[MUD-Dev] Gay Characters in Videogames

[Michael Tresca]

From: http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/content.php?article.27

A comprehensive overview of gay roles in gaming with definite
application to player roles in online games.

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://michael.tresca.net

Gay Characters in Videogames

By Matthew D. Barton

In Troika Game's computer role playing game The Temple of Elemental
Evil (2003), the player is presented with a role-playing scenario
that may shock even seasoned veterans of the genre: The player is
asked to rescue, and given the option to marry, an openly gay
character.

After several hours (or days) of fairly routine hacking and slashing
through giant frogs and bandits, the player's adventuring party
finds itself in the pirate-themed port village of Nulb, an
"adventurer's trap," the like of which any player of TSR's classic
Dungeons and Dragons tabletop (pen and paper) game is likely to have
wandered into on countless occasions. There's a blacksmith for
purchasing arms and armor, a house where the party can rest, and a
special pirate named Bertram who flirts with a male member of the
party. Bertram promises a lifetime of love and happiness in return
for the winning of his freedom from his lover and master, a certain
pirate captain who is happy to trade off his sex toy/punching bag
for the right amount of cash.1 Surely, Nulb must be on the west
coast of this game world!

Screenshot from Troika's 'The Temple of Elemental Evil.' The caption
reads, 'You and Bertram are married in a small ceremony, and he
opens a dentistry office in Verbobonc. You live happily ever
after.'The party can elect to take Bertram with them or, more
likely, allow him to remain in Nulb where he will pleasantly pass
the hours until the player finishes the game. He shows back up in
the concluding scenes if the player rescued him. A portrait is
displayed with two men embraced, and the narrator levelly explains
that you and Bertram were married and lived, as they say, happily
ever after.

The irony is surely not lost on readers of Armchair Arcade; we
expect to rescue a fairy princess, not a pirate fairy. Yet, The
Temple of Elemental Evil does not blush in its mission to
accommodate all types of players, even those male players who prefer
the intimacy of other men to women.

So, what do we make of Bertram? Does his presence here indicate a
radical re-envisioning of computer games; the long-expected (but
often dreaded) incursion of the "gay movement" into that one
literary sphere which has been, until now, the unquestioned domain
of young, straight men of the middle and upper class? How far we
have come from those naive days of SSI's Curse of the Azure Bonds,
when gay characters were unthinkable, and female characters, if they
were portrayed at all, sported enormous breasts on prominent
display-even if the display came at the cost of their armor's
integrity!

Scan of the manual for 'Curse of the Azure Bonds'In general, I think
we should admit that classic computer role-playing games (and the
majority of modern games) are sexist, if by that term we mean that
they exclude females and gays as potential players. The assumption
made by game makers was that the overwhelming demographic of
Americans who purchased and played videogames were a particular
strand of white, straight males, who were often victims of vicious
stereotyping themselves. I'm thinking here of "geeky gamers," those
nerds who wore calculator watches and were unequipped physically to
win honor on the football field or basketball court. Sexuality for
these unfortunate few was limited to masturbation and pornographic
magazines (if one were lucky). Perhaps the only way to tolerate such
a life is with considerable power of imagination, and these people
had that pulsing at every pimple. What computer role-playing games
supplied was a chance to escape from a world of tyrannical locker
jocks, puritanical parents, and beautiful women (for whom hardcore
gamers served only as a source of cheap amusement). A quick glance
around any classic Dungeons and Dragons session will, more often
than not, reveal a group of nerds in ill-fitting trousers and cheap
tennis shoes who get a little too excited about a long sword +5, and
who, when pressured, will admit that while facing an army of trolls
in the darkest dungeons of Moridir does not warrant the quaffing of
a potion of barkskin, actually speaking to an attractive woman is
cause to soil one's armor.

These are, of course, exaggerated stereotypes of "geeky gamers" that
are both hurtful and wrong. Yet, when I recently posted about "gay
characters" in videogames on a popular retro-gaming forum, an
overwhelming number of responses contained the harshest stereotyping
of gay people imaginable.  Though gamers may have been subjected to
stereotyping and insults most of their lives, this fact does not
make them less likely to hurl them at others. The general consensus
was that game makers should not include gay characters in
videogames.

Why should anyone want to change this status quo? Why incorporate
gay characters into a mainstream videogame? Tom Decker, producer of
The Temple of Elemental Evil, counts adding Bertram as one of his
"best decisions." He describes his reasoning in a recent interview
at RPG Vault: Doing some of the writing for the game, I had a lot of
fun with creating some of the characters and quests in Nulb. I
particularly felt strongly that since we had several heterosexual
marriages available in Hommlet, we should include at least one
homosexual encounter in the game (although there were actually two,
one was in the brothel that was removed) and not to make it a
stereotyped, over the top situation, but on par with the other
relationships available in the game. I felt strongly about keeping
the character of Bertram in the game, and I am glad we were allowed
to keep him, despite any controversy it might cause. It's been
entertaining reading the boards about Bertram and reactions to him.
Unfortunately, Decker does not explain why he felt so strongly about
incorporating gay marriage into his game, though his feelings seem
to stream from a sense of fairness. Another possibility, of course,
is that Bertram is present purely for shock value. Regardless, I
think The Temple of Elemental Evil will go down in history as the
first mainstream videogame2 to promote gay marriages. Is this
something the videogame community should celebrate or condemn?

Gay Characters in Videogames: The Modern Moral Spirit

Before I begin to answer this question and take my stand on the
issue, it is probably best to attempt to analyze exactly what the
problem is with gay characters in videogames. Why is this even an
issue?

Let us consider for a moment the ever increasing addition of gay
characters to modern television programs. Such an addition would
have been scandalous just a few decades ago, but now we have Billy
of One Life to Live, Will and Grace, Willow and Tara of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, and Ricky Vasquez in My So-Called Life, strutting
their stuff with all the temerity of Dr. Frank N.  Furter (The Rocky
Horror Picture Show). This is a short list, and I'm sure anyone with
access to a cathode ray tube and a remote control could list at
least a hundred more. Surprisingly, this surge of homosexuality into
television programming has not sparked a moral revolution; far from
it, anyone daring to speak out on the matter is likely to lose his
job. When it comes to gay characters in television, movies, and even
children's literature-we're forced to swallow. Ironically, the
current president of the United States is sponsoring a bill to ban
gay marriages. We can infer from this, perhaps, that Mr. Bush does
not watch much television.

What we are seeing here is a radical re-envisioning of what it means
to be a man of moral integrity in this age of political correctness
and the occasional superstar's slipping boob. We are entering a
near-Victorian Era, though strangely in reverse, with our "updated"
Ten Commandments being in effect exactly opposite of those inscribed
upon those hallowed tablets with lightning bolts and the
unquestioned authority of Jehovah. The Bible, after all, simply
tells us to burn homosexuals, and that kind of teaching doesn't sync
well with the modern moral spirit. George W. Bush's stance on gay
marriage is quite clear; he and other religious fundamentalists feel
we must protect sacred institutions from violation by "moral
degenerates."

If I were asked to describe this moral spirit in any learned terms,
I would reach for my copy of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality,
a three-volume work written by a rather controversial philosopher
whose gay lifestyle was cut short when he died of AIDS in the early
1980s. Foucault tells us that we are entering a George
Orwellian-like world where surveillance, confession, and therapy
allow power to penetrate ever more deeply into our personal and
public lives. Certain discourses trump all others; though we
privilege the opening-up of academic discourse to subjects like
sadomasochism, we at the same time limit and expel those aged voices
which hold all such material as an abomination not only to the
University, but the nation. Of course, in American rightwing
rhetoric, being a liberal has come to mean embracing all forms of
sexuality, and some of the left's most influential thinkers
(Kristeva, for instance) are now claiming that everyone is
bisexual. Many feminists and queer theorists have urged gay couples
not to marry. For them, seeking to gain legitimacy through the
institution of marriage is merely replicating a facet of a corrupt
and unworthy social system.

Screenshot taken from the movie 'Jeffrey'One of the changes in our
moral temperament, according to Foucault, is the requirement to
speak about sex in candid and learned ways. We are told to teach our
children how to properly masturbate, if not how to wear condoms; we
are told that two men or two women can live just as happily as a
married couple than their heterosexual counterparts; we are even
assured that two men can reap the physical benefits of an unimpeded
sexuality and raise children in a positive and healthy
environment. The sight of Dad #1 kissing and fondling Dad #2 is not
only appropriate, but absolutely nutritious for the social and
mental development of these bright-eyed youngsters.

We are routinely asked to speak about sex, and are also told to take
pride in being able to do so. Let Grandpa Curmudgeon blush when our
sixteen year old describes having anal sex with her boyfriend of the
week; the new morality says that it is good; it is healthy for
Nellie to feel comfortable talking and discussing such issues, and
as long as she uses the proper form of protection, who are we to
judge? Sexuality is purely a personal preference, we are told over
and over again, and since every person is unique and entitled to
his/her/its pursuit of pleasure, we have no right to intervene. The
only thing that is important is to label, classify, and categorize
oneself as accurately and clinically as possible. The bedroom has
become a truly public place; it is our domain, sure enough, but we
are obligated to form our personalities around whatever activities
take place there. The only sin in this modern morality is not
allowing (or forcing) someone to speak his mind-assuming, of course,
that the comments are not hostile towards any of the 365 flavors of
ice cream or yogurt available at the local sex shop. We value most
highly the freedom of a man to confess his genetic pre-condition of
homosexuality; such discourse must not be censored; however, that
redneck preacher or Arkansas hillbilly who dares utter a protest
must be silenced at all costs. Thus we reach the reversal of the
so-called Victorian Era, during which we are told that even using
the term "leg" was a serious faux pas, and concerned mothers wrapped
dressings around piano legs for fear that seeing them might morally
corrupt her children. Now our contemporary mother teaches her
children the most frank clinical and popular terms not only for
legs, but for clitorises, and the most suspicious young men are
those who do not seem to have any desire to have sex with a woman or
another man-such people are politely told to consider therapy. The
asexual being is the only figure of moral suspicion and hatred these
days.  Age is certainly no escape-every third commercial on
television is a promotion for one drug or another that will raise
that old mizzenmast and help one set sail once again upon the sea of
sexual pleasure and moral gratification. The last sexual taboos
(pedophilia, incest, and bestiality) are no longer universally
offensive. In short, we take our immorality as seriously as the
Victorians took their morality.

Foucault asks us to question the notion that our sexual fetish is
who we are. Many Americans argue that someone who prefers sex with
other men is not just enjoying a fantasy; he is gay. Someone who
enjoys both male and female sex partners is bi. This is not a sexual
preference, then, but an "orientation", a socially-constructed
identity, and people are expected to conform to the rather arbitrary
mannerisms, language games, and political positions that match their
"type." In fact, the homosexual as an identity did not emerge until
we began seriously to discuss and portray him, usually in clinical
terms. As any curious schoolboy knows quite well, just reading about
and describing sexual activities, especially taboo activities, are
exciting in and of themselves; no one should doubt Foucault is
correct in his assertion that discussions of sex, even in the
context of "this is evil and sick; let's describe it in detail" does
far more to encourage and fetishize the conduct than repress
it. Foucault asks a simple but provoking question: Is all this talk
about sexuality, with its obsession with labels and categories,
really making the world a freer place?

The question is whether folks identifying with labels like "gay"
would do better to resist them. It's a complex and difficult
problem. Consider the plight of the black identity; blacks can
either downplay difference and "be like the whites," thus gaining
acceptance into mainstream society ("I'm just like you, but I happen
to have black skin"), or they can establish and protect difference
and resist assimilation ("Being black is about far more than skin
color, but you can't know what means because you're white.") There
are obviously advantages and disadvantages to both possibilities,
but one fact is certain: One cannot put a token in the arcade
machine and keep it, too. Mainstreaming always involves a certain
amount of violence as many of the characteristics that define a
group are blurred or destroyed for the sake of homogenization.

Now, this has been a long and hopefully entertaining rant that may
at first have only a tenuous connection to the subject at
hand. Perhaps I have grown too fond of my own words and drifted off
course like the drunkest pirate captain? I think not, matey.

Playing Gay Characters in Videogames

Playing a gay character in a videogame and seeing a gay character on
a television may seem at first to be vastly different activities. We
"watch" gay characters on television; we don't "become"
them. However, this attitude is rather naive in that it ignores the
obvious role of living vicariously through a fictional character, a
rather moot point in literature that nonetheless seems to escape
most laypersons. In older literature, the person we are to identity
with is made obvious with a name like "Everyman" or some Greek or
Latin derivative of the term; the character we are supposed to be is
stripped of as many particular or specific details as possible and
functions rather like a hollow shell into which the reader inserts
himself.  Ben Johnson was quick to point out that the reason why
Shakespeare's plays are so wonderful is that he was a master at this
subtle art. D.B. Weiss, author of Lucky Wander Boy, claims that
Double Dragon II was the first game in which the player's character
was so well-defined that identification was difficult. Before that,
it was just a pie-shaped wedge, and anybody could be that. It is
obvious to anyone familiar with my earlier article why first-person
shooters are so popular-the player can be the character quite
literally; the game never shatters the vicarious identification by
representing the character's face or body. As soon as such an image
would appear on screen, the player would snap a bit-"Hey, that's not
me, I'm much shorter," and so on.

An obvious question arises when we read a work of fiction: Who are
we supposed to be? Where does the reader come in? The reason why so
many men do not wish to read romance novels is that they simply
can't identify with the characters or the narrator. Any fiction
guide worth its font size cautions writers against works with no
characters the reader can relate to; even space aliens should be
given enough human characteristics to allow the reader to enjoy the
story.3 A story about various forms of molds and algae, stripped of
all personification, would be about as much fun as various forms of
mold and algae.

Dr. Frank N. Furter from 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'We are not
forced to assume the role of that "transsexual from Transylvania,"
Dr. Frank N.  Furter, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Instead, the
character may stand out as literally alien and fundamentally exotic;
a spectacle and glorifying of abnormality and explosive irony that
very few people would choose to identify with. The characters most
of us identify with, Brad and Janet, are two woefully naive young
people who have hitherto suffered precious little of the immoral
smorgasbord available a few miles up the road. We watch (with
varying degrees of discomfort) as these characters are "corrupted,"
Brad and Janet have sex with Dr. Frank N. Furter, thus betraying
each other and forever sundering their loving relationship to each
other. Janet becomes a nymphomaniac, and Brad, ah, poor Brad, has
little for his pains but a gnawing awareness that he will really
never fit-in anywhere. The straight white male in this movie has
been screwed.

Now, contrast this type of identification with that taking place in
these modern television shows, where gay characters are presented to
us without any of the ridiculous animosity of Dr. Furter. Here we
see "healthy" and positive people, enjoying wholesome lifestyles
that would make The Cosby Show's Huxtable family proud. We are
handed portraits of gay persons and couples that we would feel good
about having next door, just as The Cosby Show helped racist
Americans get comfortable with the idea of having a black couple
next door. One doubts seriously if the true black experience in
America at that time would have been fit for the
television. "They're just like us" seems to be the motto of the
modern spirit, though it is to be immediately followed by, "But we
must celebrate their difference." I'm the sort of chump who can't
help but grin at the naivety of people who insist that everyone is
unique, yet must resort to a retinal scan or DNA analysis to really
tell them apart-All in the Family seems to have had a more accurate
view of race relations. Do we really do gay people a service by
welcoming them into our world with the sole stipulation being that
they act just like us?

People seek out literature (whether that be Microsoft's Xbox or a
TV) for one purpose: to live vicariously through someone else. The
harder it is for a reader or player to identify with a character in
the literature, the less successful it will be.4 The audience must
recognize themselves; they must think, "Oh, no, what will I do-the
killer is in this darkness somewhere!" If all the audience sees are
characters, and those too well-defined or eccentric for identifying
with, the result will be boredom. There is a situation here that is
most often described in terms of "marked" and "unmarked"
characteristics. These are terms from linguistics that make a lot of
sense when describing potential avatars in videogames. For instance,
if the avatar is to be a knight, then we make certain assumptions
that are considered unmarked. For instance, the knight is male,
European, and strong.  Someone may say, "Well, my knight is going to
be female and speak with a Texas accent." These characteristics are
called marked because they clash with our expectations. Now, we
could talk about marked and unmarked characteristics with some
universal set of values in mind, but I think it makes more sense to
look at what an individual player has in mind when determining what
is "me" and what is "other." For instance, someone with a Texas
accent may wish to play a character with the same accent-this could
conceivably make it easier for the player to identify with the
avatar.  Theoretically, it makes sense to say that the more marked
characteristics a player must accept in her avatar, the less capable
she will be of identifying with the avatar and enjoying the
game. What I hope is apparent here is that characteristics aren't
"marked" or "unmarked" universally, but individually; we each have
our own experience-informed way of categorizing such
things. Furthermore, it is not necessary or always desirable for
players to control avatars that are similar to them. A small girl in
a wheelchair, for instance, may not want to play an avatar with the
same disability and may even be offended if someone just assumes she
would. Tact seems to be utterly necessary in these situations. We
must strike a careful balance between making a player feel included
without making brash assumptions his or her preferences.

This point at last brings us to my analysis of the "issue" of gay
characters in videogames. Let's make a quick example: Cinemaware's
Defender of the Crown. At one point in this game, the player is
asked to rescue a maiden-a typical enough subplot in this genre of
games. If the daring rescue is successful, the player is informed
that he has fallen in love with the maiden (the romantic scene is
ripped straight from the cheesiest of soap-operas and will not be
described in detail here). Here are the possible women the player
can rescue:


Composite illustration made from screenshots of Cinemaware's
'Defender of the Crown'


Screenshot from Cinemaware's 'Defender of the Crown'As a youth, I
was happiest when I rescued Rosalind of Bedford, who is the most
beautiful of the four. I can say that because I am exercising my
personal taste. I enjoy women; there are four women, one of them is
my favorite. But what if I were female? Ostensibly, that choice
would have been ruled out at the beginning of the game, when the
player is asked to choose among four male avatars. But what if I
were gay? Conceivably, one of these avatars could be. No matter how
many times someone plays Defender of the Crown, though, he will not
be asked to rescue Prince Herbert.

The rescue of Prince Herbert from 'Monty Python and the Holy
Grail'Indeed, the reason why this famous scene from Monty Python and
the Holy Grail is so amusing is that the viewer knows exactly what
Sir Lancelot's reaction will be to the "male maiden."

Defender of the Crown assumes that the player is male and will enjoy
marrying a beautiful princess; the game does not take into
consideration a female nor a gay character. The game should probably
carry a message on its package: "Not intended for gay or female
characters."

This seems like a tidy conclusion, and the answer to the Defender of
the Crown problem is obvious: Make one of the personas gay, make
another female, make one black, and so on, until every possible
player "type" is represented. Unfortunately, this article was not
prepared in time for Cinemaware to consider it for the revamped
release; there, the persona selection is omitted entirely, and the
player must choose Robin Hood.  Efforts to include all player
possibilities in other games have been of mixed success. Electronic
Arts' The Sims Online has been noted for its inclusion of gay
character possibilities, but I'll let this The Sims Online fan speak
on the matter, since I have so little experience with this line of
games. From what I see, I'm not missing much.

One of the strengths of role-playing games is the emphasis on
vicarious living; most often, players are given quite a bit of
freedom in designing their own character-someone whom he or she can
relate to, but also someone he or she would like to be. New World
Computing's Might and Magic VII offers a wide enough selection,
though no obvious gay characters are present and, in particularly
bad taste, the default party has a single black character-who is a
thief.

Box cover for Broderbund's 'Lode Runner'What I'm working with here
is the vast body of classic and modern videogames. The question I'm
asking is whether or not there are any games here that a non-
straight-white male would want to play, and the answer is
overwhelmingly yes. Most of the games I have in mind are "classic"
games like Atari's Asteroids, Taito's Bubble Bobble, Alexey
Pajitnov's Tetris, Broderbund's Lode Runner, and so on-games whose
"poor" graphics were actually wonderfully abstract and well-suited
for the player of difference. Indeed, often the only
player-specifications made in any of these games was on the front
cover of the package-there we might see a man representing the Lode
Runner, for instance. Without such redundant materials, anyone could
have assumed the role of the Lode Runner; why did they just assume
he would be a white male?

The reason is obvious. Young white males made up of the majority of
the videogame buying public, so it only made sense to market
exclusively to them. Consider that so many old videogame
advertisements, whether for games or consoles, showed us a father
and son enjoying a videogame while the mother and daughter sat back
and watched. Computer Space, the first arcade game, featured this
advertisement. The barefoot woman in the photograph seems to be
offering herself as much as the arcade game; given this choice, I
know of few men who would have sought change for a quarter. What all
of this male-targeted marketing has created is a self-perpetuating
demographic; new males are lured to videogames, but women, gays, and
to some extent blacks, have been excluded. It is important here for
the reader to realize that I am quite aware of the abundance of
games featuring sexy female avatars; Eidos' Tomb Raider or Fear
Effect 2 spring instantly to mind.  However, the question I pose is
whether Lara Croft and Rain are meant to appeal to young women who
might identify with them, or young men with an appreciation for the
well-endowed? For an idea of the problem I have in mind, imagine a
game in which players were forced to choose a "Fabio" like main
character wearing a thong. Screenshot from Sir-Tec's 'Druid: Daemons
of the Mind'This kind of uncomfortable identification has been asked
of women for too long in the videogaming world. Where are the games
for "regular" girls, those without gigantic breasts and voluptuous
lips? Indeed, one of the few avid female gamers I know personally
constantly makes this complaint: "I have small breasts," she tells
me, "I don't want to play a female character with heavy jugs; I just
can't relate to that." It seems a female gamer would just about have
to be gay to enjoy playing some of the modern games with female
avatars. For the same reason that I wouldn't want to play Fabio, she
doesn't want to play Lara. Fortunately for me, I can choose Sierra's
Half-Life, whose main character bears a close enough resemblance to
me for identification to take place.

Furthermore, regarding Fear Effect 2, I may as well describe my own
prejudice concerning the presence of "lipstick" lesbians in
videogames and movies. I have often discovered troves of lesbian
pornography in my male friends' adult film archives. When pressured,
these friends revealed to me that they enjoy these films because
they wish to avoid challenging their sexual identity by viewing
other males having sex, especially when penises or other male parts
are prominently displayed during the movie. For these sexually
insecure individuals, women-only pornography is safer and more
comfortable. Far from helping men grow more comfortable with
alternative sexualities and ease "homophobia," these "lesbian" films
and games actually reinforce such tendencies. Any man who has
actually had sex with a woman probably questions whether the women
portrayed in these films are "real" lesbians, though trying to
generalize or "essentialize" what it means to be a "real" lesbian is
about as easy as deciding, once and for all, which game deserves the
title of "Best Videogame Ever."

Inconclusions

As I have tried to demonstrate in the above paragraphs, and in my
previous article for Armchair Arcade, identification plays a major
part in enjoying a videogame. If the game is abstract, like Tetris,
identification takes place in the same way it does when we watch
cartoons: We find enough of ourselves in the personalized features
of the characters to identify with them.  Readers of Scott McCloud's
Understanding Comics will understand what I mean when I say that
identification becomes more difficult as the characterization
becomes more realistic. I don't want to go into great detail about
Scott's book here; any readers who found this article interesting
should not waste time getting to the local bookstore (Graphic Novels
section) and purchasing a copy of the book. Even though Scott is
concerned with comics, we can practically take everything he says
about them and apply it directly to videogames.

Let me give a quick example here, then I'll try to live up to the
feeling expressed in the above subtitle.

The smiley face

Consider a simple smiley face. The image is so abstract; so simple,
so universal, that almost any human being can recognize him or
herself within it. That smiley face is a sort of "essence" of a
happy human face; all of the extra detail has been stripped away,
and we are left with the simplest possible image that could evoke
that recognition. Compare this simple smiley image with a photograph
of the rather handsome young men below. We do not see "universal"
humans there; rather, we see individuals, each with his own
personality, life history, story, goals in life, and so on. If we
were dealing with a small child, we could draw a smiley on a
chalkboard and say "This is you!" I doubt the child would have much
difficulty with the concept; indeed, small children frequently draw
stick figures and claim that they are, "Mom, Dad, and me!" However,
imagine trying to convince a child that one of the faces below was
she. She would, hopefully, respond in the negative. What this
demonstrates is that identifying with any particular avatar is easy
or difficult depending on the relative abstraction of the avatar in
question. The editorial staff of Armchair Arcade: Bill Loguidice,
Matt Barton, and Buck Feris.In the case of an extreme abstraction,
like the smiley face, identification is almost universal. However,
if we put a bow and lipstick on that smiley, a yellow wedge becomes
"Ms. Pac-Man," a female, and thus allows a whole new sex to enjoy
videogames (one wonders why Ms.  Pac-Man was so popular with males
as well as females; my thoughts are that the game was so abstractly
represented that it did not cause any problems with
identification. It probably helped that the game was particularly
well-constructed and fun to play). Hans-Georg Gadamer, a famous
German philosopher, speaks of this same situation in terms of a
model versus a portrait in his book Truth and Method5. The idea
there is that the model "is not meant as herself; she serves only to
wear a costume or to make gestures clear," whereas someone
represented in a portrait is "so much himself that he does not
appear to be dressed up" even if he is in an elaborate costume
(128). An easy to way to imagine the distinction here is to consider
a beautiful young girl in a leather jacket portrayed in a Macy's
catalog, and a Polaroid of that same young woman (perhaps in the
same jacket) stored in a photo album at her mother's house.

Let us return for a moment to the child being told that this image
or that image is she. If we showed her a cartoon of a little girl,
she'd probably agree. If, however, the cartoon had a feature that
differed greatly from the girl; for instance, if it had four arms,
or had an antenna jutting from her forehead, the girl would find
identification harder, if not impossible. At this point, the parent
could introduce a fictional explanation, as in, "Well, this is just
a story of a little girl that one day woke to find herself with four
arms," and so on. This kind of "patch" is necessary for most games
involving a very specific avatar; many games try to ease the
identification by suggesting such a story: "In A.D. 2101. War was
beginning," we are told by the narrator of Toaplan's Zero Wing
(1989). Icom Simulations' Deja Vu (1987) introduced a particularly
clever scheme to explain the player's presence; he has no clue why
he's there, either.

How can we get more women and gay gamers interested in videogames?
Well, for starters, we can tell the marketing departments to stop
privileging young, white males in their advertisements and start
catering to a wider audience.  To be fair, many companies have
already taken this step, probably out of fear of the bogey-persons
of political correctness.

Perhaps more important develop will be the need to create either
very abstract avatars which anyone can identify with, or an
abundance of avatars that cover most particularities. It is not true
that a gay gamer would always want to choose a stereotypically "gay"
avatar; the idea here is that enough choices would be present to
include possibilities like playing black, female, gay, young, old,
or even non-human avatars. So far, we have yet to see games where
these choices have a real effect on the gameplay; interestingly,
Curse of the Azure Bonds limited the strength of female avatars, but
this "sexist" limitation has been quietly removed in later AD&D
products. Should female avatars be more caring and compassionate
than male avatars? Should black avatars be allowed to jump higher or
run faster than their white counterparts? Should gay avatars be
snappier dressers than "straight" avatars? Troubled waters lie
ahead, for it seems impossible to ascribe any general
characteristics to these groups without doing more harm than good!

Gay avatars are an inevitable development in the evolution of the
videogame that will take place with or without this article. If we
already see such possibilities opening up in even mainstream titles
like The Temple of Elemental Evil, I doubt it will be long before
even the idea of a fantasy role-playing game featuring only one
white male avatar will seem a strange, misguided aspect of our
distant past. Is this a good thing? Should we fight this trend or
encourage it? I'd love to offer some general guidelines or at least
some advice for game developers on this issue, but, as is perhaps
more common in philosophy than we like, the issue only gets more
confusing the more we try to analyze it. Perhaps the best approach
would be to start talking to self-proclaimed gay persons and
determine what they would like to experience in a videogame. To my
knowledge, The Temple of Elemental Evil is the only mainstream
computer role playing game that gives players a serious gay option
without "forcing" gayness on a heterosexual player. Perhaps it will
serve as a worthy model for games to come.
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