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."
Others Aren’t So Sure
"With an industry both dominated and hamstrung by
the forces of marketing and PR, in which good games and good decisions
by good designers are routinely passed over for wringing extra pennies
out of big film franchises ... well, I’m just not holding my breath for
a socially conscious, self-aware game with a gay main character and
great game play," says David Edison, associate editor at gaygamer.net
(a site that bills itself as being "for boys who like boys who like
joysticks").
Bennett, a programmer based in Calgary, Alberta, has a similarly discouraged view of the gaming industry.
"Over
the last decade games have gotten a lot more expensive and complicated
than they used to be," he says. "As the costs have increased and big
publicly traded studios have basically dominated game sales, the
industry has also become a lot more conservative and risk adverse.
Genre and tie-in games are the rule and games which push game play or
story have really been pushed to the sidelines."
LGBT marketing
expert Bob Witeck, co-founder and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based
Witeck-Combs Communications, takes a more egalitarian position on the
situation. Although he isn’t a gamer himself and doesn’t have
first-hand knowledge of the industry, he assures it’s a business he
"understands in commerce."
Given his background and experience,
he says "the folks who own/run these companies-any company in America,
for that matter-still operate under the filter of ’if we do one thing,
do we turn off somebody else?’ It’s not just about sexual
orientation-it’s about race and gender, too. If it’s too black, too
girly, too gay, we’re driving away the core audience of straight white
boys. So, they think ’if we tip too far in any one direction, are we
going to alienate a customer or part of our audience? Are we going to
appear to have an agenda, where we could piss off some people?’ They
worry they’ll get some push back from their customer base or special
interest groups who think you’re speaking to something, an underlying
agenda."
That’s not to imply those heading game companies are
homophobic, Witeck assures. "Many of them are ’business-phobic.’ They
want to ’get it all’ but not lose or risk any of it."
Witeck
says most companies likely are thinking about "brand fitness." "I think
it’s an issue many game companies are facing-’does the game fit our
audience?’ he says. "Gamers face the same thing-does the game fit them?"
That
doesn’t mean that if a game features a gay character or storyline,
however, it will no longer be a "fit" for a young, heterosexual gamer,
Witeck says. In fact, it may be just the opposite.
"Younger
people want to see representations that are inclusive," he says. "They
expect to see games that are multi-racial and all-gender. Sexual
orientation just isn’t a big barrier for them-they don’t view it in
that way."
Games that aren’t inclusive, Witeck suggests,
eventually will be "beaten down. If they don’t connect with them, they
won’t be viewed as true."
Brathwaite also believes the majority
of gamers would accept an increase in gay content, "particularly if
they were the ones choosing the sexuality" of the character.
"I
remember this interview I did with Dani Berry (a legendary
transgendered game designer) in the 1990s, where she mentioned that
’getting the girl’ at the end of the game wasn’t exactly what she had
in mind," Brathwaite says. "As a woman, I get that, you know. How come
I couldn’t have a man at the end of a game? It would have made the
experience more satisfying for me as a player."
Although younger
gamers-and female gamers-may be more open to gay characters and
storylines than previously imagined, Witeck warns the gay community
about getting ahead of itself.
"Younger people generally don’t
care" about gay content, he says, "but they don’t want to think the
game is ’for gay people’ or ’that’s for fags.’ So if the content is too
much or crosses some line in their minds, it would create an impression
that it no longer ’fits’ them."
A Whole New World?
Assuming what Witeck and Brathwaite say is true, and
companies like Lionhead Studios (which created Fable and is now owned
by Microsoft) and Rockstar Games (makers of Bully) continue to push the
envelope and move the industry forward, what could the future hold for
gays and lesbians looking for a more realistic and representative
gaming experience?
Edison hopes the future will bring "more of
the same kind of healthy gay presence we’re beginning to see in games
like Bully and Fable," he says. "I’d like to see more incidental
characters who happen to be gay or lesbian, and it not being that big
of a deal.
"I hope that in 10 or 20 years we can look back on
characters like (Nintendo’s "fruity" sidekick character) Tingle and
Enchanted Arms’ Makoto with the same sheepish absurdity we now see in
the gay TV characters of yesterday, like Paul Lynde’s uncle Arthur in
Bewitched," he adds.
"We are, I think, universally hungry to see
ourselves portrayed in the medium we love," Edison says. "Just as gays
and lesbians have welcomed themselves on the big and little screens, I
think that any halfway respectful representation of homosexuality will
be met with open arms by most gay gamers."
Bennett, who is
working with a few of the people he met on gamers.experimentations.org
to create a "gaymer-friendly" game for the PC, adds, "I think it’s time
games started to reflect a more diverse and sophisticated view of
homosexuality. This doesn’t mean game developers should feel the need
to arbitrarily add gay characters and themes to their games. What this
does mean is game developers should start trying to include gay and
themes and stories when it’s appropriate, and when it can be done it a
way that respects the game and the maturity of the gaming public.
"I
think the classic gay-friendly games like The Sims or Fable really get
it right in that they neither punish nor reward the player for
exploring gay themes in the game," he says. "They’re treated exactly
the same as their heterosexual equivalents. In television and film,
we’re finally seeing the portrayal gays as complex and varied human
beings. It’s my hope that one day we’ll start to see the same thing in
our games."