Gay Characters

[DrunkVision]

Why the hell do you need that? It's a waste of precios developing time which could be instead spent on money system or other important stuff.

[TΛPETRVE]

It's a waste of precios developing time which could be instead spent on money system or other important stuff.

Yeah right, gay characters probably need their own engine, because Unity can't handle all the homosex .

[Zeronet]

The Game should obviously feature only straight white males between the ages of 18-24. All characters should be identical and called John Everyman. PCs will wander the wasteland solving the problems of other young white males.

"Hello i am a Desert Ranger 9 also known as John Everyman."

"Hello i am NPC Number 45, i am John Everymann. Here is your quest"

"Thank you John Everymann. I accept your quest. I need to go now"

"Thank You John Everyman. I need to go now too."


You people need to go back and read your posts and then realize how narrow minded you come across as. I'd hope Wasteland 2 will be a culturally significant project which will have artistic statements to be made on the part of the writers, metaphors, allusions, social commentary. The stuff that transcends 'decent narratives' to 'great narratives' and makes it not just a game, but art.

Take some of the attitudes displayed here and your left with a dry soulless game reflective of nothing greater than itself. I'd expect better in this game knowing the talent involved because i,ve played games by them that have done it before.

[Phocoena]

I'd hope Wasteland 2 will be a culturally significant project which will have artistic statements to be made on the part of the writers, metaphors, allusions, social commentary. The stuff that transcends 'decent narratives' to 'great narratives' and makes it not just a game, but art.

Take some of the attitudes displayed here and your left with a dry soulless game reflective of nothing greater than itself. I'd expect better in this game knowing the talent involved because i,ve played games by them that have done it before.

Perfect. I don't think anything more needs to be said than this.

[BlackGauntlet]

The Game should obviously feature only straight white males between the ages of 18-24. All characters should be identical and called John Everyman. PCs will wander the wasteland solving the problems of other young white males.

"Hello i am a Desert Ranger 9 also known as John Everyman."

"Hello i am NPC Number 45, i am John Everymann. Here is your quest"

"Thank you John Everymann. I accept your quest. I need to go now"

"Thank You John Everyman. I need to go now too."


You people need to go back and read your posts and then realize how narrow minded you come across as. I'd hope Wasteland 2 will be a culturally significant project which will have artistic statements to be made on the part of the writers, metaphors, allusions, social commentary. The stuff that transcends 'decent narratives' to 'great narratives' and makes it not just a game, but art.

Take some of the attitudes displayed here and your left with a dry soulless game reflective of nothing greater than itself. I'd expect better in this game knowing the talent involved because i,ve played games by them that have done it before.

So, the idea of injecting soul into the game is to have the following?

"Hello i am a Desert Ranger 9 also known as John Everyman."

"Hello i am NPC Number 45, i am John Everymann. Here is your quest"

"Thank you John Everymann. I accept your quest. I need to go now"

"No, you don't. John Everyman. Not before we get it on... down & dirty, first."

"Greatly obliged, John Everyman. "

Seriously, it's not about the gay. It's about the content that makes a game great.

[Woolfe]

Soooooo Good writing then?

[BlackGauntlet]

Soooooo Good writing then?

No. Good EVERYTHING. I DID say "content", didn't I?

[LornMarkus]

You keep coming back here, BlackGauntlet, and I really do wonder why. You've made the exact same points every time: that having content related to homosexuality isn't necessary for a great game, that it's weird and awkward when a fictional character announces their sexuality around the time of their shaking the hand of the person they just encountered, so forth and so on.

None of the sane and eloquent people in this thread has once claimed that to be untrue, nor that the latter or any of your other examples are what they want. Here, I'll even say the words for you right now: an awareness and presentation of the topic of homosexuality is in no way necessary to make a great game.

Now that we have that out of the way, I'm going to point out that the presence of such themes is also in no way a detriment to the quality of a game. Particularly when they're being handled by the witty, smart and very capable individuals who are developing Wasteland 2 (assuming you donated to the Kickstarter, I would hope you agree that they are such).

So, how about you and I simply agree that whatever content winds up in the game, ultimately, will be awesome and we're greatly looking forward to seeing it in motion? Can we do that?

[snakeoil]

I guess we have some childish people here who are afraid of the integrity of their own sexuality to even discuss this topic in a rpg(!) game forum. As one guy above stated, videogames are art and as art they should not limit themselves in expressing any shade of human existance. Anyway I doubt the makers of this game to be in such a childish underdeveloped state of mind to fear any social complexity.

[BlackGauntlet]

I make the same exact points because it's the truth.

Did I enjoy "Brokeback Mountain"? Sure. It's a great movie. But it's not because there are gays in there. They could replace it with any taboo relationships in there and I'd still enjoy it.

Did I enjoy "Gods & Monsters"? Hell yeah. Brendan Fraser couldn't act any better. But is it because it's a movie with a gay theme? Not to me. Like what the characters implied, "Frankenstein's Monster" was a movie about gays but not having any gays in it.

Did I enjoy "LOTR"? Yes, I do. Not because Ian Mckellen is Gandalf the G(r)ay, but Peter Jackson did a great job in summarizing the horribly verbose books into a digestable 3-hour movie trilogy (albeit heavily edited at the end).

That said, I love many other movies/games/music/paintings/novels that does not have any gays in them as well.

I can accept gays in the mainstream media. I never said anything about excluding them for the sake of exclusion. What I meant is not to include them for the sake of inclusion.

I really cannot understand why a straight guy like myself could accept a movie/game/book that is all about gays (to the point where you actually have penises dangling in the middle of the silver screen) but gays could not accept a movie/game/book that does not have them in the foreground. Why? Really... why?

[macksting]

It's not that we can't accept the lack. If we could not accept the lack of homosexuality in our media, we'd hardly read, watch or play anything.
Should all lead characters be male?
Should they all be white?
Should they all be attractive? Okay, I can see arguments in favor of this one, 'cause who wants to stare at an ugly cuss all the time? I can't help but want a little variety in what meets qualifications, however.
Should they all be warriors?
Should they all be Christian, or even Abrahamic in their religion?

You can't please all the people all the time, but in a large cast it would actually be kind of ridiculous to forget that not everybody's straight.
Or male, or white, or bishie/rambo-esque, or warriors, or Christian, or what have you.

There's an under-representation which can be addressed by consciously bearing in mind the variety of human experience and attempting to bring some of it to light in a game. If there's a great deal of dialogue or atmosphere, there may be cause to consider the finer details. Sexuality is, really, just another such detail.
Perhaps it's the way one of the Rangers looks at the others, or that his eyes aren't turned by pretty women. Or that he kind of has to force the interactions so as to appear to react the same, if he's self-conscious. (If we assume the war happened in the 80s, we might see a difficult experience for homosexuals in the Wasteland. I wouldn't want it to be harped upon, but it was a tough time back then for a lot of people.)
Or hell, maybe it's just a way you rebuff the seductress who's trying to steer you away from your mission with the sway of her hips. How she reacts may say more about her than it does about the writers, of course.

It's just detail. We like detail. We especially like detail which speaks to us.
Conversely, some heroes should be male.
Some should be white.
Some should be warriors.
Some should be conventionally, perhaps even boringly, attractive.
Some should be devoutly Christian. Not my religion, but when done right it can make for absolutely fascinating writing.
And if it doesn't match national or worldwide demographics in one direction or another, well, whatever. It's not like there needs to be a census. It's the near-total lack which bothers me and others.
Apparently, for example, it's kind of a bummer to be a gamer of middle-eastern descent. Lots of ethnicities in the region, but we tend to lump them all together into 'the bad guys' in games to a remarkable extent, or as the heroes of only stories set in very old and very fantastic scenarios. You're the Prince of Persia/Aladdin, or you're Allah Jihadi Blow-Em-Up Dolls. Or so I hear. I'm white, so I don't really know what it's like to be of a marginalized ethnicity. Poor, sure, but not really second-class citizenry.

[ffordesoon]

@BlackGauntlet:

So you're saying you wouldn't be a little pissed if 99% of movies involved two gay dudes having graphically portrayed gay sex at some point in the film, and like two good movies about straight people came out every year or so, and maybe the guy or the girl died at the end, or turned out to actually be gay for no reason? Oh, and roughly every single other piece of media released focused on some sort of gay relationship, from songs on the radio to literary fiction? Like, the entire culture was gay, gay, gay, all the time, with no respite?

I submit that you'd be a little annoyed.

[macksting]

Addendum:
Also, we really, really want to piss off the FRC.

[paddymaxson]

As a gay man I dislike nothing more than making things more gay just to represent gays or to appeal to gays. It's OK for characters to be gay so long as it's not ludricrous and isn't forced. If there aren't romance options in this game then Gayness should really only come up in passing. I suppose if there's a brothel there should be "facilities" for gay men there too?

Either way, there's not really a need for overt gayness. I don't think the wasteland is the right place to see aggressively camp men (they'd likely not survive unless someone was taking care of them).

[snakeoil]

@blackgauntlet dude, you gotta take a deep breath and relax a bit. we are not talking about a gay game or a game for gays. we are talking about a classic rpg where encounters with npcs of all kinds should be possible. its so rediculous that this thread has already 22 pages because it is so unimportant.

it brought me to an idea though, please inxile, PLEASE, make a gay bareback darkroom in the game and call it "The Black Gauntlet"

it would be so funny! not to mob you bg, but just for a smile.