#ive successfully attracted more queers B^)

[robitherat]

telling u guys this bc nobody else in my life cares lol but today was my schools club fair and it actually went very well for the creative writing club!!! only like 2 people came up to tell us they hate writing, we only had one fake sign-up (douchebag dude in my class signing his girlfriend up as a joke. I crossed it off immediately) AND we got like 4 or 5 new ppl to sign up!!!!! i think the fact that i told our sponsor not to put out suckers or any candy def helped bc every single year prior we had ppl come up, take a handful of candy and walk away without even like. acknowledging us so. that was cool. almost broke a couple of plastic bowls bc they’d keep trying to grab even as i took the bowl away because apparently near-adult aged people don’t know how to keep their fucking hands to themselves. N e ways im actually kind of looking forward to the start of club next week this is such a nice, interesting change yay

[pinkscience101]

How Are Game Development Companies Adapting to Progressive Culture?

          From Super Mario Bros 2’s Birdo in 1988 to Life is Strange’s Chloe in 2015, the gaming community is seeing a large influx of diverse characters in gaming. More and more game development companies are riding the wave of progressive culture, using it to normalize LGBT characters, embody progressive trends, and even target an audience that craves a greater representation of diversity. While these intentions are well-meaning, they have landed several companies in precarious positions and sparked controversy. This is especially likely to occur when character personalities and interactions are almost exclusively built upon diverse character identities.

          These practices are known for stripping the character of any engaging, unique characterization, and replacing them with the ongoing insistence of their own racial and/or sexual identities. On the other hand, a subtly implied characteristic or light musing on someone’s queerness can serve as a building block to a tasteful, powerful scene, which could fiddle with a player’s heartstrings. These can definitely add another layer of character immersion to any story-driven title. But only if done right. Over the past 2 decades, we have a wealth of examples, including the good, the bad, and the (quite literally) ugly. Let’s look at how game companies have explored their own implementations of progressive culture, and pick apart how these experiments can make or break their final product.

          We’ll start off with the ugly. Bioware is known for creating rpg titles with massive fantasy worlds, immersive characters, and impressive storytelling. Two big franchises come into mind when considering how Bioware has experimented with diverse characters: Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Both of these franchises contain huge open worlds and are well known for revolutionizing the fantasy and rpg genres, especially Mass Effect. Let’s focus on Mass Effect: Andromeda. This game was under controversy for an excruciatingly long time for its very forced, contrived messages about beauty expectations and portraying women especially.

          Now, anyone looking at the game can tell what BioWare’s aim was with these characters. But at the same time, anyone looking at the game can understand that these characters came across as strange, unnatural-looking, and in many cases, just downright ugly and undesirable as playable character models. They could have made them look trendy and diverse in their own stylistic ways, but instead they made the models’ faces very bulbous and imperfect, deliberately so (BioWare and the Unfortunate Faces of Diversity). This video highlights how a lot of mainstream game development companies (particularly BioWare in this case) have reacted to feminist critiques of ideally drawn character models that attract the male gaze.

          This has led them to change a lot of their models (especially the female ones) in the latest Dragon Age and Mass Effect to be much less flattering and suggest a closer fit to realistic standards, with more colored characters dragged in as well. These have actually led to a significant rise in girl gamers taking part in the Sci-Fi RPG genre, but with how blatantly terrible most female models look in Mass Effect: Andromeda, it’s unquestionable that this was a very rushed, desperate attempt to better fit progressive ideals (BioWare and the Unfortunate Faces of Diversity). This could have been handled much more tastefully.

          Speaking of tasteful, let’s move onto some well done progressive adaptations from game companies. Characters are a massive driving force in RPG and adventure genres in terms of presentation and character development. Modern games have set the bar extremely high for presenting main characters. It’s basically a given that finished products must boast amazing character model designs, which is one of the things that seriously restricted the potential of the aforementioned Mass Effect: Andromeda. One of the best ways to build upon characters with diverse identities is to spill more of their personality into the plotline incrementally, especially during deeply emotional scenes.

          Life Is Strange paved the way for this formula with its original game and crystallized it to an even greater level in the prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm. This adventure game is driven by a sequence of unique choices, each of which have ambiguous consequences that propel the story forwards. In Life is Strange: Before the Storm, the level of intimacy the protagonist develops with Rachel is stringently dependent on the player’s choices, giving the players a new sense of agency and liberty in their decisions (Favis). In a plotline that transitions through motifs of enduring grief, dread, and unpredictability, forming an unshakeable bond between two implicitly lesbian characters serves as a safe haven from surrounding chaos (Favis). Rather than presenting itself as a decision-making adventure title with queer themes thrown in irrelevantly (as many RPGs have failed doing), it fundamentally ties the intimacy between diverse characters into a very emotionally-invoking story of dreamlike proportions. Successful queer adaptations of characters can also be uncovered through little hints as a game progresses, which is the case for one of Gearbox’s most popular franchises: Borderlands.

          Borderlands 2 serves as a popular example of how LGBT characters can be subtly implied, adding a quirky bonus to their personality without having their sexual identity be their sole defining characteristic. This game featured a couple of gay and lesbian characters, not in a very overt fashion, but just as a little cherry on top of their personalities, which grew as the player uncovered more of their backstories. Axton from Borderlands 2 was an inadvertent example of this LGBT character inclusion, but his bisexual identity was then later added upon through a DLC campaign to solidify his suggested queerness (Shaw). This was a nice addition to Axton’s chill, carefree spirit, and was built in as a subtle easter egg.

          Sticking with Borderlands 2, we also have Tiny Tina who is suggested to be a lesbian character. Being a spontaneous, goofy, and fun-loving personality that she is, this is another great little spoon of sugar on top of an already iconic character, who often takes on the face of the game’s advertisement banners. She points her original reason for helping the protagonists towards her crush on Moxxi, another female character allied with the player, which ties together Tina’s motives and the secret of her identity in a pretty smooth fashion (Shaw). Both of these characters’ sexual identities are completely unknown to the player when they are presented, and are later uncovered through whisper-quiet clues to embellish the moving plotline and character backstories.

          This, in a nutshell, is exactly the way in which a company should approach the inclusion of diverse characters, namely LGBT ones. These examples have taken great strides in normalizing the LGBT presence in modern game characters, tying diverse identity traits with their already-rich personas. The above examples share a common goal of having the player uncover these diverse aspects of characters themselves, rather than having progressive ideas or faces be a fundamental trademark of a title’s presentation. So, given how Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, Borderlands 2, and other games have successfully translated the changing progressive culture into video game themes, how will companies adapt to the need for diverse characters in the future? As long as these attempts at inclusion are done meaningfully, will the gaming community become more open to progressive game adaptations in the future?

Sources:

BioWare and the Unfortunate Faces of Div. Produced by Game Objective, YouTube, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-0nCsE2zMA. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.

Favis, Elise. "Opinion – Life is Strange: Before the Storm Is The Queer Love Story I’ve Always Wanted In A Game." www.gameinformer.com, Game Informer, 24 Nov. www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/11/24/opinion-life-is-strange-before-the -storm-is-the-queer-love-story-ive-always-wanted-in-a-game.aspx. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.

Shaw, Adrienne. "Axton in Borderlands 2." lgbtqgamearchive.com, LGBTQ Video Game Archive, 15 June 2018, lgbtqgamearchive.com/2018/06/15/axton-in-borderlands-2/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.

Shaw, Adrienne. "Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2." lgbtqgamearchive.com, LGBTQ Video Game Archive, 15 June 2018, lgbtqgamearchive.com/2018/06/15/tiny-tina-in-borderlands-2/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.