Re: Why do I play/support casual RPGs:
Because that's what us libruls do. It's what we live for. We trample your dreams and destroy everything you love.
Also, uh, suddenly everyone is asking me questions, and most of them are at least in the neighborhood of "fair", so get ready for a wall of text.
this "I'll take what I can get" attitude just makes you complicit in the exploitation of a minority group for the purposes of fleecing the group and its supporters and you should know that.
I'm aware. I'm aware who Mass Effect's all-lesbian blue alien race was aimed at (besides heterosexual virgin male gamers). I was less than impressed.
But here's how I see it. On Monday they deny we exist. On Tuesday they will only cast us as villains. On Wendesday they may exploit us, but it's still better. On Thursday they're tokenizing, but it's still better than being exploited. And finally by Friday we're just more fellow humans, who exist without a special point needing to be made out of it.
Torment is Friday in this metaphor. It's the first game of its specific kind that I've heard of where the devs took the attitude towards queer inclusion that I feel is the 'right' approach. For what that is, see Colin McComb's explanations on Formspring & in interviews.
(Why am I not counting New Vegas? Because NV had a setting where you would not logically have very many visible queer people. Numenera is a setting where you WOULD logically have a lot of visible queer people. NV still was brilliant in this category though.)
And... finally, while I do also genuinely enjoy Bioware games. They're like delicious popcorn. They don't hold a candle to stuff like Planescape:Torment, but few games ever do.
Most importantly, why does it matter when an e-man sticks his e-penis?
Because ignoring the existence of queer people, *in a setting where we would logically exist*, is a bad thing, in my opinion. (Answered this further below.)
heteros, homos, and trannies should all fight for the greater good and support a potentially good game, haaai?
I pledged literally every spare dollar I have in my bank account, so, yes, I can safely say I agree with you here, besides the incredibly silly way in which you put it
And I would have still pledged as much as I could even if the developers disagreed with me. The fact that they didn't is just why I'm also filled with glee.
(Honestly that's the confusing part about this topic: While the LIBRUL part is 100% true, I'm not sure where I was butthurt on my blog. I'm surely prone to being butthurt, but... I posted those in extreme enthusiasm. Am I missing something, or is this just more of the bile you get when you piss off RPG Codex? Genuinely confused here. Perhaps I haven't lurked enough.)
15:26 - Infinitron: really, all this talk about sexism, it's just a proxy argument for "we want better writing!"
15:26 - Infinitron: I guess just asking for better writers would be elitist or something"
See, here's the thing. Yes, this is really a better writing issue. But just because someone's a good writer doesn't mean they can fuck shit up. Even totally accidentally. The Torment devs asked backers for suggestions, and I gave a suggestion.
(I am also a Witcher fan, even though much of the writing is... not good. Did I like the cards? No. Did I like the rest of the game, and can I acknowledge the strong female characters? Well... Uh, yeah. That isn't *hard*.)
But why do you need this acknowledgement? Serious question, really.
Alright, yeah, fair question.
It's my belief, based on a couple decades of being 'out' as queer, that most homophobia and gay-bashing and the shit I've had to deal with in real life stems currently from the fact that media - sometimes deliberately and sometimes accidentally - pretends that queer people don't exist, and when we do, only as horrible stereotypes.
I'm not lumping inExile in there. Bioware is also an exception (to some extent) and Obsidian is definitely a big exception.
That makes a difference, socially speaking. It's the same fucking reason women are typically taught by romantic comedies that love MUST play out in this very specific, incredibly unrealistic, often deeply creepy and fucked-up way. If you really don't believe romantic comedies have a LOT to do with that, I've got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
[There's more to say on this topic but this is already a huge wall of text, so I will abstain.]
So it's not that I need the acknowledgement everywhere. But having it *somewhere* is pretty awesome. And Torment, especially the Numenera setting, seemed like the perfect place to ask for it, being what it is. The developers are beholden to no one. They could and did weigh my suggestion by its own merits. (And I couldn't be happier with the outcome.)
Or really, any kind of references to sexuality, be them hetero or otherwise?
It's not about references.
Take PS:T. Morte, Annah, Ignus (& his lover), The Nameless One, and many miscellaneous NPCs who are "obviously heterosexual" because you see them doing heterosexual shit like, well, coupling up with someone from the opposite sex.
(I'll grant you the prostitute example was a bad one; a better one is the couple with the husband who sold his body to the Dusties early in the game. They didn't say WE ARE HETEROSEXUAL!!!! They were in a heterosexual relationship that the player could see.)
The only references I want are 'that, but with same-sex people'. This is what I'd meant by 'no pandering'. (Though obviously according to RPG Codex, just asking at all was begging for pandering. Gotcha. I'll make a note of this for future reference.)
How come we were just fine without any "this guy is straight, this guy is not" in videogames until after Bioware made it popular?
It's really not Bioware, as much as many people, including Boware themselves, would like to pretend otherwise. It's the same reason that every year it gets politically safer to support same-sex marriage. This was always a problem... just only for TEH GAYS. (Most of us queers anyway; there are always those few who didn't see a problem. But that's a tangent.) It's just that only now is it more acceptable to talk about it. Not TOTALLY acceptable, just more so.
I doubt this is going to convince anyone, of course, but you asked me a genuine question and I'm giving you a genuine answer.
Your comment of "I'll take what I can get" only reinforces that and it's in the same vein as the "this is not an RPG if it doesn't have multisexual romances" claims I've seen.
I don't really see how. I don't think RPGs need romance. Would you mind elaborating?
I suggest if you want to fanboy an RPG company which includes gay and bi-sexual characters in their games you switch to Obsidian.
I absolutely fanboy Obsidian. They're fucking fantastic. Agreeing with the rest of your post also. In terms of queer inclusion, yes, they're definitely better than Bioware. But again, most of the hate directed at Bioware seems suspiciously pointed about gays, not about the quality of their games. Which is odd, since there's so much to critique there.
This doesn't really apply to the RPG Codex as much as it does elsewhere (such as the Torment uservoice forums); in fact, the Codex review of ME3 played a large part in me determining to not get it until it goes for sale extremely cheap.
But it's present here too. It's present right here in this thread, where Infinitron calls my victory dancing on my personal blog an example of librul butthurt. One thing is being said, and you're hearing another. Sort of seems like you're hearing what you want to hear. You know. From my faggoty standpoint.
(By the way, the comment about how I'm not being a 'good' faggot, because I'm posting a lot about faggot-related stuff, was extremely funny.)
Go and ask some of those people if PS:T has chauvinistic elements like what I described. Even if they acknowledge it, they won't care, because it's "mature", "fresh" and "thoughtful".
What if we don't care because the game was so well written that it rose above those elements, and still deserves its crown as the best-written RPG of all time? Just asking.
You talk shit about my waifu again boy and you're in for some ass kickin!
I'm sorry. That entire character arc was awful writing. Full-stop.
It's not even that it couldn't have worked if done better. It's that it didn't, and wasn't.
[I'm not even talking about the character, who seemed fairly cool conceptually. I'm talking about the writing. It flopped. It may be worse in my memory than how it really was in practice, but... Meh.]
So, about 5% of NPCs are actually gay, as in the real world?
You mean 10%, and you mean LGBTQIA or whatever acronym you want. [I'm going to use 'queer'.] Basically: Not just full on homosexuals "count". In theory you'll have bigger numbers in larger, closely-packed populations, given how being not-heterosexual happens, at least per current research. "Gay" is... well, first off, even though queer people & a significant minority of same-sex relationships have existed in every population there is, the specifics of being 'gay' are rather unique to modern Western culture.
1 in 10 is enough to be reasonably obvious.
(In other words, there was a reason I didn't ask the devs to think about including 'gay' people but rather 'queer' people.)
If you want to believe it's 1% or less, that's your bag and I won't argue with you. But I'm not going to start assuming otherwise just because people don't want to believe it.
Cowboy Moment - they're not really queer unless there's some way to discover that they are queer in the story. Example: Renly & Loras in Game of Thrones. Did people miss that? Yes. Was it obvious if you'd only been paying attention? Yes. Not a perfect example, but a good one.
A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones is also a good example of a world where it just wouldn't be realistic to have a 10% queer cast. I'm a huge ASOIAF fan and while I would have appreciated more queer characters, it would be silly to go asking GRRM for it.
Whereas in Numenera, it wasn't silly to ask, because they'd logically be in there; the only question was whether the devs would essentially just forget to write them in. This is a reasonable mistake to make, even for good writers. I've seen good writers do it before, and good writers are sure to do it again. Nobody's perfect. And that's why I bothered.
[Why am I bothering *here*? Well, because the Codex entertains me, and I am all for being entertained. And people asked some good questions. So why not.]