November 9, 2006
Protagonist Jimmy Hopkins can kiss several male characters in Rockstar's Bully.Maybe you heard?
The smooching story was broken by GayGamer and editor Flynn DeMarco. AfterElton, a gay-oriented site, has an interview with DeMarco about the Bully brouhaha. In a Q&A format, DeMarco tells how he discovered the kissing scenes and talks about gay themes in other games.
Florian Eckhardt [of Kotaku] posted an earlier review of it from GameBrink which mentioned that “you can kiss girls and some guys,” but that’s all. I got a copy of it myself, and with a group of friends we played until 11 p.m. at night, and we discovered that yes, you can kiss guys in the game.
Asked about other games with gay content, DeMarco said:
It’s hard to say whether it was Fable or The Sims. I got The Sims strictly for [the gay content]. I got bored [laughs]. You get married, have kids and a white picket fence... In a sense, The Sims really was one of the first advocates for gay marriage and adoption, because they were included in the game and treated just the same as heterosexual pairings and parenting.
How does DeMarco and GayGamer deal with accusations about having a "gay agenda"?
Gaming is mostly geared to the straight white male. What [the accusers] don’t understand is that mindset is built into the games. I find it ridiculous to be accused of that. I don’t feel like I am forcing any agenda. I’m really just saying that “hey, there’s something of interest to gays here as well as all this other stuff.”
The response (to GayGamer) has been overwhelmingly positive, and I’m very proud to say that we have a good portion of our regular readers who are straight. Of course there have been the homophobes and haters, but they are far outnumbered by the positive responses.
On openly gay characters in games:
We sort of have one with Makoto in Enchanted Arms; however, the voice actor went over the top with him and made him über, über, über gay. It got on my nerves...
In Wild Arms, there is a character who has a boyfriend that is in a coma. He spends the game pining for him. The U.S. version doesn’t give any hints to their relationship... but in the Japanese version, it is made explicitly clear.
Unfortunately, if a company did [release a game with an openly gay character] they would lose money, or at least that’s the thinking. I am making it my duty to make sure that companies know that there is an audience that will buy games with gay content. I’d like to see it happen, but I don’t know if [a gay character] will ever make it to lead status.
Comments
sorry...my thoughts are not finishing them selfs today...least they are not wondering off and talking to the other voices in my head...
YOur not from the states are you? Gays are a hated "uderclass" to the point where about 20-30% of the country really hates them thus giveing them no end of greif,I have been lax on my studies of japan and asia basically if gays are not the main hated underclass then susbtatue thos the country/area dislikes.
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On a side note been watching some RIght leaning pundaut TV almsot cried when GLen beck and the person he was interviewing both agreed on that Christianity needs to go back to leading by example of deeds not its hollow and pompus words and actions that has decimated it the last 20ish years.
Linear story-based games are generally going to have heterosexual male characters to appeal to the main demographic, but there's nothing particularly wrong with experimenting a bit. I played Final Fantasy VIII without caring one iota about that stupid Rinoa woman, and so to be honest the game wouldn't have had any different meaning if I had been chasing a guy instead*. I don't see the difficulty in delevoping an emotional attachment to a central gay character any more than I do playing a woman or animal.
On the other hand, look at ourselves a moment. You don't tend to see it on this site, but gamers in general are not the most open-minded of people. Not everyone has managed to grasp the idea that girls play games. In any online gaming session you're never more then a minute away from hearin someone say "gay" as an insult. We need more openly gay characters in games, but it's going to be a long time before it's just accepted as another possible character type.
(*Though I still would've preferred Fuujin.)
But agreed with all that's been said so far. It is a shame that game developers and publishers (though it's to be expected of evil publishers) feel that putting a gay character in their games, much less having them be central to the plot, would hurt their games commercially (GTA: SA would've been awesome if CJ could've been gay). But I'd have to say that, unfortunately their fears seem founded, I've seen enough conscious and unconscious homophobia and misogynist from the mainstream gamer community to make my stomach turn three full revolutions and start oscillating like a propeller. ;.;
Anyways, to me it doesn't matter what someone's sexual preference is as long as I can pwn them. :)
Hopefully I didn't come off sounding bad, I tried to choose my words carefully so as not to offend.
Its true that few none-gay people will want to buy the former, but the impact on the latter should be insignficant.
In other words, Media doesn't like homosexuals, what it likes is the stereotype of a homosexual.
We need a Dog Day Afternoon.
KN, speak up, we wanna hear from ya on this buuuuddy.
There's a double quandary there for developers, really. If they stick with writer's description of a "straight while male" focus, they can be accused of ignoring the gay gaming population or sticking to the dominance of heterosexuality, and yet if they did make a game with an openly gay lead character, what are the chances they'd then be accused of exploiting homosexuality as a gimmick or for controversy's sake?
It really is a tough one. I'm not sure Western society in general has accepted homosexuality as 'okay' and 'normal' enough not to sit up and forcibly take note when it's brought to the fore. Hopefully we'll get to the point one day where people will just accept it as readily as heterosexuality and won't even blink when it's suggested that such and such male character has a boyfriend or what have you.
It was a big thing when Ellen came cout on TV. It was a big thing when Rosanne had a woman kiss her. It wasn't a major disaster when Doctor Who was kissed by Captain Jack.
Oddly enough, there have actually been a great many homosexual/bisexual characters on TV:
home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wyatt/tv-characters.html
It's about 4 years old, but still an interesting fact that there were far more homosexual/bisexual characters than was publicized by the ignorant and bigoted.
The list for homosexual/bisexual video game characters might not be as large, but it is still there. And the only ones who have a problem with it are the same ignorant bigoted people who had a problem with it on TV.
In all honesty, that shows the greater harm to children and adults are actually the ignorant and bigoted, not the homosexuals/bisexuals.
nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Actually, CJ was gay and he just stayed in the closet. His violent outbursts were designed to cover up his true nature.
@Darth_Toxic
Boy oh boy, you've just given me so much hope for humanity.
Out of games where it would matter, I can see two varieties:
-The sandbox games, like GTA, Bully, and Fable, where you wander around, do stuff, and in your free time can woo who you'd like or not woo anyone at all. Publishers seem to be adding gay options for this now.
-Games where you are forced into unavoidable gay relationships. I'd see this as distracting as having a prominently gay protagonist in a movie. Think Brokeback Mountain - they say it's quite a good movie, but given my taste in movies I never had a reason to see it and haven't. But since it was such a well done movie I suspect some people saw it that may not have gone to see any old romance movie. Such a thing is I daresay also doable in games, but it's definitely a gamble and a challenge to do it properly, and it's hard to fault the developers for not having felt up to it yet.
Oh, and I'm not talking about the two item vendors.
I wonder if there is actually any aknowledgement officially or unofficially that homosexual refereces could lead to higher ratings by censorship boards or if it's purely a case of worry about isolating potential homophobic buyers.
The irony of the situation is delicious if you ask me. We are constantly claiming that we are discriminated against but when some issue like a gay protagonist shows up, we lash out against it. Tis a sad thing indeed.
There are times in which I am almost disgraced to call myself a gamer, this would be one of those times. Not all of us can be as open minded as the GP readership, but sometimes I worry about us.
The game'll fly off the shelves then.
(Hooray for double-standards!)
You even had any left to begin with?
-_-
I know, that's why I threw in the Fear Effect reference. ;)
@Eloquence:
Cool, I am officially reassured!
So to summarise: If you, as a male character, show affection towards a gay character, he responds in kind. Wow. That's really pushing the gay agenda.
All jokes aside, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay,_lesbian,_bisexual,_and_transgender_cha...
Sold pretty well.
Case closed.