Do we need more LGBTQ+ protagonists in video games?

[chikusho]

It's all about context really.
A wink and a nod towards a protagonist being some part of LGBTQ, just to break the monotony of heteronormativity, would be refreshing.
A purposeful exploration of LGBTQ themes within a game story could also be a powerful thing.

Outside of that, I think LGBTQ characters fit better in a supporting role, or in a larger cast of characters. By not being protagonists they are usually able to be have more developed personalities and better defined arcs. And you can do more with their interactions with the rest of the cast. At least considering how game stories usually go.

 

[sumanoskae]

Same answer as always; how many LBGT people do you know? How many characters in games are LBGT? Just pretending that that much of your audience doesn't exist is silly. If a game included no women, or no men, or nobody outside of a certain race, despite taking place in an environment where such people exist, would you not be perplexed?

 

[Proto Taco]

So most pre op transexuals are also transvestites but not all transvestites are transexuals.

'Transsexuals' are not 'sexual'. 'Transsexuals' have a brain of gender A in a body of gender B. That means that the trans person's body is incapable of maintaining their brain. This leads to depression, reduced mental faculties, and stunted maturity in trans individuals. HRT helps with the reduced mental faculties, maturity and takes the edge off the depression. Many trans individuals, however, will pursue social gender assimilation to help further alleviate the depression and loneliness brought on by being forced to socialize as and with the wrong demographic.

Transvestites dress in flamboyant, campy stylizations of cultural genders for performance and/or sexual purposes.

'Transsexuals' and transvestites are NOT the same thing, not even a little.

Your comment is disrespectful and offensive, stop it.

 

[elvor0]

So most pre op transexuals are also transvestites but not all transvestites are transexuals.

'Transsexuals' are not 'sexual'. 'Transsexuals' have a brain of gender A in a body of gender B. That means that the trans person's body is incapable of maintaining their brain. This leads to depression, reduced mental faculties, and stunted maturity in trans individuals. HRT helps with the reduced mental faculties, maturity and takes the edge off the depression. Many trans individuals, however, will pursue social gender assimilation to help further alleviate the depression and loneliness brought on by being forced to socialize as and with the wrong demographic.

Transvestites dress in flamboyant, campy stylizations of cultural genders for performance and/or sexual purposes.

'Transsexuals' and transvestites are NOT the same thing, not even a little.

Your comment is disrespectful and offensive, stop it.

Did you even read my post other than that small, out of context bit you quoted? My opening words were "I'm guessing it's because a transvestite is different from a transexual" in regards to why the T means Transexual, but not Transvestite.

Your post is disrespectful and offensive to me, because you didn't bother to read my point properly before jumping on me.
I'll stick it here:

the T in "LGBTQ" doesnt involve trasvestite as well as transexual people?

I'm guessing it's because a transvestite is different from a transexual(pre or post op) in that a transvestite wears the opposite gender clothes because they like them as clothes, transexual people wear them because they want to /be/ the opposite sex. The prior has no doubts or sexual "oddities", for want of a better word, because that sounds like I think there's something wrong with non straight people.

So most pre op transexuals are also transvestites but not all transvestites are transexuals.

I know Transvestites are not the same as Transexuals, that was the whole point of my post, where I was making a presumption at why Transvestites are not included LGBT, but Transexuls are. They can however, cross over.

Of course someone can be both a Transvestite and a Transexual. The word transvestite means someone who wears clothes of the opposite sex. It /is/ the case that some pre-op Transexuals wear clothes of the opposite sex, because they are (for example) still /physically/ a man wearing womens clothing until they are post op and become...a woman wearing womens clothing. That doesn't discount how they feel mentally, but pre op the whole concept is that they feel like a Woman in a Mans body, or vice versa.

I did not mean sexual as in "they want to feel sexy in those clothes". I meant it as in they want to be the opposite physical sex, which is what I said, in my original post. "they want to /be/ the opposite sex". Which is of course, the very definition of a Transexual.

Also, not all transvestites do it for performance or sexual purposes, or in flamboyant clothing. Some just like to wear perfectly normal womens clothing because they like them as clothes, or they find them more comfortable. Your statement isn't fair to transvestites, especially not for someone wrongly having a go at me for lumping people together in a catagory. There's a guy on these very forums, who, while is way too cool to be offended at your hypocritical generalization, wears womens clothes, not because he's some flamboyant sexual deviant, but because he likes them as clothes.

Now, regardless of if you're transexual yourself, just a keyboard warrior, or both, I am /not/ apologizing for my original post. Because I didn't say anything distrespectful or offensive, I was making a point to differenciate Transvestites and Transexuals, while stating that there is some overlap between the two, which is true. I have nothing but the utmost respect for all members of the LGBT and Transvestites. But in future, read what someone has said before you start having a go at them for something they didn't say.

Frankly, I have no idea how you could be offended at the statement that some pre op transexuals wear clothes of the opposite gender and are thus transvestites. Are you just looking to annoy yourself on purpose? I'm going with keyboard warrior, because I can't believe that a transexual, for all their trials and hardships, would choose /that/ harmless statement to get worked up about.

 

[gargantual]

There is something fundamentally wrong with this thread.

It began with the first post and the subject name.
Do we need more..
NEED.
Such a big word.

There's nothing stopping you or anyone else to make a game with characters or a protagonist that's any sexual orientation. If you can not make it, you can finance it. To say you need it, is quite a childish attitude and I think it set off the discussion on the wrong foot.

Because if there was an adventure game out now that had a drag queen that has to infiltrate a criminal organisation, I would buy it without a second thought. I loved that I got to play as a rabbi in the shivah.

Games have very little sex in them. They may be rife with tittilation, but I couldn't tell you the sexual orientation of most game characters. Is gordon freeman gay? Was alyx born as a guy?
Really, that wouldn't change anything at all, just like knowing that dumbledore is gay doesn't really change him much.
It can be an important part of storytelling and games that focus on storytelling could definitely benefit from lgbtq characters.

That's why I expect to see this in adventure games first and minecraft last.

Thats what made Volgin's reveal so funny in Metal Gear Solid 3. Its like doppelgang an important solider to sneak into the base for intel. But who could preemptively account for and say wait this is a bad idea, because said solider is the big bad villain's sex toy, and knows his genitals better than anyone else?

No fair Kojima.

Immeasureable metrics make for great humor in action stories. Its kinda like wiping out the entire family, and their children so they don't grow up determined to exact an assassin's revenge, only to get killed years later by a distant nephew six times removed..."

Damn you writers!! *shakes fist*

 

[Jake0fTrades]

Having more diversity in the sexuality of video game characters would certainly be a positive thing for gaming publicity and it would break up the routine of "muscular, heterosexual, white dude," but you really can't tell writers what to write--that's why a lot of video game and movie stories are so agonizingly bad.

I think most writers tend to write their protagonist as being the same gender, race, and sexuality that they are. It's what they're more familiar with and it's an easier perspective for them to write from. Then again that's just what I think.

The other problem is that with hot-button issues like LGBTQ+ in the United States, it's hard to write an LGBTQ+ character without them being defined by their sexuality and that being the only part of them anyone talks about.

 

[Magmarock]

I hate threads like this
(Why'd you click on it?)
shut up that's why...

Do we need more... well it's not like we'll die with out them.
would I like to see some? Sure! Why not.
but as this new console generation of gaming gets under way, I'd much rather see a game that's just fun to play.

(I mean one that's fun to play and not developed by Telltale)

not a single game that's been announced looks fun to play. so the protagonist could be the gayest transsexual minority ever and I still wouldn't care.

Did I really out grow video games?
I'm old, fuck me...

No you didn't out grow video games, the industry forgot how to make them.

 

[Quickman]

Honestly, LGBT characters kind of weird me out and detract from my ability to enjoy a story. Not saying I dislike, wish to shun, or have a desire to discriminate against them.... it's just my natural reaction.

I would prefer they have their own sub-category within the fiction market to be honest. That way it wouldn't be forced upon anyone in a mainstream sort of way and they could willingly have such characters without the ability to detract from the story while simultaneously being able to be represented in a way they individually choose to be appropriate as people.

That being said... a writer, creator of a fictional work, who isn't from a certain demographic should never be forced to include anything he doesn't feel come naturally to him. I understand the argument and see where you are coming from regarding the whole "representing a certain proportion of [insert a demographic here]". It represents you as a person. It represents your world, your feelings, your perspective. I have no problem with that.

However for as much as it would attract some it would detract others as well.

I hope I don't come off negatively. I am merely stating how I feel as a person.

 

[Suicidejim]

The "as long as it isn't a focal point" argument is a bit of a weird one, to my eyes. I mean, sure, obviously it's important to have non-straight protagonists who don't just stroll around talking about nothing but how not-straight they are, that'd be cartoonish, but I'm all for games in which the protagonist explores their sexuality or has to deal with how society treats their orientation. That's a story rarely touched upon in gaming, and I'd be interested to see the different variations that might emerge.

And I'm tired of the "who cares, just make good games" defence. Some people actually do care, quite a bit, and trying to include diverse characters isn't going to somehow start making games bad. More diversity in your characters and backgrounds means more diversity available in the stories you can tell. Given how overwhelming the proportion of straight white protagonists to everything else is, I doubt we'll suddenly have the entire industry churning out the gaming equivalent of Captain Planet overnight.

EDIT: AND ONE MORE THING BECAUSE I KEEP SEEING THIS ONE COME UP. "Well, it's only natural, most writers are straight white guys, so obviously they feel more comfortable writing straight white guys." I'm not even going to be nice about this one. If you can only write characters if they match your exact gender/ethnicity/sexuality/whatever, that's a mark against you as a writer. If you can't step out of your own experience, you are going to be severely limited in what you can write. Sure, you probably can't identify perfectly with someone whose life experience is completely different from your own, but you can certainly research the subject, talk to people, get a feel for the topic. That's the excuse of someone who couldn't care enough to do their homework, and who decided that, even though they were ideally placed to do something about so many people who are badly represented in media (if they're even represented at all), that was just too much effort.

 

[rgrekejin]

I love the idea that we can only have gay characters if they add something to the story, like "heterosexual is default, so make a straight character unless you can think of a compelling reason for them to be gay. Otherwise I just don't wanna know!" Groan.

Don't tell me you're gay unless it's relevant to something I'm doing. 'Cause we're all straight here, right?

See, that's not what I think people mean when they reply "not unless it's relevant to the story". You seem to be under the impression that we're adrift in a vast sea of heterosexual characters with a very rare LGBT island thrown in now and again. But that's not actually true. What we actually have is a handful of straight characters, a few rare LGBT characters, and a vast, uncountable host of characters whose sexuality we know nothing about. And that's not counting all the games where the characters in question aren't even human, thereby rendering any discussion of their sexuality pointless.

This is because in most games, the sexuality of the characters is completely irrelevant to anything that's going on, and crow-barring it in without a good, story-related reason would make as much sense as adding an out-of-context discussion of said character's religious preferences. Seriously. Do we need more Muslim characters? More Catholic ones? More atheist ones? Do we need a diversity of faiths in videogames? I'm sure there are lots of people who would appreciate having a character who shares the same faith as them. And yet, no one even gives this suggestion any serious thought. Because we all instinctively understand that, in the vast majority of games, the religion of the character in question is utterly irrelevant to the proceedings. It only comes up when it actually is relevant.

So when I see the "not unless it's relevant to the story" reply, I tend to think it's less about people wanting you to have a special reason for disrupting their happy world of homogenous heterosexuality, and more about them wanting you to have a valid reason for inserting sexuality into the game *at all*.

 

[Darkmantle]

I love the idea that we can only have gay characters if they add something to the story, like "heterosexual is default, so make a straight character unless you can think of a compelling reason for them to be gay. Otherwise I just don't wanna know!" Groan.

Don't tell me you're gay unless it's relevant to something I'm doing. 'Cause we're all straight here, right?

I'm going to repeat my argument from earlier, though slightly abridged.

There are less explicitly straight characters then you make it out. Straight is NOT the default, the default is "un-oriented". Is "Soap Mactavish" of CoD fame gay? Is it ever brought up what naughty bits he prefers? Hell, I could, with some time, make a very strong case for "Soap" being a silently gay character. Same with Marcus Fenix from gears of war, he could very well be gay. I mean we know Dom is straight because he has a wife, but Marcus never seems to bring up his orientation.

But we both know, that the writers probably never even bothered to write a sexual orientation in for these characters. They are neither straight, nor gay, nor bi, nor anything else. It isn't brought up. I can't believe you would be satisfied with just name checking homosexuality, would that not just be tokenism? If Soap had some off-hand comment about a guy back home, would that be all it took to make you think homosexuality was taken seriously?

What people are saying, is that if the game has themes related to sexuality or the like, yea, having some non-straight characters is important. That's why I fully support and appreciate that bioware has started putting in homosexual relationships in their games. They have always included love interests etc in their games, and they let you make your own character in them, so it makes sense, and I'm glad they did it. But if you want games that have nothing to do with that kind of content to just start having token LGBT characters in them for no purpose other than to check themselves off as "gay-friendly", I don't think that's progress.

 

[Agente L]

I wouldn't go as far as saying "need", but it's always good to have variety on characters.

As long as it's a well written character, I don't have any problems with characters of any genre, personality or actions. Just look at Kanji] from Persona 4. It's a very well developed characters, with his inner struggles being shown and further worked on during the game. In the end, we don't really discover what he really was, but it's still food for thought. Heck, even Naoto goes through a somewhat situation. And it's an great character.

For me, it's less about "we need to have LGBT/whatever" and more "We need to have more good and well developed characters". The rest comes with it.

 

[Tarfeather]

I came here just to ask: What on earth does LGBTQ+ even mean?

 

[AgDr_ODST]

No we don't need more LGB heroes in games.

The orientation of a game's protagonist is the last thing I care about as long as the story, mechanics, level design and everything else is well done. If a game does have all of those things though but it's constantly shoving in my face reminders that say I'm playing as a gay man or a lesbian then I'll lose interest very quickly. I would much rather have a game where a deeper focus on normal or even alternative or sexualities can be optionally explored if that is not in fact the point of the game.

 

[Miles Maldonado]

I had a thought due to this thread: What if it's something that doesn't start as the primary element of a character, but an external force uses the fact to wreck the character's life either via blackmail in a society that isn't exactly happy about homosexuals, or to get him or her sacked from their position.

To me this seems like it would be a good story to tell - a character who already has come to terms with his or her sexuality finds themselves ruined by someone else who wanted them out of the way for something, or wanted them to bend to their will when they otherwise would not. Granted, this would probably only work in certain circumstances - the specific idea I had was an officer who was uninterested in politics who wanted to get his job done during a war, and the topic of homosexuality from a more corrupt officer who wants his position uses his own sexuality against him to twist his arm to whatever said corrupt officer wants even in the face of a bigger threat. Something like that.

EDIT: If nothing else it would be a change of pace from "X killed my wife/girlfriend/other significant person" and might serve as a story focused on rooting out corruption as well as attempting to send a message to the (probably fictional) society.

 

[Samael Barghest]

Keep dreaming. As it is now, it ain't happening. The game industry is only concern with profit. A game like that would spark too much controversy, especially if the character wasn't portrayed properly. There would be little to no sales, law suits, and pissed off people.