In the first year of a console’s release, every game gets a measure of attention that it would not normally enjoy later in that machine’s lifecycle. Even so, a dollop of controversy can’t help but bolster a game’s buzz, right? Case in point, Enchanted Arms—a by-the-numbers, turn-based, Japanese RPG that has increased its profile (at least in cyberspace) by the inclusion of a player-controlled character with a fairly uncommon twist. See, Makoto, a member of your initial party in Enchanted Arms, is unabashedly homosexual and has a thing for one of the other members of your party, Toya.

This isn’t merely speculation or inference. From the Enchanted Arms web site:

Atsuma and Toya’s classmate at Enchant University. Atsuma and Toya are his best friends. Makoto is openly gay and his friends like to call him the “yellow otomegokoro.”

For those that don’t speak Japanese, “yellow otomegokoro” roughly translates to “hairdresser.” OK, that part is speculation.

Now, Makoto is hardly the first gay video game character. In fact, gaygamer.net went so far as to compile a list of the Top 20 Gayest Video Game Characters (a list which has since been amended to add a few new names, including Makoto). It’s just that, back to the original statement of the post, every title to be released on the Xbox 360 right now is going to get an undue amount of attention. A brief trip around the internets is all that’s required to confirm that.

The response to the revelation of this character—aided in no small part by the appearance of this video—was fairly predictable. Trolling around various gaming message boards, it was easy to find threads which all carried the general sentiment, “I was interested in this game . . . until I saw that video.” Disappointing, but predictable nonetheless.

It wasn’t until I listened to the current episode of Cheapassgamer’s CAGcast, however, that I really started mulling the topic over—especially in relation to some other recent game releases. In the podcast, host and site owner, David Abrams (aka CheapyD), drops a few opinions of that Makoto video:

…the gayest character in the history of media…

and

…why does he have to be so, SO gay?…

and, most interestingly

…I was offended by…the over the top gayness. Nobody is that gay.

I can understand having a strong negative reaction to the depiction of homosexuals as manifested by Makoto. The character is a complete stereotype of a gay man (though I can’t help wondering just how much more outrage there might be if one didn’t discover until the end of the game that an oh-so-straight-acting party mate was really gay all along). What baffles me, however, is how these same discussions—and indeed the discussion on that CAGcast—can shift to another title, Saint’s Row, with nary a mention of the myriad lousy racial stereotypes you encounter in that game.

Within minutes of starting Saint’s Row, you deal with a pink-suited pimp, drinking from a gold chalice, who beseeches you to “bring him back some of them fine bitches.” The dialogue and characterizations are every bit as stereotypical here as in Enchanted Arms. (why do they have to be so, SO black?)

So what gives? What are we to assume based on the different reactions to seemingly the same offenses against political correctness? Are gamers coming to the defense of gays and opposing these archaic, flamboyant stereotypes, while tacitly endorsing the racial stereotypes that are much more pervasive in games? Or are we just used to seeing these portrayals of blacks and hispanics, but only now being confronted with the possibility of a gay protagonist in a game?

In the end, I think video games are still, sadly, worlds apart from the level of sophistication present in other forms of media. All of these characters smack of the types of lazy, thoughtless depictions you’d see in early TV shows and old movies. Perhaps it will just take time before developers take story and characterization in games more seriously—it is a relatively young medium, after all. There are exceptions, and reasons to be hopeful, of course. But for every interesting, three-dimensional character in games (thank you very much for HK-47 and Bastila, BioWare), there are at least a dozen more Makotos. Which makes me wonder if Roger Ebert isn’t right about games after all.

Does that make me gay?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 1:23 am and is filed under General Gaming, Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.