vision in my head "this is who my character is, this is where he's from, this is what he's all about, this is how he reacts to everything"
I allow the story to sculpt the character
I understand where you're coming from on this, Drez, you don't like promoting the narrative that sexual orientation is somehow a choice
but at the same time, when I'm playing a roleplaying game, I like for some of my character details to be hazy until I actually start playing and know what some of my options are and how I want to play it is
I don't want to sit there for half an hour at the character creation screen, working out my sexual orientation, hometown of origin, religious beliefs, etc.
I want these things to come out organically in the story, because they only exist within the confines of the story
I agree with you
But I feel like the genetics/environment/choice debate is still very much alive
So when the player is essentially presented an unframed choice regard his sexuality, to me it supports the oft-rebutted environment/choice argument.
I guess, to me, these situations feel less organic in Mass Effect than determinable. The Player decides if the character is gay by the Player's actions.
But does this decide the character's backstory, or does it decide the character's, uh, character.
I guess I just feel like Mass Effect treated it poorly. If it's a matter of emergent backstory, fine. Let the player-controlled protagonist rebuff women and court men. Or vice versa. Or both. Or neither. But don't make it feel arbitrary, please.
I'd actually like to see a little more sexual agency from NPCs in RPGs
like how about
instead of there being "romance option" NPCs who you have to keep pursuing
you encounter NPCs who are into you and you have to simply participate to continue that relationship
BioWare games in particular are real bad for propagating this pursuit-model of sexuality and dating and I really don't care for it
again, Dragon Age Inquisition improved on this but
they can do better
Then you run into the opposite problem, where people are going along, playing a game, NOT interested in romance, and then being hit on by some random jerks. Some people (especially women) have this problem in real life, and aren't interested in playing a version of this in virtual life. It is possible to do this well, and there are examples of this in some Japanese dating sims (or dating mini-games).
i talked to a dude i know who works for one of the companies that makes these kinds of games
about why we don't see instances of like, NPCs making the first move
NPCs pushing forward on things, NPCs being the ones showing agency in a relationship
and he was like "Well we've tried writing things that way and we get really negative feedback on it from our testing groups, so we tend to walk back from trying that because our assumption is that it's not something the majority of gamers want"
but then I inquire more about his testing groups and it's mostly like
young white male nerds
welp
yeah imagine a 45 year old mechanic covered in engine grease going "Well, there's yer problem"
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
i talked to a dude i know who works for one of the companies that makes these kinds of games
about why we don't see instances of like, NPCs making the first move
NPCs pushing forward on things, NPCs being the ones showing agency in a relationship
and he was like "Well we've tried writing things that way and we get really negative feedback on it from our testing groups, so we tend to walk back from trying that because our assumption is that it's not something the majority of gamers want"
but then I inquire more about his testing groups and it's mostly like
young white male nerds
welp
yeah imagine a 45 year old mechanic covered in engine grease going "Well, there's yer problem"
To be fair, even as games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect drastically grew their market, the core demo is still young white and nerdy.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
The context is that it's different when you are crafting a fictional character and creating them with your own artistic vision, as opposed to real life, where you aren't really given a choice on your gender, your parents, your sexual orientation, your social class, etc.
It might be better if the game starts out with the ability to select sexual orientation and potential romances (including the "all" and "none" options) at the beginning during the creation, but then it breaks some of the expectations and story flow. Often, the audience expects romance to begin spontaneously and organically, rather than planned (at least, in Western culture. There are cultures that "matchmaker" planned romances are the norm rather than the exception).
Since most video games are essentially power fantasies anyway, and character creation elements in RPGs offer a lot of author-level insertion, perhaps it's best if we allow everyone to be romanced/fuckable by anyone regardless of gender. A game that lets you indiscriminately kill whoever you want, steal from whatever you want, should probably let you love whoever you want (or at least, offer valid choices to do so). But then you get into the whole question of resources used to make video games (time, writing talent, money, etc.).
I don't think there's an easy answer other than "video games aren't real life", and leaving it at that.
My point is, design a an actually character.
In a story where sex is even relevant, then design your character so its actions and reactions to sex are consistent.
I think complaints about underrepresentation of homosexuality in popular culture will decrease as homosexual protagonists increase.
I don't think arbitrary player choice as to whether or not a protagonist is homo/hetero/bi/omni is remotely helpful. I think it is actively hurtful.
to offer a contrasting point of view to what you are saying
when I'm playing a RPG I don't always know everything about the character I'm playing when I create them
this goes for video games as well as tabletop games
details sometimes get sussed out through play, and come about organically as a result of circumstances
these details basically exist as fuzzy grey blanks until something comes along to fill them in with what matters
it means I don't go into the story with a clearly shaped vision in my head "this is who my character is, this is where he's from, this is what he's all about, this is how he reacts to everything"
I allow the story to sculpt the character
I understand where you're coming from on this, Drez, you don't like promoting the narrative that sexual orientation is somehow a choice
but at the same time, when I'm playing a roleplaying game, I like for some of my character details to be hazy until I actually start playing and know what some of my options are and how I want to play it is
I don't want to sit there for half an hour at the character creation screen, working out my sexual orientation, hometown of origin, religious beliefs, etc.
I want these things to come out organically in the story, because they only exist within the confines of the story
I agree with you
But I feel like the genetics/environment/choice debate is still very much alive
So when the player is essentially presented an unframed choice regard his sexuality, to me it supports the oft-rebutted environment/choice argument.
I guess, to me, these situations feel less organic in Mass Effect than determinable. The Player decides if the character is gay by the Player's actions.
But does this decide the character's backstory, or does it decide the character's, uh, character.
I guess I just feel like Mass Effect treated it poorly. If it's a matter of emergent backstory, fine. Let the player-controlled protagonist rebuff women and court men. Or vice versa. Or both. Or neither. But don't make it feel arbitrary, please.
Again I think this is a problem specific to Mass Effect, and not one solved by having a sexual orientation checkbox selector at character creation.
Mass Effect's problems with how it presents sexual orientation (especially queer male sexual orientation) just... exist. There's no fix for them. The game is done. The most games can learn from them is "Don't do that."
"That" being "don't minimize them into non-existence and/or deny they exist at all"
which is what ME did, especially in the first 2 games.
Posts
But that kind of goes against the grain of what the Bioware RPGs do.
There are lots of characters in their worlds that are bi, straight or gay. Well defined, will rebuke you if you try hitting on them and you aren't their type... and they have gotten better at it in later games like Inquisition.
But the main character is your character, and everything from the color of your skin to the way you fight to who you like to sleep with is a personal decision.
It sounds like you have a problem with games that let you define the lead character as opposed to having one that is fully scripted and planned in advance?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
i feel like this is something western society has started to move away from except for people who still call anything but vaginal sex sodomy, and those voices are getting ever quieter
but i guess there is pushback still.
As a Qualified Tax Expert,
rewatch that tonight. you'll be happy you did.
practical effects ftw.
Dragon Age: Inquisition, for all of its flaws, did not have this problem.
the romance continues well past the sexy times, and is reflected in future dialog and the comments of other team members and stuff.
They are getting better at it.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Hello, it's me, David Bowie!
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It's called the Giga Horse.
Fucking. Metal. As. Hell.
I think sexuality is very close to personality. I think action does not define sexual preferences, I think sexual preferences define action. So, yes, Bioware'a approach is bizarre to me because I don't think it remotely emulates reality.
Mass Effect 1 allowed only for straight romance options, with two exceptions: You could have sex with two different Asari characters as a female Shepard, although the game went out of its way to try to explain how that's not really gay because Asari aren't really women despite using female pronouns and whatever blah blah blah.
Mass Effect 2 continued this trend of only straight dudes, and female Shepards had another couple bisexual options. You could romance your Yeoman, Kelly Chambers, regardless of gender, and if you had Lair of the Shadow Broker and you romanced Liara in the first game and nobody in 2, you could keep that going.
Mass Effect 3 was when the series added two actual outright gay characters in the form of Steve Cortez and Samantha Traynor, who are exclusively romance options for male or female Shepard respectively. They also revealed that Kaiden is bisexual (if you play a male Shepard) and that he has a thing for male Shepard, which you can choose to pursue as a romance option finally.
In all instances, none of this matters in any sense beyond "these are the characters you are romantically involved with". Nobody has any opinions on your relationships, there's no controversy or commentary, socially it's a non-issue. This can be attributed to Mass Effect taking place in the space-future, where humanity has other things to be jerks about (like fantastic racism, Ashley) and doesn't give a shit about such things anymore.
on the other end, there's Dragon Age
Dragon Age: Origins included some gay and bisexual minor characters you could hook up with, and it also included two bisexual party members that are romance options: Leliana and Zevran (who is a horrific bisexual stereotype). There's no gay party members, so your only same-sex relationship options are these two, who are explicitly written as bisexual (and promiscuous and generally non-committal, because biphobia is awesome in video games :? )
Dragon Age 2 does this incredibly weird thing I've not really seen a game do before, where every romanceable party member (which is almost every member of your party that isn't your sibling) is... protagonisexual? Like, their sexual orientation is simply whatever is compatible with the gender of the protagonist, Hawke. They're not necessarily bisexual (although Isabella explicitly is, and is a frown-inducing stereotype once again), they just happen to be down for whatever you got goin' on. This actually leads to a really unfortunate moment of bisexual erasure for Anders' character that actually really makes me mad.
Dragon Age: Inquisition finally gets it right, I think. It just includes something for everybody. Straight characters, gay characters, bisexual characters, who are romanceable and their sexual orientation matters to the story (which in previous Dragon Age games, it weirdly didn't, despite people in Thedas being discriminatory about class and race and gender and everything else!)
I think it still holds up.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
nsfw
Oh god I just realized
Mass Effect 4 may be at E3
"Yeah yeah, dinosaurs, whatever. I'm a little hungover, I hope nobody notices."
I agree with the one poster who said Vega should have been gay, though.
he needs to do the labyrinth thing with the balls
which I know wasn't actually him but still
I want to see him do it
Botanists
to offer a contrasting point of view to what you are saying
when I'm playing a RPG I don't always know everything about the character I'm playing when I create them
this goes for video games as well as tabletop games
details sometimes get sussed out through play, and come about organically as a result of circumstances
these details basically exist as fuzzy grey blanks until something comes along to fill them in with what matters
it means I don't go into the story with a clearly shaped vision in my head "this is who my character is, this is where he's from, this is what he's all about, this is how he reacts to everything"
I allow the story to sculpt the character
I understand where you're coming from on this, Drez, you don't like promoting the narrative that sexual orientation is somehow a choice
but at the same time, when I'm playing a roleplaying game, I like for some of my character details to be hazy until I actually start playing and know what some of my options are and how I want to play it is
I don't want to sit there for half an hour at the character creation screen, working out my sexual orientation, hometown of origin, religious beliefs, etc.
I want these things to come out organically in the story, because they only exist within the confines of the story
Again, a really solid point in the favor of Inquisition.
I liked how they waited to have you define elements of your character backstory until you were capable of having an opinion things like faith in this setting.
I ended up not liking Inquisition all that much, but I absolutely adored a lot of what they did regarding the protagonist and the cast. If Mass Effect 4 carries those lessons into something that wasn't so needlessly and terribly padded and gated, it could be a contender for best modern RPG.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
But all the NPCs? Their orientation should be established and consistent by the writers.
I think I stand by this train of thought. Even though a better budget dual core alternative G3258 would technically be cheaper, he'd still need a new board which would double the cost and then some.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
While I agree that making it an ARBITRARY choice is hurtful (since sexual orientation is not an arbitrary choice for many people, although I can definitely imagine SOME people where this is true), the player is often not making an arbitrary choice when they choose the sexual orientation for their character. Again, author-insertion power fantasy is at play here, or at least, one where the author attempts to play a role that is author-created rather than developer-created. You see a lot of "My FemShep wouldn't do that" or "My Inquisitor is an Iron Bull fan".
Some people really like playing games where you are allowed to mold the characters to your liking. The Sims is the largest PC game franchise because of this.
The second problem is that if developers were to, right now, abolish all games involving player choice in character creation (ridiculous hypothetical here) and all create games with specific characters that have specific sexual orientations, I feel that the homosexual ones will be woefully underrepresented.
The industry doesn't even have the right proportions of strong female protagonists headlining video games. I'm reminded of an awful comic that someone posted in a D&D thread about a bunch of male gamers listing off a bunch of women in games to "prove" that there are enough "strong female protagonists" in gaming, and the punchline being "STOP RAPING ME" (it was an AWFUL comic). And that totally misses the point... the point is that you CAN list all of them off in a single comic because there aren't enough of them, and the ones that exist are often not designed from a woman's perspective.
Or maybe, if we actually go by demographics (which are around 2-5% gay people in the population), it would still feel underrepresented because there would be so few gay protagonists for gay gamers to relate to. That's 1 in 20 or 1 in 50, which would be a woefully low percentage... I'm fairly certain that animated furries would outnumber them as protagonists.
It's a tricky problem. I really hope that people who are designing games are looking for solutions.
https://www.periscope.tv/w/aENs5zY5MTI5fDE5MzYzNjU5_Zc-oBXVX9r00WyksY7cE9aHV3oxgqWqjKUACoKdzAU=
@Eddy @Donkey Kong
like how about
instead of there being "romance option" NPCs who you have to keep pursuing
you encounter NPCs who are into you and you have to simply participate to continue that relationship
BioWare games in particular are real bad for propagating this pursuit-model of sexuality and dating and I really don't care for it
again, Dragon Age Inquisition improved on this but
they can do better
Is he making fun of LARPers? i hope not.
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Na Drew isnt down with that, he sounds actualy interested.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
This is not judgmental.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I agree with you
But I feel like the genetics/environment/choice debate is still very much alive
So when the player is essentially presented an unframed choice regard his sexuality, to me it supports the oft-rebutted environment/choice argument.
I guess, to me, these situations feel less organic in Mass Effect than determinable. The Player decides if the character is gay by the Player's actions.
But does this decide the character's backstory, or does it decide the character's, uh, character.
I guess I just feel like Mass Effect treated it poorly. If it's a matter of emergent backstory, fine. Let the player-controlled protagonist rebuff women and court men. Or vice versa. Or both. Or neither. But don't make it feel arbitrary, please.
about why we don't see instances of like, NPCs making the first move
NPCs pushing forward on things, NPCs being the ones showing agency in a relationship
and he was like "Well we've tried writing things that way and we get really negative feedback on it from our testing groups, so we tend to walk back from trying that because our assumption is that it's not something the majority of gamers want"
but then I inquire more about his testing groups and it's mostly like
young white male nerds
welp
yeah imagine a 45 year old mechanic covered in engine grease going "Well, there's yer problem"
To be fair, even as games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect drastically grew their market, the core demo is still young white and nerdy.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
https://us.v-cdn.net/5018289/uploads/editor/nf/qibm3oh63em7.jpg
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Again I think this is a problem specific to Mass Effect, and not one solved by having a sexual orientation checkbox selector at character creation.
Mass Effect's problems with how it presents sexual orientation (especially queer male sexual orientation) just... exist. There's no fix for them. The game is done. The most games can learn from them is "Don't do that."
"That" being "don't minimize them into non-existence and/or deny they exist at all"
which is what ME did, especially in the first 2 games.
I know you've seen this but it is still awesome
http://dollychops.tumblr.com/post/107517113745/happy-birthday-david-bowie
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.