I agree with all of this, but i also see something very common.

how come actual gamers of a minority don't give one iota of a shit about they're "representation" and just want to play good games, collect some gold and fire big guns, and the people who cry for companies to pander to them, barely play games at all.

Thank fucking God someone finally understands... It took seven pages for someone to get it that they don't need to throw in stuff for the sake of it.

I'd shorten this but I can't do it on the phone.

Damn, this thread is still going on?!

I didn't say anything about Cortez. I also never said game companies need to do anything. I ALSO didn't say I need a video game to validate my "lifestyle". And "lifestyle"? Really?

What's it to you if someone is happy and feels represented by seeing someone like them in a video game? How is that a bad thing?

Dishonesty doesn't win arguments.

I didn't say anything about Cortez. And I wasn't talking about him.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/04/06/anti-gay-campaign-targets-ea

EA is the target of an anti-gay letter-writing campaign.

The company has received "several thousand" letters objecting to its inclusion of same-sex relationships in recent games.

According to report in GamesIndustry International, the letters have been sent to a cross-section of senior leaders at EA, often carrying a threat to boycott EA games unless it changes its policy.

The company says it will continue to include LGBT characters in its games, as options. EA's chief spokesperson Jeff Brown said, "Every one of EA's games includes ESRB content descriptors so it's hard to believe anyone is surprised by the content. This isn't about protecting children, it's about political harassment."

Recent EA games like Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic have included options for characters to engage in same-sex as well as heterosexual relationships.

Many of the letters come from Florida, base of the Florida Family Association, which recently posted a call to action against SW:TOR's LGBT content, and which claims that "extremists" forced EA to include the content.

Brown added, "EA has not been pressured by any groups to include LGBT characters in our games. However, we have met with LBGT groups and sponsored industry forums to discuss content and harassment of players in online forums. In short, we do put options for same-sex relationships in our games; we don't tolerate hate speech on our forums."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/01/13/homophobia-and-harassment-in-the-online-gaming-age


13 Jan 2010
Homophobia and Harassment in the Online Gaming Age
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Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered gamers face an uphill battle.

By Nathan MeunierThe explosive growth of online gaming communities in recent years has created amazing opportunities to go head-to-head against all kinds of players from around the world. But the vast freedom and flexibility of online play on consoles and PC has also given rise to something more insidious – a new place for bigotry and homophobia to manifest and thrive.

A little competitive banter over text or voice chat is all but expected when gaming with strangers. However, it's becoming increasingly difficult to play games online without encountering derisive homophobic comments or other hateful speech. Homophobic slurs – whether intentionally derisive or not – have become ingrained in the lexicon of many gamers, and the level of outright anti-gay sentiments and harassment tends to multiply substantially when other players discover there's a gay gamer in their midst. For the average straight player, one person spouting homophobic obscenities can ruin the experience, but take a moment to consider the impact this can have on members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender gaming community.

An omnipresent problem

Though it varies from game to game and server to server, the general atmosphere towards gay gamers in online gaming communities is a hostile one, says Flynn De Marco, founder and editor-in-chief of GayGamer.net. First-person shooters and war games like Halo and Call of Duty seem to spawn the most homophobic behavior among players, notes De Marco. It's not the games themselves that are the problem; it's the kinds of players they attract.

"Derogatory words for gay are used almost constantly while playing online to insult other players, gay or not," he says. "If you make yourself known as a gay player, you can be snubbed, sent nasty e-mails, turned on by your own teammates, and verbally abused."

Prior to Microsoft's decision to implement an across-the-board policy prohibiting any indicators of sexual orientation in gamertags and player bios, one anonymous gay Halo enthusiast posted a YouTube video documenting the harassment he received during a series of Halo 3 matches over Xbox Live. His experiences are not unique. Angela Simpson, content manager for LesbianGamers.com, has friends who now refuse to play in open rooms on Microsoft's gaming service after incidents that occurred there. And while Simpson herself has had some great experiences gaming with strangers over Xbox Live, she's also been on the receiving end of verbal abuse from other players on numerous occasions – and not just because she's a lesbian.

"I don't generally opt into a game with 'Hi guys, I'm a lesbian,' so more of the abuse I've had over the years has been about gender more than sexuality," says Simpson. "'Get back in the kitchen, bitch' is one that is thrown around quite a lot. I can only imagine the types of things these kinds of gamers would say were my gamertag more lesbian affiliated. I recall a session a few years ago where I was in a room and the discussion [other players] were having turned to 'queers.' I stayed in the room a minute or so and was fairly stunned by the uninformed mentality. I made my opinion known politely and was flooded with abuse, which continued even after I left the room. It was highly unpleasant."

Even Spartan armor can't deflect discrimination.

The harassment that LGBT gamers regularly face online is effectively shoving them back in the closet, forcing them to be more insular and stick to solo gaming or only playing with friends if they want to avoid being targeted.

"I often hear gamers say 'Why do you have to segregate yourselves? Aren't we all just gamers?' My answer is, quite frankly, no," says De Marco. "There are many people out there who constantly remind us that we are not 'all just gamers.'"

Setting up isolated safe spaces for LGBT gamers to play is one way to ensure they're meeting like-minded people, but it's a double-edged sword, adds Simpson. "You then have the issue of removing yourself from open spaces, which kind of lets the hate continue to manifest in some sense."

The ongoing struggle

Xbox Live isn't the only online gaming space where these issues arise, but its voice chat capabilities and high level of popularity among players of all stripes makes the number of incidents that occur fairly high. Microsoft's initial attempt to limit homophobic activities on Xbox Live – which led to prohibiting any expression of sexual orientation whatsoever in player gamertags – did not sit well with a lot of gamers. The problem with this and some policies enacted by other companies is they tend to punish the victims, says Simpson.

Not all fun and games."[Looking] at this from the lesbian perspective, if I want to identify as a lesbian so other lesbians can find me, I can't. I also cannot even mention this in my bio," she adds. "On the one hand, it can be argued this is a measure of protection by Microsoft to limit the homophobia I may get. But surely that should be my choice. I can't even put the Lesbian Gamers URL in my bio. So who is actually being punished?"

Xbox Live's Director of Policy and Enforcement Stephen Toulouse did briefly respond to our initial request for an interview, though numerous subsequent attempts to obtain comments from him for this story were unsuccessful by press time. However, during a panel discussion on homophobia in virtual communities last year sponsored by Electronic Arts and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Toulouse acknowledged Microsoft's handling of the situation could have been better.

"I think we did a very inelegant job," he told the panel members and audience at the event. "I think we've come to realizing we went the wrong route in the policy we have on Xbox Live."

Toulouse noted he has LGBT representation on his team, and everyone is working on figuring out a way to allow for the expression of sexual orientation and provide gamers with ways to stay safe.

Despite positive efforts being made by some members of the videogame industry, successfully combating the larger issue of discrimination and harassment in online gaming requires a lot more than good intentions, according to De Marco.

"Honestly, companies and journalists can talk until they are blue in the face, but we will not see any major changes with this situation until the general gaming populace matures a bit and wakes up to their own bigotry and hatred."

Dude, you need to go play some video games


And if you really need to have a character be gay to relate to them, that really shows your true self

I really don't care what you think about me, lol. That has nothing to do with this debate. So your failed attempts at insulting me are a waste of your time.

Oh, so there's another male/male romance option in ME3 I don't know about besides Cortez?

Kaidan but the point is irrelevant anyway because Liara was a lesbian romance option in the first game

Hrmm. I always pick Kaidan to die on Virmire 'cause I haven't liked his voice actor since Carth in KotOR.

But yeah, I already brought up the lesbians a couple pages ago and the point (at least the one I was trying to make, that the word "gay" is unisex, not just for males) was largely ignored, except for where it benefits his skewed argument, i.e. bringing up the media backlash over ME1 (that's a problem with Fox News, not a problem with gamers).

You goddamn fucking monster.



Few points:


1. MK is and always was a teen power fantasy game that is sanitized by the American dichotomistic perception that views violence as ok, while views the expression of sexuality as inherently sinful.

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2. MK is not a literary work of art, the story is only there to give context to the fighting game, as all fighting games are essentially character based (though exceptions exist, Karate). Sexuality does not play into the overall purpose of having character A fight B. Therefore it is not of central importance from a game design prespective.

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3. all MK characters are commercially sexualized to the extent that speaks to the main buyer sex: males are designed with easily identifiable masculine ideals and females are designed mainly as either eye candy, or possess sexually referential points that identify them as women.

(this last one: it's made so that you immediately recognize the character as a woman despite not having obvious feminine identifiers)

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4. We are roiding over a matter utterly trivial as none of us really have any power to change it, as the collective cannot and will not be unified for this case. Guess why.

And yet, it does HAVE a story and sometimes relationships move the plot forward: i.e. Liu Kang and Kitana. Male hero, villain's daughter secretly means to betray him...the way in which a love connection actually moves the plot forward there is obvious.

There's also Johnny x Sonya. Cage was usually, in past games, completely periphery to the plot and only included on the roster due to fan demand. He never really developed or mattered...but now he's CONNECTED to other characters, now that romance is even necessary because it's the origin story of a new character, his and Sonya's daughter Cassie. (Also note that this is an example created by the movie which raises the point that MK is not JUST a video game where story is dictated by gameplay needs - it's a multimedia franchise that spans films, TV, and comic books as well, which are all passive mediums where the story is the top priority)

There's also the potential to simply flesh out and develop characters. Baraka is a complete cipher, but what if they finally put his Mileena relationship on-screen? It wouldn't need to be much, just a scene or two, but suddenly he'd have the opportunity to display some actual fuckin' personality traits.

So if there was some way that two dudes or two females hooking up was necessary to tell a story, I've got no problem with them trying it.

But if it amounts to nothing, then yeah, there's no reason to mention a character's sexuality at all whether it be hetero or homo. If Jax or Smoke or Sheeva doesn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend on the roster, then I don't need to know if they're gay or straight.

But you have no problem with Scorpion's wife being mentioned?

Like I said pages ago, when talking about ME I said gay instead of LGBT. Lesbians are much more socially acceptable and they have way less of a stigma attached to them. The ME lesbian relationship was stretch anyways, since it was inter-species with a gender nonconforming race. I posted links to articles where thousands of people sent letters complaining about the ME3 gay male options.

Notice that the girls in MK can give each other kisses of death or other sensual fatalities. It's the same kind of thing. There would be a lot of bitcing if a male character had a kiss of death move or fatality.

Scorpion's family drives his plot.

That said, if they wanted to release bio information that said more characters have off-screen spouses, as they did in MK1 (Johnny Cage has an ex-wife, Goro has a harem 7 women deep), there's nothing wrong with that. Street Fighter does it too, and more often.

I'm not sure what it is you want. If it's on-screen kissing, the hetero couples in the canon haven't ever done that yet either.
I don't know why I'm arguing with someone who thinks a kiss on the cheek that causes you to explode is sensual, though. My grandma kisses me on the fucking cheek every time I visit, this is lewd now?

An awesome character who has a backstory that just happens to mention he has a husband/boyfriend. Like Scorpion with his wife, Johnny with his ex, etc.

That's all I've been asking for.

Then you're really bad at communicating ideas, because it hasn't sounded like that at all this entire thread.

There's an "Edit Message" button, friend.

Thanks, pal.

Pretty sure biology still stands in the way of men having children with other men and in terms of provoking feelings from the audience, nobody cares if an adopted kid is murdered. (When Jason Todd died, Batman mourned then moved on and got a new Robin. When Damian Wayne died, Batman went on a crazy crusade to rez him with dangerous Darkseid tech.)

Plus the Shirai Ryu don't live in San Francisco, they're a very, VERY strict and old-fashioned rural Japanese community. Making Scorpion at all rebellious would completely change his dynamic. If he were persecuted by his people for his lifestyle choices, he would care a lot less when they're wiped out instead of it being his driving motivation.
Perhaps before you use the phrase "there's no reason why...", you should make sure you're about to describe a character who actually DOES have no reason why.
I could make a list of all the canon "ships" if you're looking for unattached characters to potentially latch onto. I'm enough of an obsessive continuity-nazi that it would take me like five minutes, tops.