In short, a Straight Male Gamer (we'll call him SMUG) complained because he got hit on by a male character in the multi-player function of the game. He drew enough attention to himself that he got a rep of Bioware to tell him his complaint was considered invalid. BO-YAH! Win the for the LGBT Community & Friends.
(Krissie Pearse covers this story well. Excerpts of article below.)
“Straight Male Gamer” told to ‘get over it’ by BioWare
BioWare adopted a (sadly) very special and very principled stance in designing one of their recent games, Dragon Age 2. Their stance was simple: relationships are for everybody, whether gay, straight, or anything else in between. You can also have have more than one romance at a time with the game’s characters. In this game, everybody is equal. Too equal, it seems, for one particular straight male gamer who was upset to be on the receiving end of a little flirting from another male character in the game. The reaction of this Straight Male Gamer? – To post a new thread on Bioware’s forums to complain…
To quote the complainant;
To summarize, in the case of Dragon Age 2, BioWare neglected their main demographic: The Straight Male Gamer.
I don’t think many would argue with the fact that the overwhelming majority of RPG gamers are indeed straight and male. Sure, there are a substantial amount of women who play video games, but they’re usually gamers who play games like The Sims, rather than games like Dragon Age. That’s not to say there isn’t a significant number of women who play Dragon Age and that BioWare should forgo the option of playing as a women altogether, but there should have been much more focus in on making sure us male gamers were happy.
Now immediately I’m sure that some male gamers are going to be like “YOU DON’T SPEAK FOR ME! I LOVE DRAGON AGE 2!”, but you have to understand, the Straight Male Gamer, cannot be just lumped into a single category.
Its ridiculous that I even have to use a term like Straight Male Gamer, when in the past I would only have to say fans, …
The irony of the complaint is clearly astounding. For those that do not play Dragon Age 2, there is yet a further irony in that the Straight Male Gamer clearly has a huge problem with LGBT people being catered to as well rather than a focus based entirely in Straight Male Gamers (and a little on women too, of course, just as an afterthought). but clearly has no problem with the game allowing inter-species romances between the human player controlled character and an Elf! You couldn’t make it up!
The romances in the game are not for “the straight male gamer”. They’re for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don’t need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant… and that’s ignoring the idea that they don’t have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The “rights” of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent “right” to get more options than anyone else.
More than that, I would question anyone deciding they speak for “the straight male gamer” just as much as someone claiming they speak for “all RPG fans”, “all female fans” or even “all gay fans”. You don’t. If you wish to express your personal desires, then do so. I have no doubt that any opinion expressed on these forums is shared by many others, but since none of them have elected a spokesperson you’re better off not trying to be one. If your attempt is to convince BioWare developers, I can tell you that you do in fact make your opinion less convincing by doing so.
And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as “political correctness” if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They’re so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don’t see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what’s everyone’s fuss all about? That’s the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.
- Krissie Pearse
Complete article available at http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/
Females are hard to understand - but this Krissie Pearse makes an admirable effort. I, for one, would have preferred more outrageous things be allowed in both the SMUG and LGBT ends.
ReplyDelete... maybe a setting for "Mainstream" and "Non Mainstream".
I don't think separation is the answer here. Separation helps to enforce the cultural notion that heterosexuality is normative behavior and homosexuality/bisexuality/etc as non-normative. And that's very interesting to me, that this is the case because it likely wouldn't be so in cultures which do not draw the line so definitively between "heterosexuality" and "homosexuality".
ReplyDeleteI think the subculture of American college life is a fine example of this. Supposedly strictly/mostly heterosexual women are allowed/encouraged to express homosexual behavior under certain circumstances (usually goaded on by relatively heterosexual men).
(Just FYI, I'm a great believer in Kinsey's Scale of Human Sexuality, so I don't see people as "heterosexual" and "homosexual". I see the categories as less clear-cut, ie: a man might be something like "general heterosexual with occasional predisposition towards homosexual interaction" and so on and so forth.) It's a 7 point scale with absolute homosexuality & heterosexuality on either side.)
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale
I think it's worth pointing out here that I am in fact female. It might explain my admirable effort *smile*
ReplyDelete