Debate: Something for the gaymers
in Off-Topic
What do you lot reckon?
I've been reading a lot lately about developers introducing LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) characters, though, from what I've read in reviews, these are normally quite weak and diluted. I've asked my mum, and she explained to me about TV in the 70's and 80's having the 'token black person' and 'token Asian person', but that the story lines they had were either really weak and pointless, or they were simply the shop keeper or the market seller that had a random snog with some desperate housewife, and after that, they were never seen or heard of again.
What I'm asking here is, do you think LGBT characters should be included in games, though, like all of their other counterparts be they White, Black, Warrior or Mage, have a proper underpinned story line instead of three lines of dialogue and then disappear?
I've been reading a lot lately about developers introducing LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) characters, though, from what I've read in reviews, these are normally quite weak and diluted. I've asked my mum, and she explained to me about TV in the 70's and 80's having the 'token black person' and 'token Asian person', but that the story lines they had were either really weak and pointless, or they were simply the shop keeper or the market seller that had a random snog with some desperate housewife, and after that, they were never seen or heard of again.
What I'm asking here is, do you think LGBT characters should be included in games, though, like all of their other counterparts be they White, Black, Warrior or Mage, have a proper underpinned story line instead of three lines of dialogue and then disappear?
4
Comments
I mean.
Duh.
*leans back, starts eating popcorn*
In videogames I wouldn't demand lgbt interaction, but it would be amazing if they came up with ideas that , just like in real life, would include different people with nice stories , and the fact that they're different (belonging to a different sexual orientation, race or whatever) makes it even more interesting.
I'm gay, but in BG games I end up creating characters who'll date either Aerie or Viconia, because their romances are so cool that I don't mind roleplaying a straight character.
Well, in conclusion, I believe that videogames should show different characters because we live in a world where we all have differences, and these differences are so natural that adding it to a videogame shouldn't sound like an obligation.
Romancing characters in a game seems pointless to me, though. If I want to pursue a romance plot and see where it leads I will turn the computer off.
In a world where there are half-orcs and half-elves (and half-dragons, among others) would same-sex relationships really seem so strange?
A well written character, regardless of how big the role, has hopes, dreams, thoughts, desires and fears. That is what should define them first.
Generally, I feel that the option for same-sex relationships should be included in most RPGs; or at the very least, those containing romantic themes. This should be a reflection of a greater degree of character customisation and freedom than was possible in the past, and the ability of the player to fully immerse himself/herself in a story where choices matter.
This sounds pretentious, but I can see romance being an increasingly common element of modern gaming, as current video games are really opening up to the idea of exploring the human condition as opposed to just collecting rings. And love, sex and desire are an immensely important part of being human — I'll never really understand people who say that romance should be left out of video games. And if you're going to have romance, why not non-heterosexual romance? I can't see any logical argument against that.
Saying that, I don't think a game like The Witcher 3 should necessarily include a gay protagonist, since these games are based on pre-defined lore, and players are manipulating facets of a more defined character that has a hefty backstory.
As for non-RPGs, it also depends on the game. Shoe-horning a gay character into Super Mario would be bizarre, and I don't think that the game really revolves around the Mario-Peach romance to any great degree, so it doesn't alienate anyone who isn't heterosexual.
However, it would be refreshing to see LGBT characters in games like Gears of War/Halo/CoD, where NPCs do play a large role in the story. If not for representation of a diverse gamer base, then to at least escape from the grinding monotony of the standard-issue, boring, gruff-voiced Tough Guy(tm) who is in reality more shallow and superficial than *any* token gay character.
As for the question, I don't think they should have token LGBT characters just for the sake of it. It just feels awkward and forced. However, if a character if LGBT because that is who he is, that is fine for me.
I don't know if that makes sense, I just woke up...
And he's a transdude, which were never a subject to terrible treatment from storywriters, so i dunno, full inclusion would be nice, even if it's tokenism
A good presentation of 'LGBT', as you call it, should be interesting to more than just the token group they represent. If you're writing a gay romance and write the whole thing around the fact it's a gay romance, or specifically for gay people, it's awful writing. Exchange gay romance with "minority character" or "disabled character" or what have you. Otherwise it just seems like a cheap way to try and be politically correct.
As well as being afraid of not "offending" anyone by playing it super safe.
If it fits the setting and story, yes, include them. But if it doesn't, no I don't want it.
For example, in BG2, I could totally see Viconia and Haer'Dalis as bisexuals.
Viconia is a drow, a matriarchal society where men are second-class citizens. It makes sense that she would be open and attracted to the "superior gender" even if she's not a Lolthite, just because of her nurture.
Haer'Dalis, by the way he talks to people of both genders, seems quite open to both of them judging by his dialogue and should have been a bisexual.
In Forgotten Realms, even since the ADnD days, Corellon Larethian has been sometimes described as androgynous or a hermaphrodite.
So if there was an NPC that was a real hermaphrodite (not trans or dressing in drag), it should be an elf as it's the most fitting.
This is how you approach diversity in games. You don't say: "alright we need a black person, an asian person, a lesbian, a bi, a gay man and a trans".
In the end, the story-maker (in books, movies, games) should make a game in a way that fits the story.
And not to please everybody, to be politically correct and to make a Social Justice Game for the sake of it.
I'm the writer and creator. I get to make decisions about who I write about and why.
I don't like writing about straight/white/cis people all the time. It's not reflective of the real world, it sets up s/w/c as the "normal" baseline from which "other" characters must be added, and it's boring.
I consciously add as much diversity as I can to my writing and I don't care if people think that's "forced" or fake. I find choosing to write from a straight default just as artificial. I'm happy to be an SJW and I hope to write many Social Justice Games in the future that reach as many different types of people as possible. Everyone should get a chance to see themselves reflected in pop culture.
/end
(I don't mean to pick on you specifically Archaos; you're just the most recent person to use the phrase political correctness.)
I'm a boring white heterosexual male but one of my favourite characters (Apryl Ryan from The Longest Journey) is a woman, and I didn't have any problem empathising with her because, she is... uh, human. If she'd been lesbian or into goats, it would not have mattered. Good characters are, above everything else, human (or human-like), if his orientation eclipses that you have not done a good job.
If you are a good writer, go on and write about your transgender half-dwarf-orc, I'll read it. Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando, a transgender immortal poet, but she was a good writer. If not, please, don't.
Besides, it should be seamless and natural, your reaction to the "revelation" should be "Umm, interesting. Didn't expect that but it makes sense about you and the world, and I'm learning something about different peoples, cultures, personalities or species, but it's cool. Well, keep going, we still have many homophobic orcs to kill".
Sometimes when they say they want to write about a diverse cast of characters, they lack the self-awareness to realise they are writing these "diverse" characters from their own narrow perspective
Bad writers can make gross stereotypes about characters different to themselves unintentionally, and then compound the issue by loudly proclaiming anyone calling their writing bad or one dimensional is a bigot.
The solution is that developers should stop employing bad writers who are unsuccessful in other forms of story telling to write for their games. Sorry, but I'm going to have to include most contemporary wrpgs in this category
If your diversity is forced or fake you suck at your job. If your characters are designed by committee you are a bad developer.
If you are preachy about your own particular pet causes and social issues then I consider you to be much more interested in signalling how good of a person you are than actually helping with the issue.
The 'token black person' part made me giggle, aren't they always the first ones to die in Zombie movies?
Let a bad writer create a transgender half-dwarf-orc. Let him share his character with the world, and watch the world inevitably scorn it. If he wants to grow--not just as a writer, but as a person--then he will learn from his mistakes, and his next project will be just as inclusive, but better. And trust me--most writers do want to get better. We don't like it when people bash the hard work we'd slaved away at for weeks, months, even years at a time.
But by telling that bad writer to not even try to write something they're not necessarily comfortable with, you are telling them, "Do not grow." "Play it safe." "It's too risky." And that's part of how we keep getting the same white/cis/male/hetero characters, because people are too afraid to try something different. That they'll "get it wrong" somehow.
Practice makes perfect. Most people don't "fear" playing a sport just because they might be bad at it. In fact, many of us do start out being "bad" at a sport, but once we start playing more often and practice, we get better. Writing characters who are not all like you is just like playing a new sport, or creating a piece of art with a new medium, or singing a new song you haven't heard before. We are all human and we all suck at these things when we first start; what's important is that we try and we don't give up.
a) Why not learn to write before applying for a major project and butchering it?
b) Why do some major developers hire shitty writers?
Example: Aquiles was probably bisexual. Nobody cared even during Christian medieval Europe. It's what he DID that matters. However, when modern authors talk about lgbt-whatever, the doing disappears and it's what they are, related to some identity group, what then defines the individual (who disappears) or even the plot. It's not, "Hey Da Vinci was an inventor, painter, engineer, actually a good cook and, probably, homosexual (though celibate)" and becomes "As a homosexual vegetarian with sexual traumas, Da Vinci..."
Of course, you can write whatever you want, but you are entering a minefield, hence my warning and -perhaps too direct- advice. And if you are a professional writer in charge of a big project (a new Baldur's Gate or Star Wars) you may actually destroy it without realizing. Some writers don't have the luxury of trying and see what happens, and I was talking about them.
*Or race or any other identity politics group.
PS: I'm also an aspiring writer. I know the difficulties.
Well.
This is actually a complicated question. In a videogame, not only are you trying to write a good story, but there's also a practical aspect of selling the game, which(I assume) must be a different process than someone thinking up a good story and writing it down. The writers are hired after all, they have to produce something. It's not art for arts sake.
I'm not saying videogames [storylines/weiting] cant be art, but they are not just art. They are, at their core, entertainment. Remember that.
See, if your writing a story for its own sake, your primary goal is to write a good story. So you do whatever the story dictates. If the story wants a gay man, you put in a gay man. If it does not, you do not.
But on a videogame, you can't really do that. You have to meet certain parameters. You need to cater to certain demographics. You can't be to offensive. You need to be politically correct. So If the company decides they want 2 black characters, one lesbian and a transgender depressed half Orc with one arm, then you have to write those characters in whether they fit in the story or not.
And that's the issue.
See, if the game could be a story for the sake of story, I would say no(the question being "should minorities be forced into games for the sake of inclusion and being politically correct?") Don't force a character to be something. It only leads to bad writing and they end up being 'token' characters as mentioned.
But it's not that simple. They have to include certain things. Games are not designed and created by one single artists. They are created by committee to be entertaining. So it's necessary for a game to intentionally place certain kinds of characters into a game in order for it to appeal to a wide audience. And that's ok. That's the reality of it. It's ok for me as long as it doesn't seem really forced or obvious. But ideally the answer is no.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Political correctness is stupid. And that quote is misleading. If you go by that quote then I'm a terrible person because I think "treating other people with respect" is stupid. And that's not true.
Treating people with respect is NOT being politically correct. There is a HUGE difference. Political correctness is making sure everything is nice and inoffensive for everyone, even if that means completely changing what you're saying. Respect is different. if you really respect someone you'll tell them exactly what you think, even if it offends them, because they are a respectable human being who deserves your honesty(if you have a response to. I'm not advocating running out onto the street and yelling out all of your honest opinions.)
You can be politically correct to someone and give them absolutely NO respect whatsoever. If you think you have to water something down for someone so they can take it without getting offended than that's not respectful. That's totally disrespectful.
[spoiler=moving even more off topic,]
And that(the video) leading into my next point: society needs to get over gay people. The media is very fixated on LGBT rights, rather disproportionately Yes, they exist, yes, they have rights. moving on. I'm not saying that we should just leave it where it is. Gay people face struggles in their life. We should do everything we can to fix that. But a bunch of other people face struggles in their life to, and we should do everything we can to fix that to. And a lot of other groups have bigger issues. There are not poor, inner city gay school districts. There is not a gay immigration crisis(in Europe or America). It's a lot easier to hide being gay that it is to hide being whatever race happens to be desriminated against in whatever place you live in(not that you should have to, but still) and yes, I know that's not politically correct to say, but I covered that already.
And, as the video says, the more we make a big deal out of it the slower the progress moves. [/spoiler]
Writing her as lesbian not only gave Female!Charnames more replay value, but it also gave a huge shoutout to the lady-gamers in the demographic. Beamdog said "Hey! Girls! We realize your female Charnames don't have a lot of options in the ways of romance. We fixed that for you with Hexxat, Dorn, and Rasaad." And as a lady-gamer, that pleases me. It tells me, Beamdog heard the complaints of many lady-gamers over the years, and they listened.
(That being said, there's still some serious problems with Hexxat's character, but her sexuality is not one of them.) They're also not very memorable because they have little to no character interaction or quests thanks to Baldur's Gate 1's simplistic style, but I digress. (Unpopular Opinion Thread, anyone?)
I certainly agree that it's a balancing act. If you make that character's sexuality the defining characteristic, then yes, it can lead to tokenism. I don't think anyone on the side of "Yes! We want more LGBT characters!" disagrees with that; no matter a character's race, sex, sexuality, religion, or whatever, we want them to be well-written.
My point is that good writers don't just magically become good over night; they work and they make mistakes, and those mistakes are going to entail creating some tokens. Don't let that fear stop you. You shouldn't feel afraid to create a kind of character just because other people are telling you how hard it is, how it does or doesn't sell, or how you're buying into this "political correctness" by trying to be inclusive. And that's fine too. There's nothing wrong with playing it safe under pressure. But keep in mind too that it's that same attitude that continually gives us this:
White Guy after White Guy after White Guy after White Guy... Brand name: SCRUFFY.
(Disclaimer: This is from last year's E3, I do believe. This year's E3 was a very different story.)
Not that there's anything wrong with these protagonists. I like straight/white/cis/guys too; look at my dad, look at my boyfriend. But when that's the only kind of hero we see, game after game after game... That's a problem. The world is not made up of only straight/white/cis/guys.
And I understand that the professionals are under a lot of pressure. They're trying to make money, build a reputation, ultimately create something a ton of people will love...but they're also the ones with the most power, the ones we have no choice but to rely on for inclusiveness. That pressure doesn't give them a free pass to keep chucking out the same carbon-copy protags all the time. People want to see themselves in the games they love, and they're becoming more and more vocal about it. Sometimes it's even more dangerous to play it safe than it is to try something new. (Lookin' at you, Witcher 3 reviewers complaining about the all-white cast...)
(To be honest, the only part I really wanted to say was the first paragraph and that fistbump... But that alone felt insubstantial, so you get a wall of text instead.
Did you really just mention the "scruffy 30-whatsit white guy" trope? I seriously hope we're not playing the Oppression Olympics up in here.
::Whistles innocently…::
No characters' sexuality should be their defining characteristic, it's both unrealistic and boring (unless there's a very good character or plot specific reason to have it that way). Adding diversity to characters only makes them more interesting and multi-faceted, not more boring.
Hexxat is made MORE interesting by her lesbian-ness, not less. It is a core aspect of her character, and her romance reflects that, but it's certainly not her PRIMARY character trait.
An important point: if you are going to write diverse characters and you, yourself, are not diverse or intimately familiar with the type of diversity you're writing, consultation is vital. Talking to people of the minority you're writing, running your content by them and getting their feedback is crucial to writing good, well-rounded and diverse characters. And diversity creates more interesting, varied stories.