Maybe the developers and publishers realized that they can diversify their casts and make more people happy (which will obviously bring more money, yes, I am not naive enough to believe they never think about profits). But if they earn more money for making more people happy, that's a marketing strategy I can get behind.
You misquoted Angelblaze here with what I wrote. Just a heads up.
And I can't speak for all people of course, but I can assume that some people want just that, yes. Some people want more than that. Some people want depictions of LGBT struggles. Some want subtle gay people. Some want happy gay people. Some just want someone to be gay and for it to never be important in any way. Different people want different stuff, which is why diversity might help. It's also the reason why it's important to listen to this "new demographic" and hear them out, see their criticism and their praise. There isn't a one single ultimate depiction of a large and diverse group of people that will satisfy everyone.
You sure like putting words in my mouth. I'm against politicizing issues because people who use them are doing just that using them. As a trans person I can say from personal experience that phony baloney bleeding hearts who come in only serve to turn things on their ears, not help. They're doing it in their own interest not ours. If they cared about equal rights things would get done, and they wouldn't hop to the next hot button leaving a group high and dry. I'm focusing on people who use things as platforms, not people who actually do things that improve the situation. Even if they don't make it worse, they're using it for shallow self-centred reasons, to gain votes/popularity. That does absolutely nothing to help the people who actually have to deal with these issues.
To put it simply; they come in, stir the shit, then do nothing, and leave the groups they say that they're trying to help holding the bag. That is not helpful, except maybe from an awareness standpoint, but awareness alone doesn't fix things.
Pluvia said:
Has discrimination and misconduct by the police against black people increased in Ferguson after the riots? And what does Ferguson have to do with what we're talking about?
How these two things line up are this way: Al Sharpton and activist groups came in to "stop the misconduct," which they never proved happened, and they burned the town. They bussed people in from all over to "bring awareness," in the process destroying the town. They came in used the situation as a political platform, then they destroyed the town(for over a year after), leaving the locals to carry an unnecessary burden. That's why I brought it up. It was the opposite of helpful for everyone involved, and got people totally unconnected to it hurt and killed.
My whole point is if you want to do something positive and helpful, then please do. I'm happy with that. If you wanna come in and use someone else's problems as your political platform, then go to hell.
You've sort of touched upon a similar issue here. If I could find the image I'd certainly post it but I can't. Instead, I'll just have to do this with words (god forbid). I've seen this too with my best friends, all of which are either asexual or homosexual leaving me as the only man with a ball and chain that's actually female. When the whole "Legalise gay marriage!" movement was sweeping the UK I encountered very few homosexuals that actually gave two flying fucks. The majority of those marching were overwhelmingly straight, wore thick black frame glasses with no lenses, were holding a soy-cappucino, wore tight flamboyant jeggings, had overly loose shirts and very dirty looking beards. Also note, they were with their girlfriends.
It's the same with many other movements. Feminism - should I dare mention this hand grenade of a topic - seems to be a movement just as guilty. It will regularly shove the actual victim aside and brandish its bulwark of justice and misinformation, screaming that it represents all women (and more recently, every thing that isn't white and male. Go figure) whilst the victim it shoved aside desperately tries to say that it is not represented by feminism, hipsterism, or social justice warriors as a whole.
I'd fight for the rights of my friends, not for the rights of a minority I think could be oppressed but don't really know but I've got to blog about on my Tumblr page.
"Oh, the terrible, evil heterosexual fighters would never accept me, boohoo, how am I supposed to combat other fighters to the death if they won't accept that I like to put my cock into the asses of men?"
Apparently the worst problem in Netherrealm. I thought getting frozen and having your body smashed to pieces was bad. But had I only known the terrible oppression some of these fighters face. How do they even muster the strength to make it through the day?
Here's a post that manages to not understand what being gay means and thinks that if bad things happen, things that aren't as bad should for some reason be ignored. Otherwise known as the "There are starving children in Africa so stop complaining" excuse.
Crudely put, but Eskimo makes a very valid point. This is a game based on ultra-violence and combos. I'm god damn surprised there was even a mild reference to romance, either heterosexual or homosexual. Granted, suggestion of attraction and romance has been made before but it was usually comedic relief or by Cage. Usually both.
This just feels... tacked on. It's like they felt they needed to try and install a "Yo, Nether Realm ain't homophobic y'all." message in to - no pun intended - cover their asses. Oh, and in before "you don't understand what gay means" when the majority of my friends are raging faggots (and don't start, they tell me to call them that, I'm just being a PC Social Justice guy here) and I regularly receive very interesting and at times graphic descriptions. At the end of the day they knew this would raise eyebrows and articles along with those eyebrows, and that would raise advertising, all whilst lowering costs. The gay receives no credit, and the company receives dosh.
We all know that the more recent MK games have had incredibly robust story modes, I mean they're not even very competitive in terms of fighting games, so people gotta be buying them for some reason. Hell a large part of the story of this game revolves around the children of previous fighters, it's not like that is tacking on heterosexuality. Cage's main personality trait for awhile was hitting on anything with tits, is that not "shoving heterosexuality down throats?" Whenever I see this issue come up I see lots of criticism which basically falls into one of two categories; the character's sexual orientation is mostly incidental to the character, so why'd they HAVE to be gay? Or the character's sexuality is a defining part of their story, like Dorian in DA:I, cue accusations of excessive gayness and complaints that their sexuality defines their entire characterization. Neither are particularly good arguments. A person is generally more than their sexuality, but on the other hand, if someone's sexuality has caused them to be the target of discrimination (like Dorian with his father in DA:I) then that will be a bigger part of who they are, people are defined by a lot of things, and hardships experienced are a significant part of that.
I'd really like to see these people articulate what they think would be a good representation of an lgbtq character in a game.
"Oh, the terrible, evil heterosexual fighters would never accept me, boohoo, how am I supposed to combat other fighters to the death if they won't accept that I like to put my cock into the asses of men?"
Apparently the worst problem in Netherrealm. I thought getting frozen and having your body smashed to pieces was bad. But had I only known the terrible oppression some of these fighters face. How do they even muster the strength to make it through the day?
Here's a post that manages to not understand what being gay means and thinks that if bad things happen, things that aren't as bad should for some reason be ignored. Otherwise known as the "There are starving children in Africa so stop complaining" excuse.
"Oh, the terrible, evil heterosexual fighters would never accept me, boohoo, how am I supposed to combat other fighters to the death if they won't accept that I like to put my cock into the asses of men?"
Apparently the worst problem in Netherrealm. I thought getting frozen and having your body smashed to pieces was bad. But had I only known the terrible oppression some of these fighters face. How do they even muster the strength to make it through the day?
Here's a post that manages to not understand what being gay means and thinks that if bad things happen, things that aren't as bad should for some reason be ignored. Otherwise known as the "There are starving children in Africa so stop complaining" excuse.
I wasn't making the argument that "there are more important things to care about". Real hate and violence against gay people is a real issue of the real world. This however is a game where all sorts of freaky people fight to the death in the most extreme ways. The topic of homosexuality seems rather silly in the context of this game.
I don't have a huge amount to say to this, so I'll just post my other post in the other thread about MKX gays
Redryhno said:
Adultratedhydra said:
Suprised theres less focus on the Vastly improved female character designs. Sonya actually looks like special forces now rather than army costumed hooker.
Don't be silly, female character designs is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO last year. Though I could've done without carapace boobs D'Vorah, a bit unnecessary. But I will say I sorta liked the older Sonya design if only because nearly everyone else in the game that wasn't a ninja was in varying degrees of undress and how over-the-top the series is in general.
Honestly I'm not sure I can buy the confrim myself. Not because he's gay, no, just that it took a dev outside of the game to confirm it, because I figured he was
Cassie since they have a bit of a moment near the end of the story mode at the temple, though that could have been confused because of the Jacqui/Takeda pairing built up most of it.
It just seems a bit like a cop-out. Like they can take it back and say it was never in the game to begin with if it got bad press and that all the hints were just you projecting your own wants onto the character. I mean, I actually have emotions towards Kung Jin, mostly because of how abominably STUPID and impulsive he is most of the story mode, so he's already better than most other gays Western devs have done, but it's not really confirmed in-universe. Just a dropped hint that be taken to mean a couple of things.
But, if we're talking about characters in this thread now, I've got to say that Cassie has got to be the blandest character. She's got nothing going for her other than being Sonya and Johnny's kid, who both have better scenes and lines than her, despite the story being pretty centered around her team. Her lines are...bad(and not in a so bad it's Cage way). And her moveset and animations are so boring, though she does have one of the best Fatalities in the game.
Edit: Also, I'm surprised people play the game for the story mode, the only thing that makes them somewhat interesting is the killing off of characters, everything else is honestly just par for the course, Outworld's got silly shit going down, Raiden brings everyone in, crap happens, boom, everything's good again.
Though I will admit the after-credits scene is pretty good in that it opens up alot of opportunities.
You want examples of good LGBT characters? Look to Eastern devs, sure there's tokenism and insensitivity there, but there's also better characterized ones than the best the West have given us. People say Cortez is a good character, but his entire being revolves around being gay and he's apparently been our shuttle pilot for the last two games as well but didn't get officially introduced until just now, which is a big mark against him as a character in my book.
I really think you're reading way too much cynical business-politics into that. I also don't think that the companies who add gay characters are necessarily doing it to be progressive (intentionally, anyway). Most of these characters have been NPC's and secondary characters, like the survivalist guy from The Last of US, or the dropship pilot from Mass Effect 3. When it is actually a main character, like Kung Jin, you see it handled in a very subtle, very human way.
I feel like you're seeing more and more of them because, for one, gay people do exist (somewhere between 4 and 10% of the US population depending on where you look. Probably somewhere in the middle, in all honesty) and they just, aren't demonized like they used to be. Back in the 70's and 80's you had the AIDS breakout, which was largely (and is still in some circles) blamed on gays. 90's and early 2000's you start to get the evangelicals coming into greater power with their constant thumping of Leviticus. Now though, even that is starting to wear off and we've reached a point where the majority of the US population supports, at the very least, not discriminating against gays, even if they don't support that lifestyle.
Just really seems like more of a "Hey, these people exist, they're just as normal as anyone else, and they make up a not-insignificant portion of the population. Maybe there should be some here and there in games."
That being said, the people crying about it totally just give the game more press and get more people to notice it. That's true in just about anything. Look at Anita Sarkeesian, she'd be a relatively harmless youtube commentator if everyone would have just, maybe, not threatened to rape and/or kill her and her family for wanting to talk about gaming maybe having an issue with female representation Loony reactionaries only wind up torpedoing their own cause in the end and ruining it for the more moderate members of it.
You're still putting words in my mouth and intentionally misunderstanding what I say.
These people are not standing up for equal rights, they're saying they are to be popular. Do you understand what the difference there is? This isn't about the people who stand up for equal rights, it's about the people who use such fights as platforms, but do nothing else. Awareness and political posturing at the end of the day generally gets bugger-all done and just ignites unwanted and unhelpful rhetoric for the people you say they're "helping."
The whole Ferguson analogy I used was to show the worst case scenario. Political pandering and pontificating do the opposite of help in these situations. They just cause shit storms. That's not helping, that's not fighting for equal rights. Fighting for equal rights is actually doing things like running petitions, and working to get legislation for equality passed. Standing on a stage and shouting about injustice, then leaving, is not helping.
So please try to understand the point here. Fighting for representation and equality are not about making people aware of what's wrong, it's about rectifying the problem. Just talking about it endlessly does really nothing, and people who talk about it to be popular are doing the cause a disservice. An even worse disservice is doing the barest minimum to say that you helped and leaving things in an even more confused mess.
So please try to understand where I'm coming from here. If you're gonna support a cause, then do so, but if you're doing it for shallow political reasons, then go away. What actually helps are people who come in and are willing to get the footwork done. Mouth pieces talk very pretty words, but then either get either nothing, or counter productive things done. This is what I've been getting at.
More or less, the way I've seen it so far, inclusion in the games industry is mostly lip service. Lip service is a start, but it's not particularly useful.
You want examples of good LGBT characters? Look to Eastern devs, sure there's tokenism and insensitivity there, but there's also better characterized ones than the best the West have given us. People say Cortez is a good character, but his entire being revolves around being gay and he's apparently been our shuttle pilot for the last two games as well but didn't get officially introduced until just now, which is a big mark against him as a character in my book.
Actually his dead husband is brought up about two or three times. He talks about being a shuttle pilot and loving ships far more, and he goes out of his way to make sure his grieving doesn't affect his work, to the extent where you have to step in to make him mention his dead husband.
He was also never your shuttle pilot in ME2. He never worked for Cerberus, so your book seemingly doesn't pay attention to characters.
I haven't played the game since it launched, so sorry if I get tiny details wrong, I assumed when he was talking about knowing you and being a shuttle pilot it was him saying he'd been with you for a while. But the first two conversations you have with him are about him crying over his dead husband, once when you first get onboard at the start, then after the Mars mission. Even if he were straight and crying about his dead wife, I would have the same level of interest in him, he was a boring character that didn't have much going for him. The only reason I was ever in his section of the ship was to buy stuff.
Even Vega has more characterization than him, and he's considered the most racist character in the series because he mixes in Spanish with his English(personally I never saw it as that, but what do I know as a white guy, I just grew up with people that did that for fun).
But go ahead and pay attention only to the minor part of my post instead of commenting on the spoiler'd portion which I figured had more to discuss.
The gaming industry is currently in the midst of the ongoing desire for respect and the controversies within along with a changing demographic state.
Let's look at what's going on with Hollywood. Movies have been down except in the following areas: nerd stuff and female-centric. The traditional action movies and comedies seem to do better when anchored by a diverse cast (Fast 7 being a kid in a wheelchair away from a stock image of "diversity"). The straight white male default isn't doing so hot on aggregate.
So other media has consumers rejecting the default at the same time the homophobes are making their idiotic last stand in the US. You can hit the growing part of the market while doing something to get street cred. I don't think it's anywhere near bad at this point, because there doesn't appear to be overrepresentation inside of games. People just talk about gay characters more, which plays into their hands.
Tumblrinas and net trolls will always yell idiotic ramblings in flavors that match their extremism. The thing is, we're getting to the point where there are gay characters and you're not asked to deal with it. They're just there. The path less trodden seems to at this point be having gay characters and it DOES matter because they're an inherent minority while not being the defining feature of the character. Which is hard.
I wasn't making the argument that "there are more important things to care about". Real hate and violence against gay people is a real issue of the real world. This however is a game where all sorts of freaky people fight to the death in the most extreme ways. The topic of homosexuality seems rather silly in the context of this game.
Why the fuck are you so obsessed with starving children in Africa? I already said in the post you quoted that hate and violence against gay people is a real problem, but not every game is a good game to deal with these issues. It would be silly if all of a sudden Mario and Luigi's gay brother showed up and talked about how the plumber's union would never accept him and how he wasn't really interested in saving princesses anyway.
Really? Because I don't see anyone saying white male characters shouldn't be in games unless they are well written. Suddenly when other types of characters become protagonists there's a surge in interest in the quality of the writing.
A badly written character is just a badly written character. It isn't made *worse* by being other than a white man.
Here's an idea - it's fine to have any type of person (or non-person) as a protagonist in a video game, regardless of the quality of the writing.
"How well it's done" was a bit of an inexpert way of describing it.
I suppose what I really mean is "Done in a way that isn't always stereotypical".
Stereotypes exist, and some people fit stereotypes. But, not everyone does, and making characters that aren't just walking stereotypes would make a character better.
Now, obviously, I'm not saying that having a bad character is some sort of offence, they're just pixels at the end of the day. However, the quality of a character is improved by not sticking solely to stereotypes. And if a developer wants to make a "Good" gay character, I think they should essentially just make a regular character who's sexuality only comes up at points of romance.
However, developers are entirely welcome to make bad character, and there are exceptions. Characters intended for humour can often by stereotypical, and work quite well.
I wasn't making the argument that "there are more important things to care about". Real hate and violence against gay people is a real issue of the real world. This however is a game where all sorts of freaky people fight to the death in the most extreme ways. The topic of homosexuality seems rather silly in the context of this game.
Why the fuck are you so obsessed with starving children in Africa? I already said in the post you quoted that hate and violence against gay people is a real problem, but not every game is a good game to deal with these issues. It would be silly if all of a sudden Mario and Luigi's gay brother showed up and talked about how the plumber's union would never accept him and how he wasn't really interested in saving princesses anyway.
I get the impression Pluvia is good at distorting other people's arguments to suit his/her own personal attitude on things, and no matter what you say you're gonna get strawmen as far as the eye can see.
On to what you said about Mario, I think that would be a hilariously dark thing to do in a Mario RPG, like if they had him dishevelled, depressed, and drunk. Plus it'd make it a pretty touching story for his brothers to help pull him out of his slump and such. Maybe he could save Bowser from some evil thingy. That would actually be a pretty good little story line to have going on.
I wasn't making the argument that "there are more important things to care about". Real hate and violence against gay people is a real issue of the real world. This however is a game where all sorts of freaky people fight to the death in the most extreme ways. The topic of homosexuality seems rather silly in the context of this game.
Why the fuck are you so obsessed with starving children in Africa? I already said in the post you quoted that hate and violence against gay people is a real problem, but not every game is a good game to deal with these issues. It would be silly if all of a sudden Mario and Luigi's gay brother showed up and talked about how the plumber's union would never accept him and how he wasn't really interested in saving princesses anyway.
I get the impression Pluvia is good at distorting other people's arguments to suit his/her own personal attitude on things, and no matter what you say you're gonna get strawmen as far as the eye can see.
On to what you said about Mario, I think that would be a hilariously dark thing to do in a Mario RPG, like if they had him dishevelled, depressed, and drunk. Plus it'd make it a pretty touching story for his brothers to help pull him out of his slump and such. Maybe he could save Bowser from some evil thingy. That would actually be a pretty good little story line to have going on.
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Loony reactionaries only wind up torpedoing their own cause in the end and ruining it for the more moderate members of it.
