Game Bois And Joysticks: "God of War 3", Dragon Age: Origin" and More!

This month's Game Bois and Joysticks brings you news from the Gaygamer.net panel at the PAX East video game convention where gay gamers talked about their personal experiences and spoke openly about equality in the games industry. Additionally, I review the romance-free expansion pack to last year’s hit Dragon Age: Origins and the gory action/adventure, God of War 3, plus much more!

The PAX East video game convention took place last March in Boston and featured the second Gaygamer panel in its history. Said Gaygamer.net's founder Flynn DeMarco, “The presence of sexuality in games has grown over the course of the past four years and this is because we have been vocal about what we want as gay gamers.” 

Appearing on the panel with DeMarco were a group of game industry insiders including David Edison, an editor at Gaygamer.net, Helen McWilliams, a producer at Harmonix, Chris Shroyer, a producer at n-Space and Chip Smith, an associate producer at Aeria Games.

The panel talked about their experiences working for and with game companies, and shared how their being out at work helps them to shape sexuality in the gaming industry.

"I find that being out at work gives me the opportunity to influence the projects I work on,” said McWilliams “In one music rhythm game I designed a t-shirt with a pink triangle for purchase in the games’ shop. It was ultimately cut from the project but we have included other things like the ambiguous sexuality of a female guitar player. She could be either straight, gay or bi and that gives the player choice”.

Flynn DeMarco

Flynn also talked about his time as a writer for the prominent game website Kotaku. Said Flynn:

When I was at Kotaku, I wrote a piece from a very personal perspective, mentioning my boyfriend several times. I was nervous that I would receive some flack from the mostly straight staff but when I approached my boss with the issue he was surprisingly receptive telling me to write whatever I felt comfortable writing about, even if that includes my boyfriend. I did write about my boyfriend and from then on I was always open about being gay. It is my being candid in this very straight environment that made it possible for the other gay writers to be open about who they are and made easier for them write about games from a gay perspective.

Flynn added that his site is constantly engaged in a discussion about how the GLBT community wants to be portrayed in games, and how this discussion has yielded results. Shortly after releasing its 20 gayest video game characters in 2006, Rockstar released Bully, a prep school game where the male protagonist could choose to kiss girls or boys. Flynn said that there is no proof that his site directly affected this gay option in Bully, but he believes that constantly making our presence known does make a difference.

Gay kiss from Bully

The panel members also answered questions from the audience which was very curious on how to be out at work. Shroyer stated he always makes sure to work hard put in those extra hours so he can have more of a say about what goes into games. “Its’ all about putting in that extra effort and being an ambassador for our community.”