BioWare Defends Gay Characters ~ Video Huevos

You may have already heard about this, but there is a member of the BioWare forums who wrote a post complaining about the fact that Dragon Age 2 gives players the option of having a gay relationship.

That post has gone viral on many gaming blogs and even the mainstream media. The forum member, who unsurprising goes by “Straight Male Gamer”, stirred up so much attention that a BioWare developer has now responded to him directly:

The romances in the game are not for "the straight male gamer". They're for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don't need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant... and that's ignoring the idea that they don't have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The "rights" of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent "right" to get more options than anyone else.

I think it’s great that BioWare is defending their decision to be inclusive. If there was ever a time when games were created just for straight males, that time has now passed.

Video games have grown up. They were once seen as a hobby for teenagers and nerds, but they are now a huge force in the entertainment world. For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops is the best selling game of all time, with over a billion dollars in sales. If it were a movie, it would be the third highest grossing movie ever made.

In the future, we will likely see many more gay characters and gay relationships in video games. Why is this even controversial? BioWare isn’t the first developer to make a gay character. Rockstar North released Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony in 2009, and in that game the main character is gay! That seems much more groundbreaking to me.

What do you think about the whole controversy? Should there be gay characters and/or relationships in video games?

Also, do you know of any gay characters in other games?