In 2002, white-supremacist music label Resistance Records released Ethnic Cleansing, a technically unimpressive first person shooter that has your skinhead or KKK protagonist (they provide a choice!) gunning down stereotyped representations of African Americans, Latinos and Jews in an effort to "protect" white people from their influences. Claiming "real black people" were used to voice character sounds, enemies grunt and hoot like apes, Mexican characters utter racist catchphrases and all the Jewish NPCs have stylized big noses. Although it hardly made news in mainstream gaming media, it received the expected level of shock and disapproval from those aware of it outside of white-supremacist groups, with the Anti-Defamation League going so far as to lobby the Interactive Digital Software Association to adopt policies preventing the member companies' tools being used to create such games in the future. Earlier this year a city councilman from Georgia resigned after it became public that he'd been gleefully circulating links to Flash-based Border Patrol, a shooter that has you killing illegal immigrants as they attempt to cross the US border. Closer to home, one of the issues brought up at the recent GLAAD panel on homphobia in online communities was a similar shooter to Border Patrol called Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!, which has your character killing naked gay men chasing him in a park; if they catch up to you, you're "raped" and lose the game. Originally created for a French gaming portal, the shooter was pulled and resurfaced over the summer on a Georgian (the country, not the councilman) website to renewed controversy.
I promise there's a reason for this history lesson.
Yesterday both Joystiq and Kotaku covered the release of a new academically-approved public survey soliciting opinions from LGBT and heterosexual gamers about what they look for in video games. The survey itself didn't impress me much, personally, from the eyeroll-inducing "gaymer" phrase to the limited choices in various questions– seriously, a survey targeted to LGBT individuals and the only choices about gender are male or female?– but it's a good jumping-off point to examine the sort of outrage anything like this generates in heterosexual-dominated gaming circles.
Let's start with this comment: (10/10 edit: the comment by solaranox looks to have been deleted by moderators at Joystiq, so I've uploaded a screenshot of it here taken from a cache of the website before the comment was removed)
Again, I really wonder why Joystiq continues to bring sexual preferences into the lime light on a gaming site???
What do the two things have to do with each other? Really?
OK, some (Is it alright if I use the word Gay?) people like to play games.
So what?
Why is this posted on a gaming blog?
[...]
Please Joystiq, quit preaching to us about things that really have nothing to do with gaming or games. That is NOT what we come here for!
This is representative of the sort of hostility that comes out whenever this subject is explored to any degree. When you discount the outright homophobes (who obviously can be expected to take offense to something like this) you're still left with a depressingly large segment of people who bristle all the same. From straight people it always seems to me as a sort of "I'm not racist, I have black friends!" in the way they try to justify not seeing "the point" in any additional gay content in games, whether we're talking about more representation for the LGBT players or something as simple as gay-styled NPCs. I also know gay people who feel similarly, but much like Log Cabin Republicans I just don't understand the mentality, though I have to suspect (and I'm not going to mince words here) that their discomfort with it stems from a place of deeply suppressed and rarely examined issues with their own sexuality.
I know that this subject has been explored a lot both here and elsewhere, but it's a broken record that comes up again and again and again. In an earlier entry I brought up the idea of a "good representation" of LGBT people in a video game; being a gay man aside, I still take a story for what it is. If a gay character is thrown into a game with a very scripted, linear plot– like, say, Prototype– and their sexuality actually serves no purpose to the story, I'm likely going to feel that it's tacked on and corny or simply pandering to LGBT people. In a game that is all about choices and decisions– like Mass Effect, which did allow for the possibility of lesbian interaction if you created a female character– then there's little excuse to leave orientation references heterosexual only. Or worse, the lesbian-only half-hearted implementation that seems to similarly cater to frat boy sexual fantasies over legitimate storytelling.
Yet this topic is frequently the source of teeth-gnashing from the majority of gamers. Mike Fahey, the writer of the Kotaku version of the survey coverage, says:
As for the survey's motivation, I find myself a bit conflicted. I've just never thought of gaming as a pastime that sexual orientation figures into.
Well no, Mike; as a presumed heterosexual male I guess that wouldn't be something you're likely to think of, given that the default sexuality is always straight, whether we're talking about TV shows or movies or games. As a gay man, I didn't come out once; I have to come out of the closet constantly because it's assumed that I'm straight and it's on me to correct that assumption, unless I want to make things easier by camping it up to such a degree that the assumption is changed to "oh yes, he's got to be gay." As an outlier to the default I am constantly face-to-face with how I am different, so "sexual orientation" is going to be a bigger deal to me in places it won't matter to straight people and I'm going to notice the glaring lack of representation in places straight people didn't realize something was missing. I would think that this is easy logic to follow but apparent it isn't, since other gamers constantly wail about how it's injecting something irrelevant into their particular hobby.
"Lighten up, it's just a game." The extreme examples I used at the start highlight the fact that "just a game" is becoming less and less acceptable as a dismissal to the very real issues they involve themselves with. You can wax poetically about artistic merit, but if a director released a film titled "Black People Need to Go Back to Africa" with any sort of content like Ethnic Cleansing, I honestly doubt you would see any commentary to the effect of "lighten up, it's just a movie." But games still seem to exist in some special class where what happens in them is not subject to the same expectations we have about other mediums or polite society in general, and if you happen to be one of the ones who attempts to apply those standards you're strongly confronted as crossing the line. Increasingly I feel like "I don't think this is relevant" is some demure codeword for "it makes me feel icky and I do not want" and I suspect that the gamers complaining the loudest about how they don't feel it's necessary aren't going to notice any of the hypersexual marketing that's pelted at them by game developers– and if they do notice, they won't have an issue with it.
Ultimately it's just an issue of visibility. Gay characters (and explicitly stating that you, yourself, are a gay gamer) might be irrelevant to many or most heterosexual gamers (and sadly some gay ones; come on guys!) but it is still an elevation for awareness that has a very tangible effect on the people who see it. If one gay teenager living in middle America can look at such a representation, whether from video games or movies or TV shows, and feel less alone because they see themselves reflected in a way that seems "normal" and "okay" then that is a powerful accomplishment. If one straight kid sees the same thing and it changes how they react towards gay people for the better, it's an improvement for our rights and treatment in a way that political lobbying will never match. That is why this stuff is important and why dismissals about it being irrelevant or out of line hold no weight.
Possibly Related Posts:
What's gay identity in the gaming microcosm?
Summarizing opposition to LGBT players in MMOGs
What am I missing about EVE Online?
80s retro gaming at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney
Belated news: Microsoft finally reverses policy against saying you're gay on Xbox Live
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Richard
10 Oct 2009 · 3:25 AM Richard[quote this]
Joshua,
Excellent piece amid a series of excellent posts on your site. You've definitely earned a fan with your thoughtful and eloquent writing.
Joshua Meadows
10 Oct 2009 · 12:59 PM Joshua Meadows[quote this]
Thanks for the compliment Richard, and thanks for the link as well!