Ooh I forgot one, not sure how it counts, but it is still relevant.

In Jericho, one of the characters is an obvious lesbian. The other characters make soldier jokes about it, etc. All the players played the game with this as accepted. She looked and acted the part...

Unless you managed to get some of the difficult unlocks and expose some journal entries. She was in love with a specific man (in fact, the player's avatar), she could never deal with it or let him know. She was completely ill equipped for it.

Now does this mean she doesn't like women at all? Maybe, maybe not, I've heard of women who largely felt themselves to be lesbian who did love a man or two, one even married and remains married to one (she doesn't consider herself bisexual because it implies she likes both equally, which she claims she does not, she loves women, she happens to love "a man").

I didn't actually get all the unlocks (some were pretty hard), maybe there's more to the Jericho story. I thought it was interesting that it was so stereotypical on the surface and turned out to be deeper than that.

Well yes, but the point I'm making is that I'd rather have people learn from Anders rather than Anders never existing in the first place. You don't just go straight from writing the same two or three tropes over and over to going OKAY WE GET DIVERSITY NOW. There's going to be awkward characters and stumbling blocks and successes and failures and it's all moving things forward, rather than just waiting indefinitely for writing to get "better" before we start treating minorities as viable character options.

I'm starting to feel my position is being seen as similar to people complaining about the original LGBT thread. It's very much *not* that.

The reason I think asking for more gay characters in games might not be so productive is that the end result would probably be "well, lets pop a gay character in there - it looks like we're being progressive but we're still churning out the same old shit". It's a band-aid on a bullet wound and I think it dilutes the issue. The problem is that thus far, writing in games has taken a back seat, and if games expect to be taken seriously as an art form, that needs to improve.

Consumers aren't going to change things, people will buy the same old shit, but it would be nice if reviewers stopped grading the story in games on a curve and actually compared it to more well established media. The absolutely embarrassing state of writing in games needs to have a torch shone upon it. The people making these games need to be made to think "holy fuck.. yeah, this is *really* bad." and hopefully things might start to improve. If the same is done but limited to requesting a more accurate representation of the diversity of human beings, they can do that and it'll be meaningless.

Then again, given the outrage by some moronic prats at the addition of homosexual story paths in Bioware games - perhaps the mere act of adding stuff like that is enough to have an effect.

Wouldn't it be better to have a game not deal with a certain subject than attempt to deal with it and end up reinforcing negative stereotypes? I've not played DA2 but from the description in this thread it seems that Anders would reinforce that ludicrous "be gay if you want, just don't come at me with your gayness" attitude.

It should be a requirement for same sex relationship character writing to watch the lesbian kiss episode of Deep Space Nine, and all of Babylon 5 that isn't the first or fifth seasons.

Camannn, surely Buffy had the best same-sex relationship portrayal. They even won awards for just that!

The trouble is BioWare were arguably masters of writing characters up until Dragon Age 2. If you want tropes it's the perfect example. By making all characters bisexual you turn them into nothing more than an achievement. Just because Alistair has a huge gay following it doesn't mean BioWare have to make him bisexual just to please fans. Alistair is a straight male, he was written that way and it's a part of who he is. Similarly Arcade in New Vegas is gay and no amount of speech checks is going to make him jump into bed with a female Courier no matter how many female fans want him to. BioWare approached Dragon Age 2 with the idea of pleasing everyone and ended up pleasing no-one. In fact the character most wanted to romance was Varric.

Keep in mind, I don't just want minorities in games because I want better writing. I want minorities in games because I'd like to see a move away from the notion that games are for Straight White Men first and foremost and everybody else is secondary. That it would improve writing is a huge benefit, but not my main point of interest.
I agree that Bioware's approach to sexuality in Dragon Age 2 was stupid and a step back, I'm just contesting the notion that if they can't hit it out of the park they shouldn't even try to play ball. A well-meaning failure is still better than "fuck it, let's make everyone straight", even if neither is the best option.

I would say it's the actual writing not the characters they need to be looking at. I assume you are referring to the relationship between Ivanova and Talia. It was very, very good but it was more the writing of the characters rather than the actual relationship. In fact most of it was heavily implied rather than shown on screen.

Did they? I can't stand much of anything I've seen or read from Joss Whedon.

Well this I agree with entirely. I don't know how this would be done, but it'd be nice to see reviewers en masse make games with stupid frat-boy storytelling made to be a laughing stock. Highlighting just how shit it is, shaming the developers in to trying harder. Voting with wallets is simply not going to work because, well, by-and-large consumers are morons and will buy stupid shit :).

Yes. Read the scripts, watch the show. One's for technical knowledge, one's because you have bettered yourself for having seen the show. =D

Oh dear. And there's me thinking we could be friends so have this :).

Anyway yeah, the lesbian relationship between Willow and Tara was just so lacking in sensationalism - it was so 'normal' for want of a better word that it really stood out as a fantastic portrayal.

They'll also buy games with minority main characters just fine (despite the initial racist uproar over its unveiling, GTA San Andreas went on to become the best selling game on the PS2, and I don't think anybody gave two shits about all the main characters in Portal being non-objectified females). Gamers will buy stupid shit, no doubt, but they're not as set as some people like to think.

Oh sure, I'm not saying they'll avoid games because of progressive aspects, just that they sure as fuck won't avoid games because of poor writing/story so the impetus to change won't come from the sales figures.