This. I mean, we can be sympathetic of a cause or an issue, even if it isn't ours, but if we really want to see a change, we DO need explicit actions that need to be taken besides a general shift in attitude, like "yeah, I'll be supportive" or "yeah, I'm fine with gay representation in games".
In my personal case, the only franchise I really care about is Pokémon, and other than that, even though I do play some games here and there, nothing is as important to me to evoke some kind of reaction if they take one direction or another. So I really don't know which games are traditionally known for portraying romantic arcs or something, or which developers have been explicitly against gay content/ gay characters, or I don't know, something that needs to be addressed.
What are we supposed to do? Demand every game developer out there to include more gay/queer characters in their games, whether that has relevancy or not in their gameplay? Or ask the developer of one game/franchise in particular? Like Tekken or something?
Because then there's the issue of not only what we're asking for, but how are we asking for it. As I said, Pokémon is the only franchise I'm really obsessed with, and currently we've had to deal with the #BringBackNationalDex thing which has divided the fanbase a bit: people who were upset with not all the Pokémon coming back in the next games, or ever again, and people who didn't care about it / were happy about the decision.
Then from those groups, the first one divides into people who have been vocal about it in a normal, coherent, rational way, and people who have taken an attitude of insulting the developers, threatening them, bringing up other issues, usually false, to exaggerate the complaints, etc. The second group however has taken as well several attitudes: those who defend the developers no matter what, against any argument, and those who have actually started to insult and be aggressive too with those who are complaining in general (whether the complaints were offensive or not).
So if someone threatens or personally insults Junichi Masuda or any other developer of the games, that's totally wrong and there's no question about it. But then, for example, you can't go to Facebook or Twitter Pokémon accounts and comment #BringBackNationalDex without a bunch of people jumping at you telling you all sorts of negative things and how you should stop complaining and ruining the fun for everyone else, and how wrong you are and that you have to deal with it and move on, and it's like, really?
So I'm very curious to know how are we supposed to speak up about something that is bothering us, or that we think is wrong without breaking whatever imaginary rules people on the Internet have about the correct etiquette of online complaining.
And in this topic in particular about queer representation in games, or in the game scene in general, is important for all of us interested in helping, to know where to start, who are we speaking to, what are the points we're fighting for, what is it specifically that we're demanding.
Because this opens a huge debate. Homophobia and any kind of discrimination are not ok, but, do every franchise, every developer is obliged to include at least a queer character on every game? Or the same amount of straight characters than gay if it isn't even relevant to the story or the gameplay? Or are we asking only those games that include some sort of romantic plot? Or are we asking them to leave the games that already exist the way they are, but instead release a new kind of game that specifically focuses in the inclusion of queer characters/themes/plots?
Does not including a gay character equal to being homophobic? Because I think a game like, I don't know, Crash Team Racing doesn't need explicitly straight or gay characters, and yet we have cases like N. Gin wearing a ballerina outfit, which people can take as whatever they want.
So, yeah, it wouldn't hurt to have some sort of plan to follow. I mean, it's evident that there's a lot of people that's either homophobic or indifferent to the cause, so much that this thread needed to be done, so I think it's more than obvious that people need to be enlightened as to what are we supposed to do to effectively help the queer gamers community, imo.
