Why Video Games Need More LGBTQ Representation

[Sinner's Sandwich]

Women, who demand to have their own spaces, decided that isn't good enough and bullied their way into the culture and told the us we're pieces of shit for starting it.

Wahhh! Wahhh! Women bullied the poor innocent dick owning neckbeard gamers and that's why female gamers exist! Bullies reee! Before that gaming was all about us!!1



And after women came the darkies! The horror!

That and Metroid being trans was never an issue back in the day

Metroid being WHAT?

 

[The Sauce Boss]

Alright, as a gay person, let's talk about this shit.

Tokenism and bad representation are just as damaging to a property as a lack of representation- nay, even moreso.

'Good' representation for me follows a certain set of criteria:

• The character's primary character trait is not that they are a member of a minority, unless that minorityship is the subject of the game (i.e. Butterfly Soup for an admittedly shitty example, as the game is pretty shoddy)
  • That being said, if the character's race/gender identity/sexuality is the focal point of their character, it must not be their ONLY visible character trait, and they should be portrayed as being 'normal' people outside of their minorityship- faults and all
• The character is human and believable. Most real life minority folks, save for the vocal minority, prefer to act like 'normal' people, with their own sets of quirks that usually are not connected to that identity.
• If the character dies, it is done in a fashion that is believable, respective to the media in question, and does not rely on the character being black/gay/trans/etc to deliver the desired impact. If you replace the character with a straight white man/woman, the effect should be the same for the average consumer

Now that I've laid that out, this is also what most people feel. This is why 'Black Dude Dies First' and 'Bury Your Gays' are such tired cliches at this point, and why certain films (such as Scary Movie and Get Out) are so popular with minority audiences, as I can attest that mediums that I consume that have gay characters who are otherwise just... normal people, are more enjoyable to me than when they're tokens. Sometimes, you can even do 'reverse tokenism', which happens in the movies I've mentioned, where the characters themselves are aware of the stereotypes in a sort of metacommentary. As one friend of mine says, "a real nigga sees some spooky shit, he's not gonna stick around like some clueless white girl to find out what the fuck it is, he's gonna bail the fuck out, because that's what we do when scary shit goes down the rest of the time"

When I think of good rep, I think of Ellie from The Last of Us (moreso the first one), Will and Carlton from 'Fresh Prince', Falcon from the Avengers movies, pretty much the entirety of 'Paris is Burning', and Jack in Brokeback Mountain (which was a movie that played a large part in me coming to terms with my own sexuality)

Now, let me lay out my criteria for 'bad' representation

• The character's main character trait is that they are a member of a minority. If they are gay, they are always flirting with other men and speaking in a 'fae' voice. If they are a lesbian, they are a slovenly, aggressive pervert. If they're trans, they're constantly confronting 'bigots' in every scene or aggressively reaffirming their identity. If they're black, they speak solely in stereotypical 'hood ebonics' and exist only as a soundboard for black culture, etc, etc, etc.
• The character is protected from danger or confrontation due to their minorityship. This does not mean that conflicts cannot arrive from this. Arcs and plots about discrimination and bigotry are sometimes some of the better parts of series- to cite a direct example, absentee fathers are a systemic issue in the black community even to this day, and a widely-cited fantastic episode of The Fresh-Prince of Bel-Air, 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag' ( i believe that's the name), has Will being confronted with his father, who truly desires no real connection to Will. This is not something that is often confronted in new media, instead focusing on 'outward' problems to minorities instead of the issues that they face as a community. Bigotry, while very real, is a very one-dimensional and blase target to tackle over and over again.
• The character is static and rarely, if ever, grows apart from their identity, and if they do, it is quickly reverted.
• The character is removed in an insensitive or nonsensical fashion after a limited run due to the authors simply wanting a 'diversity point'.
• The character is portrayed as 'good' or 'innocent' as a result of their minorityship, rather than along with it. That is not to say that the character should be a byronic, schizophrenically flawed character, but they should be, well, normal.
• The characters are only ever confronted with bigotry, and have little to no other role in the plot.

The simple fact is, what I listed as bad representation makes movies less enjoyable as a whole, because it doesn't make sense. Even in the lowest-income, shittiest hoods, there are few black men that I've ever met that solely speak in ebonics about fried chicken, wipipo, and 'nigga' this, 'nigga' that. There are few Hispanic people I know that call everyone 'ese' and wear bandanas everywhere they go. There are few gays I know that hit on anything with a dick near them. The fact that 'woke' media is trying to *enforce* these methods of representation while ignoring genuinely good examples is baffling to me, as, being as I am a gay man, I don't want to be represented by a fae shopping enthusiast who must try to pork anyone male in his vicinity. I'd like to be able to identify with characters who struggle, succeed, and fail like normal human beings, because while fiction, in its very essence, is a form of escapism, its effects have, as a result of our shifting culture, stretched beyond escapism to social commentary and political/social idealism. With that shift comes a responsibility to portray everyone with the same light as you would anyone else.

Not every 60 year old white man is a racist. Not every 20-something black man has a criminal record. Not every cop is a crooked, violent sociopath. Not every gay man is a rapist pedo. Yet we still try to put everyone in this same blanket of 'this is what representation looks like' and pretend that is what makes people happy. All it does is make outsiders uncomfortable and the less ignorant in the community can notice it.

TLDR: woke media is the reason everyone hates gay people IMO


EDIT: to address a point i forgot, I hate that the woke crowd also gets angry at the idea of antagonists being black/gay/other forms of minority. The Transsexual Transvestite From Transylvania, that one cowboy motherfucker from Dead Rising 3, The main characters of Rope, Kilmonger, and Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr. Ripley are excellent antagonists / villains, and in the case of Kilmonger, his villainy is intricately but understandably tied to his minorityship without making him 'evil for being black'.

 

[Balr0g]

Games need more LGBTQ+ representation so we can all do this to them

I mean if we can do that to Elvis we should be able to do that to those "minorities"

 

[Cyclonus]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/03/31/resident-evil-3-review/amp/

This review for Resident Evil 3 complains about the female main character being killed in gory ways. Even though all main characters in Resident Evil games, both male and female, get killed in gory ways. I also remember them complaining about reboot Lara Croft getting the shit kicked out of her, even though the exact same thing happens to Nathan Drake. You know why most main characters in games are white heterosexual males? Because when your main character is a white heterosexual male nobody gives a shit. You can tell whatever story you want. You don't have to worry about being cancelled for the rest of your life.

 

[Meat Target]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/03/31/resident-evil-3-review/amp/

This review for Resident Evil 3 complains about the female main character being killed in gory ways. Even though all main characters in Resident Evil games, both male and female, get killed in gory ways. I also remember them complaining about reboot Lara Croft getting the shit kicked out of her, even though the exact same thing happens to Nathan Drake. You know why most main characters in games are white heterosexual males? Because when your main character is a white heterosexual male nobody gives a shit. You can tell whatever story you want. You don't have to worry about being cancelled for the rest of your life.

I'd like to see how they react to RE4 and 5.

 

[Basketball Jones]

You know most people don’t like reliving tragic experiences like the time their country lost a war, economic depressions, deaths, or that time they got BTFO’d on both the internet and in real life by a bunch of “smelly basement-dwelling nerds.”

And yet, six years later we still can’t stop hearing about it from the losing side. Gamergate was their Holocaust and in 2060 we’re still going to be talking about it. I can’t decide if that’s tragic or funny (probably both).

 

[Cyclonus]

I'd like to see how they react to RE4 and 5.

They all called RE5 racist back in the day, because black zombies. Even though you had been mowing down white zombies in all the games before this one. Even though the type of zombies the black zombies were are more intelligent than the white zombies of Raccoon City. They said this game upheld white supremacy even though its a Japanese fucking game. I think the furore over Resi 5 was when I first noticed that games journalism had gone down the woke toilet.

 

[Meat Target]

They all called RE5 racist back in the day, because black zombies

I mean, are they wrong?

 

[I-chi]

Alright, as a gay person, let's talk about this shit.

Tokenism and bad representation are just as damaging to a property as a lack of representation- nay, even moreso.

'Good' representation for me follows a certain set of criteria:

• The character's primary character trait is not that they are a member of a minority, unless that minorityship is the subject of the game (i.e. Butterfly Soup for an admittedly shitty example, as the game is pretty shoddy)
  • That being said, if the character's race/gender identity/sexuality is the focal point of their character, it must not be their ONLY visible character trait, and they should be portrayed as being 'normal' people outside of their minorityship- faults and all
• The character is human and believable. Most real life minority folks, save for the vocal minority, prefer to act like 'normal' people, with their own sets of quirks that usually are not connected to that identity.
• If the character dies, it is done in a fashion that is believable, respective to the media in question, and does not rely on the character being black/gay/trans/etc to deliver the desired impact. If you replace the character with a straight white man/woman, the effect should be the same for the average consumer

Now that I've laid that out, this is also what most people feel. This is why 'Black Dude Dies First' and 'Bury Your Gays' are such tired cliches at this point, and why certain films (such as Scary Movie and Get Out) are so popular with minority audiences, as I can attest that mediums that I consume that have gay characters who are otherwise just... normal people, are more enjoyable to me than when they're tokens. Sometimes, you can even do 'reverse tokenism', which happens in the movies I've mentioned, where the characters themselves are aware of the stereotypes in a sort of metacommentary. As one friend of mine says, "a real nigga sees some spooky shit, he's not gonna stick around like some clueless white girl to find out what the fuck it is, he's gonna bail the fuck out, because that's what we do when scary shit goes down the rest of the time"

When I think of good rep, I think of Ellie from The Last of Us (moreso the first one), Will and Carlton from 'Fresh Prince', Falcon from the Avengers movies, pretty much the entirety of 'Paris is Burning', and Jack in Brokeback Mountain (which was a movie that played a large part in me coming to terms with my own sexuality)

Now, let me lay out my criteria for 'bad' representation

• The character's main character trait is that they are a member of a minority. If they are gay, they are always flirting with other men and speaking in a 'fae' voice. If they are a lesbian, they are a slovenly, aggressive pervert. If they're trans, they're constantly confronting 'bigots' in every scene or aggressively reaffirming their identity. If they're black, they speak solely in stereotypical 'hood ebonics' and exist only as a soundboard for black culture, etc, etc, etc.
• The character is protected from danger or confrontation due to their minorityship. This does not mean that conflicts cannot arrive from this. Arcs and plots about discrimination and bigotry are sometimes some of the better parts of series- to cite a direct example, absentee fathers are a systemic issue in the black community even to this day, and a widely-cited fantastic episode of The Fresh-Prince of Bel-Air, 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag' ( i believe that's the name), has Will being confronted with his father, who truly desires no real connection to Will. This is not something that is often confronted in new media, instead focusing on 'outward' problems to minorities instead of the issues that they face as a community. Bigotry, while very real, is a very one-dimensional and blase target to tackle over and over again.
• The character is static and rarely, if ever, grows apart from their identity, and if they do, it is quickly reverted.
• The character is removed in an insensitive or nonsensical fashion after a limited run due to the authors simply wanting a 'diversity point'.
• The character is portrayed as 'good' or 'innocent' as a result of their minorityship, rather than along with it. That is not to say that the character should be a byronic, schizophrenically flawed character, but they should be, well, normal.
• The characters are only ever confronted with bigotry, and have little to no other role in the plot.

The simple fact is, what I listed as bad representation makes movies less enjoyable as a whole, because it doesn't make sense. Even in the lowest-income, shittiest hoods, there are few black men that I've ever met that solely speak in ebonics about fried chicken, wipipo, and 'nigga' this, 'nigga' that. There are few Hispanic people I know that call everyone 'ese' and wear bandanas everywhere they go. There are few gays I know that hit on anything with a dick near them. The fact that 'woke' media is trying to *enforce* these methods of representation while ignoring genuinely good examples is baffling to me, as, being as I am a gay man, I don't want to be represented by a fae shopping enthusiast who must try to pork anyone male in his vicinity. I'd like to be able to identify with characters who struggle, succeed, and fail like normal human beings, because while fiction, in its very essence, is a form of escapism, its effects have, as a result of our shifting culture, stretched beyond escapism to social commentary and political/social idealism. With that shift comes a responsibility to portray everyone with the same light as you would anyone else.

Not every 60 year old white man is a racist. Not every 20-something black man has a criminal record. Not every cop is a crooked, violent sociopath. Not every gay man is a rapist pedo. Yet we still try to put everyone in this same blanket of 'this is what representation looks like' and pretend that is what makes people happy. All it does is make outsiders uncomfortable and the less ignorant in the community can notice it.

TLDR: woke media is the reason everyone hates gay people IMO


EDIT: to address a point i forgot, I hate that the woke crowd also gets angry at the idea of antagonists being black/gay/other forms of minority. The Transsexual Transvestite From Transylvania, that one cowboy motherfucker from Dead Rising 3, The main characters of Rope, Kilmonger, and Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr. Ripley are excellent antagonists / villains, and in the case of Kilmonger, his villainy is intricately but understandably tied to his minorityship without making him 'evil for being black'.

Hit the goddamn nail through the fucking floor. Well said my fellow.

 

[DNA_JACKED]

I mean, are they wrong?
View attachment 1495352
View attachment 1495353

Yes, they are wrong. The game takes place in Africa, there are still swathes of africa that live the same way they've been living for 1000 years. IF the zombies were all white it would be "white washing". The only winning move would have been to not have the game in africa, AKA "black erasure".

This is why you tell SJWs to fuck off and move on with their pathetic lives.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

A major reason behind why I fucking hate this shit is that it's sending the wrong message.

You've got 50 loud mouthed cunts on Twitter DEMANDING companies add an LGBT character, so the company capitulates and throws one in. Then those same people will bitch and harass the companies for throwing a shitty LGBT character in that is a fucking atrocious representation.

If a writer wants to throw an LGBT character into their story, most (read: sane) people won't even bat an eye at their inclusion, and may even think that that character is their favourite. But when you throw one in that is slamming the brakes on the story to shout "I'M A GODDAMN LESBIAN AND I JUST FUCKING LOVE EATING PUSSY, IT'S MY FAVOURITE THING IN THE WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD", it's fucking obnoxious. It's extremely obvious when a character is only LGBT because the writer had a checklist of things they wanted in the story, and that checkbox hadn't been checked yet.

Fucking Undertale handled the lesbian characters in a great way that flowed with the story. Had their interest in each other not been brought up at all, it would have just been an incidental detail for the character, rather than being the focal point of the character.

Dear homos of the world,
Stop settling for bad representation and praise good representation when you see it, the industry will cater better to your requests than your demands.

 

[AnnLurker]

I missed the whole GG shitshow when it went down, but I'm now pretty up to speed. Why was it so devastating to them, that it gives them 'Nam flashbacks even 6 years later?

Something the vast majority of people don't know is that the actual people involved with fighting corruption got exactly what they wanted.
See, early on the gamers that cared about ethics launched Operation UV to force Gawker and other media empires to disclose advertising, making native advertising effectively illegal anymore if you tried to hide it. That meant that talking about a subject and then shilling for it without disclosing that you got kickbacks of some kind was now out the window and Gamergate effectively won.

People forget this because not only did it happen early but it also caused Gawker to lose millions. Then faggots like Milo and twitter tards started to get involved more and advertise that the companies weren't affiliated with their brands anymore. Essentially Gamers used Rules for Radicals to Cancel Gawker and there was nothing they could do about it. They also sent tons of info to Hulk's law team including the double standard articles and the rest is history.

Needless to say, the left hated their own tactics being used on them, the gay right wing nearly ruined it and gamers don't give a shit they are being called beta fag losers because only idiots associated themselves with the autistic twitter slapfest and gamers were already used to being beta fag losers.

The real gift of GG was all the cows it unearthed, especially Brianna Wu, who is the most special of the bunch.
Seriously, GG was great and the best part is besides the few unhinged cocks that stick around, it did it's job and went away unlike almost any other movement.

 

[Meat Target]

The real gift of GG was all the cows it unearthed, especially Brianna Wu, who is the most special of the bunch.
Seriously, GG was great and the best part is besides the few unhinged cocks that stick around, it did it's job and went away unlike almost any other movement.

It makes me simultaneously smirk and cringe that Wu and Zoe Quinn describe themselves as "survivors" of GG, as if they were ever in any real danger. And Zoe is a known liar and swindler, why does anyone still believe her? Are the press that full of simps?

 

[DNA_JACKED]

It makes me simultaneously smirk and cringe that Wu and Zoe Quinn describe themselves as "survivors" of GG, as if they were ever in any real danger. And Zoe is a known liar and swindler, why does anyone still believe her? Are the press that full of simps?

Because Zoe Quinn is a Wahmen. And as much as people who enjoy games want to shut down the stereotype of "thirsty nerds", their actions speak a lot louder.

 

[AnnLurker]

It makes me simultaneously smirk and cringe that Wu and Zoe Quinn describe themselves as "survivors" of GG, as if they were ever in any real danger. And Zoe is a known liar and swindler, why does anyone still believe her? Are the press that full of simps?

Yes, it is full of more simps than an MLP Bronycon. As for Van Valkenburg, she fucked her way across the industry and with several people to advance her "career". These people just didn't want the gravy train to end and milked the autism for all they could. Her old livejournal was a treat to read before it got nuked off the internet (mostly, it was archived). She has some serious daddy issues and claimed to have glassed someone.

 

[Xvaien_Patty]

I cant fucking believe they brought up "gamergate" again. It has been % DAMN HYEARS SINCE THAT WHINE-FIGHT ON TWITTER ENDED. THEY MENTIONED GAMERGATE IN THE FIRST FUCKING SENTENCE.

God i feel like these people will never be satisfied they always want more its so damn stupid

 

[Wooz]

GAMERGATE
GAMERGATE
GAMERGATE
GAMERGATE
GAMERGATE
GAMERGATE

Holy fuck, will it never end?

YOU DONT UNDERSTAND! GAYMARBLARGAME KILLED MY ENTIRE FAMILY!

 

[Johan Schmidt]

I mean, are they wrong?
View attachment 1495352
View attachment 1495353

Yes, they are wrong. The game takes place in Africa, there are still swathes of africa that live the same way they've been living for 1000 years. IF the zombies were all white it would be "white washing". The only winning move would have been to not have the game in africa, AKA "black erasure".

This is why you tell SJWs to fuck off and move on with their pathetic lives.

The plagas inside them literally made them go insane and dress that way; no different than a fairly modern spanish village going feudal again. This is explained in game. The majority of the niggers ingame are dressed like normal if poor people.

Also faggots, women, and darkies should be barred from gaming and shot with paintball guns every time they have an opinion on it. No one cares there's no arse bandits in games; games are meant to be enjoyed, no one enjoys being near fudge packers.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Wahhh! Wahhh! Women bullied the poor innocent dick owning neckbeard gamers and that's why female gamers exist! Bullies reee! Before that gaming was all about us!!1



And after women came the darkies! The horror!



Metroid being WHAT?

Seriously, calm the fuck down.

This isn't even a shitpost, but actual concern. Just take a break from the internet for a few minutes and relax

I'm with @littlearmalite on this one, if you want LGB representation in video games, have it be in the form of actual interesting characters in a well-made game.

Not just tokenism and pretentious political grandstanding and pandering.

The plagas inside them literally made them go insane and dress that way; no different than a fairly modern spanish village going feudal again. This is explained in game. The majority of the niggers ingame are dressed like normal if poor people.

Also faggots, women, and darkies should be barred from gaming and shot with paintball guns every time they have an opinion on it. No one cares there's no arse bandits in games; games are meant to be enjoyed, no one enjoys being near fudge packers.

Sir, you are an idiot.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

for throwing a shitty LGBT character in that is a fucking atrocious representation.

Representation is itself atrocious bullshit.

A character who represents an entire group of marginalized people can never be her/his own character. Everything they say and do is reflecting the group which means the character can never have any flaws. If they do it means the creators hate the people the character represents.