I Put A Trans Character In A Game And Gamers Went Insane

in money •  8 years ago 


Several recent controversies have taught us that the public has a great deal of trouble remaining calm the moment anyone utters the word "transgender." A certain percentage of you involuntarily tensed up the moment you saw what this article was about -- you could sense a fight coming. Combine that controversial subject with the video gaming community, which has a tendency to, well, get worked up about things, and it's easy to guess what happens whenever a trans character shows up in a game.

Recently, a game called Baldur's Gate: Siege Of Dragonspear included a blink-and-you'll-miss-them character who makes reference to being transgender. The response?

YouTube

We talked to Amber Scott, the writer of Dragonspear, and Sheva Gunnery, who recently conducted a large survey of transgender gamers, to try to understand this. They said ...

5
Games Aren't Exactly Chock-Full Of Trans Characters

Femhype.com

To be fair to the gaming industry, its portrayal of transgender characters hasn't been any worse than Hollywood's, in which trans people have historically been either punchlines (Ace Ventura) or murderous monsters (Silence Of The Lambs). If you want an unintentionally sad snapshot of the situation, look at Out's "7 Trans-Friendly Video Game Characters." Their list includes Birdo, a dinosaur creature tennis enthusiast who started off as "a boy who thinks he's a girl" in 1988 and was almost immediately changed to just a girl ...

Nintendo
They were worried she might be too out there for a game full of doors to the netherworld, malevolent sentient masks, and ghosts with social anxiety.

You also have Guilty Gear's Bridget, a tween who produces a suggested Google search of "Trap," along with a lot of jokes about how gross he is ...

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PsychoLaugh/DeviantArt

Sprite, via Knowyourmeme.com

... and whatever the fuck Final Fantasy IX's Quina is.

Squaresoft
"I self-identify as a turnip."

So it's not a terribly inspirational landscape if you're trans and looking for a character you can relate to. That's too bad, because that's part of what makes gaming so appealing -- you can control someone who's like you, but more interesting, because they're a professional demon killer and you had to spend half of last weekend doing paperwork at the DMV.

With that in mind, Amber's motivations for including a trans character, Mizhena, in her game seem uncontroversial. "I think everyone deserves to play a game that represents them in a fun fantasy setting. That's how imagination and wonder develops." There's also the issue of variety in an industry that has largely defaulted to "strapping white dude" or "voluptuous babe" for its protagonists. "Creating a wide range of characters also makes settings more complex and believable. There's a certain amount of willful blindness you have to have to believe in a video game world where the entire population is made up of one or two character models in one of five outfits. The more diverse a game world can be, the more like real people the characters become."

So Mizhena wasn't an elaborate ploy by Big Social Justice -- just one writer trying to flesh out the world she was building with a couple of quick, completely optional lines of dialogue. And yet ...

4
There Was A Ridiculous And Terrible Overreaction

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So here's a typical reaction to Dragonspear:

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"Blatantly scream personal information at the player"? Shit, what did Mizhena do, not let you continue until you built a float for the first mandatory Baldur's Gate pride parade? She was a minor character, you had to ask her about her name before her being trans even came up, and then you got back to business. She has four short sentences about being trans, which most players probably miss because they want to hurry up and get back to the magical combat ...

Beamdog

... And now here are some players reacting to that brief conversation as if the game required them to pledge allegiance to ISIS before proceeding. You can play a fun minigame right here. We call it "count the hand-wringing hyperbole"!

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Gog

Steam
Any attempts to "protect video games" might be a bit undercut by 74 percent of readers considering "Hurr durr!" valid critique.

Sadly, we could spend all day finding examples. Someone made a video in which they killed Mizhena and called it "Tranny Abuse," and serial killers would find the comments a bit much.

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"LMAO: homicide."

Did you guess that Amber was personally targeted too? If so, give yourself a depressing pat on the back.

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Oh, and someone rushed out to make a mod solely to remove that one conversation, so they could enjoy the game without "propaganda." It's called Siege Of Dragonspear: Corrections, because apparently there was a competition to make the Skyrim horse vagina mod look classy.

Moddb.com
"Suck on it, world-building."

The flood of anger focused almost entirely on this one brief and easy-to- miss conversation, to the point where people with real criticism had to preface their reviews with "Sure, transgender character, whatever. Can you fix these bugs, please?"

Steam

Despite all that, Amber has remained upbeat about the whole thing. "I have [been harassed], but I prefer not to dwell on the vile stuff. I've gotten as much thanks and support as I have abuse, and that's what I try to focus on. One message from a person saying, 'I saw myself in the game, and I want to thank you' means more than a hundred messages calling me unprintable names."

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Stereotyping sucks. In real as well as virtual world. When will come a time when everyone will accept a person the way they are?

Then we shall be truly free. Racism will end when people stop referring to each other by race. Same goes for other labels. You are a person, I am a person.

i agree with you

Thank you for bringing up a very important subject.A lot of work is needed to broaden the perspectives on gender.I consider myself genderfluid,but always pass easily as male.The stereotyping is very clear to me though.I have actually been on second life as a woman(and a man,sometimes,but that felt weird)and as a transgendered woman,and learnt a lot from that.That is a great promise of virtual reality I believe,if people would "try" how it is to be gendered as another gender than the one you normally identify with.

This is the second comment of yours that I've read and liked. high five

Aw,that is sweet!I did not realise you had replied to me,I´m such a noob! High five yourself!

Sex and gender are hot-button issues currently. You can't make a video game where a man/woman/trans-person/gay-person/whatever does anything without people going ballistic and accusing you of trying to impose your personal values on the universe.

This extends to everything. A bunch of women come out on top at the end of a Game of Thrones season, and suddenly they have an alleged agenda, when three seconds ago, everyone swore the show was anti-woman because it had rapes in it. It doesn't matter if the writers are just making a show with no agenda -- people go ballistic over gender issues.

Make some action show where the evil terrorists are Muslim, and people yell at you for being a hater. Make some action show where the real villains are actually the US government, and people yell at you for being a hater. You were just making a show, but because your show has characters in it that do stuff, you must have an agenda.

This particular example is kind of borderline, though. I mean, when the writer's cohort went out and specifically interviewed trans gamers, and the entire point was to include a trans character for the purpose of being inclusive, it's not a 100% pure writing decision. The creator wasn't just creating interesting characters out of the blue. She was specifically trying to appeal to certain people in the world and make a statement.

These days you can't say anything , without offending someone.

Bonk on the turbografx let you become a female bonk if you collected a power up. This was only in the Japanese version tho. It was taken out the USA version.

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