chiggerwood said:
Men who love the cock and women who enjoy a nice rack is a bit of a decisive issue in gaming culture nowadays. Between the gay Shepard controversy and the spectacular debacle going on in 'The Old Republic' it seems like whenever someone says "Maybe we should allow people the choice to enjoy the genitalia of their preference." Someone else must raise a flag in opposition, because of reasons, BUT we're not here to discuss that. You see a curious realization came upon me not too long ago that despite both the 'Fable' series and 'Skyrim' offering up genitalia enjoyment of your choosing and despite both being extremely popular I can't remember any huge controversy blowing through the culture like a tornado made of homophobia. With gay Shepard there were people acting as if we were to allow homosexuality in a game then in no time our children would be running around in gimp masks and assless chaps leading one another around on leashes and spanking each other for pleasure before lunch. With 'The Old Republic' homosexuality apparently only exist on one planet in the entire galaxy (which I'll assume offers the best in game ship interiors, fashion, and haircuts) which is clearly meant to appease the homosexual fans, but only serves to foster a feeling of segregation and patronization, because they want to pussyfoot around the concept of homosexuality with flimsy, inadequate corporate bullshit excuses so they don't offend right-wing shitheads, or lose right-wing shithead investors (please note: I'm not calling every right winger a shit head, just the shit heads there's plenty of left wing shit heads out there too but they're irrelevant to the conversation at this point), So the question I'm posing is how did 'Skyrim and 'Fable' slip by with little to no controversy, or uproars? Because honestly I can't really remember any.
CAPTCHA: toe the line
NEVER! Also you spelled tow wrong
Edit: Apparently the phrase is "Toe the line" you win this time captcha, but don't get cocky.
It largely comes down to the fact that the developers/creators intended for the same sex options to be there with Skyrim and Fable, where with Mass Effect and The Old Republic the writers did not. The issue basically came down to one of entitlement, especially when it came to Bioware which provided such content when they thought it fit, and didn't
when they did not.
Regardless of which side of the coin your on when it comes to gay rights, claims of entitlement, telling someone that they HAVE to give you something, pisses people off. This is what created the issue since even people who might otherwise support gay rights came out in basically telling the parts of the LGBT community that started making demands to go pound sand. In general you have to be fairly intolerant to go out and attack something like Fable or Skyrim where it's just there, and nobody makes a big thing out of it, but you don't have to be a bigot to resent the demands by a group of people that they are entitled to creators making content just for them.
It also has generated a lot of backlash due to such things being used for trolling. To put things into perspective when it came to ToR in paticular, the developers said flat out they weren't going to put homosexuals into Star Wars. They had no plans for it, it did not fit with anything they envisioned developing. Portions of the LGBT community got all huffy and Bioware eventually relented in saying that they would throw in a bit of content those the rather small minority of people that wanted it. This was taken by those demanding the content that this was a promise Bioware was going to rush this right out (it wasn't) and pretty much every 15 minutes you had someone going "where are all of our homosexuals?", this going on even when the very survival of the game was at stake, which shows some truely screwed up priorities. To be honest during a lot of this, it became less about representation in this case in paticular, and more about trolling the other side. Gays pretty much wanting obnoxious NPCs flirting with straight people who didn't want to be exposed to it, in order to annoy them and "make a point". The idea being the belief that Bioware was going to "bash" the anti-gay movement and those who just wanted to not be exposed to it, not caring what other people choose to do with their own time. Fast forward to now, where the issue has become "big" again, and we've seen the content added tastefully to the game with the next major content update. It's there for those that want it, but not anywhere that it's going to intrude on the straight majority that might not want to have to listen to it. Because it's not omni-present and annoying people you are looking at a small jihad of homo-trolls (for lack of a better term) who have been trying to claim that there is something wrong with it. Among them the accusations that the new planet "Makeb" or whatever is basically designed as a "homosexual segregation ghetto planet", which is so stupid it's unbelievable, since that planet is the hub for all of the new content, and as new content the gay stuff was unveiled on that planet along with the rest of it.
It's important to understand that liberals, can and do troll with their beliefs, as do minority groups like gays. I think there is an increasing amount of awareness to this, and your starting to see a bit of an attitude of "I support the issue, but not the trolling" and refusal to participate on attacks, provocation, and mockery of the other side, which has been manifesting as assaults on trolls trying to do that, that are often mistaken as attacks on the issue itself.
With Shepard, it was a similar kind of issue. The basic arguement came down to whether Shepard was supposed to be a direct projection of the person playing him/her (An Avatar) or their own, fully self-contained character. The latter being more true since you generally don't have any control over Shepard's personality or how the majority of the storyline turns out, everything going more or less the same way except for a few very specific "plug and play" plot points that affect little except for some later cinematics. No matter what you choose, Shepard is pretty much himself, and probably isn't like anyone playing him. The writers basically came out and said "we created Shepard, he/she is not gay" which is a writers perogattive to decide the sexual orientation of their characters. This caused an outcry of LGBT trolls, it went to the gaming media, Bioware relented, threw in a bit of content for the minority of people who really wanted it, and then much QQing ensued because again it wasn't as obnoxious and trolling of those who aren't comfortable with gays as they wanted it to be. Same story, differant issue, and the overall back and forth was pretty much the same thing.
The irony here is that the LGBT community has arguably annoyed one of the gaming communities they were most welcome in. Bioware's writers had in the past decided that their characters being gay fit them potentially, and allowed for those options without any prompting. Something that arguably made it an entitlement, and has encouraged trolls to insist that the writers have no choice but to insert homosexuality into everything because they decided to do it a couple of times when nobody else did.
Right now your getting a lot of upset people, who aren't anti-gay, have no objection to homosexulity in video games, but don't think there is any entitlement for it to be present, or that creators should lose their rights to create and be forced to always conform to the same things. As a result you had a lot of people who would normally be on the pro-gay side, actually siding with the anti-gay side, which made the battles in communities where those expressing opinions are usually incredibly liberal much louder and less once sided than they usually have been.
That's my observations on the subject, many people won't like what I've said, or agree with it, but as I've been watching it play out that's how it breaks down.
Those who are genuinely confused by the intensity of the issue in forums and communities that are typically VERY one sided, are those who haven't yet realized that not everyone taking a specific position (pro-gay, left wing, anti-sexism, etc...) is doing it out of a genuine desire to promote that position. Increasingly your seeing people try and "draw a line" in some pretty ridiculous places just so they can watch the sparks fly. Something which incidently undermines the legitimacy of a lot of those positions when real issues come up (assuming you agree with them to begin with).
