Gay Characters

[Hell Razor]

We've supposedly acknowledged that we do not want a) romance and dating sim, or b) offensive gay stereotypes, and thus supposedly acknowledged that all we're talking about is c) a male character referring to another male character as a "husband" or "boyfriend" (or the equivalent for women).

The problems with this are (in order):

1) It seems completely trivial and pointless. You're talking about an almost unnoticeable use of words that will have no effect on anything, so I'm annoyed that you somehow think this is important.

2) How many occurrences of this need there be? Just one? Or should it be representative, so, for every ten characters that mention a hetero spouse or date, there should be one homo? In which case, if there are only two or three such references in the game, they should all be hetero?

3) If it is, for instance, just one reference to homosexuality, and if it is so important to you and a community of gamers to see it, then the risk I see is the need for the game designers to shove the reference in your face, or else it might get overlooked and you'll be back here asking why there are no gay characters. And it's not that I am scared of seeing gay words or anything, it's just that a contrivance of any sort is almost always a detractor from otherwise enjoyable entertainment. I'll know it's being shoved in my face to make sure I notice it, I'll know it's being shoved in my face to satisfy the political egos of a group in the real world and not the game world, and that will annoy me and detract from the natural immersion of the story and gameplay, and this is completely regardless of the issue of homosexuality.

[The_A_Drain]

I can see lesbian amazon settlement fit right in to wasteland setting.
Amazons would truly add to the story, but I don see how gay sensitive dudes survive in vilante world of wasteland. Can't seem to picture mad max being gay.

Not Max himself, other characters in the films.

Fifi, and some of his crew are most certainly homosexual. One of them rapes a guy. Negative portrayal, sure, but nobody can argue that character isn't homosexual/bisexual.

In Road Warrior, it's strongly implied that the guy hit in the head with the boomerang is Wez's lover (Humongous tells him "We've all lost people we love" as he incapacitates him by choking him.)

Edit: Which is another thing people seem to have glossed over in this discussion, nobody needs to say "LOOK AT ME! I'M GAY!" as with the Wez example from Mad Max, it could also be asserted that the dead character is his brother, or simply a close friend. This can be achieved with good quality writing as opposed to clumsy ham-fisted attempts to 'include' people by checking off tick-boxes. You can please lots of people because you can imply certain things but never explicitly state, this means people can draw the conclusions they want to draw without each character introduction being a friggin' speed-date.

[Infinitron]

I can see lesbian amazon settlement fit right in to wasteland setting.
Amazons would truly add to the story, but I don see how gay sensitive dudes survive in vilante world of wasteland. Can't seem to picture mad max being gay.

Gay sensitive dudes? No. Bloodthirsty leather-clad pederasts? Absolutely.

[Clockwork Knight]

So why not do it? Give me one valid reason.

Why do it? Give me one valid reason.

LOLOLO IF IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHY NOT INCLUDE IT?

LOLOLO IF IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHY INCLUDE IT?

Jesus, how many pages until you guys notice the pattern? If the developers feel like adding gay characters, they'll do it. Yeah, equal treatment to the point of gay characters going unnoticed instead of "hey, have I mentioned I have a husband *wink wink nudge nudge*" would be nice, but you won't get that with "MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE ONE OR TWO GAYS IN YOUR PROJECT" pleas. I don't want games to serve as "ha ha, that'll show them gays / homophobes" political platforms.

Also, I find the "I want to feel like I am the character" people to be abhorrent. Please stop ruining everything I love, kthxbai.

[Infinitron]

So why not do it? Give me one valid reason.

Why do it? Give me one valid reason.

LOLOLO IF IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHY NOT INCLUDE IT?

LOLOLO IF IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE WHY INCLUDE IT?

Jesus, how many pages until you guys notice the pattern? If the developers feel like adding gay characters, they'll do it. Yeah, equal treatment to the point of gay characters going unnoticed instead of "hey, have I mentioned I have a husband *wink wink nudge nudge*" would be nice, but you won't get that with "MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE ONE OR TWO GAYS IN YOUR PROJECT" pleas. I don't want games to serve as "ha ha, that'll show them gays / homophobes" political platforms.

Also, I find the "I want to feel like I am the character" people to be abhorrent. Please stop ruining everything I love, kthxbai.

Exactly. If you have to explicitly ask for gay characters to be included in something, then you've already given up on being treated equally and fairly. So why even go there?

[Garfunkel]

I have a wild idea. How about the sexuality of characters is a complete non-issue? It doesn't need to come up at all! Never mention whether someone is straight, bi or gay. Just don't reference sexuality at all. Now that would be refreshing.

That's discrimination by pretending the LGBT community does not exist, plus further discrimination at the expense of sexual orientations specifically because the game's characters will have some form of "race" via having some form of skin colour(/name/voice), so unless they are only ever portrayed with helmets [and wearing body armor that lets you make no educated guess as to their gender (or religion, or age, or..)]..... and then you can't have no story in that precious game of yours.

I don't know whether you're trolling or you didn't understand me at all.

I meant that there is no need for a game like Wasteland 2 to reference sexuality at all. There is no need for romances as other games have got that covered. I can understand you thinking it being "discrimination" if LGBT (can't you people come with an easier acronym?) was completely missing from the game but again, if there is no sexuality in the game AT ALL, then where's the discrimination? Having no sex in the game is now equal to every character being a robot and somewhat that equates no story as well?

[Gennadios]

Can we all just agree to let the developers put two dudes in the same house somewhere in the game and leave it at that?

[ffordesoon]

I never saw any complaints about the inclusion of homosexual characters in any of the major inspirations for these games and other examples in the post-apocalyptic genre. There's quite a lot of them, Mad Max for example both Mad Max and Road Warrior include pretty significant homosexual characters. So why should the game itself be any different?

I think some people just have trouble accepting that all kinds of different people exist and when anything around them isn't "normal" then it's being "pushed" on them. Which is pretty delusional, if I'm honest.

QFT.

[Celtic927]

I understand the need for this as people become more opened minder but consider this. EVERY Character in the first WL could have been BI...except for the 3-legged hooker that wouldn't sleep with women. SO when must we assume that lack of a mention of GAY characters means everyone is straight??? I mean you could even buy a Flame Thrower and be Flammingly Super Right RIGHT? ok, bad joke

[Brother None]

I never saw any complaints about the inclusion of homosexual characters in any of the major inspirations for these games and other examples in the post-apocalyptic genre. There's quite a lot of them, Mad Max for example both Mad Max and Road Warrior include pretty significant homosexual characters. So why should the game itself be any different?

I think some people just have trouble accepting that all kinds of different people exist and when anything around them isn't "normal" then it's being "pushed" on them. Which is pretty delusional, if I'm honest.

Well. I think a lot of people seem not to take offense at gay people being in it, they're more like "if InXile wants gay people in it, that's fine". But offense seems to be taken to the suggestion that gay people *need* to be in there. I kind of agree. If it makes no sense story/setting-wise, gay people needn't be in it. But as you point out, it makes sense for WL2, and I kind of expect some gayness to make an appearance regardless of feedback. But it shouldn't be something that "needs to be in".

[UniversalWolf]

I just don't see how sexuality and Wasteland are connected much at all. It's not really what the game is about, so I'm not really concerned about it's inclusion or exclusion.

[stonetoes]

I meant that there is no need for a game like Wasteland 2 to reference sexuality at all. There is no need for romances as other games have got that covered. I can understand you thinking it being "discrimination" if LGBT (can't you people come with an easier acronym?) was completely missing from the game but again, if there is no sexuality in the game AT ALL, then where's the discrimination? Having no sex in the game is now equal to every character being a robot and somewhat that equates no story as well?

For the umpteenth time, sex, romance, and sexuality are different things. You can have people who happen to be gay without anybody having sex. And having no sexuality at all? So no one is married or in a relationship at all. Gotcha.

But it shouldn't be something that "needs to be in".

I agree with you, but I also think that there's no reason for it not be, so why not make a few gay people happy? The vast majority of publishers won't include diverse characters for risk of a public backlash and hurting profits. Brian doesn't have to worry about that, so he can do something which takes a few minutes of development time (changing he to she, wife to husband) and accommodates people who are normally ignored, just like he did with Mac and Linux users.


Edit: oops, quoted Brother None as Garfunkel, fixed now. Also BN, I think you're being pretty charitable when you say people are only annoyed at the suggestion that they "need" to be in, not that they're in at all. So many people here were aggravated by the simple inclusion of gay characters in DA/ME, as far as I can see they're not arguing that those games' writing was compromised, that the designer's artistic vision was compromised by the gay agenda.

Edit 2: what i'm trying to say is, under what circumstances do you thank that most of these people wouldn't object when gay characters are included? Actually I can think of one, hot bisexual women. Everyone else not so much.

[knux81]

I wasnt aggrevated by the inclusion of same sex relatioships in ME/DA...What made me angry was that I couldn't get down with the Krogan...*bow chicka bow wow*

[ffordesoon]

It doesn't need to be in there. But it would be nice.

That is my position.

[Leona]

I can see lesbian amazon settlement fit right in to wasteland setting.
Amazons would truly add to the story, but I don see how gay sensitive dudes survive in vilante world of wasteland. Can't seem to picture mad max being gay.

Gay sensitive dudes? No. Bloodthirsty leather-clad pederasts? Absolutely.

Thank you, your post was so funny ))) I can't seem to stop laughing.

[PiPboy]

You ever notice if you ever mention the word gay \ sex a massive debate popups.
But you talk about shooting a guys head [The Secondary Man Brain] off its ... Meh.

[luckz]

I have a wild idea. How about the sexuality of characters is a complete non-issue? It doesn't need to come up at all! Never mention whether someone is straight, bi or gay. Just don't reference sexuality at all. Now that would be refreshing.

That's discrimination by pretending the LGBT community does not exist, plus further discrimination at the expense of sexual orientations specifically because the game's characters will have some form of "race" via having some form of skin colour(/name/voice), so unless they are only ever portrayed with helmets [and wearing body armor that lets you make no educated guess as to their gender (or religion, or age, or..)]..... and then you can't have no story in that precious game of yours.

I don't know whether you're trolling or you didn't understand me at all.

I meant that there is no need for a game like Wasteland 2 to reference sexuality at all. There is no need for romances as other games have got that covered. I can understand you thinking it being "discrimination" if LGBT (can't you people come with an easier acronym?) was completely missing from the game but again, if there is no sexuality in the game AT ALL, then where's the discrimination? Having no sex in the game is now equal to every character being a robot and somewhat that equates no story as well?

[stonetoes already wrote pretty much this, but I reply to stuff as I read, so..]
You realise that there is not a brick wall between FRIENDSHIP and ROMANCE, but that "like the McKinsey scale" it's more like a rather fluid area inbetween. So if you write a character into the story, his relationship to the other NPC he appears with might be 15% animosity, 35% friendship, 5% clearly sexual, 10% romance, 35% indifference. It's hard to confine yourself to writing characters that have no sexual identity. If you ever look at the field of anthropology, you'll quickly see that sexual identity is a major part of human life. Saying "the characters in my game are not allowed to have a husband/a wife/a domestic partner/an incestuous relationship/zoophiliac tendencies" is like saying "the characters in my game are not allowed to be black, white, man, woman, fat, thin, tall, short, [..]".
If no sexual identity is specified, characters are expected to be heterosexual, not asexual == if nobody's skin colour is specified, they are all presumed white, not ColourFree™ or apigmented™
There being no in-depth romancing quests/conversation options for the player is what I'd very much like to see (I played enough Bioware cRPGs - actually KotOR alone was enough for me in that regard), however that is entirely disconnected from how robbing all characters in your game from inter-NPC relationships besides "hate", "friendship" and "indifference" is a pretty silly premise.

The vast majority of publishers won't include diverse characters for risk of a public backlash and hurting profits.

EABioware would like to have a word with you. I wish we could have a discussion on these forums without mentioning Bioware as a negative example all the time.

You ever notice if you ever mention the word gay \ sex a massive debate popups.
But you talk about shooting a guys head [The Secondary Man Brain] off its ... Meh.

Some peculiar societies on this planet have a rather warped relationship to rather natural aspects of human life, i.e. sexuality.
And I doubt turning people into eunuchs in mid-combat would help the game. Really.


P.S.: Fwiw my girlfriend is playing The Ballad of Gay Tony the whole time. They even have it in the name!!!11

[PiPboy]

Well technically it made them "Winded" so they lost all their AP points to move. Hence made them much easier to kill.
I remember on my 4th run through FO all i did was De-Genderization Surgery my sniper rifle to all humans. Hence no need to worry about sexuality after that.

[BlackGauntlet]

If we're gonna have what OP wants for the sake of real-world immersion, let's also include homophobes and gay-killers whom are now no longer stopped by any legal bodies to do whatever they want.

Of course, the rapists (both male & female), pedophiles, cannibals, mad scientists, drug-dealers, slave-drivers, racists and suicide cults should all exist without any judicial system to keep them in check too. Spread the hate!

That said, this is where the Rangers come in... to encourage the chaos, to promote a cause or to mete out their brand of justice.

[Drool]

Well. I think a lot of people seem not to take offense at gay people being in it,

Except for some of the stellar posters here who seem to still be screaming, "ew, gross!" at the very thought.


The thing is, it all depends on how in depth the game gets. In Wasteland, as I said before, there's only a handful of people where sexuality is ever even touched upon or hinted at. Pedros and Felicia are married; Ugly hit on Laurie; Ellen flirts with you regardless of gender. One of the fake paragraphs portrayed Crumb as being a stereotypically flaming queen.

If this is all the depth that WL2 gives us, sexual preferences are going to be largely immaterial. If there's loads more dialogue, then sure, it's no big deal to have some NPC want you to rescue their same sex partner. It doesn't need to be a giant neon sign, but I don't think anybody's asking for that.

Finally, from a world building perspective, it's very likely that in a post apocalyptic hell hole, sexuality will be far less important. Companionship will be key, and beggars can't be choosers.