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LGBT Representation in Gaming - should it be proportional or equal?
- Thread starter Deleted member 2840
- Start date
I mean, are you a LGBT+ person? Do you really know what would and wouldn't help?
Side-characters very much can be just as impactful as the heroes of the story. Whether it's an ensemble cast, or a supporting character. If I had grown up, and let's say Luigi, or Cyan from FFVI, or let's say Lando Calrissian from Star Wars or Master Splinter from the Ninja Turtles had been LGBT+, any of those side characters that still have a significant impact on the story, had been gay? That would have been awesome.
There's no correct way to have LGBT+ representation outside of not using harmful stereotypes. Not every LGBT+ character has to have an involved plot with a gay romance included to make it clear that they're gay. Sometimes yes, just a throwaway line about how that character has a same-sex partner is enough. There's a reason why characters like Birdo are hailed as trans icons in video games. A fucking dinosaur with a tube for a mouth. That's one of the most popular trans characters.
And the reason for that is that LGBT+ is so, SO heavily underrepresented in gaming that LGBT+ gamers heavily latch onto any character that is even mildly suggested to be potentially LGBT+, and heavily read into the portrayal of certain character relationships that they might be gay. Why do you think the internet blew up so hard when Tracer and Soldier 76 from Overwatch were revealed to be LGBT+? And the worst part about it is that Blizzard is doing this only outside of the game - Tracer and Soldier's relationships aren't even really mentioned in the actual game outside of like, a little icon you can put on a wall. No voice lines or interactions about these relationships.
Equal in quantity would be problematic as the people making games would not have a diverse enough design and writing staff to write them well.
That isn't an issue now because any representation is better than none, but as the amount of representation increases the quality needs to increase along with it or it hurts both the representation and the media.
Also, quotas work for things like getting low income minority kids into schools as the quota is requiring simply admission/hiring of someone from a disadvantaged start. Quotas in creative fields would be a mess.
Lastly, this is massively premature. Lets just see what relatively proportional looks and feels like first. thousands of games are made every year. If even 10% of them gave meaningful representation to the LGBTQ+ community that would be a huge step.
I'd like to see the industry hold itself to the standard of reaching proportional representation of all minorities in narrative games and, where applicable, equality in games relying on player agency in character creation. Get there, then we can see what else remains to be done (probably a minority groups development/publishing fund).
That isn't an issue now because any representation is better than none, but as the amount of representation increases the quality needs to increase along with it or it hurts both the representation and the media.
Also, quotas work for things like getting low income minority kids into schools as the quota is requiring simply admission/hiring of someone from a disadvantaged start. Quotas in creative fields would be a mess.
Lastly, this is massively premature. Lets just see what relatively proportional looks and feels like first. thousands of games are made every year. If even 10% of them gave meaningful representation to the LGBTQ+ community that would be a huge step.
I'd like to see the industry hold itself to the standard of reaching proportional representation of all minorities in narrative games and, where applicable, equality in games relying on player agency in character creation. Get there, then we can see what else remains to be done (probably a minority groups development/publishing fund).
I'm not sure that would work either because not every game with a character creator means your characters sexuality ever matters.
i.e. Dark Soul series
Yea you have a character creator but nobody in the dark souls universe ever expresses any sorta of sexual interest in you and hell your character barely even speaks so what value would there be in expressing that when the game itself never brings it up and never has a reason to?
Really? Which released AAA game has a LGBT main protagonist? Must have went under my radar. Everything else you said tracks, I agree 100%. It shouldn't be a solution to a problem in the way the characters are written, but it is a problem that there isn't equality in this space, and these characters are the solution. It needs to Arby's least feel natural though, or else it just feels like more tokenism.
Is hard to find a solution when the rest of the world is homophobic.
Dark souls 3 actually changes in response to the players gender, in order to make the whole wedding thing heterosexual. So kind of a bad example there.
I th
I understand what you're saying, and I think we're on the same page here. I'm not trying to undermine the LGBT side characters. But a side character is not good enough. It is quite literally not equal.
The goal should be a LGBT main protagonist if we're talking equality.
Master Chief could have been subtley gay if Halo 4 didn't exist and it would have only made his character more badass.
By not allowing the main protagonist this the studios are basically saying LGBT is not a priority, but we will shove as many gay side characters in there, cause we want your money. It's tokenism at the least. It's better than nothing, but it's not equal.
Tons of RPG's allow the main character to be gay. I'm sure you'll probably claim that doesn't count for some arbitrary reason, so there's also games like Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Overwatch (more of a mascot than main character but the distinction there is arbitrary), Divinity 2 (as far as I'm aware everyone in that game who is a pre-set character is bi), the upcoming The Last of Us 2, Life is Strange and its prequel, the list goes on and on my dude.
There's an underrepresentation for sure, but do not erase the existence of LGBT main characters in order to prop up your awful arguments against LGBT side characters.
I totally forgot about that but my point still stands for the first couple of games and any other game with a character creator that is effectively ignored because the game world almost never references anything about your characters personally.
Note I'm not against representation at all but a sexuality meter on a character creator feels utterly meaningless to representation if the game never utilizes it. I guess my biggest issue is I hate when a game doesn't recognize my options. When I'm playing as a woman I wish the game would recognize that, if you give me the option to be gay I want the game to recognize that.
The idea of being limited to a proportional ratio, kind of a bare minimum, pisses me off because the only ones accused of overrepresentation are minorities. But no one talks about how straight white dudes are only like 30% of the country but 99% of the heroes in every story that gets any play.
I get wanting to talk about representation, but I think presenting it as a choice between either proportional or equal representation skews the discussion towards a weird area of talking about how much is Too Much or Enough. Suffice it to say games (and all media) could be doing a lot better wrt representation of all kinds - women, people of color, LGBT, etc.
What I want to see is more diversity among (lead) creatives. Look at interviews with game directors, narrative directors, lead writers, etc. 99% of the time it's a white guy. Getting more diversity there is the way to more varied types of stories about more varied types of people. This is more about AAA than anything, I'd say in indie scenes it's *slightly* less skewed, but clearly there's work to be done.
Dark Souls is actually a really interesting example because you can equip a ring (Gwyndolyn's, a trans-coded character) that gives your character the animations of the "other" gender, so you can, in a weird, kind of reductive way, make trans characters. This doesn't relate to sexuality, but it does relate to gender expression. This is kind of really neat (although not without its issues) and I'd like to see more stuff like that. The Sims 4 has particularly robust gender options, I'd like to see that kind of stuff more.
What I want to see is more diversity among (lead) creatives. Look at interviews with game directors, narrative directors, lead writers, etc. 99% of the time it's a white guy. Getting more diversity there is the way to more varied types of stories about more varied types of people. This is more about AAA than anything, I'd say in indie scenes it's *slightly* less skewed, but clearly there's work to be done.
Dark Souls is actually a really interesting example because you can equip a ring (Gwyndolyn's, a trans-coded character) that gives your character the animations of the "other" gender, so you can, in a weird, kind of reductive way, make trans characters. This doesn't relate to sexuality, but it does relate to gender expression. This is kind of really neat (although not without its issues) and I'd like to see more stuff like that. The Sims 4 has particularly robust gender options, I'd like to see that kind of stuff more.
It shouldn't be a factor at all. I don't like this forced "collect the whole set" tickbox attitude. It shouldn't matter whether somebody's gay or black or whatever, but rather a coincidence.
I think it's exploitative. Being a black lesbian should be as normal as a white straight male. That's equality.
I think it's exploitative. Being a black lesbian should be as normal as a white straight male. That's equality.
It must feel great to be a biggot but be able to hide it behind terms like "but we shouldn't have inclusion for the sake of inclusion" or "it has to fit in the story or setting, and be well written". I honestly wish I had such a great shield I could use for my own biases and prejudices.
I'm a straight white dude, and even I'm sick of games full of straight white dudes. How insecure do you have to be to get upset about the suggestion that we could use a few less straight white dudes? It's honestly shocking to me. I still haven't seen a good argument for maintaining the status quo.
I'm a straight white dude, and even I'm sick of games full of straight white dudes. How insecure do you have to be to get upset about the suggestion that we could use a few less straight white dudes? It's honestly shocking to me. I still haven't seen a good argument for maintaining the status quo.
The last Thing I think about is the sexuality/Gender/... of a Video game character, unless there is some obvious sexual stuff. I am cool with more lgbtq representation and hope it is done in a good and respectful way
Over the whole of gaming I'd say something resembling proportionality would be the objective. Individual games don't need to be representative samples though.
With something like Bioware romances I think something closer to equality than proportionality is better because there I think offering all players choices matters
With something like Bioware romances I think something closer to equality than proportionality is better because there I think offering all players choices matters
Well,Thai have a bunch of LGBT Movies and Show
but in real life most people still fear or make fun of them.
Then why are the vast majority of video games starring straight white men? Why is it always when there's a minority protagonist or even side character, or the inclusion of LGBT+ elements to a story (or even optional side content like Bioware romances), there's a huge backlash from people complaining about SJW pandering, or forcing diversity?
Why is it every time that a minority suggests that maybe, perhaps, we could have a few more minorities, some straight white dude comes in and said "It shouldn't matter what minority you belong to, that's equality"?
Because, I've got news for you, darling - we don't live in an equal society. Bigotry is still at large, and on the rise even. Now more than ever, minority representation is crucially important.
I personally don't see how saying there must be a 50/50 split is beneficial but I don't think it has to be directly proportional either, there should be no upper limit to the inclusion of LGBT characters.
They simply need to be better.
Quality over volume. I think most major queer representation so far just drips with tokenism and surface level depth. The best examples we have are also cis lesbians, and while that's fantastic, good trans and gay representation is incredibly lacking.
Quality over volume. I think most major queer representation so far just drips with tokenism and surface level depth. The best examples we have are also cis lesbians, and while that's fantastic, good trans and gay representation is incredibly lacking.
Doesn't "need" to be "proportional" (to what ?) or "equal" (to what) for me.
Needs to be better than the shit we get, (oh hi, ATLUS).
Even The Witcher 3 did talk about gay men : there's a side quest with a hunter and you can explore his story a bit, when he suddenly reveal that he "have an illness" because he's attracted to men. I loved Geralt's answer to this and this was more than enough for me.
I am gay, I'm happy when I can have a gay relationship in RPGs but I also enjoy hetero relationships. Just if you want to talk about LGBTs, just do it RIGHT.
EDIT :
Also, Saints Row IV did have the most open "relationships" ever. And the most funny lines too ^^.
Needs to be better than the shit we get, (oh hi, ATLUS).
Even The Witcher 3 did talk about gay men : there's a side quest with a hunter and you can explore his story a bit, when he suddenly reveal that he "have an illness" because he's attracted to men. I loved Geralt's answer to this and this was more than enough for me.
I am gay, I'm happy when I can have a gay relationship in RPGs but I also enjoy hetero relationships. Just if you want to talk about LGBTs, just do it RIGHT.
EDIT :
Also, Saints Row IV did have the most open "relationships" ever. And the most funny lines too ^^.
Pretty much this for me. I get that quantative representation matters to people, but I think depth is more important.
Unfortunately, most game characters are shallow and poorly written so that needs to be fixed as well.
When it comes to broadly marketed games with romance options, I am in the camp that there should be numerous characters who can be romanced either way. I think a good split is roughly 1/3rd straight, 1/3rd gay or lesbian, and 1/3rd undefined. This breaks up the binary and allows players to romance the same amount of characters while still writing identities that are specifically one or the other. If it's a core mechanic it should be accessible to every player and it's not inclusive to box out players for the sake of realism. Obviously it doesn't need to be exactly this kind of split but if we're making up numbers I'll throw that out there.
Some games, like Romancing SaGa, center around procreation and bloodlines. These games have a mechanical reason to be predominantly heterosexual. But it's important to observe that games like Romancing SaGa are not marketed to straight people. These games aren't like Dream Daddy or otome dating sims where they are made with a very specific consumer in mind. So just because the central mechanic is contingent on heterosexuality doesn't mean LGBT characters can't appear elsewhere in the story. So even when there's a decent justification to have straight characters over gay ones, there's no reason to not have any LGBT characters anywhere.
A game like Fire Emblem or Mass Effect is designed to have mass appeal. Its content should reflect the variety of players who will engage with the material. Queer romance options appeal to more than just gay people too. You don't have to gay to roleplay a homosexual relationship. A variety of romantic possibilities just makes games with romance options more interesting. Even if you don't care about representation, which you should, this stuff just makes your game better. I would argue that having a diverse cast of romance options is an objective improvement over homogeneous options. It's not just about self-insertion, it's about increasing the opportunity to roleplay too.
But this question also brings up a broader point.
Comparing statistics for representation is only useful for recognizing disparity and tracking improvement over time. It is helpful to know how few video game protagonists are black. It is helpful to know how few stories have trans characters. These statistics help us see where we are failing to depict humanity as it exists and shows us an easy way to enrich our stories. But inclusivity itself isn't about reaching percentages, it's an ideal.
I don't think of media diversity as a quota that needs to be reached. It's an expectation to be encouraged indefinitely. There is no metric for how many LGBT is enough. There is no threshold where there are enough gay people or enough Jewish people or enough Asian people or enough women. Fulfilling expectations of inclusivity isn't something you should be boiling down to math. It's something you should be doing, and and expecting from your art, without an end-goal in mind.
If you want an edgy answer: no amount of LGBT is ever enough. Tell stories with lots of queer people. Tell stories with only one. Tell stories about queer lovers and depict queer friendships and queer hardships and queer experiences. Tell stories where people look different and sound different and enrich your narratives with a full range of humanity. And art isn't just about depicting people, it's also about empowering expression. Support authors from different demographics so they can tell their own stories too. Foster black authorship and women in writing and transgender creatives. The goal of inclusivity and diversity isn't to fulfill quotas. It's to platform your peers and neighbors and fellow humans so they have the same luxury to express and consume as anyone else. So don't stop at any point and don't ever feel like there is enough.
That's how I feel about it.
Some games, like Romancing SaGa, center around procreation and bloodlines. These games have a mechanical reason to be predominantly heterosexual. But it's important to observe that games like Romancing SaGa are not marketed to straight people. These games aren't like Dream Daddy or otome dating sims where they are made with a very specific consumer in mind. So just because the central mechanic is contingent on heterosexuality doesn't mean LGBT characters can't appear elsewhere in the story. So even when there's a decent justification to have straight characters over gay ones, there's no reason to not have any LGBT characters anywhere.
A game like Fire Emblem or Mass Effect is designed to have mass appeal. Its content should reflect the variety of players who will engage with the material. Queer romance options appeal to more than just gay people too. You don't have to gay to roleplay a homosexual relationship. A variety of romantic possibilities just makes games with romance options more interesting. Even if you don't care about representation, which you should, this stuff just makes your game better. I would argue that having a diverse cast of romance options is an objective improvement over homogeneous options. It's not just about self-insertion, it's about increasing the opportunity to roleplay too.
But this question also brings up a broader point.
Comparing statistics for representation is only useful for recognizing disparity and tracking improvement over time. It is helpful to know how few video game protagonists are black. It is helpful to know how few stories have trans characters. These statistics help us see where we are failing to depict humanity as it exists and shows us an easy way to enrich our stories. But inclusivity itself isn't about reaching percentages, it's an ideal.
I don't think of media diversity as a quota that needs to be reached. It's an expectation to be encouraged indefinitely. There is no metric for how many LGBT is enough. There is no threshold where there are enough gay people or enough Jewish people or enough Asian people or enough women. Fulfilling expectations of inclusivity isn't something you should be boiling down to math. It's something you should be doing, and and expecting from your art, without an end-goal in mind.
If you want an edgy answer: no amount of LGBT is ever enough. Tell stories with lots of queer people. Tell stories with only one. Tell stories about queer lovers and depict queer friendships and queer hardships and queer experiences. Tell stories where people look different and sound different and enrich your narratives with a full range of humanity. And art isn't just about depicting people, it's also about empowering expression. Support authors from different demographics so they can tell their own stories too. Foster black authorship and women in writing and transgender creatives. The goal of inclusivity and diversity isn't to fulfill quotas. It's to platform your peers and neighbors and fellow humans so they have the same luxury to express and consume as anyone else. So don't stop at any point and don't ever feel like there is enough.
That's how I feel about it.
Quotas is not something I'd be in support of at all. More diversity is great but bad gay stereotypes is not something I want more of.
More roles, that are more prominent, and aren't token is what we need. I don't think that means there needs to be a certain percentage of characters. Quality representation would be excellent. That being said, it is hard to expect quality representation from a creator who doesn't write any of its characters particularly well, that is why the absolute minimum standard should be representation that isn't exploitative (and doesn't treat a character's sexuality as a punchline).
lol, far from my intention XD but i can see how you can read that XD but i would argue about the part about the part about marginalized people...
anybody can make any form of art or culture, not straight for straight or gay for gay. what i was trying to explain is that is more a matter of doing more than talking. quotas are not the solution, producing/demanding the content you want it is.
on the other hand the sexuality of most of the characters is completly nonrelevant on most games. who cares if rayden likes scorpio in MK for example if is not relevant in any point in the game? you could say that X character is gay or whatever, but the point is that if its straight wouldnt matter also. sometimes demanding quotas we lose perspective of what really matters
Don't care about catering to anything, I believe that the original story and characters should fit the vision not just cater to demands to be politically correct.
I would like game to be more diverse in general. I don't need gay representation as a gay man. But I would prefer to have varied casts and characters and have gay characters play various roles in various games.
But lets use all the colours and styles across all games.
But lets use all the colours and styles across all games.
i understand what you are saying. what i was trying to explain (obviously not very well) is that while its obviously a matter of exposure, concientiation etc... i feel its wrong to demand or force whatever role if its not relevant. Does the protag of GoW (never played the games, btw) shows his sexuality in the game? do we know if its straight? gay? that was my point. if its not relevant for the actual game, my point is that all debate around it is irrelevant.
(and actually in theory should leave more room for imagination and inclusion in that aspect) you could make a point about other more evident aspects, that i agree, but i jumped on this thread about making the characters on games more sexually obvious xd
/and by the way... thanks for responding seriously or not, i wasnt trying to be dismisive. but i feel its always wrong to force quotas in one way or the other
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People need to get this idea out of their heads that there's some sacred aspect to a creator's vision we should not interfere with or try to influence, especially in a highly collaborative and group effort like games. First off these ideas change and are "compromised" a thousand times during the creative/development process, very little is sacred or unchanged in any creative process. And secondly a character's race, gender and orientation are rarely ever that important to either the story or the creator, let alone something that is ever really given a great deal of forethought or consideration, especially for non-leads. Unconsciously defaulting to white cishet men is a real thing that even minority creatives sometimes fall in to.
Thirdly is this idea, or kind of undertone/implication, being presented like white cishet creators inherently don't want to and can't/shouldn't create characters outside themselves and the only solution is getting other people in development is not helpful. More diversity behind the scenes is really important don't get me wrong, but it's a kind of a huge cop out to act as though only gay people are capable or interested in writing gay characters or only black people can write black characters. Quality and authenticity matters, as is marginalized groups being the authors of their own stories, but outside of trying to craft a whole story or subplot around or examining a minority experience you're not a part of people are more than capable of developing and writing characters different from them for inclusion in their games and stories. And getting input and feedback from others when needed isn't a big hurdle. The internet exists, it's not hard to find someone or a group to consult about any subject matter if you don't happen to have anyone on staff who can speak to it or provide feedback on work.
And there can be generic LGBTQ+ and non-white characters, not everyone needs to be some champion or ambassador of their group. Not every character or game needs to examine what it means to be black or gay or trans to include those kinds of characters. They can just exist and don't need to justify their inclusion with their identity or be defined by it. Just as the vast majority of games never really touch upon, let alone examine, the white-cishet-male-ness of characters, so the same can be true for other groups and peoples. Simply having them there is important even if there isn't some huge degree of depth or "quality" to their identity. Quantity and quality both matter.
Thirdly is this idea, or kind of undertone/implication, being presented like white cishet creators inherently don't want to and can't/shouldn't create characters outside themselves and the only solution is getting other people in development is not helpful. More diversity behind the scenes is really important don't get me wrong, but it's a kind of a huge cop out to act as though only gay people are capable or interested in writing gay characters or only black people can write black characters. Quality and authenticity matters, as is marginalized groups being the authors of their own stories, but outside of trying to craft a whole story or subplot around or examining a minority experience you're not a part of people are more than capable of developing and writing characters different from them for inclusion in their games and stories. And getting input and feedback from others when needed isn't a big hurdle. The internet exists, it's not hard to find someone or a group to consult about any subject matter if you don't happen to have anyone on staff who can speak to it or provide feedback on work.
And there can be generic LGBTQ+ and non-white characters, not everyone needs to be some champion or ambassador of their group. Not every character or game needs to examine what it means to be black or gay or trans to include those kinds of characters. They can just exist and don't need to justify their inclusion with their identity or be defined by it. Just as the vast majority of games never really touch upon, let alone examine, the white-cishet-male-ness of characters, so the same can be true for other groups and peoples. Simply having them there is important even if there isn't some huge degree of depth or "quality" to their identity. Quantity and quality both matter.
(actually for me ryu always was... >_<)New ad in SF V makes mewantwish Ryu to be GAY.
Hard to visualize lgbt without stereotyping.
Like, you're creating a character, what type of facial features and clothing do you give them to be lgbt without having to spell it out to a user?
Like for women or people of colour, it's easy to show that visually without having to tell the user.
Unless there's examples of how it's done visually, without stereotyping...
Like all I can think of is the character letting it out in a conversation or it being told in the narrative.
Like, you're creating a character, what type of facial features and clothing do you give them to be lgbt without having to spell it out to a user?
Like for women or people of colour, it's easy to show that visually without having to tell the user.
Unless there's examples of how it's done visually, without stereotyping...
Like all I can think of is the character letting it out in a conversation or it being told in the narrative.
I think I'd answer, simply, "Neither. It should be visible". The problem is that cast sizes of games vary greatly, and for a game with a small cast that 10% could easily round down to zero; that doesn't serve representation at all. If you are intending to reflect society with the game, then inflating the proportion to ensure that minorities of all forms are visible characters is probably better, even if the actual proportions are wildly inaccurate as a result.
I'm assuming, OP—you mean in situations where being gay or straight even factors into a game? Which isn't THAT often, is it?
In any event, I say make them all gay. As a straight male that's so used to being catered to, if it means this much to the LGBTQ community, take it all.
In any event, I say make them all gay. As a straight male that's so used to being catered to, if it means this much to the LGBTQ community, take it all.
I'm not going to lie. I'm not gay. I don't have to live endure such an issue since heterosexuals have stunning representation in gaming (and pretty much any media). That say, I feel empathy for the people struggling with this. I'd be more than ok if we could significantly bump the lgbt representation.
It's nice that I can play characters that represents my values or my sexual orientation and I wish the same for everyone.
It's nice that I can play characters that represents my values or my sexual orientation and I wish the same for everyone.
something like this?
yeah, fuck me, right?
Those bears look stereotypical gay and the dude in the middle could be anything.something like this?
Though I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't want those bears as main protagonists...
It's the new ice climbers.
The whole cast of Saints Row IV is bisexual. Just check how not stereotypical they are.
And how do they show it?
Is it by how they look, or through some interaction?
Have the game, just never played it. :|