Poll of the Day > Why is Undertale being highlighted as a Pride Month game?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I never actually completed the game but Ive played it and it just seemed to be like fun little RPG with some bullet hell mechanics and funny dialogue

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Cuz furries are part of the rainbow

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Because theres a gay couple and a lesbian couple in it, iirc.

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It's got a couple homosexual romances in it, in addition to generally being a very "let's all get along despite our differences" sort of story.

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adjl posted...

It's got a couple homosexual romances in it, in addition to generally being a very "let's all get along despite our differences" sort of story.

so all they gotta do is acknowledge that gay people exist and not be mean about it? Sad that the bar is that low

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Mead posted...

so all they gotta do is acknowledge that gay people exist and not be mean about it? Sad that the bar is that low

The bar is that low in video games.

adjl posted...

It's got a couple homosexual romances in it, in addition to generally being a very "let's all get along despite our differences" sort of story.

Not the way I play it :v)

Mead posted...

so all they gotta do is acknowledge that gay people exist and not be mean about it? Sad that the bar is that low

I mean, that is basically all Pride is looking for in a general sense. The bar really is not high for "stop mistreating LGBTQ people."

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BlackScythe0 posted...

The bar is that low in video games.

Sadly it really is.

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It's all just corporate lip service. Same as all these businesses suddenly being pro black.

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party_animal07 posted...

It's all just corporate lip service. Same as all these businesses suddenly being pro black.

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I think it's pretty sad there are very few games that have LGBT protagonists, sure there are some like Bioware games and Fallout/Skyrim that let you choose but barely any that have set-in-stone sexuality characters.

Because you gotta be gay to like it?

Not really though, I like it and i'm not really gay (sadly).

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The MC is also canonically non-binary iirc.

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gay ppl love undertale

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PMarth2002 posted...

The MC is also canonically non-binary iirc.

Yup, main character "they/them"

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Non-binary protagonist one white paint bucket tool away from wearing a trans flag.

ultra-binary people exist

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Cruddy_horse posted...

I think it's pretty sad there are very few games that have LGBT protagonists, sure there are some like Bioware games and Fallout/Skyrim that let you choose but barely any that have set-in-stone sexuality characters.

The usual excuse that gets trotted out is that it's "harder for most players to identify with the protagonist" if the protagonist is gay, but I don't think there's much merit to that. Video game protagonists very frequently have nothing in common with their players besides gender and presumed sexual orientation, and that really doesn't hamper enjoyment. One particularly hilarious example of this was people whining that GTAVI adding a female protagonist (option) "ruined the game" because players couldn't identify with a female, as though they actually thought they could identify with any of the male protagonists.

That said, if a protagonist being gay is actually going to manifest meaningfully in the game, that's going to mean same-sex romance plots and scenes. I can see participating in those being uncomfortable for straight players, which do still make up the overwhelming majority of gamers (if slightly less than for the general population), so putting that in non-optionally is going to alienate a large chunk of the game's potential audience. The reverse is no less true (not, for that matter is it less true for straight women playing games made with straight men in mind), but the unfortunate reality of sales is that catering to more people is generally going to be more beneficial than catering to smaller markets. To that end, if a protagonist is going to be gay, that's generally going to be either an option (so straight audiences can avoid it), or it's not going to have any impact on the game (in which case there's no point in proclaiming them to be gay).

Now, a trans protagonist? That has more potential, since being trans is more of a journey than a sexual preference would be, and can form the basis of its own story that players can work through. Even if it's not something players can personally identify with, that's within the realm of reasonable role-playing and can be used to tell an interesting story. Unfortunately, such a game would be pretty widely seen as "pandering," such that it's only likely to be indie studios taking on the idea and ending up with a fairly niche audience.

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adjl posted...

"harder for most players to identify with the protagonist"

I never got that mindset. There are many games I like, with interesting characters, where I do not identify with the main character at all. It kinda feels in the same ball park as videogames cause violence arguments to me.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

I never got that mindset. There are many games I like, with interesting characters, where I do not identify with the main character at all. It kinda feels in the same ball park as videogames cause violence arguments to me.

Eeyup. It's mostly brought out whenever a protagonist is anything other than a white guy, as a means of attacking what they feel is "pandering to SJW's." Never mind that none of these people resemble video game protagonists beyond their race and gender, given that video game characters tend to be just plain better at everything than real people are.

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adjl posted...

The usual excuse that gets trotted out is that it's "harder for most players to identify with the protagonist" if the protagonist is gay, but I don't think there's much merit to that.

Anecdotally, at least, I'd tend to agree with this.

I don't even necessarily think of myself as "straight" (I'd probably rank myself somewhere around 1.5 on the Kinsey Scale), and I still almost universally avoid playing male characters with homosexual relationships in games. I have very little issue romancing a male character if I'm playing as as female (which I usually am), though I do still tend to gravitate to romancing female characters (which thus becomes the "lesbian" option in-game). But if I'm playing a male (either by choice or because the game forces me to), I never go with a male romance option.

In 30+ years of video games and tabletop RPG gaming, I can't think of a single instance where I've ever gone for a male-male option, and I probably would be annoyed if a game forced me into one without my input.

Then again, after years of playing games where player choice has been a mechanic, I'm getting to the point where I dislike when games force me to do anything without my input. Because I like being able to decide who I am and who I want to be more than passively being told the story of someone else's character.



adjl posted...

One particularly hilarious example of this was people whining that GTAVI adding a female protagonist (option) "ruined the game" because players couldn't identify with a female, as though they actually thought they could identify with any of the male protagonists.

Well, to be fair, Trevor was supposed to be the literal avatar of most people who play GTA, so maybe a lot of gamers did identify with him. Or at least how he interacts with the game world.

And Michael's an old man with anger management issues who's burned out on life with a family who hates him and who feels like he's made a mistake with his life choices, and that probably sums up the perspective of quite a lot of older gamers.

Personally, though, I really related to Claude. It was like the developers knew me!


(As a more serious aside, I deliberately played as a female in GTA:Online, and almost always play as a female when I played the Saints Row games, so I'm more than willing to play as a female avatar in GTAVI. Though my objection is almost certainly going to be that they're going to TELL us who that female is - a la Michael, Trevor, and Franklin - than they are going to let us decide for ourselves who that woman is - the way Saints Row does. I vastly prefer the second option.)



adjl posted...

The reverse is no less true (not, for that matter is it less true for straight women playing games made with straight men in mind)

I'd argue it might be, honestly.

Even if you're gay, the idea of heterosexual couples is utterly normalized in nearly every form of media. It's almost a given that no matter what genre of movie you're watching, there's going to be a romance subplot somewhere in there (unless the genre IS Romance, in which case it's going to be a romance superplot). And those romances are almost always going to be straight male-female pairings.

After a while, you're going to grow somewhere desensitized to the idea of male-female relationships in entertainment media. You may not relate to the relationship as much as you would one that more accurately reflects your own preferences, but you can more easily accept it as just another example of what you constantly see in films, on TV, and in pretty much everything else.

For straight people, most media is constantly reinforcing their own world-view, so gay relationships in media can feel much more transgressive (or at least unusual). It's something they're not used to at all, and in some cases, may feel uncomfortable with.

This is one of the ideas behind why there needs to be more representation in media in general. The more you normalize a behavior, the more people become accepting of it.



adjl posted...

Now, a trans protagonist? That has more potential, since being trans is more of a journey than a sexual preference would be, and can form the basis of its own story that players can work through

I'd argue this would be even more of a deal-breaker than a gay protagonist for a lot of people.

Regardless of how someone feels about the issues in question, it's very much a truism that pop culture has been doing far more to normalize homosexuality over the last few decades than it has transsexuality. A trans character is even more of an anomaly in the world view of most people, and would be far more jarring and unrelateable to most people. While some trans people might welcome such representation, and plenty of people would take a "Ehh, whatever, I don't care" stance, there'd still be a LOT of people who would feel uncomfortable in that scenario.

I'd also argue that even some trans people might object to how a trans character is presented. Because most transsexuals don't see themselves as some sort of third-gender middle state, they view themselves as the gender they present as. Those people aren't looking for a "trans" option in game, because that only ostracizes and exceptionalizes them even more than they already feel. When you're playing fantasy games for escapism, being universally accepted as what you already perceive yourself to be as the default is going to be more appealing. Given a choice, a MtF transsexual is far more likely to just choose the "female" option for their character than choosing a "trans" or "non-binary gender fluid" one.

This could certainly change (decades worth of normalizing transsexuality in media could make people in general more open to seeing them - or playing as them - in games), but at the moment it's probably going to stay very limited at best, and even then mostly restricted to games where you can choose your own attributes (sort of what Cyberpunk half-assedly attempted to do, or at least claimed they were going to do).
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adjl posted...

Eeyup. It's mostly brought out whenever a protagonist is anything other than a white guy, as a means of attacking what they feel is "pandering to SJW's."

The problem is, a lot of the time when the pandering argument gets brought out, it's because a game (or movie, or TV show, etc) feels like it's cashing in on exceptionalism for the sake of "progressive credit" or are otherwise treating it more as exploitation than a sincere attempt to represent other races, preferences, cultures, or world-views.

There's a yardstick for this (similar to how some people use the "Bechdel Test" to gauge female representation). Simply ask yourself, "Is this character black/Asian/gay/trans/etc because it is intrinsic to the character's arc, or does it feel like it was simply tacked on after the fact to seem progressive or for the sake of identity politics? Is this an interesting character because of/in spite of/regardless of their established identity, or does it feel like the creator simply wanted a [INSERT MINORITY HERE] character, and they come across as a shallow, one-note character whose identity revolves almost entirely around their minority status?"

It is possible to have minority characters of any race, creed, preference, etc and have them be fully developed, interesting characters telling a story that almost anyone can relate to. It is also possible to cram cardboard cut-out characters who constantly emphasize their exceptionalism into a work solely to shout LOOK HOW PROGRESSIVE WE ARE!

The latter is pandering - and is just as bad as media that has a one-note pandering stereotype joke character (like the over-the-top oversexed super-camp "gay friend" or the "generic brown person cab driver"). Neither is encouraging you to look at the character as a real person, or relate to them in any way.

The problem is that pandering is easy, and it feels like the laziest way to exploit potential audience gains in a cold marketing sort of way ("Hey, if we cast a black dude in this role, more black people will come see this movie!"). Writing interesting characters with different perspectives takes way more work.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The problem is that pandering is easy, and it feels like the easiest way to exploit potential audience gains in a cold marketing sort of way. Writing interesting characters with different perspectives takes way more work.

This is one of the reasons I like Timespinner's take... the 5 or so people you're able to interact with have been functionally stuck in a timeloop for infinte time (not to scale, but I'm being vague to avoid spoilers)... so naturally they've all hooked up with every combination of each other... and have since given up. Your character breaks this emotional stalemate.

edit: Timespinner was lawded as some "woke sjw garbage" but honestly their take is mature and nuanced.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

There's a yardstick for this (similar to how some people use the "Bechdel test" to gauge female representation). Simply ask yourself, "Is this character black/Asian/gay/trans/etc because it is intrinsic to the character's arc, or does it feel like it was simply tacked on after the fact to seem progressive or for the sake of identity politics? Is this an interesting character because of/in spite of/regardless of their established identity, or does it feel like the creator simply wanted a [INSERT MINORITY HERE] character, and they come across as a shallow, one-note character whose identity revolves almost entirely around their minority status?"

That sounds like a dangerously offensive test, treating "white het male" as the blank slate.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd argue it might be, honestly.

Even if you're gay, the idea of heterosexual couples is utterly normalized in nearly every form of media. It's almost a given that no matter what genre of movie you're watching, there's going to be a romance subplot somewhere in there (unless the genre IS Romance, in which case it's going to be a romance superplot). And those romances are almost always going to be straight male-female pairings.

After a while, you're going to grow somewhere desensitized to the idea of male-female relationships in entertainment media. You may not relate to the relationship as much as you would one that more accurately reflects your own preferences, but you can more easily accept it as just another example of what you constantly see in films, on TV, and in pretty much everything else.

For straight people, most media is constantly reinforcing their own world-view, so gay relationships in media can feel much more transgressive (or at least unusual). It's something they're not used to at all, and in some cases, may feel uncomfortable with.

This is one of the ideas behind why there needs to be more representation in media in general. The more you normalize a behavior, the more people become accepting of it.

Not incorrect, though I was sort of speaking in the sense of a hypothetical future scenario where gay relationships have been normalized. There's no reason role-playing a gay relationship should feel any more uncomfortable for a straight person than role-playing a straight relationship does for a gay person. That it does is more a consequence of broader social and cultural issues than it is anything that's inherent in the media itself.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The problem is, a lot of the time when the pandering argument gets brought out, it's because a game (or movie, or TV show, etc) feels like it's cashing in on exceptionalism for the sake of "progressive credit" or are otherwise treating it more as exploitation than a sincere attempt to represent other races, preferences, cultures, or world-views.

There is a fine line, and pandering definitely does happen. There is still a lot of demand for artists to justify using any characters other than the "default" of a white male, though, as opposed to just accepting "that's just the character I felt like making." At least part of that issue is that there's no way for a single character to represent a demographic. Hypothetically, ~5-10% of main characters should be homosexual, if media were to accurately represent the general population, but if a game's main character is gay, that's a rate of 100%. No single game can (without taking ridiculous measures to ensure diverse representation that would definitely qualify as deliberate pandering/marketing) accurately represent the general population's demographics, simply due to the bias inherent in small sample sizes.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

There's a yardstick for this (similar to how some people use the "Bechdel Test" to gauge female representation). Simply ask yourself, "Is this character black/Asian/gay/trans/etc because it is intrinsic to the character's arc, or does it feel like it was simply tacked on after the fact to seem progressive or for the sake of identity politics? Is this an interesting character because of/in spite of/regardless of their established identity, or does it feel like the creator simply wanted a [INSERT MINORITY HERE] character, and they come across as a shallow, one-note character whose identity revolves almost entirely around their minority status?"

I generally just look at how much attention is called to it. Borderlands 2 did quite well there: There were several instances where minor characters referenced their same-sex relationship, but it was never treated any differently than if it had been a heterosexual one. Just casually mentioned as part of their experiences, and the game continued as normal. That, I think, is the way to do it: If it's relevant, don't shy away from mentioning it as much as is relevant, but also don't harp on it any longer than that. Treat it as though it's normal.

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