Why Makeb Hits LGBT Players So Hard
- Thread starter Robert Rath
- Start date
Bethesda... hasn't. Everyone in Skyrim is bi. Every prostitute in Fallout 3 is bi. In FO:NV, their sexuality is determined by your chosen sexuality perk, so they might as well be bi. At least, in Bioware titles, preferences exist, and gay characters can still be characters without becoming exclusively love interests and be valuable party members. Yes, even Anders. He's not a manwhore, he's vulnerable. And loves kittens.tangoprime said:
The Republic is a morally skewed sometimes Lawful Good but mostly Lawful Neutral in practice society. This could be Bioware not walking on eggshells for once and inserting some grim into Star Wars, by showing what the Republic would do: purge any "wrongness" in society. We've well established through the campaign that the Republic's biggest difference from the Sith is that generally genocide is not okay.Andy of Comix Inc said:
I could be giving Bioware too much credit, but how often in Star Wars does sex even come up? And how often do we see men looking misty-eyed at each other? Sexuality has just never been a Star Wars issue.
I wasn't the one speaking prior. However comma, I'll point out that marriage entered into English from a middle French term in which the concept of a dowry was married (no pun intended) to the concept of marriage.SonOfMethuselah said:
What wasn't brought together in blessed union was the concept of holy matrimony.
Your statement fails on almost every level.
Hmm.Zachary Amaranth said:
Well, then, I humbly submit to an authority greater than my own, and apologize to anyone who may have scoffed at my woeful ignorance. I shall heretofore cease in any and all discussion until I thoroughly verse myself in whatever subject I happen to be speaking about.
*exits conversation*
I LOVE Once Upon a Time, but let's be fair here. The tone of the show shocked a lot of its viewers if they knew it was a Disney show. When they didn't, finding out Disney was behind the show shocked them. So to an extent, this will certainly indicate how forward thinking they are perceived, at least.Bara_no_Hime said:
But I grew up in an era where Disney actively discriminated against homosexuals and were supported for it. When they had Ellen's show on the air, people pitched a fit about them changing, but they didn't change much; they just went for what made financial sense. If I remember right (and I may be wrong), Disney had strings attached for same sex marriages and their "open" employment policy, and maybe still do.
Disney's had single parents for ages, but without any particularly moral support behind them. Now, if they're changing, it will show. I'm just not ready to give them the benefit of the doubt after so many years of EVIL. >.>
Thanks for the reply! Sorry to cherry-pick, but this was the only part that really warranted any further discussion.Smilomaniac said:
My take on this character? Yes, we were meant to feel sorry for him... and then it was revealed that he was gay. Is it about sympathy? Sure is. Remember, though, that sympathy is the beginning of understanding. "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
The only real issue, as I see it, is that this was a homosexual character included, in a sense, "for the benefit of heterosexuals." I don't, however, see this as a problem when done in this way. The character had depth, had a backstory, had emotional weight -- he was a good character to add dimension to the crew. And, additionally, he may have "surprised" some people into realizing, hey, maybe "gay love" isn't so different.
There are "minority" characters (for lack of a better term) that are included as a nod to people in that minority. There are minority characters included as a message to people outside that minority. This, I feel, was a decent compromise between the two.
...and then there are the bad ones. Minority characters included in a superficial, appeasing sort of way (Hi! I'm gay! Goodbye now!), and minority characters included as a parody or caricature of that minority, usually unintentionally. BioWare has their share of both of those, too.
Isn't that still better though? Isn't it better to just have well written characters, who may or may not be gay/bi based on your choices, rather then a shoe-horned in gay character just for the sake of having a gay character? I'd rather have my characters not be defined by their sexual orientation, but actually have well created characters, with their sexuality being a part of them rather then defining them, and I believe Obsidian / Bethesda does that WAY better than Bioware/EA.Nieroshai said:
That's the thing, I think it is showing.Zachary Amaranth said:
How does a company that fucked up in the past prove their good intent? By doing good things.
Now, that doesn't mean I don't think we all should watch and make sure they keep doing good. I do - we should watch them like hawks. But, so long as they do good, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.
Oh, I almost forgot - another ABC show that's been very gay-friendly: Castle. Actually, a lot of my go-to shows lately are on ABC. Or Starz, because Lucy Lawless is fucking awesome. Speaking of gay-friendly.
Anyway, the point is I think it is very commendable that Disney has cleaned up it's act so much. As you say, as little as ten years ago Disney was not a gay-friendly company. Now, if you asked me which of the big four networks, CBS, NBC, ABC, or FOX were the most gay-friendly, I'd say ABC.
Maybe it's all for the money. If so - I don't care. If they have changed their ways because they want my money, then congrats, they can have my money. And they will keep getting it as long - and only as long - as they keep being gay friendly.
And if other multimedia empires realize the same thing - that gay money is just as good as straight money - and start catering to us to, then that's progress.
....
Anyway, as much as I've enjoyed talking about ABC, we're kinda off topic here. I'd say something to get back on topic, but honestly... anything Star Wars branded holds no interest for me. I absolutely agree with the article, but I have nothing to add because I pretty much hate all things Star Wars.
Well that system did screw with me a bit in skyrim, As my khajjit (Who I have been roleplaying as since morrowind (hes immortal)) would only get proposed to by males so skyrim as forced my immortal cat to forever for the sake of continuity be gay not that I have a problem with that also my characters husband provided me with money untill I sorta murded him.tangoprime said:
OT:I have to say keeping same sex relations to one planet seems a bit off to me why not incorperate it into the ship
This article misses a substantial part of this entire issue.
Love it or hate it, the initial statements for Old Republic online was that there were not going to be any LGBT relationships in ToR. Indeed I believe they even went so far as to say "gays do not exist in Star Wars" at one point which got a certain amount of attention at the time. There was a huge uprising of a fairly small minority and it's supporters and eventually Bioware consented to doing it some time post launch.
There was never any promise of making "equal time" content similar to what we had for straight romances, or bringing it to the forefront in the same way, merely that it would be given a prescence and some usable companion characters that could potentially go that way. Nor was this ever promised as a major feature, or any kind of development priority, though it was taken that way.
What I think of homosexuals aside, understand that this was one of the stupidist things ever. All arguements about "wanting to be represented" aside, what we got here was political pressure to make a company develop content it didn't want to create under duress. Not a good move, when Bioware was arguably one of the biggest allies so called "Gaymers" had, developing such content without any prodding or duress on their own, which is what the gay rights community actually wants. Once you start forcing people (or trying to) that's when you build resentment and backlash of the sort we got here for a while.
With the game itself in trouble the continued QQing about the "promise" to create this content which the company didn't want to build to begin with, and also created several game balance issues (namely the companions each character gets and the options they present are fairly balanced set vs. set, adding more characters to the mix without creating issues for certain characters can be rough, especially if you don't want them to effectively just function the same as existing companions and bring their own abillities and gimmicks to the table), I don't think the LGBT community won many points here for priorities, or has really understood their actual relationship with Bioware on this. Forcing someone to do something is not the same as them doing it on their own.
At any rate, after all the pressure, Bioware produced some token material, which by all reports is half hearted, despite the massive pressures on them to just keep this game alive. Surprise, surprise, the LGBT community is not happy with it because it isn't their dream "Star Wars Slash MMO", and admittedly less than they were promised, but of course the realities have changed since then, and this was always at best a "nice to have" as opposed to a development priority.
The point here is that regardless of what side of the fence your on with the whole issue of gay rights, this was a rather ham fisted and stupid situation right now that revolved around a sense of entitlement, and forcing a friendly developer to produce content it didn't want to simply based on the fact that it had been friendly to this type of material before. Expecting things to work out perfectly under duress is pretty bloody stupid to begin with (with pressure like this, you can't expect much except for a gesture), but to complain about the results when a game is facing what ToR is... that's kind of beyond the pale.
Honestly while people in the "Gaymer" community touted this as a victory, to be honest I kind of felt it would turn out this way whether ToR faced problems or not. People of course dismissed me because I'm hardly pro-gay, but it should be pretty easy to recognize a dumb move by a movement whether you agree with that movement's goals or not.
Who knows, maybe the LGBT community will get the content they want, but right now I think the priority for actual fans of ToR (of which I am not one) should be on the survival of the game as opposed to content for a minority of people. To be honest I think "Gaymers" are more interested in seeing the content included due to the pressure, than the survival or health of the game because of the statement and victory it represents. It's a trophy, even if it goes down with a sinking ship, and contributes to the weight (via divided development) dragging it down.
To be honest I'm kind of reminded of "Star Wars Galaxies". SoE did indeed get around to developing and releasing the content where you could fly your spaceship around on planets. You could go flying by and see players down on the ground, and even use the ships in city battles apparently though nobody was doing them when this finally launched. An awesome development, equal to everything that was promised, delivered as a gesture when the game was already doomed and going down in flames. At the end of the day if you get a lesbian version of Nadia Grell or whatever it serves no actual purpose if the game itself dies a week or so later.
I don't play ToR myself anymore despite once thinking it was going to be the most awesome thing ever. That said if you want the game to survive and want this content, my advice to you is that instead of making some huge statement of dissatisfaction over the content on on Makeb, you should go and buy a ton of Cartel Coins.
Hell, I'll go one further, for those who read this far. If I was gay and wanted this content badly, I'd work towards saving the game. I'd establish a website, make sure everyone knows it exists, and then collect donations from the LGBT community (if they truely enthusiasticlly support this) and use it to buy Cartel Coins or Code-Cards in bulk (probably the codes for coins would work better). I'd make a huge show over giving these coins away to players in contests and such throughout the game, in doing so making it clear to both the players and Bioware that homo and bi- sexuals were investing a lot of money in saving their game as a community. That would make a powerful statement and encourage Bioware to more enthusiastically create content than demands (equality, they've done it before, etc...). If you could find a trusted leader to collect the money, and the community is as big as implied, even people chipping in a couple of bucks here and there could make a big impact as a group.
That's my advice, like it or not. Become an undeniable positive influance on the game and it's survival in a time of crisis rather than another group of complaining voices.
Love it or hate it, the initial statements for Old Republic online was that there were not going to be any LGBT relationships in ToR. Indeed I believe they even went so far as to say "gays do not exist in Star Wars" at one point which got a certain amount of attention at the time. There was a huge uprising of a fairly small minority and it's supporters and eventually Bioware consented to doing it some time post launch.
There was never any promise of making "equal time" content similar to what we had for straight romances, or bringing it to the forefront in the same way, merely that it would be given a prescence and some usable companion characters that could potentially go that way. Nor was this ever promised as a major feature, or any kind of development priority, though it was taken that way.
What I think of homosexuals aside, understand that this was one of the stupidist things ever. All arguements about "wanting to be represented" aside, what we got here was political pressure to make a company develop content it didn't want to create under duress. Not a good move, when Bioware was arguably one of the biggest allies so called "Gaymers" had, developing such content without any prodding or duress on their own, which is what the gay rights community actually wants. Once you start forcing people (or trying to) that's when you build resentment and backlash of the sort we got here for a while.
With the game itself in trouble the continued QQing about the "promise" to create this content which the company didn't want to build to begin with, and also created several game balance issues (namely the companions each character gets and the options they present are fairly balanced set vs. set, adding more characters to the mix without creating issues for certain characters can be rough, especially if you don't want them to effectively just function the same as existing companions and bring their own abillities and gimmicks to the table), I don't think the LGBT community won many points here for priorities, or has really understood their actual relationship with Bioware on this. Forcing someone to do something is not the same as them doing it on their own.
At any rate, after all the pressure, Bioware produced some token material, which by all reports is half hearted, despite the massive pressures on them to just keep this game alive. Surprise, surprise, the LGBT community is not happy with it because it isn't their dream "Star Wars Slash MMO", and admittedly less than they were promised, but of course the realities have changed since then, and this was always at best a "nice to have" as opposed to a development priority.
The point here is that regardless of what side of the fence your on with the whole issue of gay rights, this was a rather ham fisted and stupid situation right now that revolved around a sense of entitlement, and forcing a friendly developer to produce content it didn't want to simply based on the fact that it had been friendly to this type of material before. Expecting things to work out perfectly under duress is pretty bloody stupid to begin with (with pressure like this, you can't expect much except for a gesture), but to complain about the results when a game is facing what ToR is... that's kind of beyond the pale.
Honestly while people in the "Gaymer" community touted this as a victory, to be honest I kind of felt it would turn out this way whether ToR faced problems or not. People of course dismissed me because I'm hardly pro-gay, but it should be pretty easy to recognize a dumb move by a movement whether you agree with that movement's goals or not.
Who knows, maybe the LGBT community will get the content they want, but right now I think the priority for actual fans of ToR (of which I am not one) should be on the survival of the game as opposed to content for a minority of people. To be honest I think "Gaymers" are more interested in seeing the content included due to the pressure, than the survival or health of the game because of the statement and victory it represents. It's a trophy, even if it goes down with a sinking ship, and contributes to the weight (via divided development) dragging it down.
To be honest I'm kind of reminded of "Star Wars Galaxies". SoE did indeed get around to developing and releasing the content where you could fly your spaceship around on planets. You could go flying by and see players down on the ground, and even use the ships in city battles apparently though nobody was doing them when this finally launched. An awesome development, equal to everything that was promised, delivered as a gesture when the game was already doomed and going down in flames. At the end of the day if you get a lesbian version of Nadia Grell or whatever it serves no actual purpose if the game itself dies a week or so later.
I don't play ToR myself anymore despite once thinking it was going to be the most awesome thing ever. That said if you want the game to survive and want this content, my advice to you is that instead of making some huge statement of dissatisfaction over the content on on Makeb, you should go and buy a ton of Cartel Coins.
Hell, I'll go one further, for those who read this far. If I was gay and wanted this content badly, I'd work towards saving the game. I'd establish a website, make sure everyone knows it exists, and then collect donations from the LGBT community (if they truely enthusiasticlly support this) and use it to buy Cartel Coins or Code-Cards in bulk (probably the codes for coins would work better). I'd make a huge show over giving these coins away to players in contests and such throughout the game, in doing so making it clear to both the players and Bioware that homo and bi- sexuals were investing a lot of money in saving their game as a community. That would make a powerful statement and encourage Bioware to more enthusiastically create content than demands (equality, they've done it before, etc...). If you could find a trusted leader to collect the money, and the community is as big as implied, even people chipping in a couple of bucks here and there could make a big impact as a group.
That's my advice, like it or not. Become an undeniable positive influance on the game and it's survival in a time of crisis rather than another group of complaining voices.
In the star wars universe that seems to be the case. Planets full of jedis, planets full of cathars planets full of wookies. Planets full of religious zealots. Remember this is a fictional universe we are trying to apply our real world ideals upon.thanatos388 said:
By developing a track record for good things, actually. They don't have much of one yet, and that's the problem here. When they have a track record sufficient to demonstrate an actual departure from their prior behaviour, I will accept it. It does not have to equal their prior negative record, but it should stand on its own rather than a few token examples.Bara_no_Hime said:
And that can go directly to EA/Bioware, too. They've had, at least recently, a track record of claiming to fix things and then half-assing the ordeal. Bioware's position is understandable, but so is the frustration with them, as well.
Meanwhile, Skyrim allowed everyone to gay marry from the start if they wanted to.
Personally, I don't really care about gays in Star Wars or Star Wars games. I've rarely thought about the sexuality of the characters anyway. But if you're going to say you're going to put something in, put it in. And if you then don't and promise you'll fix it, make a slightly more concerted effort.
Though the next time I play Star Wars in Tabletop form, I think I'm going to make a Trans Jedi or something. >.>
So, given the financial restraints of going back and retooling all the previous coding for current companions, as well as calling-back the voice actors for additional voice work and paying them for the same-gender romance material... what would the LGBT community prefer?
LGBT options in new content? Or no LGBT content at all? SWTOR is barely afloat, and while I welcome the addition of these romance and character options, I'd much rather, ya know, have the game prosper for a few more years instead of going bankrupt trying to essentially revamp the parts of the game that are already finished.
LGBT options in new content? Or no LGBT content at all? SWTOR is barely afloat, and while I welcome the addition of these romance and character options, I'd much rather, ya know, have the game prosper for a few more years instead of going bankrupt trying to essentially revamp the parts of the game that are already finished.
Fair enough. But I am of the opinion that they are developing such a track record, and have been doing so for the past several years. They've had what appears to be a fairly sudden, entirely positive change. Will they keep it up? I don't know. But until/unless they screw it up, I intend to be optimistic.Zachary Amaranth said:
Agreed. With all of that.Zachary Amaranth said:
Well, except for playing Star Wars in Tabletop form. I would never play a tabletop game set in the Star Wars universe (since I greatly dislike the Star Wars universe). I did look at their tabletop game briefly while I was working on my Mass Effect table top game last year, but it was too dated (and too d20 Modern) for my taste.
As for other table top games: been there, done that, had a great time. In a recent game, I played a fully functional hermaphrodite (that looked female otherwise) which was great fun. So yeah, if you get the chance to play your Trans Jedi, I highly recommend it.