BioWare Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back on Gay Issues

This past month on the Bioware gaming forums it was no surprise to find gay and bisexual gamers abuzz with personal accounts of Dragon Age: Origin's exploration of sexual equality. For those not familiar with the hugely popular video game, in Dragon Age you can play as a man or a woman, and can choose to be gay, straight or bisexual.

For just one example of how that looks, check out the romantic tryst players can have with the character of Zevran as revealed on Gaygamer.net. (WARNING: NSFW.)

This kind of choice and inclusion marked a new benchmark for gay male equality in video games. And while this is wonderful news, not all the news from BioWare this week is as positive. First, the company deleted threads on their community forums that contained a discussion about gay sexuality in Dragon Age. Then the company issued an illogical explanation as to why Mass Effect 2, another BioWare game, did not allow any gay male content when the original game had allowed for lesbian content.

The link above is only part of a longer thread that discussed the differences between the possible same-sex relationship with Dragon Age's Zevran as opposed to the curious lack of a man on man action with Commander Shepard from Mass Effect. In the original Mass Effect, you can play Captain Shephard either as a man or a woman, but only have access to the gay option as a female.

When BioWare surprisingly removed or locked entire chunks of the thread discussing the issue, as well as other threads relating to the topic, the company claimed they did so because the content included spoilers that could ruin the game for newcomers.

I respect BioWare for at least attempting to inject some form of gay appeal in its games, but these uncommitted, stumbling attempts at inclusion full of half-measures are confusing some fans, and the unwillingness to discuss it in an open forum doesn't exactly help. It's almost as if BioWare likes having a little bit of gay content in its software just to say it has it, but doesn't want to touch the subject any further than that.

As a gay man who has pined for equality in video games since I first met Squall Leonheart (pictured) of Final Fantasy VIII, I think it is fair to say that up until the abrupt editing of the forums, BioWare has been anything but safe in regards to its social content in the past few years.

With Dragon Age, the company all but removed gay sexuality from the "generic" arena of default possibility, and placed gay romantic reality firmly on the digital stage, granting equal footing with heterosexuals. While Mr. Sterling's statement is supportive of GLBT visibility and could well serve to push equality into more games, to call the inclusion of the tasteful romance in Dragon Age stumbling or uncommitted certainly does not reflect the larger response of the gay community.

However, this wonderful push forward is now darkened with BioWare's aggressive censorship under the guise of "spoiling in game events for newer players". The "spoiling the game" statement seems implausible to the say the least. These sorts of discussions are commonplace on BioWare forums and frequently include information that could be considered "spoilers," yet it is only when heterosexual gamers complain about a gay discussion that the information is removed.