• Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I personally don’t understand the whole thing of a fictional character in a video game where there is absolutely no romance anywhere having a preference. I don’t care whether my character in a game like Borderlands is straight, gay, lesbian, or anything in between so long as I can pop the heads off my enemies.

    • Jank@literature.cafe
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      1 year ago

      Because a lot of games have a story of some sort and traits can help flesh out a character?

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Okay, but then leave it ambiguous and let people think of the character whatever they want. It doesn’t matter if doomguy was gay, it matters that he slays

        • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          And then of the characters significant other is important? Like they complained about Spimer-Man 2, despite the playable characters not even being gay. We know that because we know who they are after.

          It Takes Two. Me and my boyfriend played it. Beautiful game. Loved it. Plan to wait a few years and play it with him again. It’s about a straight couple. I can’t imagine how that game would work if we didn’t know that. Like I guess we could keep stretching the argument to “Well they could be bi”, I guess. We don’t need to know that. But it kind of helps to know they’re married to know the story. Otherwise it’s gonna get weird with the kid involved.

          We don’t have to try and out progressive everyone for everything. A story can have a romance and we can see the romance and we can know who they’re dating and we can know they’re sexuality. None of this is the issue.

          Your example would make sense in Doom. Sure. I’ve literally never seen anyone ask for it in doom. It’s a terrible example because it’s not that kind of game.

          But for many games where the story is actually a big part, and not for games like Doom where the story really doesn’t matter, it’s fine. We can still celebrate love in really any shape or form(thats not harmful). If a game wants to avoid it, thats also fine. Once again, not arguing every game needs it. But if that’s the story, that’s the story, and it seems pointless to be angry that you know who a character is dating.

          The movement for queer acceptance isn’t for people to be hush hush and for us to make the closet bigger to invite straight people in. It’s to get people out.

        • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There’s 2 problems with that

          LGBT people deserve explicit representation as much as cishet people do, and cishet representation is all over media

          Even if there’s a LGBT coded character people will fight to death to say that they’re actually very straight and that the degenerates are attacking them personally

          • NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml
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            11 months ago

            Deserve how? I might be too simple to understand.

            The ratio of representation is off, because the ratio of clientele is off.

            When the demand grows, demand from actual paying customers, the representation will rise. Get more diverse people playing and creating games, and you’ll get more diverse games.

            Forcing representation has never helped any group, ever.

            • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              What makes you think it’s forced and not LGBT creators creating or reinterpretating the characters?

              What makes you think that LGBT people aren’t consuming video games? The indie game scene is gay as fuck.

              • NotJustForMe@lemmy.ml
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                11 months ago

                Why do I think that? Because that’s how a capitalist market works.

                Demand creates potential value. And no game developer would leave potential value untapped.

                If there were a few really bestselling LGBT games, others would hop on the wagon, the market will get saturated for a while, and then it levels out a bit and some good concepts remain.

              • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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                11 months ago

                I don’t necessarily disagree, but my question would be how to quantify the number of LGBT characters/games. If we assume LGBT people comprise about 10% of the population, we would expect about 10% of the content should reflect that perspective/experience. To argue that LGBT content should be actively encouraged and expanded, one would have to demonstrate some kind of data regarding the relative prevalence of LGBT content, no?

                Or is that point moot, because you believe it’s a desirable outcome to have an inflated media presence due to the fact that the LGBT community is a minority? I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that either, but it’s a very different argument than fighting for equal representation.

                • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  I will not rest until all the characters are gay and you will not stop me

                  In all seriousness, this is a non issue and idk why you’re trying to do some weird gay ratio calculus

            • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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              11 months ago

              They deserve it, because they exist.

              They aren’t doing anything wrong by existing.

              So developers should not have their creative freedom of using non-cis characters in their stoies taken away.

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          That’s an interesting one because I actually always headcannon doom guy as gay ever since I was a kid and it was just being silly, always pictured him as a badass marine that loves sucking cock and he’s fighting his way to hell because his bf died and was sent there.

          Duke Nukem on the other hand was explicitly hetro which is fun, I would have also enjoyed in a different game a character like the duke who was aggressively homosexual or even better a good representation of a ego obsessed badass power bottom that has all sorts of fun quips like ‘I’m here to suck cock and kick ass, and I already drained everyone’s balls…’ it would be silly, fun, and we could have lots of shots of his toned butt and stuff… But no, thirty years later and people are still scared of fun. Sad.

          :::