Electronic Arts haven't had a great month. Consumer action website
The Consumerist, named them the 'Worst Company in America' and last week, the publisher received 'several thousand' letters complaining about the inclusion of same-sex relationships and sex scenes in recent titles like
Star Wars: The Old Republic and
Mass Effect 3. And many of the protesters are threatening to boycott future games if the company continues to do so.
The lion's share of complaints have come from the
Florida Family Association, who have also made claims that EA were coerced into including LGBT material by, 'extremists', although they neglected to mention who these extremists might be and why they would want homosexuals represented in video games. EA's chief spokesperson Jeff Brown countered with a statement that 'EA has not been pressured by any groups to include LGBT characters in our games. However, we have met with LBGT groups and sponsored industry forums to discuss content and harassment of players in online forums. In short, we do put options for same-sex relationships in our games; we don't tolerate hate speech on our forums.'
Public retaliation was almost instantaneous - in the last five days a
counter-petition has found the support of more than 65,000 people and garnered some celebrity endorsement. Stephen Fry tweeted:
'If you do 0 else today, do join me and @Yoda to help game-maker @ea stand strong against anti gay hate & the dark side'.
Gaming journalist legend Charlie Brooker added:
'Good for @EA for telling the homophobes to **** off.'
'They should make *every* character in their games gay for a year just to wind up the bigots. Starting with the
FIFA franchise'.
'In the next
Modern Warfare, they should have a special 'gay' gun that's better than all the others, thus forcing online players to use it.'
Unfortunately, complaints against video game content aren't anything new. Though this is the first really public outcry in a while, it's odd that it's specifically targeting homosexuality. It's not like
The Old Republic and
Mass Effect 3 are the first games to feature LGBT themes, but nor have these themes been an integral part or particular consideration in game development from the industry's birth. The history of homosexuality in gaming is, turbulent, to say the least.
Back in '88,
Super Mario Bros. 2 on the NES featured the gender-confused Birdo, who was described in the manual as 'thinking he was a girl and wanting to be called Birdetta'. This was dutifully removed by Nintendo of America in all future incarnations of the character, but it's surprising Birdo made it through development as transgender at all, Nintendo were so scrupulously family-friendly in the 80s that you couldn't put a fart-joke in a NES game without a twelve-page disclaimer. Four years later, Nintendo demanded Enix remove (among other things) a gay bar from
Dragon Warrior III before the game could be sold on a Nintendo console. And the story wasn't much better among Sega games of the early 90s either - a gay villain dressed like the Village People was scrubbed from
Streets of Rage 3, although with hindsight that may have been because it sounds to us like such a horrendous stereotpye, rather than Sega trying to protect our delicate sensibilities.
LGBT themes were often present in development early on, and only removed later when the publisher got preview copies to ratify before release to the general public. But in the majority of cases of games produced in Asia in the mid-90s, the themes were allowed, but methodically erased if the game was ported to American markets. However by 1999, censorship of homosexual material had been toned down a little on the other side of the Pacific as well. Rare's
Banjo-Tooie on the Nintendo 64 featured a gay frog bartender and his cross-dressing lover. And Enix re-released
Dragon Warrior III with all it's originally-banned content with a bumped up 'Teen' rating from the ESRB.
But here lies the real issue. To censors, homosexuality was and still is a matter of morality, something to protect young gamers from in just the same way as violence, sex or racial injustice. The Entertainment Software Rating Board that assigns all age and content ratings to games is not legally obliged to visibly state whether or not a game features LGBT material, but its inclusion will reflect the game's overall rating.
Mass Effect 3's potential to develop a homosexual relationship with Cortez and other select characters attracted the wrath of anti-gay campaigners, but EA defended itself by saying the game's ESRB rating warns against this content. Except it doesn't, EA were simply referring to the age rating that dictates that the content isn't appropriate for kids. It's an antiquated system, that still fails to recognise homosexuality can be represented in a manner that's suitable for children, just like heterosexuality - romance has been a key aspect of children's games for decades when often, the characters aren't even human. And even eight year olds must have been getting sick of the pedestrian 'will they/won't they' pandering of squeaky-clean game characters like Mario and Peach over the years.
Homosexuality in modern gaming hasn't advanced much.
Mass Effect 3's relationship dynamic still really boils down to 'say the right things until everyone takes their clothes off'. Bioware are hardly lighting the way for other developers to include mature representations of sexual activity regardless of orientation, and it's surprising that homosexuality only became an option in the trilogy's closer, for a franchise supposedly dedicated to offering choice, look at the uproar caused by its endings. It's seems more like LGBT themes are offered as a talking point: 'look at us, aren't we open-minded for including this awkward sex scene?' Until that mentality changes, we're still going to see occasional, arbitrary inclusions for the sake of it. I realise that being straight, I don't really get to have an opinion on any of this, but what, I would assume, the protesters against the Florida Family Association want, is a situation where homosexuality is treated with normalcy - included where relevant, and maybe even, with a little discretion. Because the more matter of fact homosexuality becomes in any form of culture, the less reason homophobes will have for thinking it causes the apocalypse or something.
