Awful person demands No Homo mode in DA2, awful people on TTLG come out of woodwork - by june gloom
Muzman on 27/3/2011 at 01:46
Alpha Protocol's system sounds brilliant. Seems like just the sort of thing video game dialogue options need. I've never tried it though and it could certainly go horribly wrong.
On the topic of general game romances, I've only recently grasped (well, I think I get it anyway) why it is that in movies and TV complex relationship portrayals are exceedingly rare and the beginnings of most fictional relationships skip huge chunks of the way it tends to work in real life ( by being fantastical and quirky or by having two characters share a glance at a party and then cut to the bedroom, seems like the most common variations). Even when two characters are supposed to grow together it sort of happens fairly suddenly after the characters have spent a lot of time amusing the audience instead of each other.
The reason this is so is, to do the more realistic and subtle moment to moment version would be an unbelievably difficult piece of writing and acting for all concerned and loads could go badly along the way. Even done well it'd be running the risk of every beat not gelling with the characters and how the audience sees them up to that point. It's much easier to just leave it up the audiences imagination.
Here all the conventions of film and so on help immensely. We're used to just getting bits and pieces and joining the dots in our heads (arguably every edit in a film is this taking place).
Something like an RPG trying to do this long form, where the characters spend a lot of time together and there's lots of things that happen and lots of ways things could go? They are basically trying to do something that every other fiction medium, - things much much more established and with a whole lot of advantages in their form - baulks at, skirts and generally avoids all the time because its so problematic.
And game fiction isn't exactly held in high regard to begin with. Even at its best it's charitably described as immature.
So, yeah, I'm not saying don't do it. It's just interesting to consider what they're taking on in the wider perspective.
gunsmoke on 27/3/2011 at 02:42
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Alpha Protocol's dialogue
system sucks balls, though, because A) you're on a timer and B) you have
no idea what you're going to say, the dialogue choices are simply labeled stuff like suave (which comes off really creepy a lot) and professional.
I thought it was the most brilliant convo system I have ever experienced.
Shadowcat on 27/3/2011 at 04:17
Quote Posted by Ladron De La Noche
I'm at a loss really. What is the benefit of having homosexuality in video games?
Erm, the same as any other feature? (to appeal to that portion of your audience that appreciates said feature).
Quote:
Is this an option or a requirement in the DA2 game story?
I don't know how you both referenced the original response from the writer, and completely failed to register that he said "romances are optional content".
Quote:
How about not promoting homosexuality at all when its not called for.
I don't even know what that means. Even if the storyline was static and included gay love every time you played the game, that's up to the writers. If it's badly written, you could complain about the poor quality of the writing, and if you happen to not like the story that's fine, but no part of a story is any more "called for" than any other. It makes as much sense as complaining that the game "promotes Dragons, when it's not called for", or "promotes weapons with spiky bits when it's not called for".
Jason Moyer on 27/3/2011 at 06:36
The thing I find funny about the whole thing is that if anyone should be offended by DA2, it's gay people since it reinforces the stereotype that they're easy.
Koki on 27/3/2011 at 07:49
Quote Posted by demagogue
This guy is trying to fight two practically inescapable axioms of the state of fantasy RPGs today: (1) they are chained to their genre tropes more than any other genre (or are at the top of the list anyway); and (2) one of those tropes, inherited from jRPGs, is a baseline sexuality of androgynous & bi-curious
Whoa whoa whoa since when?
Ladron De La Noche on 27/3/2011 at 12:49
There is homosexual content in the game because the writer is a homosexual. Its his choice of words in the response. A heterosexual male writer would never write such a storyline since that aspect of human sexuality would be unknown to him and would not know how to write such a storyline without offending or delving into offensive stereotypes of a sexual minority. If this game were more properly labeled this issue would not have come about. A AO rating would be more appropriate as the inclusion of this material is bordering on the pornographic. The original poster has every right to object to this unnecessary 'feature' that doesn't seem unavoidable (flirtation) and should ask for and be given by Bioware a complete refund. Bioware could have avoided this problem by not employing someone from the pink brigade as its lead writer.
I've read articles presenting statistics on female gamers and also racial minorities but nothing of homosexual gamers, at all. I'm sure it exists however I think its size is practically infinitesimal. Therefore, there is really no need for this abnormal inclusion in DA2.
@Shadowcat: This sexual exploration in a video game is unnecessary, I don't find it appealing. Marketed to American youths I find it all troubling. It's the wrong path for this art.
Sulphur on 27/3/2011 at 13:00
I'm sorry, but unless you mean to say that Mass Effect 1 & 2, and indeed any game that features bodily contact of such a nature between two people regardless of gender, should be labelled as 'AO', that just sounds really, really bigoted. Whether it borders on pornographic or not is another matter altogether - the 18+ rating is warning enough of what's included, and an 'AO' is taking this a step too far when there's what amounts to some touching, some writhing, and some strategic fade-outs. Much less than what a normal NC-17/R-rated film would depict.
This 'abnormal inclusion' isn't welcome in your books or your films or your art either then, I take it. If sex is the 'wrong path' for 'this' art, then is it also just as wrong for the hundreds upon thousands of depictions of it in every other art?
Eldron on 27/3/2011 at 13:06
Quote Posted by Ladron De La Noche
There is homosexual content in the game because the writer is a homosexual. Its his choice of words in the response. A heterosexual male writer would never write such a storyline since that aspect of human sexuality would be unknown to him and would not know how to write such a storyline without offending or delving into offensive stereotypes of a sexual minority. If this game were more properly labeled this issue would not have come about. A AO rating would be more appropriate as the inclusion of this material is bordering on the pornographic. The original poster has every right to object to this unnecessary 'feature' that doesn't seem unavoidable (flirtation) and should ask for and be given by Bioware a complete refund. Bioware could have avoided this problem by not employing someone from the pink brigade as its lead writer.
I've read articles presenting statistics on female gamers and also racial minorities but nothing of homosexual gamers, at all. I'm sure it exists however I think its size is practically infinitesimal. Therefore, there is really no need for this abnormal inclusion in DA2.
@Shadowcat: This sexual exploration in a video game is unnecessary, I don't find it appealing. Marketed to American youths I find it all troubling. It's the wrong path for this art.
What's suddenly so wrong with homosexuality in videogames when nerds all over the lands have been boning elven maidens for as long as they've had a penis.
Sexuality is sexuality, just now we can be a bit more open with accepting homosexuality as a normal sexuality in the way that heterosexuality has been, and games with romancing (which is as small or big part of the story as it ever has been) are done just the same way, only more people can enjoy it in a way they experience the world.
Also, heterosexuals are fully capable of writing a story of homosexuality, it's not something different from heteroseuxality.
Jason Moyer on 27/3/2011 at 13:37
Quote Posted by Ladron De La Noche
I've read articles presenting statistics on female gamers and also racial minorities but nothing of homosexual gamers, at all. I'm sure it exists however I think its size is practically infinitesimal. Therefore, there is really no need for this abnormal inclusion in DA2.
Jesus christ you're a piece of fucking work.
a.) Homosexual relationships warrant an AO rating, but heterosexual is what? M? Should Snow White and Cinderella be re-rated NC-17? Seriously, AO? If Dragon Age 2 were rated AO I'd expect, at a minimum, some implied frottage and graphic oral. If they substitute the homo/bisexual characters with an NPC modelled after Fred Phelps, would that knock the rating back down?
b.) Oh, so because homosexuals are a minority, we shouldn't feature homosexuality in any sort of entertainment? Maybe we should just stop making every game that isn't a Call of Duty or World of Warcraft or Farmville spinoff while we're being populist douchebags.
This might invite the ban-hammer, but as far as I'm concerned you can take your thinly-veiled homophobia and fuck yourself up the ass with it.
Ostriig on 27/3/2011 at 13:45
Yup, I hear registering Dragon Age 2 on your EA account automatically mails you your homosexual membership card. Redeem attached coupon at your closest homosexual-approved venue for a free homosexual welcome
package.
Quote Posted by Ladron De La Noche
Bioware could have avoided this problem by not employing someone from the pink brigade as its lead writer.
There isn't a single statement, literally, in your post that isn't wrong or outright retarded (and I was gonna quote it in its entirety just to prevent you from weasel-editing yourself out of it but Eldron's got it covered) but I gotta go for lunch and I just don't have the patience for that hurling trainwreck of stupidity, so let me just focus on this one choice quote above.
Why would you say this? Even if you wholeheartedly believe it, as I'm sure you do, why would you include this in your post? Do you not comprehend how making this one statement single-handedly nullifies any argument you can make on the matter, do you seriously not see what you are suggesting in both an ethical and legal context?
Get the fuck out. Seriously, just get out.
