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

Same-Sex marriage allowed in The Sims 2

[TheRedHorse]

The issue of gays in videogames will get a lot more mainstream soon, one example is that the website for "The Sims 2" says that members of the same gender will be able to marry each other.

http://thesims2.ea.com/about_faq.php

The Longest Journey

[AvantLegion]

The Longest Journey, a wonderful point-and-click adventure from a few years ago, featured a main character who rents her room from a lesbian couple. The game treated this like a natural thing, not something to be pointed out and grandstanded (in fact, it took a couple references before I got suspicious, and a couple more before I fully caught on).

Eagle

[LGagnon]

Eagle from Capcom vs SNK 2 (who was a character in the original Street Fighter) came out of the closet in that game as an openly gay character. Many of his winning quotes in the Japanese version of the game show this. The American version, however, had the quotes changed to not show his sexuality.

Re:Gamers are Awful

[Rallion]

I'll go one step further -- I know gay people who do it. It really is just common slang now. Gay means either homosexual or stupid. It can mean both, but doesn't always.

That said, I do try not to use it that way myself, but I'm exposed to it constantly, and ever so rarely it slips out.

Morrowind

[Hythlodaeus]

To me the best gay character in a game is great, because it was completely unintentional. The character is Crassius Curio in the game Morrowind. He was intended to be a very lecherous, but straight character. However, there was a bug that caused him to give the dialogue for female players regardless of the character's actual gender. The result: he comes across as absolutely, flamingly gay.