| Would Mario Still Sell Millions if He Were Gay? |
By Gay Gamer |
Published
02/5/2007
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Blogging and Computing
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Rating: 
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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."
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