{"id":639,"date":"2015-02-09T13:30:48","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T18:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/?p=639"},"modified":"2015-02-09T13:31:32","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T18:31:32","slug":"you-cant-take-it-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/you-cant-take-it-off\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can&#8217;t Take It Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"dslc-theme-content\"><div id=\"dslc-theme-content-inner\"><p>Lately, I&#8217;m beginning to feel like a bit of a crank when it comes to LGBTQ issues in games.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, I&#8217;m worried that I&#8217;m being too hard on people who are potential allies. And while I am vehemently against that as a critique coming from allies themselves (&#8220;you&#8217;re not making any friends, you know&#8221;) I think it&#8217;s a valid thing we queers can ask ourselves when it comes to treating allies with respect. Sometimes, allies making the effort can and\u00a0<em>should<\/em> count for something. So occasionally when I bust out a critique like&#8230; well, spoilers, like the one I&#8217;m about to write&#8230; I get worried that I&#8217;m being too hard on people that are trying.<\/p>\n<p>What I&#8217;m saying is, if you get to the end of this and are mad at me, cut me some slack.<\/p>\n<p>So recently Jamin Warren released a video in his &#8220;Game\/Show&#8221; webseries for PBS called &#8220;The Value of Playing Gay in Videogames,&#8221; which I have included below:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"663\" height=\"373\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7WetCgxkQK8?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>I have some concerns about this video, or maybe more accurately, I&#8217;d like to add some nuance to the discussion of this video that it very likely had to cut to fit everything into an 11 minute video. I&#8217;ve also got some thoughts about <a href=\"http:\/\/kotaku.com\/how-i-realized-my-dragon-age-inquisition-character-is-1678673801\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Rougeau&#8217;s Kotaku article on &#8220;playing gay&#8221; in\u00a0<em>Dragon Age<\/em><\/a>, which is cited in the video. Details after the cut.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Okay so the general premise Warren offers is this: we could stand to have more queer characters in games 1.) &#8220;because it&#8217;s only fair&#8221; and 2.) because they offer a chance for players to inhabit the experiences of queer people, which can present non-queer people with a chance to understand those experiences better. I don&#8217;t necessarily have a problem with that idea, per se. It&#8217;s sort of a digitally abstracted, highly simplified version of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Contact_hypothesis\" target=\"_blank\">contact hypothesis<\/a>: the idea that the more chances you have to communicate on a personal level with someone who is different than you, the more you will see them (and their out group) as people rather than stereotypes. I&#8217;m being highly reductive, of course, but that&#8217;s the briefest gist.<\/p>\n<p>Also, as a side note, I&#8217;d recommend the writing of Professor Adrienne Shaw <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westminster.ac.uk\/__data\/assets\/pdf_file\/0019\/182116\/005.-Talking-to-Gaymers-Adrienne-Shaw.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">on the subject of queer representation in games and what queer players want out of it<\/a>. It is not as cut and dry a situation as you might imagine and her work (especially her new book\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.upress.umn.edu\/book-division\/books\/gaming-at-the-edge\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Gaming at the Edge<\/em><\/a>) explores that nicely.<\/p>\n<p>Rougeau&#8217;s Kotaku article, comparatively speaking, was about how over the course of playing\u00a0<em>Dragon Age: Inquisition<\/em> he realized that his Herald of Andraste &#8212; an avatar he was approaching as &#8220;playing himself&#8221; &#8212; wasn&#8217;t attracted to any of the man\/woman romance pairings, but instead was interested in exclusively gay option Dorian. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RogueCheddar\/status\/541100254578216960\" target=\"_blank\">This tweet of his<\/a>\u00a0(which he links in the story) sums that up pretty well. Rougeau spends much of the piece talking about how his typical approach to avatars is, as I said, playing them as if they were him&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But as I get older I find myself being able to empathize better with people whose life experiences are not like my own. I&#8217;m writing more and more about<a href=\"http:\/\/animalnewyork.com\/2014\/making-slam-city-oracles-game-women-breaking-world\/\" target=\"_blank\"> female game developers<\/a> and people<a href=\"http:\/\/animalnewyork.com\/2014\/making-love-alive-game-leaves-mark\/\" target=\"_blank\"> who identify as trans<\/a>, and about people who suffer from things I don&#8217;t have much experience with, like developers who use games to<a href=\"http:\/\/www.playboy.com\/articles\/video-games-about-depression\" target=\"_blank\"> work through their depression<\/a>. And that&#8217;s opening me up to new perspectives.\u00a0A younger me might have been frustrated by <em>Inquisition<\/em>&#8216;s lack of romance options for straight male characters, as some of the game&#8217;s fans are.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>But I recognize the unique opportunity this has given me: to for the first time see a role-playing game protagonist as something other than an avatar for myself. I still feel a connection with my Inquisitor, but he&#8217;s also taken on a life of his own. As I continue trying to save the world in the latest (and possibly greatest) <em>Dragon Age<\/em> game, delivering people&#8217;s letters and chasing Dorian&#8217;s well-mustachioed tail, I&#8217;m not stepping into the game world itself, but into the shoes of a gay man who already lives there. And for that I am thankful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, much as with Warren&#8217;s core message, I don&#8217;t necessarily disagree with this. As Rougeau himself says, there are lots of different approaches to playing an avatar in a game where you create your own. Choosing to &#8220;reflect yourself&#8221; is just one way to do it, even if it&#8217;s one that I think people are probably doing on\u00a0<em>some<\/em> level no matter what approach they take. My\u00a0<em>Saint&#8217;s Row<\/em> Boss is this strange fusion of an idealized me and playing around with having a different body that is clearly not mine, but which I enjoy inhabiting, for example. If that created avatar gives you an opportunity to try on an experience that&#8217;s different than your own, I think that&#8217;s valuable. If that experience helps you come to a new and better understanding of those people that are different than you, that&#8217;s also valuable.<\/p>\n<p>However, I think we need to be cautious about this one-remove contact hypothesis process. If and when games can foster empathy and understanding, that&#8217;s awesome. But I remember reading Rougeau&#8217;s piece and thinking, &#8220;Is this really reflective of a gay experience, though?&#8221; In some ways, it is; as Warren discusses in the video, much has been made of Dorian&#8217;s story and character drawing on (gay male-IDing) series head writer David Gaider. So in that regard I wouldn&#8217;t critique Dorian&#8217;s story along that axis. Unfortunately my\u00a0<em>DA:I<\/em> game bugged out and I missed a lot of Dorian&#8217;s personal storyline, to my chagrin, but from what I know of it, it touches on a lot of themes that are salient to my memory: disapproving family, trying to be true to yourself even though it has a cost.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, and I hate to promote myself this way, I think <a title=\"She\u2019s Not That Into You\" href=\"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/shes-not-that-into-you\/\">being let down easy by Cassandra Pentaghast<\/a> was an experience way more resonant with my gay life experience than Dorian&#8217;s story was. And the reason why is this:\u00a0<strong>it was out of my control<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>I think my concern with this situation is that even if Rougeau&#8217;s suddenly-gay Inquisitor or the play-for-empathy characters in the situation Warren describe are meaningful, they are\u00a0<strong>optional<\/strong>. The people behind them can stop at any time they want, taking off the mantle, returning to whatever vision of &#8220;normality&#8221; they embody at any given moment. And I am not saying they\u00a0<em>will<\/em> do this without fail; from his article&#8217;s tone I suspect Rougeau let that play out to its natural end.<\/p>\n<p>But the difference, to me, is that I cannot put on or take off my sexuality and identity like a suit, suddenly divest myself of it. Or rather, I\u00a0<em>could<\/em> do that, but it&#8217;d mean heading back into the closet and I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a thing I can even do, anymore (thanks Google). This is why my rejection by Cassandra was a more affecting and resonant queer experience for me, than my impossibly storybook potential romance with Dorian (and I was playing a lady Herald anyway so we were just friends). I couldn&#8217;t choose for that not to happen. I couldn&#8217;t undo it. I flirted, she noticed, she shot me down. The only way to take that back &#8212; to save myself the heartache &#8212; would be to &#8220;cheat&#8221; by loading an earlier save and behaving differently.<\/p>\n<p>Considering <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/articles\/2015\/02\/this-will-come-back-to-haunt-you-choice-and-time-i.html\" target=\"_blank\">what I just wrote about rewinding time to fix mistakes in\u00a0<em>Life is Strange<\/em><\/a>, that doesn&#8217;t seem likely.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not against what Warren is saying in his video, about wanting more queer characters in games so people can step into their shoes. I&#8217;m not against Rougeau feeling that his Herald was &#8220;suddenly gay,&#8221; nor do I think his experience was bad.<\/p>\n<p>But I do think if we&#8217;re going to claim this pseudo-contact hypothesis situation as being a primary good for diversity representation, we need to step away from the created avatar a bit. We need to set down gaming&#8217;s holy grail of &#8220;choice&#8221; and force people into it, make them step into the role without a chance to wriggle out. For most marginalized people, there is no option to doff the Difference Suit\u2122 at the end of the day and become &#8220;normal&#8221; again. If you really are serious about this &#8220;giving people a chance to experience it&#8221; thing, then you&#8217;re going to have to make them uncomfortable, take them outside the range they&#8217;re used to&#8230; and you can&#8217;t do that if it&#8217;s optional.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lately, I&#8217;m beginning to feel like a bit of a crank when it comes to LGBTQ issues in games. Specifically, I&#8217;m worried that I&#8217;m being too hard on people who are potential allies. And while I am vehemently against that as a critique coming from allies themselves (&#8220;you&#8217;re not making any friends, you know&#8221;) I&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/you-cant-take-it-off\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You Can&#8217;t Take It Off<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[81,28,9],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/takeoff_poster.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3NfdI-aj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}