Trans representation in gaming

[Erttheking]

I think forcing players to play as controversial or things they find undesirable is of limited benefit.

The GTA series says otherwise.

I'll add Shadow of the Colossus to the mixed-feelings-about-what-i'm-doing playlist.

Spec Ops the line would also like to join the party.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Shouldn't we endeavor to develop empathy and through it the ability to identify with people from all groups?

To put that into practice, one needs enough good characters from all groups with whom empathize. Make the overwhelming majority about one or two groups, and you'll be saying that those two groups are the only ones who deserve empathy.

If you can empathize with people, you can empathize with people, it doesn't matter what type of people they are. If you don't focus and pay attention at group representation percentages and just go in trying to just enjoy the game while being an empathetic person you will never have any issues as long as the game is actually a good game worth playing. Even if there's nobody of your group represented, ever. I know this for a fact cause growing up in Greece there were no games even in my own language, never mind ones with modern native Greek characters. Yet, I never had any issues identifying with all the foreign characters speaking in foreign tongues and so on.

 

[Erttheking]

Really? Because the Yakuza seems to be actually rather common in media, to the point where they crop up almost as the default bad guy in quite a few stories and heroes in others. Persona 5, had Yakuza, Saints Row 2, had Yakuza, GTA, had Yakuza, SMT, had Yakuza, Overwatch, had Yakuza, Payday 2, had Yakuza, fucking PAPER MARIO, had Yakuza.

Didn't play any of those and wasn't aware they feature this syndicate.

Maybe i underestimated how common the Yakuza is but so far i have seen far more transgender people in games (including options to play one like in Battletech).

[EDIT: Fuck, there's an argument to be made that there's more games where you can play as God Almighty himself than trans people]

That however seems quite believable. God games are a popular genre.

The fact that you think transgendered people don't have interesting story hooks speaks volumes. And not in a good way.

It is not so much that i thing transgendered people don't have interesting story hooks - just that those hooks have nothing to do with being trans. Just like the hooks of everyone else have nothing to do with not being trans.

If a writer can't write a trans person, I have a hard time swallowing that they couldn't, I find the more likely explanation to be that they weren't willing to put the work in.

You are probably right.

But i don't think a writer should invest this work just for the sake of it. Just like he shouldn't invest the thousands of other things he doesn't know about just for the sake of it. Research needs a reason. Either because the writer is interested anyway or because it is the topic of his future work for other, unrelated reasons.

Can I share something with you? I wrote a character named Nora Hawkins once, a woman who didn't like women's clothing, not because of a dislike of femininity, but just because it made her personally feel uncomfortable and she just liked the way men's clothing felt.

I wouldn't even know what mens clothing is. While women's clothing still exists, everything else is nowadays unisex. And a significant portion of all women never use women's clothing. Doesn't make them transmen.

Your lack of experience doesn?t change the facts. I can think of multiple playable characters that are canon Yakuza. Can you do that with trans people?

If you think there are no story hooks connected to a person?s trans status, again, that speaks volumes. And not in a good way

If you think the world of clothing is divided into women?s and unisex, you are misinformed. The world of professional workplaces begs to differ

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I think forcing players to play as controversial or things they find undesirable is of limited benefit.

The GTA series says otherwise.

I'll add Shadow of the Colossus to the mixed-feelings-about-what-i'm-doing playlist.

Spec Ops the line would also like to join the party.

Can we talk? Yes, but No Russian [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBDkevx5lM]? I understand, Call of Duty, I understand.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Would [proponents of trans characters in video games] consider Gwyndolin from Dark Souls a good example? Born as a male, but raised as a female. I may be wrong, but the game never overtly addresses the issue save for perhaps in an item description, and the fact will likely go unnoticed by less thorough players, but it adds so much to the overall lore and his motivations: Gwyndolin, the last of the gods in Anor Londo keeping up appearances with myriad illusions of a time and place that shamed him. I imagine that?s something trans people might deal with in real life, lack of acceptance, hiding truths, loneliness, etc. and it?s expertly incorporated into the game without ham-fistedly making it a focal point. Yes? No?

I don't think Gwyndolin was actually written as a trans character. For one, he did not voluntarily identify as female, he was raised as a woman in order to fulfil a particular societal role. In the English translation, he is also described consistently with male pronouns which puts him more into the camp of being a transvestite or gender non-conforming male. In Japanese culture, perhaps even more so than ours, that's a very different thing.

That said, Gwyndolin has a lot of queer and trans subtext. Like us, he's the product of a world in which sex and gender are distinct. He's pretty much designed, visually at least, to be as confusing as possible, and he never apologises or even offers an explanation. As you say, unless you dig through item descriptions the game never addresses it. A lot of players still seem to think Gwyndolin is female-bodied.

In this sense, I'd definately put Gwyndolin in the trans representation box even if he wasn't consciously written that way. Even the fact that he's a literal monster with very clear non-human features is interesting on a subtextual level because queer people often identify with monsters. When you are told constantly that you are disgusting and unnatural, when you're treated as not quite human, it becomes easier to feel a commonality with things that also possess these qualities.

Incidentally, that's also an example of that whole "gaze" thing I talked about earlier and how it might influence stories beyond just literally having trans characters in them.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

The point is, it is possible to relate to someone of a completely different sex/color/orientation. We're all human, we all have feelings, our own worries, troubles and personal problems as well as our joys and triumphs. This should be cause for celebration, no? It means that no matter what my body looks like and who I'm attracted to, I can identify with your motivation to rob ancient tombs for treasure or to shoot Nazi soldiers in the face with a shotgun.

I think you are correct. I also think you under-estimate just how hard it actually is to relate in a deep and meaningful fashion. We can all relate to the basic human stuff, having to eat, sleep and feel loved (or killing bad guys and finding treasures in games). But the unique experiences of being male bodied? Of being female bodied but identifying as a man? These are complex lived experiences that those that have them take for granted but are virtually impossible for someone else to experience. How do you explain menstrual cramps and pain to someone who's never had a period? How do you explain the feeling of not fitting into your own body to someone who's never felt it?

Most of us can probably learn to relate to it, but it also takes a concerted effort to be willing to listen. And if there's one thing these discussions about games show, it is that most people are not willing to listen. Instead they feel that their current, limited ability to relate is sufficient (if not outright great in their own estimation), no matter how lacking it is. It is a good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, really.

Here you are not talking about identifying with a trans person, but identifying with a trans person as a trans person. That is to say, relating their particular life circumstances as they relate to their lived experiences of seeing themselves as and being seen as trans.

But games do not do that kind of relating in general, with any form of identification - how many games have presented the everyday experiences faced by "white cis male" or "middle class mixed-race female"? I can't think of many. Instead we're transported to the battlefield or the Egyptian tomb where those experiences involving identity are irrelevant.

So even if trans representation occurred, what still needs to happen is a fundamental shift in the focus of games in order for the lived experiences of all identities to be capable of expression. That shift has arguably happened in other art media, but not so much games. And I do not think gamers want it to happen - sales certainly indicate that they don't.

And nor do reviews - last year I played a game called "We Are Chicago" in which you played as Aaron, a boy who was bullied at school and whose inadvertent involvement with friends and gangs was jeopardizing his family's lives and future aspirations. It was by no means perfect, but I found it an interesting insight into a dramatically different experience of growing up from what I had, with insight into challenges I never faced. Reviewers hated it. Similarly with "Fragments of Him" which dealt with homophobia and social expectations.

So in the end, I think you're right - it's about the will to listen. Something we don't yet have, or at least not enough of us.

 

[Abomination]

Considering how many games are about bullets hitting people or hitting other people with swords, the fact someone is or is not trans is hardly important.

The games that sell the best focus on bullet/sword hits person. The bullet or the sword does not do anything different when it hits a trans person.

The other added hurdle is what is the difference between a MtF and a cis F person mechanically or story wise, and how do you want to depict trans people? Because there are two ways to go about it, have the MtF behave differently to the cis female and run the risk of offending due to the possible implication that MtF are not real women/behave like normal women, OR they act the same so what's the fucking difference since you can not depict penises/vaginas anyway?

A trans person in their perceived optimal setting is treated the same as a member of the gender they identify as. They do not want to be treated as a trans person that is female/male. So how does one tackle it?

I actually think that Cyberpunk 2077 might have the opportunity to explore this more as one of the big themes of Cyberpunk is changing your body to meet your desires. Having the technology available to do and delving into the body modification "scene" may offer opportunities to encounter trans issues.

 

[Erttheking]

Considering how many games are about bullets hitting people or hitting other people with swords, the fact someone is or is not trans is hardly important.

Frankly I say that's systematic of a bigger problem.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Maybe i underestimated how common the Yakuza is but so far i have seen far more transgender people in games (including options to play one like in Battletech).

I, too, remember the shit-storm in a teacup that had people mad that "they" was a pronoun option in Battletech.

Gaming culture's dedicated "true gamers" were certain it'd cause that game to fail.

I actually think that Cyberpunk 2077 might have the opportunity to explore this more as one of the big themes of Cyberpunk is changing your body to meet your desires. Having the technology available to do and delving into the body modification "scene" may offer opportunities to encounter trans issues.

Here's hoping. Transhumanism is only one of the many forms of the dreaded "politics" that make up the cyberpunk genre.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Considering how many games are about bullets hitting people or hitting other people with swords, the fact someone is or is not trans is hardly important.

Frankly I say that's systematic of a bigger problem.

It sounds like this guy has never played an adventure game before. LA Noire wasn't anything new except in the area of graphics.

I don't play violent games or big budget AAA games and I'm left with plenty of options.

 

[Kerg3927]

I think the best art is created when the artist has creative freedom and is unencumbered by rules. And right now there are just way too many fucking rules. I imagine for a lot of artists it is stifling.

What rules?

See, the thing is that the metaphysics of your argument don't make much sense on their own. You could flip it around with Star Trek. Star Trek could be argued as per 'filling out a diversity checklist' all while reinforcing a normative gaze despite a fictitious setting in a far future where humanity have achieved some egalitarian future of equal inheritance to resources and the stars themselves.

For instance, why exactly isn't the Federation more representative of the grand peoples of Earth? And this is a legitimate question that you can pose at so many far future settings.

My example of the cast of personalities in Android: Netrunner, whether Runner IDs, corporate executies, random people on card art .... there's actual paucity of the obligatorily understood White, eurocentric man.

And that helps reinforce in every card that the world these people exist within is global and interplanetary and in a far future technocratic setting that reinforces the idea of liquid culture and liquid national boundaries, in exchange for megacorporate global hyperconsumerism and the mass transit of billions of people all throughout the world and to space itself.

The thing is, the people making an argument of 'diversity checklist' solely because of a trans character, and then lumping that with a transcharacter can't simply be trans for the hell of it, is a self-defeating proposition of creating believable worlds themselves. Because I love ANR's world ... and these characters often only have paragraph long backstories that are presented with direct visualization and metanarratives through card art.

My favourite runner is still Chaos Theory...

Spoiler: A Wunderkind Shaper from New Angeles...

Spoiler: Who perhaps has more personal reasons for testing her computer science creations against megacorporations than simple curiosity...

Spoiler: And managed to survive the cycle trashes ... unlike most early runners... suck it, haters.

And so on ... and so on ...

Because it's not about a 'diversity checklist' ... in essence characters owe to themselves simply being as much as they owe to the nature of the world they inhabit. A trans character being trans and doing normal stuff regardless is equally a statement about their existence, and need not be defining. And honestly, that's what good representation is about. That's kind of the world that we want in the way that being trans is often all people need to single them out for abuse and hatreds.

And if writers are struggling with that, perhaps they need practice to get over it ... and less idiots screaming 'diversity checklist'. ANR has had expansion cycles set in India during the clone suffrage movement, and how runners and corporations are jockeying about with card art and card mechanics centred on that political contest and trying to capture that feel in the gameplay... Where corporations that are invested in destroying the cloning market competitors for their android creations are funding clone suffrage movements to help weaken their competitors and increase sales, and runners willing to capitalize on political assassination events that see some of their contacts 'trashed' in exchange for increased public attacks to help them damage megacorps....

And lo and behold many of the runners and executives, and subsidiary corporate IDs from that expansion cycle (the Mumbad Cycle) are Indian, or East Asian. To represent the socioeconomic, fictitious focus.

Spoiler: Also another favourite runner of mine comes from it...

It's less about the character themselves, and just how much of all nuances of the world that you wish to portray. And it's intellectually dishonest to pretend like a trans character on their own suddenly has to merit some amazing reason for being trans. Well, no ... they're trans, they exist.

See, the thing is ... I find it difficult to believe any future setting of a supposedly enlightened humanity and half the cast is white. It starts to break down, don't you think? When you actually stop and think about it ...? And the thing is roles get cast this way for a reason despite every reason why you should probably not do it.

It really doesn't set a very good visual narrative of an egalitarian future of a united humanity when every authority figure in the movie is cast as a white dude. You know .... sends kind of a bad undercurrent as in it gets you to start thinking there must have been one hell of an apocalyptic return of Caucasian colonization.

And the thing is Android: Netrunner is not magically worse for the 'diversity checklist' .... no, it actually sells the idea of its world actually being one set in a global focus. And it doesn't have much more than a metanarrative of blurbs and card art and some background filler about theme each cycle.

Spoiler: And hell, its representation and narratives of genderqueer people isn't perfect ... but you know, practice ...

You are talking about future science fiction. (I've never heard of Android: Netrunner.)

What about 2018 on the planet Earth? If I walk into a Starbucks, odds are there is going to be at least one table with 3-6 white heterosexual people sitting, chatting, drinking coffee, through no fault of their own... they simply enjoy each others' company. This scene is absolutely not allowed (by the rules) in any art form at this current time in the Western world. The fallout of portraying such a horrible scene could be career-ending.

Two examples, Seinfeld and Friends. Two of the most popular TV shows in American history. There is no possible way that either show would be allowed on the air as a new show today. The internet would have a coronary thermonuclear meltdown and the show would be promptly canceled, and the careers of those involved possibly permanently destroyed. An artform with the main characters being all white and heterosexual is absolutely not allowed, ever. It's allowed in real life and takes place everywhere - in every Starbucks your walk into - but not in art.

That's what I'm talking about when I say "rules." Artists usually draw their inspiration from real life. But they are no longer allowed to portray the real life they know in their art. And when art forms are no longer relatable to real life, they are greatly weakened, and come across as contrived and artificial.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

What about 2018 on the planet Earth? If I walk into a Starbucks, odds are there is going to be at least one table with 3-6 white heterosexual people sitting, chatting, drinking coffee, through no fault of their own... they simply enjoy each others' company. This scene is absolutely not allowed (by the rules) in any art form at this current time in the Western world. The fallout of portraying such a horrible scene could be career-ending.

Two examples, Seinfeld and Friends. Two of the most popular TV shows in American history. There is no possible way that either show would be allowed on the air as a new show today. The internet would have a coronary thermonuclear meltdown and the show would be promptly canceled, and the careers of those involved possibly permanently destroyed. An artform with the main characters being all white and heterosexual is absolutely not allowed, ever. It's allowed in real life and takes place everywhere - in every Starbucks your walk into - but not in art.

That's what I'm talking about when I say "rules." Artists usually draw their inspiration from real life. But they are no longer allowed to portray the real life they know in their art. And when art forms are no longer relatable to real life, they are greatly weakened, and come across as contrived and artificial.

Uhh, How I Met Your Mother ran for 208 episodes over 9 years.

Stop being dramatic.

 

[Kerg3927]

What about 2018 on the planet Earth? If I walk into a Starbucks, odds are there is going to be at least one table with 3-6 white heterosexual people sitting, chatting, drinking coffee, through no fault of their own... they simply enjoy each others' company. This scene is absolutely not allowed (by the rules) in any art form at this current time in the Western world. The fallout of portraying such a horrible scene could be career-ending.

Two examples, Seinfeld and Friends. Two of the most popular TV shows in American history. There is no possible way that either show would be allowed on the air as a new show today. The internet would have a coronary thermonuclear meltdown and the show would be promptly canceled, and the careers of those involved possibly permanently destroyed. An artform with the main characters being all white and heterosexual is absolutely not allowed, ever. It's allowed in real life and takes place everywhere - in every Starbucks your walk into - but not in art.

That's what I'm talking about when I say "rules." Artists usually draw their inspiration from real life. But they are no longer allowed to portray the real life they know in their art. And when art forms are no longer relatable to real life, they are greatly weakened, and come across as contrived and artificial.

Uhh, How I Met Your Mother ran for 208 episodes over 9 years.

Stop being dramatic.

I've never watched that show, but it came out in 2005, back when things were much more tolerant. 2005 was a very, very different time than today. Social media was just finding its legs, and had not yet become the career destroyer it is today.

 

[Abomination]

Considering how many games are about bullets hitting people or hitting other people with swords, the fact someone is or is not trans is hardly important.

The games that sell the best focus on bullet/sword hits person. The bullet or the sword does not do anything different when it hits a trans person.

And if we pull on that thread we come to the conclusion that ALL story is irrelevant in video games, regardless of politics.

Which is a pretty big load regardless of how you swing it.

Only if you choose to force that thread past all the other stitching, namely the "games that sell the best" part.

There certainly are games with great plot and story, but even then those plots and story are about political intrigue and adventures into dark, unknown, and dangerous places. The question of a person's trans status is not even a blip on those radars.

During a zombie apocalypse being trans doesn't mean anything significant, but being diabetic does.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Uhh, How I Met Your Mother ran for 208 episodes over 9 years.

Stop being dramatic.

I've never watched that show, but it came out in 2005, back when things were much more tolerant. 2005 was a very, very different time than today. Social media was just finding its legs, and had not yet become the career destroyer it is today.

"It came out in a time where you could have an all white heterosexual cast and those pesky minorities couldn't complain as much. Much more tolerant!"

You realise thats not an argument that reflects particularly well on you, right?

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

[
You are talking about future science fiction. (I've never heard of Android: Netrunner.)

What about 2018 on the planet Earth? If I walk into a Starbucks, odds are there is going to be at least one table with 3-6 white heterosexual people sitting, chatting, drinking coffee, through no fault of their own... they simply enjoy each others' company. This scene is absolutely not allowed (by the rules) in any art form at this current time in the Western world. The fallout of portraying such a horrible scene could be career-ending.

Two examples, Seinfeld and Friends. Two of the most popular TV shows in American history. There is no possible way that either show would be allowed on the air as a new show today. The internet would have a coronary thermonuclear meltdown and the show would be promptly canceled, and the careers of those involved possibly permanently destroyed. An artform with the main characters being all white and heterosexual is absolutely not allowed, ever. It's allowed in real life and takes place everywhere - in every Starbucks your walk into - but not in art.

That's what I'm talking about when I say "rules." Artists usually draw their inspiration from real life. But they are no longer allowed to portray the real life they know in their art. And when art forms are no longer relatable to real life, they are greatly weakened, and come across as contrived and artificial.

Well, what about it? The number of trans people across the Western world is increasing, and there is a story there. Even if it's to highlight this growing new normal. It doesn't matter about the odds, it matters about the world you're crafting. The thing is that good representation is beneficial not only to a writer's worldliness, but also for readers. In the same way that many post-millenials are learning multiple languages through homes, social environment, and schooling to at least a baseline, plebeian level of common usage than their millenial parents ... and there's a story there.

If this is an argument of growing reality of the world, we're still not seeing it in media ... even if its common exposure for the person you're writing about. As a kid, I didn't know other trans kids. I grew up solidly pre internet. Had a ruthlessly Australian country kid upbringing. Had after school and weekend jobs at a horse breeder and Indian restaurant when I was 11-15. What set me apart beyond being labelled a 'fairy' by my schoolmates was having a Filo mum, but apart from people who knew my family most were just assuming I was perpetually tanned (until I was suddenly 'tanned'). The most famous East Asian Australians I routinely saw was Lee Lin Chin on SBS World News as a very young kid .... I made a thread about her recently given she's quitting SBS, which is sad.

But as I was saying... the power of representation.

And there's a story there.

But kids aren't like that anymore. Many kids know other trans kids. So many kids are 1st and 2nd generation Australians. The internet allows people to meet up and have far larger social networks of different people they know on a level I never had. And there's a story there.

It's a different world. Yet media has yet to actually reflect that in a lot of fields, and the desire to try by 30+ year old creatives is lacking. To their detriment of truly capturing the rate of social change or even creating believable characters.

Harry Potter feels positively antiquated to modern London, for instance, at the time of its publishing. I know that personally ... me and my dad were in England for a spell at the time of, I think, Philosopher's Stone. But no one would legitimately think of Potter or Granger, modern Britons, as being reflective of modern British youth. It's weirdly sanitized in terms of anachronisms of definitive identification that it is, itself, anachronistic and sterile ideas of youth culture and greater society.

But then again no one is really carrying pitchforks to Rowling's home. Potter himself feels like a romanticism of what a suburban British lad might have been when she was his age. But it's not set then... it was aiming at boys and girls roughly at the demographics and stylings of current millenials and near-post millenial youth.

So why would a show like Seinfeld now get shut down? If there's a market for it, it will be consumed. If a show can't survive criticism, or the marketplace, it probably isn't going to get its profile to begin with.

 

[Silvanus]

What about 2018 on the planet Earth? If I walk into a Starbucks, odds are there is going to be at least one table with 3-6 white heterosexual people sitting, chatting, drinking coffee, through no fault of their own... they simply enjoy each others' company. This scene is absolutely not allowed (by the rules) in any art form at this current time in the Western world. The fallout of portraying such a horrible scene could be career-ending.

Absolute, sheer bollocks. This is complete fabrication.

 

[Satinavian]

Maybe i underestimated how common the Yakuza is but so far i have seen far more transgender people in games (including options to play one like in Battletech).

I, too, remember the shit-storm in a teacup that had people mad that "they" was a pronoun option in Battletech.

It is not only that you can pick pronoun options seperately from other character customization options like portait and that there are more than two pronouns to pick, they also quite a number of other characters in the game that are somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum, especcially the non randomized mech warriors (though those are backer characters).

Personally i found all of that fine. And the game itself is not bad, if a tad clunky and repetitive. The outrage was stupid.

 

[Saelune]

What about 2018 on the planet Earth? If I walk into a Starbucks, odds are there is going to be at least one table with 3-6 white heterosexual people sitting, chatting, drinking coffee, through no fault of their own... they simply enjoy each others' company. This scene is absolutely not allowed (by the rules) in any art form at this current time in the Western world. The fallout of portraying such a horrible scene could be career-ending.

Two examples, Seinfeld and Friends. Two of the most popular TV shows in American history. There is no possible way that either show would be allowed on the air as a new show today. The internet would have a coronary thermonuclear meltdown and the show would be promptly canceled, and the careers of those involved possibly permanently destroyed. An artform with the main characters being all white and heterosexual is absolutely not allowed, ever. It's allowed in real life and takes place everywhere - in every Starbucks your walk into - but not in art.

That's what I'm talking about when I say "rules." Artists usually draw their inspiration from real life. But they are no longer allowed to portray the real life they know in their art. And when art forms are no longer relatable to real life, they are greatly weakened, and come across as contrived and artificial.

Uhh, How I Met Your Mother ran for 208 episodes over 9 years.

Stop being dramatic.

I've never watched that show, but it came out in 2005, back when things were much more tolerant. 2005 was a very, very different time than today. Social media was just finding its legs, and had not yet become the career destroyer it is today.

Tolerant of what exactly? Straight white people? Or tolerant of rapists and bigotry? Cause I am tired of being in a world that tolerates those things. We used to tolerate slavery too, glad that's done. Mostly.