The queer perspective on gaymes

Flynn Daunt
Science and Technology Editor
So it turns out that I’m gay.
See, I apparently used this great pick-up line on this broad-jawed doctor fellow, who is now following me everywhere I go. His name is Arcade Gannon. He flirts with me and isn’t bad with a plasma gun.
His affection might have had something to do with the extra inter-male dialogue options I enabled when I chose my character’s traits. I’d hardly noticed them, to be honest. But I’m glad I picked them. They let me see a side of Fallout: New Vegas I wouldn’t have seen had I stayed with the default orientation the video game provided. The film industry is still hung upon macho male action heroes, as is the game industry, but when the player is given the choice to pursue a romance with a character of the same sex, it opens up a lot of new creative avenues.
Games have had gay action heroes for a while now, even if they aren’t marketed or explicitly identified as such. Games like Fable or Dragon Age: Origins give the player the option of having romantic relations with someone of the same sex while not altering the character or story.
In Fable, for instance, your male character – later iterations allow for female main characters – can marry any villager in the game, be they male or female, and the game fully supports it as something normal. There’s something kind of bad ass about a character who saves the world, fights bad guys and whose sexuality is something of a minor trait.
While it’s most likely a good sign these game developers are considerately making role-playing games that allow for different sexual orientations, the idea you can choose homosexual relationships is a bit controversial, and there’s yet to be a mainstream game that makes a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual (LGBT) character or relationship a theme where the player doesn’t choose the sexual orientation of the main character.
However rare gay characters may be in modern games, they do exist, and they’re beginning to become well-rounded characters. Arcade Gannon, for instance, is an intelligent, snarky guy who makes sarcastic quips. He happens to mention he’s gay, and occasionally flirts with the protagonist if the character is male.
It’s nothing huge to his core character – it’s just an aspect of it.
On the other hand, the game Shin Megemei Tensei: Persona 4, from Japanese developer Atlus, features a sexually confused character named Kanji. Kanji is a street-wise punk; he tells off cops and threatens to beat up anyone he doesn’t like. Persona 4 deals with each character’s inner demons, and Kanji’s inner demon is his fear of being gay. His inner demon takes the form of a flamboyant effeminate doppelganger. Kanji realizes that the only way to defeat this demon is to accept it.
While Persona 4 never makes Kanji’s sexuality explicit, the fact the plot deals with a high-schooler’s sexual ambiguity in such an interesting way speaks volumes.
Still, this isn’t to say gays are entirely welcome in the mainstream gaming community. Terms insulting to homosexuals are still used liberally online. Back in 2007, someone trying to play the popular Halo 3 on Xbox Live, the Xbox 360’s online service, chose the unambiguous screen name “xxxGayBoyxxx,” and decided to record his interactions with other online players. The result was a flurry of pejorative uses of the word “gay” and “fag.” Words intended to hurt seemed perfectly acceptable within this online com- munity, as were ways of speaking that only the anonymity of the in- ternet would protect.
It’s disheartening to say the least.
There also seems to be some backlash against making gay characters, or even making them an option. Bioware, who pioneered the gay or bisexual-optional main character, took that feature away in Mass Effect 2. Ray Muzuka, Bioware’s co-founder, ambiguously responded, “It doesn’t mean that we’ve in anyway changed our philosophy toward enabling choice. We love giving players choice, and we are going to continue to enable that for future games. That’s a commitment for some of our franchises. For some other franchises we’ve had more defined characters and sort of approaches to things, and they’ve had a more defined personality and a more defined approach to the way they’ve proceed through the game and the world.”
It seems he means they don’t want their tough, macho space marine sleeping with dudes.
There are also games where there’s no plot, and in which characters are free to do whatever they wish. The Sims, for instance, allows the family of characters under your omnipotent control to marry whomever they want, regardless of gender. In later iterations of the game, they even allow gay couples to adopt.
Then there’s games like LittleBigPlanet, which stars a cotton plushie-esque guy called Sackboy. You’re given the choice to dress Sackboy in a dress, give him long eyelashes, or make him look like a robot if you choose. But it presents this kind of cross-dressing as something perfectly acceptable – most players never really stop to think about why Sackboy would wear a dress. It all seems natural.
I can’t argue playing through the eyes of a gay character shows me anything close to the actual experiences of a gay person, but in video games, we can make our own world and experience things we just physically can’t in other mediums.
Personally, I’d ask game developers to give players more freedom in any way they could, including gender and sexual orientation. Gamers want to get everything they can out of the game.
Now if you’ll excuse me, Arcade and I have to deal with a group of raiders who’ve been terrorizing this post-apocalyptic New Vegas.
LIST › Gay characters in video games
They may not be numerous and when they are in video games, they don’t get as much attention as they might deserve, but here are a few that have stood out in some pretty good games over the years
1. Juhani–StarWars:Knights of the Old Republic
If you play your card right as a female jedi, this star wars tiger lady lady will profess her love for you passively in a plot that goes nowhere.
2. Kanji – Persona 4
Kanji is the tough, street punk who has a folding chair as his first weapon. While his sexual orientation remains ambiguous, he does start bleeding from the nose when he sees his fellow male classmates in the pool. Nose bleeds are japanese for boners.
3. Veronica Renata Santan-gelo – Fallout: New Vegas
The perky Veronica is voiced by the ever-so-precious Felica Day. She’s a scribe for the egnimatic Brotherhood of Steel, who was almost kicked out for her romance with her girlfriend. Other than being adorable and courting ladies, she loves snack food and punching the heads off of fools in her way.
4. Tingle – Legend of Zelda
Tingle is… Tingle. The less said, the better.
Compiled by Flynn Daunt