People in today's society aren't acting like such "little bitches." People in today's society should more so grow the fuck up and stop acting very immature over stupid things to get mad at. You can disagree with people all you want, but once you start the insults, why should anyone listen to a word you have to say?

Seriously, grow up.

I don't really get the "who cares if we don't get different characters?" mentality. I mean, people get tired of seeing the same type of characters after a while (even I'm kinda getting bored). Gotta switch things up a bit, especially after 20 years.

You're a bit of a bitch for presenting it as a moral imperative.

if you had spoken like a normal individual and said "I PERSONALLY wish there was a character like me, for me to relate to", people would be fine with it. They might disagree and debate the need for such things as they are now, but that's the point of a discussion forum anyway. At the very least, it'd be a less hostile conversation.

But when you present your opinion like a Kotaku article, talking like what you want is a NEED, it's for the greater good, it's the moral high ground, making sweeping generalizations like "gamers are racist", "gamers are sexist", etc., a lot of what you're saying comes across as pretentious, manipulative, intellectually dishonest, and insulting.

We're all gamers here and did you consider how we might feel if you fucking called us all racist/sexist when you don't know any of us?

You also have no right to speak on behalf of entire minority groups, even one you're a member of, you only have the right to speak for YOURSELF.
Nobody likes uninvited preaching.

Gotta love those who actually believes the reasoning behind the lack of gay characters is that the developers are homophobic people.

Because there's really no other reasoning, just that.

Not pointing the fingers at anyone in general, but this was, sadly, a reason that was actually brought up in a discussion.

I can't stop laughing at the amount of ignorance in that sentence.

See I can't even say "quit being a bitch" without people getting upset about it. It was not meant as an insult or an attack to anyone here. It was a general statement targeted at a broad spectrum of people, hence why I said "people in today's society." I'm sure you all have friends/coworkers/siblings and sometimes they act ridiculous and you have to tell them to just quit being a bitch. That is the manner in which I was making that statement in my previous post.

Also, how do you introduce a gay character anyway? Add a sexual orientation section onto the biography?

"Height: 6'1
Weight: 200lbs
Alignment: Good
Status: Warrior
Sexual orientation: Gay
Origin: Earthrealm"

Show some scenes of the character with his or her gay lover just so we know the character is gay? Even though it has nothing to do with the storyline at all. It's just a small detail about the character like their height or weight.

Height and weight are important in giving some idea of what a character's strengths and weaknesses might be. Their sexual orientation is completely irrelevant.

I certainly would like to see a gay fighting game character but ONLY if it serves some legitimate purpose and not just to pander to a specific group of individuals. MK has taken enough flack from fans for the latter in regards to having black characters in the games, which, quite frankly, is damn ridiculous.

Your comment did not seem so general. Granted that you weren't targeing me even since I'm not asking for a gay character. I just felt you could have not thrown in the insult.

And eh, a coworker wouldn't say that since he/she could face the risk of a complaint being filed. Believe me, the littlest of problems have been made as complaints. I've hears about them.


But anyways, your point that you're trying to get asked here is that there's no way to even introduce a character's sexuality. They've stopped with the height and weight thing since I think Mortal Kombat 3. The game booklets always has such fascinating stuff and once they got into the fourth , they just stopped.

I've been trying to say, along with many others, that unless it plays a crucial part in the story, that it affects the story in some way, it would have a purpose. But it doesn't. And some tend to see this as a way to throw in other bull as an excuse for saying that's not relevant either. People think that if other companies are to have this on their game, Mortal Kombat should have it too. But just because they have it doesn't mean that they're not facing some issues. You have idiots like Jack Thompson making legal issues out of it and people writing hundreds of complaints. It's not like this would be considered an easy thing to do by putting a gay character in a game. These activists would find the dumbest thing to protest against and they do make a big deal out of it.

I mean, if you input a code to take away the censors in The Sims when they're supposedly make and such is an example to where the creators had to patch it where you can't input a code anymore in the next expansion.

People don't get that and I don't understand why that is. There are people every day finding ways to protest over the most ridiculous things and it does make a difference. I'm not saying that gay people should be completely out of games, no, that's nog my point. It's just this is a different way of looking at it since we still have people who have a hard time accepting people who are different from them.

Plus, there's no significance behind sexual orientation in a fighting game. Which is still my number one main point of arguing.

It makes NO sense that a gay character has to be gay for some important reason. There's no reason why Scorpion's backstory couldn't be that his husband was killed, rather than his wife.

Being gay doesn't have to be a freaking Lifetime movie. NOBODY is saying they want the Kombatant to be "the gay one". We want an awesome character who happens to be gay. It's a human trait. It SHOULDN'T be important to the plot that the character is gay. Is it important to the plot that Jax is black? Is it important to the plot that Johnny is white? Or that Sonya is a woman? Why the hell does it have to be important to the plot that a character is gay? It's such a BS argument, only used to keep the conversation going around in circles because you don't want to play as gay characters.

Avenging a loved one is a common character trait in MK. Make the loved one someone of the same sex. *wipes hands* DONE!

I encounter casual homophobia every time I play an online game. And if my character has a rainbow emblem on his back in GTA Online, I can't play for more than half an hour without someone discovering it and telling the whole room to either go after me - or run away from me like I'm going to attempt to rape them. And if a player turns on her mic and reveals she's a girl, she's more than likely going to be sexually harassed almost immediately.

I never called you a homophobe or racist or sexist. I said the gaming community has a lot of homophobia and sexism in it. It's a fact. If you don't agree with me it doesn't make you one of those things, it just makes you ignorant about the fact that it exists. You're denying my life experiences, and the experiences of millions of other gamers.

quality thread

You encounter children, teenagers, and college frat-bros every time you play an online game. They're behaving how children, teenagers, and frat-bros behave - underdeveloped morality and no personal responsibility? What a fucking surprise.

And apparently you're just as mature as they are if you think people being shits over the microphone on Call of Duty is at all representative of gamer culture or says anything about how adults think and act in the real world.

You also never learned Rule Number One of interacting with anonymous strangers over the internet. You're not just feeding the trolls, you've lost the ability to tell them apart from other people.

And here's some ableist language for your sensitive, politically correct ears: That's fucking retarded.

You're saying I'm right, you just don't think homophobic and trolling kids, teens and college aged people make up a big enough segment of the gaming community for me to say the gaming culture has an issue with homophobia and sexism? Or that, what, even though you can't play online without running into homophobia and sexism - that it shouldn't count because they're just doing it via a microphone?

You're also making a lot of assumptions about me. And you're rude.

You're really making a mountain out of an anthill.

You're also making a lot of assumptions about other people without thinking that MAYBE not every single gamer you've encountered are homophobes/sexists/whatever.

I encounter a lot of people who talk a lot of stupid shit to me after they discover I'm a woman behind the account. Do I take what they say to me seriously? Absolutely not. Do I think every single gamer I encounter are a bunch of sexist morons? Absolutely not. They're gamers, they're immature yeah but what they have to say shouldn't be taken to a serious degree. I talk shit to them too, and in the end, I get a good laugh out of it.

Sorry that you encounter a lot of problems when you play online, but maybe you should grow some thicker skin and not get so offended. Most of the time, these people are trolling others for the sake of just trolling. Others just do it because playing online games always show the worst of people. But none of what they say to people needs to be serious. You want to encounter a bunch of idiotic people who are really fucking rude, go play League of Legends.

Other than that, what you encounter online should not break you because I am fully certain that 99% of those people who talk trash over a microphone would not say what they do say to people face to face. They can threaten people all they want, they wouldn't have the balls (or the pussy) to say what they shittalk to your face.

But I completely agree with Razor with this. This is stupid to judge an entire community based on your encounters with a bunch of immature folks. Not every single gamer acts like the ones you encounter. Like I said, grow thicker skin and stop taking what you hear so seriously. They're trolling you, that's all they're doing.

This thread is effing ridiculous....
...but entertaining.

I just want to say that, as part of the LGBT community, I personally don't need or really even want "representation" in MK. I can understand the desire for diversity but it can't be forced or it loses it's sincerity. Not to mention, can you imagine how offensive and generalized it will most likely be coming from NRS? (Note : females of MK)

All in all though, if they introduce a new character that's gay, I won't refute it. Just as long as they do it for the right reasons (Wrong Ex: Shitstorm from LGBT activists.) If they could manage to create a character and write a compelling bio that works well with the story (also, that does NOT revolve around said character's orientation) then so be it.

I just don't need a constant reminder telling me a character is gay. Just like we don't need them to reiterate that Liu Kang or Johnny is straight.

Because 20 years ago we didn't have the ridiculous PC police, people had lives and more important things to think about other than getting offended by extremely trivial matters.

There we go.

You mean like how they turned Stryker into Sonya so that MK1 would have a woman in it? Oh, I guess that's different. Or, you know, not.

If you think the gaming community doesn't have an issue with homophobia and sexism, you must be living under a rock. Did I say that anything they said hurt me? Did I say how I interact with these people? Did I say how I feel about them, or how big of an impact their foolishness has on my life? Did I say all (or even most) gamers are homophobes or sexists? Did I say ANYTHING about the "entire" gaming community? Or did you, and the others here, just put words in my mouth and make assumptions? Reading comprehension seems to be an issue here.

The point I made was even if companies see all of this crap, and even if they're misinterpreting what they're seeing - it affects their decisions because it comes down to MONEY. Do your research or butt out.

Wait. So Stryker and Sonya are one in the same? Like, transsexual?...

...Well then, problem solved!

So it's okay for you to make assumptions about people but if we make assumptions about you, it's wrong? You're really going to sit here and say thy everyone has a problem with the gay community because one too many people drop the "faggot" word when playing games? Jesus Christ dude, relax.

I'm making an assumption about you being bothered by this issue because you're making a huge fucking rant about it, I can tell you are incredibly insensitive about what gets said out of a stranger's mouth online.

Do video game companies care about what people say online? Probably. But can they do anything about it? Not really. Online interactions aren't covered by the ESRB, if one measly little person offended you, block them and never speak about it again.

Does the gaming community have a problem being homphobic, sexist, racists? No. It's words, unoriginal insults being thrown out at people because that person has a problem losing. It's a game. If you're bothered this greatly at ow mature people act then maybe this community isn't for you.

I don't need to do any research to know that words being said by a stranger shouldn't affect me to where I need to act like a person from One Million Moms and write a tear jerking email to a video game company whining that some jerk said mean things to me,

This is about M-O-N-E-Y.

Jesus Christ, yes all companies are evil sons a bitches caring all about money money money and not about your widdle hurt feelings.

Feel better?

I can tell you're new so, you see that "Add Original" button down there when replying? it does that

The backlash against the character Steve Cortez wasn't because he was gay, but because he was a terribly written character who was nothing more than pandering political agenda shoehorned in to please a certain demographic. BioWare has done nothing but capitalize on social issues and use LGBT as a shield for genuine criticism for the past few years. "Don't like our poorly written characters, flimsy plots, disappointing sequels and false promises? HOMOPHOBIA!" It's disgusting and BioWare/EA should not be inspiration for anything other than how NOT to do gay characters in games.

The whole issue is absolutely absurd. Games don't need to cater to everyone, games don't need to cater to anyone. If someone doesn't like the fact that a game doesn't cater to your needs, then fuck off and find a different game that will. What the hell does it matter what sexual preference characters in a fighting game has? Most of these characters have the depth of a puddle anyway. What difference does it make if we find out Motaro has a transexual human lover? What would that add to the game or to the character? Do you really need a video game to throw out superfluous drivel like that just to validate your own lifestyle?

There's a fine line between genuine artistic integrity, and politically fueled agenda pushing circlejerking hugbox bullshit. So just leave it out, who fucking cares. It's video games.

Whoa..... It's Ninja_Mime.