Would you play a gay character in a video game? One of My Gaming’s regulars, powderbucket, recently posed the question on our forums (consequent to a somewhat related topic on her blog), to a tragically predictable inundation of “EW GROSS NO”-type replies.
I was rather amused by two prominent presumptions of most respondents – that “gay” means “gay male”, and that playing a gay (male!) character would invariably involve loads of hardcore sex scenes. This necessarily precludes the possible existence of gay female leads, and the inconvenient fact that no mainstream game has ever actually featured anything even remotely resembling real sex – two ostensibly contradictory facts, when one considers that the overwhelming majority of games are apparently designed exclusively for boob-obsessed adolescent males.
I realise, of course, that there’s a much broader discussion to be had on the subject of homosexuality and sociocultural perceptions and attitudes that’s far beyond the limited scope of gay characters in games, but it’s perhaps significant that so many people would say, “I’m not homophobic, but…”.
I mean, I’m not male, but… well, actually, I have no problem whatsoever playing male characters in games. In fact, given the choice, I’ll more often than not choose a male character over a female character. Isn’t gaming about escapism? Back in the real world, there are arguably no two more definitive and inevitable human characteristics than gender and sexual orientation*, so it just makes sense to me that people should want to explore these outside of their own somewhat – and necessarily – inhibited experience in the alternate reality of games.
And to some extent, that’s true. Given the option, how many guys out there will choose to play a female character over a male character? Quite a few, I’m guessing. So why is sexual orientation different? Hilariously enough, I remember reading a comment about Mass Effect 2’s romancing opportunities, wherein a man playing a female character described his tremendous personal difficulty courting male partners, because it made him feel gay. I just can’t even begin to process such an astonishing paucity of mind.
So perhaps gender-bending isn’t such an issue for most gamers, but can people really feel so insecure about their own sexuality that playing as a gay character is problematic, even impossible, that it’s psychologically threatening in some way? Dubious moral convictions notwithstanding, I can’t quite work out how playing a gay character is substantially different to playing a character of the other gender.
There’s the convenient identity card, mind you. It’s the one that reads, “I need to identify with the character I’m playing, and I’m not gay (I’M. NOT. GAY.), so I can’t identify with a gay character”. That’s in conspicuous violation of the interchangeable gender rule, but it’s also in blithe contravention of demonstrable reality. Game narratives have come some way since Asteroids, but I’d hardly describe contemporary game characters as humanly credible past the most cursory inspection in any way whatsoever. If gamers really needed to intimately identify with the characters they’re playing, I daresay nobody would be playing anything.
But maybe sexuality is irrelevant in games, anyway. At least for the moment, I can’t think of a single game that would be improved by outing a gay lead character. But by the same token (as it were), I simply cannot imagine why a character’s heterosexual status should matter either, much less require explicit confirmation. Rather, I think that until game designers are prepared to present something a bit more realistic than a few bland conversation nodes leading to two characters having sex (hugging, really) with their clothes on, they’re probably better off chucking it entirely.
* For whatever that’s worth, anyway. I have a gay transgender friend.
Discuss sexuality in gaming on the MyGaming forum.
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