Yes, because people are incredibly happy with Rin in Catherine.
Edit: For clarification, I do agree with you. But I've seen an incredibly vocal minority/majority (?) not agreeing.
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LGBT Representation in Gaming - should it be proportional or equal?
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Yes, because people are incredibly happy with Rin in Catherine.
Edit: For clarification, I do agree with you. But I've seen an incredibly vocal minority/majority (?) not agreeing.
LGBT Australians don't have to an insane disparity between opportunities that others receive. That is a fact I will believe, because we are a fair country that doesn't ask those questions any stage of the hiring process. If you are talented enough, it doesn't matter your sexuality.
Actually I do. How is it impossible for me to dislike all romantic storylines that are done badly?
Not holding gay characters to an unrealistic standard =/= supporting homophobic/transphobic depictions
Good lord.
I live in Canada, a country that is arguably more progressive than Australia, and I can guarantee you that LGBT+ citizens are not given the same opportunities or support.
Well, for one thing, you're conflating the LGBT experience to something purely romantic/sexual.
Now I am lost. In what way is Rin transphobic or homophobic?
What happens? They try to get a job and the company says "no thanks, only straights"? I find this pretty tough to believe, as I've been in the industry in America for over a decade and have only ever seen my minority comrades succeed.
A lot of the time it's about breaking the stereotype yourself and being the change, instead of forcing an artist to change what the vision is for their projects, IMO. If you're LGBT+ that's fantastic, but using that as a crutch isn't going to get the same results 100+ hour grueling weeks of work will get you, regardless of gender/sexuality.
I think the more constructive question is for developers to ask themselves why is that a perspective or an element of representation they've deliberately or otherwise excluded.
Do you think someone's workplace experience is defined solely by the interview?
I have personally faced discrimination in the workplace, even filed complaints through all the official channels, and absolutely nothing was done. This is not uncommon in the slightest. This honestly feels like bizarro world being told otherwise.
Yeah racism and LGBT phobia are not real problems because nobody says "no blacks or no LGBT" during interviews. Ya solved it.
I'm not sure why I'm even responding to you seriously, considering you're literally expressing amusement at the terrible representation of minorities in games, but yes, it would be incredibly meaningful if the Gears of War protagonist was gay, yes. Because it's a massively popular series, and that character gets a lot of exposure.
Nobody is saying that games with straight white dudes as protagonists are discriminatory because the protagonist is not a PoC, a woman, or LGBT+. At least not inherently.
But representation is incredibly important to all minorities.
There are 2 really, really important factors to representation of minorities in media.
One: Normalization.
By having minority characters in various forms of media/entertainment, these minorities are shown to be part of our society. This reduces the "otherness" of these minorities, emphasizes and validates our existence, and makes it clear that we, just like the straight white dudes, are either regular, normal people, and/or can be heroic, as well.
Two: Idolization and Empowerment.
This is mostly for kids and teenagers, but it helps adults as well. It's incredibly important for young people to find media that helps them to not feel alone, to not feel like they are wrong for being the way they are, and that tell them that they too can do good if they put their mind to it. To give my own example: I've grown up in an environment that was very homophobic, and I ended up with a lot of self-loathing and even was genuinely suicidal. I still struggle incredibly hard with my confidence and clinical depression, and my phase of self-loathing definitely did not contribute positively to this. If there had been just a few gay characters in the TV shows I watched or games I played, my lot in life may have ended up being nowhere near as much of a struggle.
Obviously, if you're not queer or any other minority, you would never understand this kind of struggle. This kind of fear of rejection and otherness that constantly is reinforced by entertainment and society, and with it, most game protagonists being straight white dudes.
Just because it doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it wouldn't matter the world to someone else.
anything other than proportional would sounds disingenuous and hard to justify
but in the end just make story makers decide without the need of a quota.
personally i wouldn't care one bitsince sexual preferences rarely matter in a videogame.
in games where there's a role playing part, just make everyone bisexual so that anyone can fuck anyone.
but in the end just make story makers decide without the need of a quota.
personally i wouldn't care one bitsince sexual preferences rarely matter in a videogame.
in games where there's a role playing part, just make everyone bisexual so that anyone can fuck anyone.
Hey, uhhh, my dude. You're implying that marginalized folks aren't working hard enough to change things. What the fuck.
Bless this and I hope life is going much better for you <3
This is a question that never appears when doing a straight character and not enough people questions why.
At the end there's isn't a difference between straights and LGTBIs other than sexual orientation and same as how that doesn't define the totallity of a straight character it shouldn't define a LGTBI character as a whole neither.
This is a question for literally every single person talking about quotas or how "Only if they are done right."
Why are you not applying that standard to straight white male characters?
Nobody is like "We should only have white characters if they are done well," or "Jeez I'm so sick of people trying to push quotas for the number of straight chars," so why are you doing that with under-represented groups of people?
Why are you not applying that standard to straight white male characters?
Nobody is like "We should only have white characters if they are done well," or "Jeez I'm so sick of people trying to push quotas for the number of straight chars," so why are you doing that with under-represented groups of people?
Thank you for this post, as it helped me understand more of the "why?" For sure. And it totally makes sense for characters those sexuality is ever showcased in a meaningful way to the actual story. But if it's Gears of War, and forgive me since I haven't played much of this series, they're space soldiers fighting aliens with chainsaw guns. Where would the "and I'm gay" come in during the story naturally.. and fit? Maybe it's a bad example, but when playing video games, I'm thinking of the plot of the game first. If it's relevant to make Noctis have a boyfriend he's fighting for instead of a girl, that's something as easy as a toggle at the beginning of the game, and more games should have that option. If it's Kirby, I never really wondered if Kirby was gay or straight, you know? With stuff like Overwatch it's great because it naturally fits. With stuff like Apex Legends.. it seems forced. Not forced in a good way for equality.. forced because EA knows if they announce a character is gay, more people will buy the game. It has very little to do with equality.
Can we at least start with "not a walking stereotype" or "what a straight guy thinks LGBTQ+ness is like and gets it horribly wrong" as a base standard :p
Then they can have hamfisted romances and poorly plotted motivations to their hearts content :D
Gay people buys the very few games that they are represented, dunno why this is surprising nor how it is bad. And it has all to do with equality, because adding more gay people into games, help into normalizing gay characters in the medium. We aren't gonna do that if we keep adding us extra excuses that straight characters don't suffer.
No way is is surprising or bad. That much of it makes total sense. It's the larger, virtue signaling majority that I'm referring to, who should be buying a game based on its quality and merits, rather than what gender it's virtual characters get down with. Art should be judged for what it is, not for what it isn't.
It's tokenism at worst, wishful thinking at best. No game developer will have the balls to make the Kratos or Chief character gay, but the side characters they will continue to force these relationships to appear more woke and sell more copies to people who think they're "woke". The problem is still there, it's just poorly bandaged.
...so would "and I'm straight" come in during the story more naturally for you?
Nope. That's exactly why I stopped playing those games. Marcus was chasing after some girl, I said this game sucks and stopped playing after 2. When I buy a game to chainsaw aliens in the face, I don't give a crap about that stuff.
You'd be surprised how often there's a scene of straight guys bringing up their girlfriend/wife waiting back home in war stories. If you don't like romance in your stories then that's fine. But as long as they're still there, and they still crop up frequently, it's not too uppity to wish for some of them to be LGBT, is it?
Absolutely not! I agree there should be more representation. It just feels gross when it's tackEAd on.
Halo 4 sucked when they had Chief and Cortana in that relationship. He was a way stronger character when he was plutonic. I strongly feel like the romance element is 99% of the time completely unnecessary.
Honestly if a shallow call from exec's to include more LGBT content on the basis of "they'll sell well with the progressive crowd" leads to an uptick in LGBT writers and designers getting into the industry then I'm all for that shallow, money-grubbing call. It would at least be a sign times are changing
Why not? People buy a game for a lot of different reasons, and this doesn't mean they don't appreciate the whole game once playing. A lot of people simply bought Nier Automata because 2B was hot, and latter found a deep game and appreciated it. Same as how one buys a Spiderman game simply because they like Spiderman, ignoring if the game will be good or not...
If you feel that adding romantic relationships to characters is forced then fine, but it's not forced to make them gay instead of straight when they add them. It should be irrelevant, and that there's people that still think LGBTI = forced means that we need more diversity no matter what, because it m eans that LGBTI characters aren't normalized yet in gaming.
Proportional in mainstream single player games, equal in rpg experiences and hero multiplayer games.
By saying I need 50 percent of all games to include a gay character is forcing the issue. Forced isn't a strong use of a word cause that's not challenging people. You're literally saying they need to meet a quota. By telling someone they need a certain character in this game or I'm not gonna be happy with it isn't challenging. Now like I said in the conversation, if you challenge someone by saying we need more quality representation then that's different. Because by not forcing a quota you allow creators to create a quality character on their own. And also like I said, having a conversation about needing more creators who want to make these characters is gonna be a more productive conversation then this one.
I think we also need to start paying more attention to the diversity that already exists.
For example, everyone praised and propped Cory Balrog for the new God of War, and rightfully so. But one of the best aspects of the game is the combat, and the combat director for the series is Jason McDonald, a black man:
This guy has clearly an understanding of combat mechanics and what makes a game fun that should get more recognition. We endlessly praise Kamiya for games he barely even touched, and we completely forget about people like McDonald.
So yes, we need more diversity among developers, but we also need to start paying attention to those that are already there.
There's never been more LGBT+ representation in gaming than now, so I too am curious to what this person means.
we had this discussion many times before and it always comes down to: "why have gay options when the straight ones are badly written, I'd rather they were not in the game at all, waah!" and what happens is, they keep writing those bad hetero relationships and nobody complains. they throw millions of dollars at david cage and he writes humans as gracefully as a cat coughing up a hairball. now, only lgbt people are allowed to write lgbt characters, otherwise it won't work. meanwhile, they don't have problems writing mythical creatures, even fucking square-shaped blocks have personalities in thomas was alone. the last guardian affected people emotionally, did team ico hire a catdogbird to write their game? those are all excuses to not deal with the fact, that there's no representation of minorities.
it's about damn time for a change and the "pretty please with cherry on top"-approach didn't work so far, why not try it from a different angle?
True. But most games these days don't push the boundaries like Nier Automata did. Still. that's a great point you've brought up, people should try to be more informed when buying a game instead of just buying it because Spider-Man is there. Developers can and should be challenged to make a better game, before making a more inclusive game.
The point I was making is, "forcing" side characters who aren't important to be LGBT doesn't help anyone. In order for real change, it needs to be the main protagonist. And in a meaningful, non-pandering way.
The dark ages. People believe the earth is Flat, global warming is a lie, far right and far left populism is coming back , cold war with the russian ect ect
User Banned (Permanent): Bigoted trolling. Account in junior phase.
Proportional +/- 2 %. Everything everything above or below that would be heterophobic and discriminating.
I think the solution is kind of twofold. I don't think "forced representation" makes much sense if you want developers to tell personal and genuine stories. With that said, developers should come from a wider variety of places and therefore tell stories from a more varied palette of life experiences and social backgrounds. I think this would make the gaming landscape much more interesting. Thankfully getting into development is easier now that it's ever been, and can be done with little more than an internet connection and a relatively cheap pc. TLDR, developers should make whatever they want, but a much greater variety of people should be able to be developers.
You're putting an unfair condition on LGBT characters that I sincerely doubt you would place on straight characters.
LGBT characters are allowed to exist without their existence being a direct attempt to improve society.
On top of that, I don't exactly think you get to decide what helps and what doesn't. I know multiple people who were thrilled by the gay side characters in Nier Automata. It's kinda crappy for people like you to then turn around and try and say that they don't matter, when I've seen just how much they can matter to some people.
I didn't mean they don't matter at all, but as I said before, it's a band-aid solution to a bad problem. There has never been a gay main protagonist of a AAA game. By continuing to buy other games from developers who are too chicken shit to write their main character gay, you are supporting tokenism and woke-enomics, ie; you are a wallet to them and they don't care about actual equality, just your money.
Imagine a world where it's 2019 and there still hasn't been a female main protagonist in a AAA game. Would you continue to buy the games they use the female characters as side characters? Or would you want equality?
Most video game romances are horribly written as it is, so why can't the LGBT community have their own hackneyed love stories too?
Not saying their representation should be defined by romance, but if heteronormative games can get away with clumsy, contrived love stories, let's let some other types of stories have a shot.
I feel like any game with a character creator needs LGBT options as a standard.
Not saying their representation should be defined by romance, but if heteronormative games can get away with clumsy, contrived love stories, let's let some other types of stories have a shot.
I feel like any game with a character creator needs LGBT options as a standard.
Ok, first off, that's bullshit. Gay main characters of triple A game's exist.
Second, you're still placing the expectation on gay characters to be "solutions" to a "problem", and not letting them just be characters. You would not do that to straight characters, despite them actually being far worse at solving the problem than these supposed "band-aid" LGBT characters, because you and society are way less willing to criticise straight characters than you are LGBT ones.
Placing the responsibility on LGBT characters to be active attempts at solving a huge societal problem further dehumanises them and ties their existence to the politics of representation. LGBT characters can be that, but you need to also let them just be characters.