Gayming: The Under-representation of Gay Characters in Video Games

13th March, 0 replies

Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age, Dragon Age II, Grand Theft Auto IV, Tomb Raider, Persona 4: Golden, Streets of Rage 3, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Microsoft Windows

For many games, sexuality is a non-issue. Who cares if Cooking Mama is preparing a meal for Accounting Mama or Teaching Papa so long as she gets a gold medal for her minestrone, right? For other games, though, particularly narrative-heavy games that have the player experiencing many facets of the characters’ lives, the issues of love and sexuality crop up from time to time - art imitating life and all that jazz.

Many forms of media seem to have started embracing gay characters for some time now, and in recent years, gay characters have even started being developed well. Sure, a lot of early gay characters in film and television were first included only as fringe characters who were defined by their sexual orientation, but nowadays many characters’ sexual orientation does little to define them; they’re just people. What about video games then — what is the current representation of homosexuals in gaming?

In short, it’s getting better, but it lags behind other media. There’s a reason for that though, and that reason is the player’s agency — his or her ability to influence what happens to a narrative. The idea of the consumer of the story having an active sway over the chronicle is exclusive to video games and choose-your-own-adventure novels (and I don’t recall the “Give Yourself Goosebumps” series as ever addressing the idea of sexuality)...

To read the full article check out the link below.

Source:

gamrreview.com/article/91119/…

Around the Network

0 COMMENTS
Reply

Related Brainwaves

Trending Articles