Gays and Games

The inclusion of a same-sex feature in a popular online game signifies a shift in attitudes towards queers in the gaming community. But it has also exposed deep-seated homophobia towards gay gamers. 

A fundamentalist Christian outfit made headlines around the world after claiming that the recently released new Star Wars: The Old Republic online multiplayer game was a danger to children as it features a patch that allows users to experience same-sex relations.

Although the claim has as much leverage as the opinion of Margaret Court, the incident once again throws a light on the uneasy relationship the gaming community has with queer issues and whether gamers themselves have outgrown stereotypes of being immature, misogynistic homophobes.

Developers Bioware had decided to include a same-sex romance component for Star Wars following complaints from queer gamers in 2009 about how the company treated gay and lesbian issues, both in its products as well as on its website forums.

Back then, the company had claimed that “gay and lesbian” did not exist in the Star Wars universe and had even banned users from talking about queer issues on its forums.

It’s a state of affairs that Tony Perkins, from the Washington-based Family Research Council, would like to see a return to, having suggested last week that homosexuality is more of a threat to Darth Vader and the empire than Luke Skywalker or the Millennium Falcon.

“The biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!

“Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t,” Perkins said.

“A lot of them [are] expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this star warped way of thinking.”

Perkins isn’t exactly an expert on gaming, or even a credible source on most issues, with the Family Research Council having the honour in 2010 as being listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for pushing false accusations linking gay men to paedophilia.

David Hollingworth, the openly gay editor of Atomic magazine and a gaming enthusiast to boot, says that a more realistic appraisal would mention the widespread homophobia existent across many servers and gaming guilds.

“Gamers are like any other subset of society, so the majority of gamers will never even see that content – no one’s forced to make a gay character or explore a same-sex relationship,” Hollingworth tells SX.

“The idea that merely by offering ‘gay options’, a game becomes open season for moral decline is pretty short-sighted.”

The view that allowing for a same-sex relations patch would lead to a free-for-all virtual orgy involving young children is silly to the extreme, particularly in light of the festering homophobia that pollutes the chatter of way too many gamers.

Log online onto any major game, be it World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, or Halo and all too often, gamers think it’s ‘harmless’ to pepper their phrases with constant references to ‘fags’, ‘homos’ and everything else being ‘so gay’.

In a case of perverse irony, Blizzard – the makers of World of Warcraft – from 2006 until late last month had placed words such as ‘transsexual’ and ‘homosexual’ on a banned filter list for users of its forums alongside words like ‘n-gger’. Blizzard has said they had taken the action to protect users from homophobic attacks.

That protection didn’t however extend to the word ‘faggot’, which until this day, sadly, remains a favourite utterance of many a World of Warcraft enthusiast.  

Hollingworth, for one, believes for that to change more companies such as Bioware need to make an attempt to appeal to diverse audiences.

“The importance of that option to queer gamers cannot be overstated – it makes us feel that we really can be a part of these worlds. And heroes to boot!” he says.

“Bioware’s been good at this since the first Mass Effect game, and it’s wonderful to see the company continue to support its gay audience.”