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I dunno, most games the sexuality of the protagonist is completely irrelevant, and in those cases id tell both sides to stop whining or just play a different game
This is a case of double standards.
If you weren’t willing to call it out before when it was heavily one sided, you shouldn’t be calling it out now.
You’re making it relevant by calling it out at the worst possible time.
I’m not seeing the double standard there. Their overall stance sounds like they don’t gaf about anyone complaining about the sexuality of characters in video games because it’s often completely irrelevant to the game itself.
Or did I misunderstand and you mean that since they didn’t call out people complaining about a lack of gay representation they shouldn’t call out everyone complaining now that the complaints go both ways?
I’m not seeing the double standard there.
If you sleep through all the romantic subplots of the last 40 years of RPGs, but you wake up offended when you discover that Ellie and Riley Kiss at the end of The Last of Us: Left Behind, you’re working from a double standard.
you mean that since they didn’t call out people complaining about a lack of gay representation they shouldn’t call out everyone complaining now that the complaints go both ways?
Basically this, yes. Although, generically complaining “Ew! Kissy stuff!” would suffice.
No one gave a fuck about Ellie and Riley kissing in 2014. It wasnt until after the culture wars started that it became a thing. Im still not even sure it is a thing, since everyone was saying that not liking part 2 was only because you dont like “the gayz”. Which is bullshit. The fans of the game, knew for 6 years that Ellie was gay, and that she was going to be the only playable character(which turned out to be bullshit), and everyone was still looking forward to it.
Then the leaks happened, and all of sudden half the fans are bigots…
It just wasn’t clear what the “this” in the comment I replied to was referring to, the OP or the comment it replied to. My own comment assumed it was saying thr comment it replied to had the double standard, but I see now that it might have been agreeing with that comment’s sentiment but saying the OP was about a double standard.
I’m calling it out right now because someone posted a meme and I’m replying to that post. I am not against more representation in video games, and I find people who whine about it to be annoying children.
Also, nobody is forcing anybody to play a game. Every gamer already chooses to not play most of the games that exist. What’s one more?
“The game is forcing me to fuck this man, repeatedly”
What?! That’s terrible! How?! How can I replicate that so that I don’t accidentally do it?!
Could I skip it? Yes, but I paid for this content so now I have to see it to get my money’s worth. It’s not my fault I’m doing it, it’s the woke™!
Aww I ruined the conversation I gotta save scum the assgfuck scene again
No one is forced to be straight… Most games don’t even have romances.
Like you think Doom Guy is straight because he’s clearly a Christian? When I control him, he’s the gayest queen in Hell. 🤷♂️
No one is forced to be straight…
Virtually every JRPG has a straight romance subplot, typically staring the main character. Every FF since… six? Every Dragon Quest. Every Persona. Kingdom Hearts. Fucking Mario Brothers has a straight romance in it.
Like you think Doom Guy is straight because he’s clearly a Christian?
I think you can head-cannon that the two dudes in Time Crisis are having hard core steamy Special Agent on Special Agent lovemakings in between chapters. Fine and good.
But when Arno & Elise kiss in Assassin’s Creed Unity? I’m sorry, but nobody needs to see that heteronormative degenerate filth. Kids are playing that game. What are they going to grow up thinking?
For Mario and Peach, Nintendo has had decades to do something and hasn’t. They officially confirmed they’re just friends I believe.
For Kingdom Hearts, it’s a similar thing with Sora and Kairi. There are some undertones and potentially attraction but they’re just friends, and children besides. They haven’t done so much as kiss. Plus with Birth by Sleep it’s shown that Sora literally has had another dude inside him for years.
SoraXRiku what’s this kairi bullshit
exACTly
nobody needs to see that heteronormative degenerate filth. Kids are playing that game.
Wow, didn’t expect someone speaking so loudly about same sex relationships to be so bigoted, but all walks of life, I guess. Either way, I seriously hope you have no interaction with anyone below the age of 30 personally or professionally.
I’m not gonna even get into how romance is just a part of a story, and if you read anything that has romance in it, fanfic or not, it has just as much a right to exist.
I will however rip into you pointing out franchises for ‘heteronormative degenerate filth’. First, the game isn’t about you. No game ever is, nor ever will be. If that is a moral failing of a game, I suggest you start making games yourself or stop playing them, because any other expectation is really stupid beyond compare.
I will concede that games often lure you into self inserting yourself into the main character, as JRPGs tend to do. But at some point, the illusion has to break, and I can’t really imagine how you’d get mad if you’re self inserting into Zidane (FF IX protagonist) or even Leon or Cloud ( I hope you know enough about franchises you’re trash talking to know who they are).
Also, to complain about the Assassin’s Creed franchise of all things is so braindead I have to question if you’re a plant. You’re saying children are playing a game whose whole premise is premediated murder, and the romance scenes are what you’re up in arms about? That is honestly beneath anything that breathes to acknowledge, and really shows that critical thinking is a skill.
Do note, however, that if children are playing a game with mature content in it? That’s the parent’s responsibility as an individual to care for their child. Games aren’t obligated to include or exclude content to suit children, nor even whiny little shits like yourself.
I think it was satire
Wooooooooooosh
I feel moved! imagine a 6’7 monster like human, ripping apart monsters to save a rabbit, but its a total drag queen outside the outer space
I’d much rather play as a woman.
I’m cis, my character in Saints row ended up trans because I wasn’t a fan of dressing up a guy and wanted to dress up a woman.
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yeah I have gender dysmorphia. Gender Dysmorphia that I don’t look like He-Man as someone assigned male at birth.
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Hi, I spent a few years unpacking those feelings to figure out that I like crossdressing more than I like being the gender opposite my birth. One of the things that made it more confusing in the beginning was the slew of internet comments I would read reinforcing that any gender nonconforming activity was a sure sign I was trans.
If you know the person irl and they consistently show signs of being trans I think it’s good to ask probing questions that may lead them there, but I don’t think it’s right to tell them who they are. Better for them to figure it out themselves. On the internet you definitely don’t know the person beyond a single post, or a few posts coming from their online persona (not their personal self). This means you have even less right to tell them who they are.
Especially with the TM I took your initial comment as a joke, which I don’t find super funny anymore personally but can give a half smile and single roll of the eyes. Your edit about people unpacking their feelings implies to me that you were saying it in earnest though, which is where I start to have a problem for the reasons above. Just in case you want some insight on why you may be downvoted so much.
Yeah, no. You don’t have to try to make everything into more than it is. I’d be perfectly fine being trans. No hard feelings. I’m not though, but I sometimes play female characters because I prefer looking at them. It’s not more than that.
So what? They didn’t say they weren’t. In fact, they said they were.
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You sound like an AI slop caricature of a blue-haired teacher telling kids they’re trans.
Not everyone you disagree with sounds like AI slop.
Not by a long shot, but that person sure does.
Which LLM says things like “still cis though”?
The phrasing isn’t exactly dead on, but normal people don’t go around trying to convince others they’re trans for stupid reasons.
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“ai slop” slop
Honest question, can anyone actually name a mainstream game where the main playable character is canonically and explicitly portrayed as gay?
I honestly can’t even think of one.
last of us?
That’s what makes it even more pathetic, literally just being given the option of a gay subplot is having it shoved down their throats.
It’s so ridiculous that I question how many of the complaints we see online are even sincere, because surely people aren’t that dumb.
Mainstream? No, but my character decided he was gay in Disco Elysium.
FFXIV. Like the whole raid tier for Gia and Rynne.
Life is Strange series, Before the Storm. Not sure about the others.
A bunch of characters in Apex Legends are canonically gay, trans, nonbinary, bi, pansexual, and Mirage. As a hero shooter, I guess there’s no real “main” character as such.
Aloy in Horizon is pretty much there if the Burning Shores DLC is any indication, although she seems to be a work in progress as a fully developed person.
Last of Us.
Life is Strange games.
Transphobic dudes experiencing gender dysphoria playing as a woman
In many cases, not even forced, just given the option to play as a non-straight character in a way that’s mostly irrelevant to the actual game!
I’m not aware of a single game that forces one to play as a homosexual. Anyone?
Can’t find any for explicitly homosexual male main characters, but Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us both feature explicitly homosexual female main characters.
Aloy is a lesbian? Was that introduced in the second game? I’m not against it, just surprised
When playing the first game I just assumed she wasn’t willing to deal with guys’ flirting bullshit.
Apparently it was confirmed in the Burning Shores dlc when she kisses Seyka.
A kiss isn’t definite proof she’s a lesbian. Ever hear of a brojob?
^FYI this is a joke^
That’s never going to happen. Male sexually just gives people the ick these days. It sucks, but I don’t know what can be done. Even liberals will throw gay men under the bus
Always like to use the Last of Us as a example. If Joel and Tommy were lovers, instead of brothers. How would the story change? The answer of course being, it wouldnt. Joel would still be awesome. But what would be different, is that the character wouldnt be bogged down in social media pandering dogshit.
I think most people who object to LGBT characters, do so because they are almost always caricatures of stereotypes laced with perpetually online social commentary. Ellie is probably one the best LGBT characters ever created. Because shes just a human being, with flaws, hopes, dreams, fears and all the rest. Anyone can relate to her.
Unfortunately, the chuds will object to any representation of any minority. It does not matter how irrelevant their sexuality or race or gender is to the plot. Unless they’re hypersexualized for the male gaze, that is.
Kingdom hearts?
I don’t think there are any confirmed gays in that series. The closest I could find was a fanon wiki with an LGBT characters category.
i contest reality’s position. no one is gayer for riku than sora. quod erat demonstratum, reality is wrong
Fear Effect? Although that was mostly just marketing.
Why do we still attention to tiny loud minority of GamersTM who whinge about “go woke go broke” and yet these still games sell like hotcakes? Just tell them that if they don’t like the game, then don’t buy the game.
I prefer to clown on them relentlessly and let them be aware that everyone thinks their opinion is stupid and childish
Allowing this to go unchecked or ignored is how we got here in the first place. “Just ignore the trolls” led to the trolls having actual societal inertia. It is no longer enough to just ignore them, they need pushback.
I don’t disagree. If they troll, troll them back harder. But the way the mainstream act is that these toxic GamersTM opinions have weight, when in reality their toxic views don’t even make a dent to popular opinions and sales of game developers.
There’s a whole thing right now where companies are caving to right-wing pressure about “adult” games. It’s not smart to ignore this.
Tbh, I’m not even sure where most people get exposed to these whiny gamers. Maybe I’m just lucky that the places I spend time on online and offline don’t overlap much with these weirdly conservative gamers who seem to forget that the moral panic conservatives tried to use to ban games they love.
I’ve noticed a lot of things liberals bag on conservatives for are things they don’t say IRL. The converse is true! We pick the most outrageous statements and say, “SEE! That’s what they’re all like!”
Preach, brother! Youve nailed it.
Literally I’ve talked to people like this. Usually when I was younger, but people aren’t known for growing up. And then there are Facebook comments that are just horrendous cesspools. Also the fact that 99% of conservative politicians are openly homophobic/sexist/etc. and that never seems to disqualify or register with their base and actually improves their chances.
No, many conservatives say some pretty awful shit on the regular and you’re either lying or ignorant.
A lot of Facebook comments are filled with these people. Every once in a while I’ll go there and see an onslaught of people whining about it but generally I keep to saner places. Hell, a woman goes anywhere near a lead role and someone like Ben Shapiro, who has plenty of loyal followers, is right there to bitch and moan about it.
There are plenty of these people around, and I remember even in person when I was younger hearing about people whine about a single gay cahracter in a movie so it is not surprising at all.
Who the fuck is still using facebook???
A lot of people, especially a lot conservatives, and being weird about it doesn’t make it untrue.
You know, I dont mind you saying “maga”. But I cant get on board with “conservatives”. They arent all one thing, any more than democrats are. In fact, you cant even say “maga” as a lot of them still want to see the Epstein files. Maybe just say “cunts” :)
No one is. But we are all exposed to people moaning about them, while looking for upvotes…
All I ever see is an ocean of positive comments everywhere. And the moaning is always, like the person youre replying to. Using buzzwords and positive message to get up arrows… Like they matter at all.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Why do we still attention to tiny loud minority of GamersTM
Because a lot of them are well-funded or have big far-right promoters behind them, affording their opinions a disproportionately large megaphone.
Just tell them that if they don’t like the game, then don’t buy the game.
They make money by complaining. This is their entire business model.
Would be nice if you could play a gay dude. It feels like most lbgtq representation is only women
Yes! It’s that whole disgusting “two chicks at the same time” trope that allows them to get away with it more, I assume.
Also sexism. Women can do it because they’re silly creatures who don’t know what they’re doing without a man controlling them so obviously being a lesbian is acceptable. But a man choosing to do those things? He should know better
Games are not about you and the purpose often is to give you an experience that you wouldn’t have as yourself.
Depends on the game. Many games let you create a custom character and the character is defined by their actions.
Some games have zero character to the character you control.
Some are story based with strong characters where it isn’t about the player, sure, but those are less common than the ones that allow the player to either self insert or play a one dimensional archetype character.
Kojima’s got this one right. Every game has at least one gay character. You, the player.
“forced” to play
because the path of the gamer isn’t a choice™
No one is forcing them to do anything. They can choose to play the game or to do anything else.
Oh and buddy they will yell about how much they won’t play a game and how their boycott will kill it while the game does just fine.
Yeah, remember Hogwarts Legacy… What a bunch of morons. Screaming about boycotts, and how they wont play the game…
The people I saw boycotting it, myself included, didn’t think that our absence would kill the game. It should have, because people shouldn’t be supporting a rich, powerful, raging transphobe but they knew it wouldn’t. Meanwhile “go woke go broke” really just doesn’t work unless your entire business hinges on a large amount of terrible people, like the customer base for cheap beer that dared try to treat people like people.
Besides, if your opinion is “they put a gay person near this game and that’s why I won’t play it” vs “the person who gets a shitload of money frok this game is actively working against human rights” and you think those are equal arguments I got a few bridges over distant water I’d love to introduce to.
Edit: Sorry, didnt realise how much I wrote. I will totally understand if you dont read all that.
“Go woke, go broke” isnt about what you are saying its about. It is for some people, those horrible maga cunts, but for the majority it means something else.
The problem is that word “woke”. It means different things to different people. You, I imagine, would say it meant its original meaning. To call out social injustice. Yes? But around the time of the rise of the online influencer, 4chan, started a trend of using “woke” ironically to describe online influencers who used social justice issues for their own benefit. ie “Dont forget to like, share and subscribe so we can fight racism together!”. Those people didnt give a fuck about social issues, only the money they get by saying the right things. Now, at some point, the maga fuckwits misunderstood the 4chan use, and started using it to mean anything that didnt have a white straight male in the lead role.
Now, what “go woke, go broke” means to the majority, the normal people. If that if you make movies, games, tv shows that pander to the perpetually online, people will stop buying your shit. And its true. Not because its a girl in the lead role, or a black guy, and an LGBT person. But because these characters tend to fucking suck.
Ill give you the most obvious example. Rey from the sequel trilogy. She is, what would become known as, a disney girlboss. The girlboss isnt just a female lead. Theres loads of great female leads in great movies. No, the girlboss is like a mary sue, but worse. If you look at Rey, the character, shes great at everything. Everyone loves her. etc etc. But she also, loves to tell(not show) the audience how much of independent woman she is. Did you notice, that she never loses a fight with Kylo Ren? Except once, which wasnt a fight, she was just captured. And that was only done to show as that she didnt need any help, that she could save herself. But the real damage is that because the character is never allowed to fail, she never grows. And worse than that, Kylo Ren is never a threat to her. He doesnt win in light sabre duel, a force dual or anything else. Hes not threat to her what so ever. That makes for a bad villain. And having good villains, is what makes heroes great.
Now, you can look anywhere you want. And you can see the girlbosses and online pandering shit everywhere. And you can also see those franchise, dying. Disney, bought Marvel and Star Wars because they were a girls brand, and wanted to reach the boys market as well. But in the past decade, they have taken both of those brands into the girls camp. So much so, that variety just did a piece of the Disney looking at way to get gen z boy/men back into their brands.
Marvel movies over the past 5 years, are dying a death. The Marvels making less than a 100m domestic, after the first movie making for a billion WW. Even WW money, the Marvel only just manages to reach 200m. And that was on a production budget of over 230m, not contenting marketing and all the other costs that would take it well north of 300m. All these bad movies, with terrible girlbosses, that are just women given toxic masculinity traits, have done so much damage that only a handful of movies now are getting past 500m WW.
No one wanted to play the new dragon age game, because it was cringe as fuck. But oh, look how many people played Baulders gate 3? Almost like including non straight white men into gaming, isnt a problem after all. Almost like, its the writing and the presentation thats the problem.
So whenever you see “Go woke, Go broke”. For the majority, it means stop writing dog shit that panders to perpetually online people who wont go to watch it, or play it.
And as for Hogwarts, who cares? Shes already made money off the licencing. Shes going to be making money on the new tv shows too. Who gives a fuck what she thinks, or what she posts online? You dont have to agree with her. In fact, you probably shouldnt. But then maybe, you shouldnt have made her villain either. Because, as you say, shes got fuck tonnes of money. And at the start all she was doing was speaking out for female women. Not against trans woman. But you all ganged up, and turned her into the monster shes become. She was one of the most left wing people on the fucking planet. And she got turned into a monster, because she wanted womens voices to be heard on the issue as well, and didnt want the language changed to accommodate others. I mean, you do remember that this all started because of the push to refer to women by their biological functions, right?
This whole argument, the culture wars, the gender wars, the trans wars, could all be avoided by just talking to each other. But no, “everyone who doesnt agree with me is a cunt” is everyone mindset. And its escalating into the real world. America is a fucking hell hole just now. The UK, not much better, and worse looming on the horizon. And for what? Because some fucking bigots who hate white men got power in the entertainment industry? And all of sudden instead of their being something for everyone, there was only every things for those social media deemed worthy. We cant even get a hot white girl into a pair of fucking jeans, without people crying online that is nazi propaganda.
Have whatever characters you want. But make them real people, not lectures, not panders, real. That means relatable. Like, imagine the last of us. But instead of brothers, Joel and Tommy are lovers. The story doenst change. Almost nothing changes. But Joel, would still be relatable and likeable. Because it was his character that spoke to people, not the fact he was straight. Shit, look at black sails. That did have a gay lead character. And he was awesome. Totally fucking relatable. Brilliant tv show by the way if you havent watched it. Point is, make good shows, good movies, good games and you can avoid the word “woke” going anywhere near your product.
Feel like dudes who refuse to ever play as women or in simulated gay relationships are just depriving themselves of some quality content. I haven’t gotten to this BG3 playthrough yet, but you can’t tell me Ascended Astarion and Ambition Gale won’t be the most toxic codependent enabling shit ever, and it is gonna be enthralling to watch that heat up and burn down.
I want to be something else when I play games. I don’t understand this need to be the same thing I am every fucking day. Bring on other genders, sexes, races, species, colors, limbs, all of it. Let’s be different. It’s a fucking video game.
Given the choice I’m almost never playing a human. The fuck would I want to be me for lmao
