| Would Mario Still Sell Millions if He Were Gay? |
By Gay Gamer |
Published
02/5/2007
|
Blogging and Computing
|
Rating: 
|
|
|
|
Could "gay" video games someday top the bestseller lists?
Don’t laugh. Sure, a decade ago-even a few years
ago-the thought of a video game starring a gay main character selling
like hotcakes would have caused most anyone to chuckle, if not roll
their eyes and shake their heads incredulously. Considering the success
of a few recent games featuring gay content, however-such as Bully on
the PlayStation 2, Fable on the original Xbox and The Sims 2 on PC-the
question is no longer as silly as it once seemed.
Mark Bennett,
a long-time gamer and frequent visitor to gamers.experimentations.org,
an online forum for gay gamers, thinks it’s just a matter of time
before more games follow in the footsteps of those groundbreaking
efforts.
"I think it’s inevitable that games, just like every
other form of media, will have a major game with a gay story," he says.
"I don’t think every game will suddenly start having gay content, but
it certainly is getting more acceptable and I think games like The
Sims, Fable or Bully prove it doesn’t have the negative affect on game
sales that studios seemed to think it would."
For Bennett’s
dream to become reality, of course, the "suits" running the gaming
industry will have to make a few organizational changes. For starters,
they’d have to acknowledge adding gay content to games may not, as
Bennett suggests, adversely affect the sales of those games. They’d
also have to come to the realization that a market exists for such
games-a market made up of more than just gay gamers. And of course
they’d have to overcome any prejudices they may harbor about the gay
community and their inclusion in video game storylines.
There
are signs industry leaders are moving toward accomplishing the first
two objectives. Sony, for instance, recently placed targeted ads for
its Singstar game in European gay magazines.
Should that really
be considered "one small step for gay mankind?" Industry vet Brenda
Brathwaite (she’s worked on 21 published games) seems to think so.
"In
the game industry, to my knowledge and to date, very little game
marketing has been done that directly and specifically targets the GLBT
market," she says. "The Singstar advertisement was newsworthy on that
basis alone."
When will game companies make some progress on the
last objective-ridding themselves of any prejudices against gays in
general or gay content in games in particular? Brathwaite, for one,
isn’t sure any changes need to be made.
"I don’t think it’s a taboo subject" for game developers, she says. "They’re fairly liberal in my experience."
|
|
|
Pages: « Back 1 2 3 Next »
|
