On Gay Characters In Videogames

Thanks to Armchair Arcade for its feature discussing the portrayal of gay characters in videogames past and present. The article starts by pointing out: "In Troika Games' computer role playing game The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003)... the player is asked to rescue, and given the option to marry, an openly gay character", and ends by arguing: "Gay avatars are an inevitable development in the evolution of the videogame that will take place with or without this article. If we already see such possibilities opening up in even mainstream titles like The Temple of Elemental Evil, I doubt it will be long before even the idea of a fantasy role-playing game featuring only one white male avatar will seem a strange, misguided aspect of our distant past."

Comments

Re:Gamers are Awful

[Pluvius]

These words have a negative meaning because, and only because of their connection to gay people

Do you realize that "faggot" used to refer to a bundle of sticks, or that "gay" used to be a synonym of "happy"?

Language changes all the time. Just because something became an insult because of homophobia doesn't mean that it will always be an insult because of homophobia. Even now, a significant number of people use the word as an insult just because it's accepted as an insult; sexual orientation doesn't enter into it. After all, how does it make sense to call, for instance, Star Wars Galaxies gay in the homophobic sense when SWG doesn't even have a sexuality?

For all those people who believe that words like "nigger" and "fag" aren't related to their original meaning, I invite you to come to my neighborhood and start calling my neighbors "niggers". I wager you won't walk out intact.

Because, as we all know, emotion not only overrides logic, it disproves it.

Rob

Re:Gamers are Awful

[nekoes]

I'm going to have to agree on this one, that is:

Do you realize that "faggot" used to refer to a bundle of sticks, or that "gay" used to be a synonym of "happy"?

Language changes all the time. Just because something became an insult because of homophobia doesn't mean that it will always be an insult because of homophobia. Even now, a significant number of people use the word as an insult just because it's accepted as an insult; sexual orientation doesn't enter into it. After all, how does it make sense to call, for instance, Star Wars Galaxies gay in the homophobic sense when SWG doesn't even have a sexuality?

Now I do know a lot of "gay" and "bi" people who would actually be offended if they were around people who used gay as a pejoritive, then again I know twice as many "gay" people who no longer feels that gay really means what it used to. It no longer holds offensive meaning for them. Which makes sense, technically gay doesn't even have any sort of connection to what we'd now call Homosexuals, besides the meaning it shares with happy, which I'd be more offended by. Of course these are the same friends that I game with occasionally, and I'd have to say that may have something to do with it.

Sure these words may have become pejoratives because of their connection to gay people, but they're now losing that connection it seems. Same deal with nigger, sure you still have the rednecks who use it offensively, and the black people who consequently get mad. But that's to be expected. I've heard black people call eachother nigger, white people call eachother nigger, white people call black people nigger, and asians that say it and everyone laughs. Racism, at least in my area, is becoming quite the joke.