Do we need more LGBTQ+ protagonists in video games?

[Therumancer]

To get right down to it without getting into a whole spiel about it, there is a lack of protagonists in video games that fall outside of the heterosexual norm. Now I'm not talking about games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age where main characters can choose whether to be heterosexual or not. I'm talking about games where the protagonist has been written as being LGBTQ+. Off the top of my head I can only think of My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant and maybe Gone Home if we can stretch the definition of what constitutes a protagonist. Read Only Memories promises to be more LGBT friendly as a video game but it's not clear at whether or not the main character will be heterosexual.

This also isn't just a matter of inclusion. Yes I would like to see more protagonists that I can relate more closely to as a gay male but I that's not the only reason I would like more LGBT characters. There's just so many more varied stories you can tell if you don't just stick to the rigid formula that seems to be in place for video games.

I'm not saying I dislike games with heterosexual protagonists, I mean if I did what would I have to play. I also understand why there are not very many games with protagonists that are explicitly LGBTQ+, video games want to appeal to the core demographic of heterosexual 16-30 year old men and I get that. I just want a little more breaking of the mould.

Anyway, enough of me talking, I want to know the users' opinions on the matter.

Well, there are more than you think. The main character in "Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle Of The Flesh" is gay for example and indeed attending therapy about it where it comes up. When you start looking into games made in Japan you find tons of gay and lesbian characters, especially when you look under labels like "Yaoi" and "Yuri" and they don't always involve outright porn. That said when it DOES come to porn games you have the two part "Lightning Warrior Raidy" a sort of lite RPG/hentai game where the main character is about as lesbian as your going to get. "Loren Amazon Princess" is another game that features heavy lesbian elements, though it's not a sex game (unlike Lighting Warrior Raidy), Loren herself is pretty much a Lesbian amazon, your character who can be either male or female can be straight or gay in either direction with the various characters you run into (and that includes potentially romancing Loren).

To be honest, given that your dealing with such a small percentage of the population, and also a behavior (or state of being if you prefer) that is pretty much gross to the overwhelming number of norms, your dealing with pretty good representation in how often it does come up, and the simple fact that you can find entire series of games, albeit off the beaten path, that cater specifically to that. Not to mention that as much as you might not want to include them, games where you can choose gay romance options without the character being written in any particular way do count, especially when your dealing with something like "Mass Effect" with tons of dialogue and characterization behind the protagonist even if you get to name them. Indeed one of the big problems with "Mass Effect" has always been the lack of control and how things are so heavily written that what you select doesn't always wind up mattering as what you choose doesn't necessarily match what's going to come out of Shepard's mouth. Dragon Age "Origins" with it's silent lead is a case where you can make a better argument, but "Hawke" in Dragon Age II was again pretty heavily scripted and developed.


I don't think we need more, but time will tell if we see more. Honestly I think right now the whole gay rights movement has gotten offensive enough where it's begun discouraging people to want to work with it. The situation with Bioware for example hasn't gone unnoticed, where the writers decided to give gay options in a game, and then it became an entitlement where they were actually attacked for not having them in another project (The Old Republic Online) where it was touted as a major social issue. Ubisoft is getting similar treatment from liberals because they had a female protagonist in a game, and now it's seen as an entitlement that all of their games at least have the option for one. Basically nobody wants to work with these kinds of groups when they start making demands and telling you what you have to do with your games, or attacking you for exercising your own creative freedom.

My basic advice is to keep an eye out, and understand when dealing with a minority, you oftentimes have to look toward fringe sources. Your best bet as I pointed out, is to specifically do searches for "Yaoi" games or those with those elements, and you'll probably find a number of them from importers and the like. That said I imagine you'll see more representation as an option at least within the AAA market, assuming the gay rights movement can learn to zip it, and just go with the flow. By all means express appreciation for inclusion when it comes up, but when it goes so far as to attack someone for daring not to present gay alternatives to heterosexual romances (hey, maybe the writer just felt it didn't fit his characters, or not being gay just couldn't write it well) that's when you start to see problems.

 

[Silvanus]

Games would benefit from greater diversity, as other art forms have and continue to.

There are a great many people intentionally missing the point of the question (such as those talking about how we need well written characters, which should go without saying), or focusing on minutiae (like the use of the word "need").

 

[BarkBarker]

Apart from maybe a few nods and awareness jokes about stereotypes and the like, would you really get anything different out of it? The game is still marketed to straight men, so you'll likely get a lot of tits and ass somewhere anyway and it'll likely be an interesting lampshading, but not much else. If they were gay or trans or whatever, would it really matter? Do you want a game with multiple races to have some sort of input on racism and thus the same with gays and trans, or do just wanna see them in a position where that preference is so meaningless they coulda been hetero and nothing changed?

Basically my point is it can either mean a lot or it can mean nothing, there is no victory in these kind of situations unfortunately, however it could be an interesting experience to live the life of a man who cannot marry whom they love....wait thats already been done in multiple different forms, er maybe it'll be fun to experience feeling like one gender trapped inside another....I guess??

 

[Darkmantle]

More specifically, I'd like to see more characters that are 'out and proud.' Mainly because it seems to me that there's this logic that the quality of a queer character can be directly tied to how 'out' they are.

Practically abstinent gay man who is so out of touch with his sexual identity it's hilarious? Great character!

Effeminate gay man who's a total queen and loves having sex with other men? Bad character!

You know that the instant a developer puts your "out and proud" ideal character into a game, they would get a huge wave of controversy for "stereotyping" gay people. It's lose-lose really. What are devs to do?

 

[Stavros Dimou]

Most games doesn't apply a sexual identity to a character anyway.
Some do for story purposes,so at that point it comes down to if there is a need for more stories written with such protagonists.
Here is what's truth however: Usually,at least most story writers,make the protagonist of their stories somewhat like them. Actually a very big percentage of stories if not the majority of them,are written in first person,meaning the writer forgets he is writing about another character,and writes as if the character himself is writing the story.
Having that in mind,we realize that in order for there to be more games with stories that have homosexuals as protagonists, there should be more homosexual people becoming involved with video game making.
Thus its up to them to change how things are. Usually strangers don't do favors to random persons,so it is kind of hard to just see an increase of stories with homosexual protagonists without a rise on homosexual video game makers.
So here is my personal advice: If you want something to be done,do it yourself!
This can be a great encouragement to drive you to change the way things are.

 

[Darkmantle]

No. How many games even have the protagonist even mention their sexual orientation? No Mass Effect and the like don't count because you choose it. The Last of Us or whatever it was did, and that's all I can think of other then that really dumb one, it was a movie about a sad lesbian or something but everyone made it out to be an amazing game.

I'd rather have a game focus on an interesting story rather then who the character likes to bone. I mean at best such an addition would be a footnote.

"Captain, the bad guys are doing things!"
"Holy shit balls! what are they doing?"
"I don't know, but I'm a transsexual."

Seriously? Is that what you want? That's how it's gonna end up if you keep asking for crap like this. If a developer feels like doing it because it's part of an interesting story then cool! If it's forced in because people kept bitching then it's not cool, and will probably cause more bitching and they won't try it again.

Well that's the main issue isn't it? Homosexuals are a non-visible minority. You usually can't look a person and say "they're gay" with any kind of accuracy. And for all this talk of the prevalence of heterosexuals in games, how many are just assumed straight because it never comes up? Look at Gears of war, we know Dom is straight, he has/had a wife, but marcus? Never brings up his sexuality. How do we know "Soap" MacTavish (of COD fame)isn't gay, it's never mentioned (and frankly he kinda looks like my gay roommate). or what about Alex and Reznov from CoD:BlOps? Again, never mentioned

I think this is part of the problem when people hear "I want more gay protagonists" it sounds like you want to have it mentioned in game merely to be name checked. I'm almost more interested to know what percentage of protagonists are non-oriented (IE sexuality never brought up)

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I don't quite buy this line of thinking.

For one, it seems for many a game, the publisher was the one being very adamant on which kind of character needed to be in the game and front and center. Diversity in devs is nice, but it seems like we also very much need a diversity in publisher thinking or else every video game out of norm still has to fight tooth and nail to get things put in.

And publishers are very rarely creative types. They are money managers, and they are more interested in market trends.

And second, I don't like this idea that the only way for more diverse characters is to have diverse people behind them. Like the only way a female protagonist gets written is if a girl wrote her apparently. Or that the creative director has to be black to get a black protagonist.

I think we can ask more of the creative types. If they can create characters who are dragons, elves, aliens, anthropomorphic turtles, we can ask for female or even queer characters.

Very good points actually.

1) I agree, although I think it was more bad wording on my part than us disagreeing. Substitute "publishers" for "devs" and I think we're more on the same page. Obviously developing a more diverse game is useless if it won't be properly funded or marketed to find an audience who appreciates it.

2) I totally agree with you here and I don't mean to imply that the only way to get diverse CHARACTERS is to have a more diverse group of people making them. I've seen a lot of games with great non-white, non-straight or non-male characters, in games that are directed by white male developers.

However, I've made the point before that if you have videogame makers who are influenced by stuff that's outside what we'd consider the "traditional" sphere of videogame creators, the stuff that they come up with is going to be more diverse - be it characters, settings, mechanics, etc. That's why I'd argue that a lack of diverse characters is a symptom, not a problem in itself. Other such symptoms include repetitive mechanics, settings, etc. Just look at the criticisms levelled at the "modern military shooter".

(It's also worth mentioning that very often game mechanics don't fall into this category. For example, it'd be foolish to re-invent "WASD" as the default direction keys in first-person games. People don't keep using this same configuration because of a lack of creativity, they keep using it because it just works. The same can't often be said for characters, settings, and other aspects of a game though.)

 

[simple64]

This is why I love the Escapist board. You can't have this discussion at this level of maturity anywhere else.

Incidentally, I'd love to see more LGBTQ characters in games. There are so many stories that needs to be told, and America is a diverse country. It's a crime that we are getting so many of the same things.

 

[Skratt]

As a heterosexual male, I wouldn't mind a protagonist being LGBT (Q+?). As long as I am playing a game about space aliens, or zombies or random medieval setting game, I don't care what the protagonist is sexuality speaking. Once you start forcing love interests as required plot drivers, hetero or otherwise, you lose me. I don't want to play a dating sim.

Mass Effect was okay and I enjoyed pursuing Liara through all three games as a love interest for my character but I would have zero interest in doing the same thing for an LGBT character in that type of game where I was asked to go out of my way to pursue the interest.

I would however, play a game where the protagonist was LGBT and had an already established love interest that I got to interact with. Say a detective who was gay, came home to his partner and they interacted as a hetero couple in the same game might. Or two mech pilots who had the aforementioned established relationship, etc. Bring on the diversity and I'll happily play in that sandbox. Just don't make sex or sexuality the focus and I'm in.

 

[Darkmantle]

More specifically, I'd like to see more characters that are 'out and proud.' Mainly because it seems to me that there's this logic that the quality of a queer character can be directly tied to how 'out' they are.

Practically abstinent gay man who is so out of touch with his sexual identity it's hilarious? Great character!

Effeminate gay man who's a total queen and loves having sex with other men? Bad character!

You know that the instant a developer puts your "out and proud" ideal character into a game, they would get a huge wave of controversy for "stereotyping" gay people. It's lose-lose really. What are devs to do?

Well, 'sexual deviancy' is still a very common trope for video game writing, so I wouldn't blame people for possibly being apprehensive at first (once again, I would like everyone to know that if Far Cry 4 does anything of the sort with Pagan Min, I fucking called it).

However, queens are just as much a part of the gay community as less effeminate gay men, so if someone writes a guy whose flaming puts forest fires to shame, I see no problem with it as long as he's a well-adjusted person whose possible foibles can't be directly linked to his homosexuality.

Oh I get that queens are just as much a part of the gay community, but that doesn't change the fact that a ton of people would call the developers homophobes and attack them/try and get people to boycott their game. So as a dev, would you want to take that risk? Even more unlikely, is a publisher going to want to greenlight a game that could be such a hotbutton issue?

This is the bed we've made, and now we are lying in it

 

[Saltarius]

So uh, why do people automatically assume that LGBT characters HAVE to be well-written with deep character to be something worthwhile, when we have plenty of characters already who are the same straight white male with not much to add but different inflection from the same pool of male voice actors?

 

[Saltarius]

So uh, why do people automatically assume that LGBT characters HAVE to be well-written with deep character to be something worthwhile, when we have plenty of characters already who are the same straight white male with not much to add but different inflection from the same pool of male voice actors?

Because minorities have to be held on a pedestal for some reason. Making a generic lead character that just so happens to be gay, or a woman, or an ethnic minority, is apparently tokenism by itself.

God forbid the LGBT be held to the same standard and criticism levels of majority works without having any additional hoops for their representation to be 'valid.'

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Because minorities have to be held on a pedestal for some reason. Making a generic lead character that just so happens to be gay, or a woman, or an ethnic minority, is apparently tokenism by itself.

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner here!

It's maddening when people think that every character who isn't a heterosexual, white male has to be a special snowflake. I'm pretty vocal on this forum when it comes to my passionate desire to see more diverse protagonists, but let's be honest: inclusivity isn't going to magically usher in the Shakespearean Age of video game storytelling. If exclusion continues out of a fear of quality discrepancies between minority and non-minority characters, then meaningful diversity will never occur.

Truth is, some games will /still/ be written as tightly as a Neil Gaiman novel, and others will /still/ appear to have taken their inspiration from something that the writing team found written in feces on the wall of a highway gas station restroom.

So let's shake it up and bring on the diversity, already! If your characters are shitty, I guarantee that we're mature enough to realize that they would have been shitty regardless.

 

[Branindain]

Well that's the main issue isn't it? Homosexuals are a non-visible minority. You usually can't look a person and say "they're gay" with any kind of accuracy. And for all this talk of the prevalence of heterosexuals in games, how many are just assumed straight because it never comes up? Look at Gears of war, we know Dom is straight, he has/had a wife, but marcus? Never brings up his sexuality. How do we know "Soap" MacTavish (of COD fame)isn't gay, it's never mentioned (and frankly he kinda looks like my gay roommate). or what about Alex and Reznov from CoD:BlOps? Again, never mentioned

I think this is part of the problem when people hear "I want more gay protagonists" it sounds like you want to have it mentioned in game merely to be name checked. I'm almost more interested to know what percentage of protagonists are non-oriented (IE sexuality never brought up)

This is roughly my problem with this topic as well. The majority of protagonists are not straight, the majority of protagonists are of unspecified sexuality because the majority of games don't go there to begin with. It reminds me of, I think it was Boondock Saints, which has a gay character and if it wasn't for one 20-second sequence of him being woken by a phone call with his partner next to him, you would never know. Having played Halo 1 & 2, Master Chief (or Sergeant Johnson, or whoever else) could be straight, gay, asexual or a paedophile for all I know. You don't want to be rewriting the story in order to crowbar in a reference to someone's sexuality.

Having said that, it would be particularly impactful to "out" the protagonist of one of these major franchises when you're three games in and have a following built up. No company is going to take that kind of chance though.

 

[Xman490]

Yeah, sure. Whatever. Doesn't matter to me if more show up, unless they become stereotypical.

 

[trlkly]

So uh, why do people automatically assume that LGBT characters HAVE to be well-written with deep character to be something worthwhile, when we have plenty of characters already who are the same straight white male with not much to add but different inflection from the same pool of male voice actors?

Because minorities have to be held on a pedestal for some reason. Making a generic lead character that just so happens to be gay, or a woman, or an ethnic minority, is apparently tokenism by itself.

The objection is not to tokenism, but to the reason why tokenism is decried. It may not be tokenism, but it's still minority status being used a gimmick. In both, a minority is added to make people stop complaining about them not being there. But that's not the ultimate goal.

This need not be about minorities. Let's say you want the Kinect to be incorporated into more games. Would you want it to be just a gimmick that doesn't affect gameplay at all, like maybe making your character move funny? Would that satisfy your urge to have better Kinect games?

Having something you care about just be a gimmick just doesn't satisfy. Minority inclusion is not special in this regard

 

[Darkmantle]

Well that's the main issue isn't it? Homosexuals are a non-visible minority. You usually can't look a person and say "they're gay" with any kind of accuracy. And for all this talk of the prevalence of heterosexuals in games, how many are just assumed straight because it never comes up? Look at Gears of war, we know Dom is straight, he has/had a wife, but marcus? Never brings up his sexuality. How do we know "Soap" MacTavish (of COD fame)isn't gay, it's never mentioned (and frankly he kinda looks like my gay roommate). or what about Alex and Reznov from CoD:BlOps? Again, never mentioned

I think this is part of the problem when people hear "I want more gay protagonists" it sounds like you want to have it mentioned in game merely to be name checked. I'm almost more interested to know what percentage of protagonists are non-oriented (IE sexuality never brought up)

This is roughly my problem with this topic as well. The majority of protagonists are not straight, the majority of protagonists are of unspecified sexuality because the majority of games don't go there to begin with. It reminds me of, I think it was Boondock Saints, which has a gay character and if it wasn't for one 20-second sequence of him being woken by a phone call with his partner next to him, you would never know. Having played Halo 1 & 2, Master Chief (or Sergeant Johnson, or whoever else) could be straight, gay, asexual or a paedophile for all I know. You don't want to be rewriting the story in order to crowbar in a reference to someone's sexuality.

Having said that, it would be particularly impactful to "out" the protagonist of one of these major franchises when you're three games in and have a following built up. No company is going to take that kind of chance though.

That bit at the end about risk speaks to a larger point too. "Risk", why is it a risk?

I can tell you why, long story short, still a lot of homophobic people out there that the gaming industry fears losing the cash flow from. I think the better solution is to work on reality and the real people with these views, and the other pieces will fall into place. Stop attacking a symptom, destroy the disease.

 

[Stg]

Damn I'm tired of these topics. Who gives a shit about the sexual orientation of a video game character? Would it make a difference if Marcus Fenix was gay? No. Would it make a difference if Gordon Freeman was a trans-sexual? Not in the slightest. Would anyone really care if Jill Valentine preferred the ladies over men? Only the simple-minded would care. Sexual identity should be completely ignored unless it's a core game mechanic or it's a part of the story. If sexuality isn't mentioned at all, why the hell would anyone start analyzing it?

I don't know why people cannot be content with the games that allow us to choose the sexual orientation and leave the rest alone. It's a video game which is meant for our entertainment. If you're so wrapped up in yourself, your own sexuality, and the sexuality of everyone around you that you cannot enjoy a video game, then I believe you have much bigger problems. These types of arguments are right in line with people bitching about Mario lacking any type of diversity. The moment developers cave in and start allowing full character customization is the day video games will effectively die. Once developers give control over to the moronic masses, they will be too concerned with trying not to offend someone which will cause the content to suffer greatly.

 

[KisaiTenshi]

So two isn't a shortage? and for the record, both Birdo and Poison/Roxy (I only count them as one character) are not canonically trans. At least, not outside of Japan, where they were censored. The only characters who are trans outside of Japan that come to mind are Erica from Catherine (in which she's the butt of a ton of insults from her "friends" because they don't really seem to respect her), Bridget from the Guilty Gear series (and I'm not sure if I'd even count him since, for him, women's clothing isn't really crossdressing) and Flea from Chrono Trigger. Notice a trend among those games? Japanese, Japanese, and Japanese.

There's plenty of Japanese games that like to play with the Transgender angle, Steins;Gate ( http://steins-gate.us/ ) being one of the more recent ones. It's a core part of the narrative, a not a simple "randomy GLBTQ character" checkbox being ticked off on some marketing department's list.

Where Japan tends to succeed and America fails is in regards to sexuality. Japanese aren't so repressed to care, so you see lot of things in their fiction that would never see the light of day here for for fear of not selling to the willingly sexual repressed. However not very many GLBTQ characters are written well, no matter where and what game they are in because the developers and writers have even less experience with them, that they could only possibly write a negative stereotype.

 

[KB13]

While I won't outright say we need more; as there are many games out there with LGBTA characters either already out to consumers or in the works, I think they need to bring more attention to themselves. And, no I don't mean in an obnoxious, and or creepy way such as Alfred Ashford from Resident evil Code Veronica, that was just weird. I like the more subtle devices for characters such as those in Sims (yeah I know easy decisions sue me). I really don't count characters such as Leliana, Zeveran, (every romance option for DA2) Liara or Diana Allers, as they are all not only widely known but recent and in the news. Though I feel as though I should count Kaiden as he becomes a male homosexual option in the third game (All three if you know the right codes!)

Geez look at all these character's I just listed in just 2 games, 1 company. That's not even listing my favorites like Gay Tony from GTA. Carol and Greta the two lovable lesbian Ghouls from Fallout 3, Juhani the first openly lesbian character in the Star Wars Universe, and Flea from Chrono Trigger. As I said there are enough they just need to pull up their respecting leg coverings and demand a little more attention, not just from fans but from their developers. Seriously Juhani was glitched until the third patch for KOTOR. I do agree with Sigmund Av Volsung.