I stumbled across this article from “Not always my favorite LGBT magazine” The Advocate today, and I thought it was interesting enough to post here. The article talks about games like Fable 2 (which allowed you to marry and court people of the same sex) and Persona 4 which had a gay storyline, and also the upcoming Grand Theft Auto game that features a gay character.
Jeb Havens, an associate game designer at EA/Maxis’s Spore and one of the few openly gay designers in the industry:
Video game designers and developers, he says, are “moving away from the stereotype of the angry, homophobic teen boy … toward a broader picture of who is buying and playing games.”
As a result, he adds, “we’re starting to see a willingness to experiment with stories and characters that would appeal to more diverse audiences,” such as female, LGBT, and older gamers.
This is a good thing. It’s nice to see the game industry expanding into other markets – and not just LGBT but also female, casual, and older gamers. One particularly interesting quote was the following:
“The moment is coming,” she assures us, though it won’t arrive until “more gay game developers enter the industry and involve themselves in the process.” Until that happens, “a bunch of straight guys will be trying to make games for the gay community, just like they used to try to make games for women.”
At the end of the day, I think this was a good and bold statement by Brenda Brathwaite. A lot of games ‘oriented towards women’ are made pinker, cutesy’er and happier – but that’s not always what women want in a video game. Typically when I think of what I want out of a game, it’s strong female characters that I can identify with and a lack of stereotypical man-leading storylines. It doesn’t feel like the game industry has really put their finger on that quite yet. It feels that often times women and tweens are lumped into the same game demographic – we want cuddly, soft and bright colors and easy to play mechanics. It seems like people forget that teenage girls do grow up into people with unique interests and like to identify with characters in games. It’s not always fun to identify with the ‘damsel in distress.’
I also agree with Brenda we need more openly gay game developers in our industry. Let’s see some game companies get on the Human Rights Campaign’s Best Places to Work list!
Check out the article and let me know what you think in the comments.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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I liked the article, and its stance about how to get games to be more LBGT-friendly. Like many things, it isn’t to stuff the thought down peoples’ throats, but to get them to accept it as a natural outcome. The article talked about giving choices to people’s actions with regards to their characters’ tendencies, and I think offering that choice – whether it is to be with someone in Fable 2 or in Mass Effect that could be considered LBGT-like – is a good and meaningful first step in the process.
I think people are on a slow crawl to LBGT acceptance, and video games seem to reflect that. But in the last two years especially, there’ve been some great strides. I have confidence that it’ll be even better.
Here’s hoping for a gay protagonist sometime soon
As a side note – Fable 1 allowed this as well, though the same sex partners were always referred to as your wife(ves) regardless of gender.
It’s the world of MMOs that need more ‘gay’ content if any movement is to be made in enlightening your average gamer, that should be the battlefront. Global chat in any MMO will usually treat you to a plethora of things that are ‘gay’, not because of any involvement in a same sex relationship or because it’s happy and frivolous, it’s simply that very tiring (old now) thing of anything bad = gay.
Age of Conan managed to slip in one, matter of fact ‘gay’ bodyguard during a quest line. Conans world has an historical context with ancient rome, egypt and the celts, it’s not unlikely as we know, that same sex relationships happened in that era and those cultures.
Throw it in without making a big deal (let the gamers do that) the way Funcom did in AoC