stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2024-10-31 07:11 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2024-10-31 07:11 pm
Video Game Evolution: LGBT Style
By most definitions, I'm not a video game fanatic. I don't have shelves of games and ten different platforms. I play only on my PC, and I tend to play one or two games, and that's it. Right now, those two are Baldur's Gate and City of Heroes.
But even a dilettante like me has noticed the changes.
The first video game I remember playing that had an actual story to it was Adventure on the Atari platform. Remember that one? You were a little cube wandering through different screens, able to carry a single object--a yellow arrow that was supposed to be a sword, or a blocky key. You were bothered by a mischievous bat that would steal your object and menaced by 8-bit dragons that would swallow you and end the game, all during your attempt to return a blocky glowing chalice to a blocky gold castle. The game was a best-seller, and my brother and sister and I played it over and over.
Now the game seems silly and simplistic, like a Model T or a rotary phone.
Games continued to evolve, though. Graphics improved by leaps and bounds. Computers got faster and memory got bigger. And we finally got full-blown animated characters, 3D worlds, and rich storylines.
But when story-based fantasy games like Final Fantasy and Zelda and Dragon Age came out, they kept up strict guardrails on character creation. Very few choices about what your character could look like, and very binary gender choices. The males were all manly men, the women were all womanly women. The games also included romantic subplots in the stories. Your avatar could romance certain characters in the game--or not. Your choice. These romantic choices were all strictly heterosexual. Absolutely no hint of male/male or female/female romance. Building-sized dragons, sorcerers with world-changing spell, and minotaurs charging into battle? No problem. A man kissing a man? That's too ridiculous to consider.
Also, the major mainstream games had no adult content. With the exception of the deliberately over-the-top Grand Theft Auto games, every story was, at most, PG-13. Characters could kiss. Sexual activity took place off-screen and wasn't discussed. No nudity.
"Well, yeah," said the big video game companies. "Kids and teenagers are the majority of our market, and we don't want to piss off their parents. And those right wingers boycott you and Wal-Mart won't carry games with adult content anyway. Besides, adults will still play teen-oriented games, so why should we include content for adults at all?"
It was really Walmart, though. WalMart dictated content for everything. Publishers of books, magazines, and video games NEEDED WalMart to carry their stuff, because everyone shopped there. You cut your own throat by risking WalMart's wrath. Book covers and blurbs were designed with WalMart sensibilities in mind. Video games wrote for children and teens. If you broke the rules, WalMart wouldn't carry your stuff, and you were relegated to niche markets in small gaming stores.
But games like The Sims started sneaking in LGBT content. Just hints of it. Players scratched their heads. "Is that character ... gay? Huh." The internet remained uncertain, but the game sold well.
Then, some ten years ago, one of the Dragon Age games allowed a male avatar the chance to romance two male characters. One of these characters was a flaming queen, and the other was a huge, hot-tempered minotaur, done up for comedy relief. But they were there.
Parts of the internet lots its collective shit, of course. The trolls howled. Parents snatched up their children and ran to church. Wal-Mart refused to carry the game.
And it didn't hurt sales one bit.
See, society had changed. Same-sex marriage was legal. We were starting to see gay and lesbian kisses (well, lesbian, anyway) on TV. LGBT storylines were becoming cool.
And something else had happened. BioWare (maker of Dragon Age) released the game both as a disc and as a download, meaning you didn't have to go to the store for it. And anyway, if you still wanted the disc, Amazon would ship it to you overnight. Who needed WalMart? Fuck you, Sam!
I also think the game creators realized that they had been trapping themselves in hetero-centrist thinking. It simply hadn't occured to them to allow a male avatar to romance a male character or a female a female. But finally someone said, "And why not? The non-player-character's dialogue would be exactly the same, whether the avatar is male or female. It's actually EASIER if we write the game to be gender blind. Besides, we have same-sex marriage in the real world. Why shouldn't we have it in our fictional world?" And so it happened.
Sexual content and nudity also crept in. Holy crap! Adults like adult content in their video games! Who knew? And who has more money to spend on video games, adults or teenagers?
Yeah.
Along came Baldur's Gate. Character design that lets you play any type of body. You can be cis-gender, transgender, non-binary, or anything in between. You can even customize the character's genitals. (!) Turned out the option of playing a female-presenting character who also has a penis became an astoundingly popular choice. Your avatar can romance any character, regardless of gender. And very explicit sexual content.
The game broke sales records all over the world and won countless awards.
Oh yeah--WalMart carries it. Guess their principals don't stand up to the chance at profit.
Now BioWare has released the newest Dragon Age game. It also allows highly-customizable characters and sports gender-blind romances.
It's freaking awesome. I would have committed cheerful murder for even a speck of gay content in a video game when I was growing up and when I was a young adult. The chance to play Someone Like Me? Wow.
It does highlight how bad things used to be for LGBTQ people, of when we were invisible even to entertainment. But the days of retailers dictating content are gone. WalMart doesn't have the near-monopoly it used to. We've become visible.
Now? Let me put it this way. When I mentioned the LGBT content of Baldur's Gate to the students in the Gay/Straight Alliance at Nameless High School, none of them had heard of it.
Let that sink in. This level of LGBT content has become so normal that it can be overlooked! A long, long way from the firestorms a hint of gay content once created.
These days I only read books with gay protagonists. I'm catching up after decades of being forced to read about straight people. And now I can play gay men all I like in video games, too. I've played Baldur's Gate several times through with different avatars, and I've never once romanced a female character, not even to see what happens. After decades of being forced to have straight romance or nothing, I can have all the gay content I want. It's fan-fucking-tastic.
As I write this, my computer is downloading Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I'm going to build a male who's good-looking by my standards and pay attention to romantic overtures only from male characters. Because I can.
And I'll slay some dragons, too.
But even a dilettante like me has noticed the changes.
The first video game I remember playing that had an actual story to it was Adventure on the Atari platform. Remember that one? You were a little cube wandering through different screens, able to carry a single object--a yellow arrow that was supposed to be a sword, or a blocky key. You were bothered by a mischievous bat that would steal your object and menaced by 8-bit dragons that would swallow you and end the game, all during your attempt to return a blocky glowing chalice to a blocky gold castle. The game was a best-seller, and my brother and sister and I played it over and over.
Now the game seems silly and simplistic, like a Model T or a rotary phone.
Games continued to evolve, though. Graphics improved by leaps and bounds. Computers got faster and memory got bigger. And we finally got full-blown animated characters, 3D worlds, and rich storylines.
But when story-based fantasy games like Final Fantasy and Zelda and Dragon Age came out, they kept up strict guardrails on character creation. Very few choices about what your character could look like, and very binary gender choices. The males were all manly men, the women were all womanly women. The games also included romantic subplots in the stories. Your avatar could romance certain characters in the game--or not. Your choice. These romantic choices were all strictly heterosexual. Absolutely no hint of male/male or female/female romance. Building-sized dragons, sorcerers with world-changing spell, and minotaurs charging into battle? No problem. A man kissing a man? That's too ridiculous to consider.
Also, the major mainstream games had no adult content. With the exception of the deliberately over-the-top Grand Theft Auto games, every story was, at most, PG-13. Characters could kiss. Sexual activity took place off-screen and wasn't discussed. No nudity.
"Well, yeah," said the big video game companies. "Kids and teenagers are the majority of our market, and we don't want to piss off their parents. And those right wingers boycott you and Wal-Mart won't carry games with adult content anyway. Besides, adults will still play teen-oriented games, so why should we include content for adults at all?"
It was really Walmart, though. WalMart dictated content for everything. Publishers of books, magazines, and video games NEEDED WalMart to carry their stuff, because everyone shopped there. You cut your own throat by risking WalMart's wrath. Book covers and blurbs were designed with WalMart sensibilities in mind. Video games wrote for children and teens. If you broke the rules, WalMart wouldn't carry your stuff, and you were relegated to niche markets in small gaming stores.
But games like The Sims started sneaking in LGBT content. Just hints of it. Players scratched their heads. "Is that character ... gay? Huh." The internet remained uncertain, but the game sold well.
Then, some ten years ago, one of the Dragon Age games allowed a male avatar the chance to romance two male characters. One of these characters was a flaming queen, and the other was a huge, hot-tempered minotaur, done up for comedy relief. But they were there.
Parts of the internet lots its collective shit, of course. The trolls howled. Parents snatched up their children and ran to church. Wal-Mart refused to carry the game.
And it didn't hurt sales one bit.
See, society had changed. Same-sex marriage was legal. We were starting to see gay and lesbian kisses (well, lesbian, anyway) on TV. LGBT storylines were becoming cool.
And something else had happened. BioWare (maker of Dragon Age) released the game both as a disc and as a download, meaning you didn't have to go to the store for it. And anyway, if you still wanted the disc, Amazon would ship it to you overnight. Who needed WalMart? Fuck you, Sam!
I also think the game creators realized that they had been trapping themselves in hetero-centrist thinking. It simply hadn't occured to them to allow a male avatar to romance a male character or a female a female. But finally someone said, "And why not? The non-player-character's dialogue would be exactly the same, whether the avatar is male or female. It's actually EASIER if we write the game to be gender blind. Besides, we have same-sex marriage in the real world. Why shouldn't we have it in our fictional world?" And so it happened.
Sexual content and nudity also crept in. Holy crap! Adults like adult content in their video games! Who knew? And who has more money to spend on video games, adults or teenagers?
Yeah.
Along came Baldur's Gate. Character design that lets you play any type of body. You can be cis-gender, transgender, non-binary, or anything in between. You can even customize the character's genitals. (!) Turned out the option of playing a female-presenting character who also has a penis became an astoundingly popular choice. Your avatar can romance any character, regardless of gender. And very explicit sexual content.
The game broke sales records all over the world and won countless awards.
Oh yeah--WalMart carries it. Guess their principals don't stand up to the chance at profit.
Now BioWare has released the newest Dragon Age game. It also allows highly-customizable characters and sports gender-blind romances.
It's freaking awesome. I would have committed cheerful murder for even a speck of gay content in a video game when I was growing up and when I was a young adult. The chance to play Someone Like Me? Wow.
It does highlight how bad things used to be for LGBTQ people, of when we were invisible even to entertainment. But the days of retailers dictating content are gone. WalMart doesn't have the near-monopoly it used to. We've become visible.
Now? Let me put it this way. When I mentioned the LGBT content of Baldur's Gate to the students in the Gay/Straight Alliance at Nameless High School, none of them had heard of it.
Let that sink in. This level of LGBT content has become so normal that it can be overlooked! A long, long way from the firestorms a hint of gay content once created.
These days I only read books with gay protagonists. I'm catching up after decades of being forced to read about straight people. And now I can play gay men all I like in video games, too. I've played Baldur's Gate several times through with different avatars, and I've never once romanced a female character, not even to see what happens. After decades of being forced to have straight romance or nothing, I can have all the gay content I want. It's fan-fucking-tastic.
As I write this, my computer is downloading Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I'm going to build a male who's good-looking by my standards and pay attention to romantic overtures only from male characters. Because I can.
And I'll slay some dragons, too.