Sexuality in Mass Effect

[Pyode]

If people actually adhered to this in real life, the media would be pretty bland.

But your claims do not hold water. Some of the most critically acclaimed films about homosexuality were made by heterosexual directors. Ethnic minorities are regularly featured in video games/films which have been made by white people. Even if they are not the protagonists, writers are at least able to slot them in as a secondary characters.

First of all, there is a huge difference between a director and a writer, nine times out of ten, its not the same person.

Secondly, those movies are generally true stories based on real people. I'm talking about a straight writer creating a fictional gay character. It's completely different and happens very rarely.

No such luck for homosexuals in video games. Not even Dragon Age: Origins featured one; Zevran was a bisexual, after all. In fact, the only other mainstream games which I can recall that feature secondary homosexual characters are Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit and Jade Empire. There is literally no representation in the market whatsoever.

Gaming is a minority in it's self, so you are talking about finding a minority within a minority. On top of that, the reason you see homosexuality more often in books and movies is because they are non interactive. It's one thing for someone to be able to sit and watch a movie about how hard life is for a homosexual. It's completely different for them to actively participate in the courtship.

To ad months of development to a game, in order to cater to a relative minority, would not have been feasible or logical.

How would the inclusion of even a single male homosexual option have taken "months of development"?

Game development is an incredibly complex endeavor. First you would have to write the dialog, then bring the voice actors to record it. After that, you have to input the animation and other coding. Then comes bug testing and the subsequent fixes and then you have to find and fix the bugs that your original fixes caused. It's not as simple as just typing in a few lines of code.

Keep in mind that this game is already on two disks. It's the first 360 game I have ever seen do that.

 

[RyVal]

If people actually adhered to this in real life, the media would be pretty bland.

But your claims do not hold water. Some of the most critically acclaimed films about homosexuality were made by heterosexual directors. Ethnic minorities are regularly featured in video games/films which have been made by white people. Even if they are not the protagonists, writers are at least able to slot them in as a secondary characters.

First of all, there is a huge difference between a director and a writer, nine times out of ten, its not the same person.

The point still stands; white, straight directors will still make films featuring gay or black people. People do not have to let their own personal identity dictate their creative process. If we did, then we wouldn't even have sci-fi in the first place.

Secondly, those movies are generally true stories based on real people. I'm talking about a straight writer creating a fictional gay character. It's completely different and happens very rarely.

Brokeback Mountain, American Beauty, Gohatto, even Tropic Thunder.

No such luck for homosexuals in video games. Not even Dragon Age: Origins featured one; Zevran was a bisexual, after all. In fact, the only other mainstream games which I can recall that feature secondary homosexual characters are Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit and Jade Empire. There is literally no representation in the market whatsoever.

Gaming is a minority in it's self, so you are talking about finding a minority within a minority.[/quote]
Judging from how profitable the industry is, it certainly isn't a minority.

On top of that, the reason you see homosexuality more often in books and movies is because they are non interactive. It's one thing for someone to be able to sit and watch a movie about how hard life is for a homosexual. It's completely different for them to actively participate in the courtship.

As aforementioned, there is nothing forcing these people to follow the homosexual option. They can ignore it completely and it will never affect them in the slightest.

To ad months of development to a game, in order to cater to a relative minority, would not have been feasible or logical.

How would the inclusion of even a single male homosexual option have taken "months of development"?

Game development is an incredibly complex endeavor. First you would have to write the dialog, then bring the voice actors to record it.

As most video games show, most dialogue is written on the back of a napkin and voice actors are brought in for a few days, allowing them to garble out their lines, before they are paid and kicked out. These are hardly time-consuming factors.

After that, you have to input the animation and other coding. Then comes bug testing and the subsequent fixes and then you have to find and fix the bugs that your original fixes caused. It's not as simple as just typing in a few lines of code.

And this still would not take as long as you imply it would.

Keep in mind that this game is already on two disks. It's the first 360 game I have ever seen do that.

Again, I don't think a few "I love you lines" and a hugging scene are really going to tax the disk space.

 

[RyVal]

Marginalise: relegate to a lower or outer edge, as of specific groups of people; "We must not marginalize the poor in our society".

Social groups who are marginalised are minorities in the first place, since it would be impossible for them to become marginalised otherwise. So your "Homosexuals don't have a large enough influence to warrant homosexual characters" point is redundant, since this is a key aspect of being marginalised.

Good, you've answered your own question. Now that you know what the difference between being marginalized and not being featured is, can you take the hint and stop being so aggressively demanding?

Because asking to be represented at all is being "aggressively demanding", obviously.

Comparing your problem to the mistreatment of black people doesn't do much for your argument though.

While somehow acting as if it is fair game to marginalise homosexuals on the basis that they are a minority is doing absolute wonders for yours.

 

[The4th1]

RyVal, I think you completely and falsely misquoted me. Do you have a forum posting disorder where you take what people say out-of-context (I was actually implying companies aren't benevolent beings that cater to every upset that a particular product happens to have, they only care about profits) See, I hate posting on topics such as these since anything that anyone says is taken out-of-context.

FYI I was commenting on the original post but feel free to dissect the post with misquoted and rhetoric points.


EDIT: You'll obviously point out my homophobia by stating something which I cannot fathom.

You seem too focussed in finding homophobia, which is annoying. It's like finding racism where there is none in Resident Evil 5. Like a paranoid person who thinks someone's out to get them even though there is none (inb4 "How do you know that... they perhaps are", this person i am referring to has no enemies who wishes to harm him, I made him up so therefore he is what I dictate him to be.)

Can you perhaps accept that they didn't want to explore this route in this game? Were you upset that there was no romance in KOTOR2? (AFAIK) I anticipate a none-serious, rhetoric reply.

 

[RyVal]

RyVal, I think you completely and falsely misquoted me. Do you have a forum posting disorder where you take what people say out-of-context (I was actually implying companies aren't benevolent beings that cater to every upset that a particular product happens to have, they only care about profits) See, I hate posting on topics such as these since anything that anyone says is taken out-of-context.

You said that companies are motivated by profit and so they would not feature gay characters for fear of losing their profits. I pointed out that Dragon Age: Origins' sales were not damaged by the presence of gay characters. Where was the displacement of context?

EDIT: You'll obviously point out my homophobia by stating something which I cannot fathom.

So you are attacking me for something I have not even done yet. Right.

You seem too focussed in finding homophobia, which is annoying.

I never even said that the decision to omit gay characters from Mass Effect was due to homophobia, so where did this come from?

Can you perhaps accept that they didn't want to explore this route in this game? Were you upset that there was no romance in KOTOR2? (AFAIK) I anticipate a none-serious, rhetoric reply.

They had explored it before. They had previously explored - and were exploring - another aspect of homosexual relations. So why, then, omit this aspect?

 

[RyVal]

Marginalise: relegate to a lower or outer edge, as of specific groups of people; "We must not marginalize the poor in our society".

Social groups who are marginalised are minorities in the first place, since it would be impossible for them to become marginalised otherwise. So your "Homosexuals don't have a large enough influence to warrant homosexual characters" point is redundant, since this is a key aspect of being marginalised.

Good, you've answered your own question. Now that you know what the difference between being marginalized and not being featured is, can you take the hint and stop being so aggressively demanding?

Because asking to be represented at all is being "aggressively demanding", obviously.

Comparing your problem to the mistreatment of black people doesn't do much for your argument though.

While somehow acting as if it is fair game to marginalise homosexuals on the basis that they are a minority is doing absolute wonders for yours.

You're using circular logic.

Since I am referencing your own argument...

Don't worry, RyVal does that in all topics he enters. It's quite hilarious, actually.

Do I even know you?

 

[RanD00M]

I thought you could play as a gay male Shepard. Curious. I guess gay sex would spark more controversy that lesbian "sex"? I don't know.

This statement is so true.And it is also one of the main reason why my hope for humanity is so low.

 

[RyVal]

Don't worry, RyVal does that in all topics he enters. It's quite hilarious, actually.

Do I even know you?

I'm more of the guy who watches from the shadows.

I was sure we had a word for that.

Was it something beginning with "S"?

 

[The4th1]

Can you perhaps accept that they didn't want to explore this route in this game? Were you upset that there was no romance in KOTOR2? (AFAIK) I anticipate a none-serious, rhetoric reply.

They had explored it before. They had previously explored - and were exploring - another aspect of homosexual relations. So why, then, omit this aspect?

Wait, so you're saying they omitted an already (but not) explored route? How dare they do so, they should uphold the very values of which their RPGs stand for.

What do you mean by another homosexual aspect? As far as I can tell there's only one, the same sex aspect.

 

[RyVal]

Can you perhaps accept that they didn't want to explore this route in this game? Were you upset that there was no romance in KOTOR2? (AFAIK) I anticipate a none-serious, rhetoric reply.

They had explored it before. They had previously explored - and were exploring - another aspect of homosexual relations. So why, then, omit this aspect?

Wait, so you're saying they omitted an already (but not) explored route? How dare they do so, they should uphold the very values of which their RPGs stand for.

What do you mean by another homosexual aspect? As far as I can tell there's only one, the same sex aspect.

They included the option for lesbian relationships, but not gay relationships.

 

[scotth266]

Odds are that they just didn't want to do it in Mass Effect. What's the problem with that, when they've include the option in other games?

 

[Pyode]

The point still stands; white, straight directors will still make films featuring gay or black people. People do not have to let their own personal identity dictate their creative process. If we did, then we wouldn't even have sci-fi in the first place.

Again, your talking about directors as though they are the writers. And I'm not saying that someones race or orientation "dictate" their creative process.

What I am talking about is not a conscious decision. Unless the storyline demands something specific out of the character, such as orientation or race, the writer will naturally model the character, at east partially after him/herself.

Also, sci-fi is a setting. I'm talking about character development, it's completely different. In every sci-fi I have ever seen, even though the setting is completely different, the people still act basically normal, allowing them to be easier to relate to and care about.

Brokeback Mountain, American Beauty, Gohatto, even Tropic Thunder.

As I said, movies like that are rare. I never said they didn't exist. Also, in Brokeback Mountain, the homosexuality of the characters was essential to the plot (I don't know about those other two, I have never seen them). As I said above, typically, the only reason a straight writer will crate a gay main character, is because it is essential to the story being told. Also, the gay character in Tropic Thunder was a secondary character, I'm talking about main characters, and even then they only made him gay for comedic effect.

Judging from how profitable the industry is, it certainly isn't a minority.

Compared to the movie industry and other art forms, gaming is most definitely a minority.

As aforementioned, there is nothing forcing these people to follow the homosexual option. They can ignore it completely and it will never affect them in the slightest.

I wasn't talking about Mass Effect specifically. I was responding to your claims that their aren't enough gay characters in gaming as a whole. In a liner game, a gay protagonist would be hard for the majority of gamers to relate to.

As most video games show, most dialogue is written on the back of a napkin and voice actors are brought in for a few days, allowing them to garble out their lines, before they are paid and kicked out. These are hardly time-consuming factors.

I think the writers of Mass Effect would beg to differ on that one. It's true that, in most game, story and dialog play second fiddle to gameplay, but Mass Effect is not one of those games.

After that, you have to input the animation and other coding. Then comes bug testing and the subsequent fixes and then you have to find and fix the bugs that your original fixes caused. It's not as simple as just typing in a few lines of code.

And this still would not take as long as you imply it would.

Can you really say that for sure? Anytime you are working with coding of any kind, the slightest mistake can cause a chain reaction of bugs that need to be fixed. Not to mention that the simple act of play-testing to find the bugs can take hours on end.

Keep in mind that this game is already on two disks. It's the first 360 game I have ever seen do that.

Again, I don't think a few "I love you lines" and a hugging scene are really going to tax the disk space.

I didn't mean to imply that there wouldn't be enough room, my point was that the fact that it was on two disks shows just how much work they had already put into it. To demand that that work wasn't enough seems kinda petty.

 

[Ionami]

I AM NOT PUSHING AN AGENDA. I AM NOT TRYING TO FORCE YOU TO LOVE GAY PEOPLE OR EVEN AGREE WITH ME. I AM NOT ASKING FOR A GAY CHARACTER TO BE SHOEHORNED INTO THE GAME FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF BEING GAY. I AM SIMPLY NOTING THAT WHILE THERE IS A RANGE OF SEXUALITIES POSSIBLE FOR A FEMALE CHARACTER, A MALE CHARACTER CAN ONLY BE HETEROSEXUAL, AND THAT SEEMS LIKE A STEP BACK FOR BIOWARE. I THINK THAT IS INTERESTING! IF YOU DISAGREE, THAT'S FINE, BUT PLEASE REFRAIN FROM BUILDING STRAWMEN! THANKS!

What's a strawman?

 

[Ionami]

Judging from how profitable the industry is, it certainly isn't a minority.

Compared to the movie industry and other art forms, gaming is most definitely a minority.

Actually, the game industry is second now only to the pornography industry. Shocking, I know.

 

[mechanixis]

In the first game, you had straight human-on-human options, and then anything-on-female alien options. Bioware managed to salvage the controversy with the explanation "It's not gay if it's with an Asari 'cuz they're sexless and it's transcendental."

They sort of shot that in the foot in ME2, because now you can have lesbian sex with another woman, so as far as defending themselves they're dead in the water.

I guess they know that man-on-man sex options won't move enough copies - like all flaws with Mass Effect 2, I place the blame solely and unconditionally on EA.