{"id":774,"date":"2014-01-23T16:46:59","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T21:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/?p=774"},"modified":"2014-01-23T16:46:59","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T21:46:59","slug":"no-need-to-hide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/2014\/01\/23\/no-need-to-hide\/","title":{"rendered":"No Need to Hide"},"content":{"rendered":"

So today Gameranx is apparently feeling like messing with my (perhaps excessive) emotional attachment to the\u00a0Dragon Age<\/em> series. First, they post that<\/p>\n

Dragon Age 3: Inquisition Might Drop Romance Options http:\/\/t.co\/vTeEfXtih5<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 gameranx (@gameranx) January 23, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have a small, private freakout because that’s one of my favorite components of BioWare games, click on the link, and discover that the story was clearly the result of misinformation, as Gameranx had already updated it with a tweet from Mike Laidlaw assuring fans that romances would still be included (and optional) in the game.<\/p>\n

The next tweet from Gameranx reads as follows:<\/p>\n

Dragon Age 3: Inquisition Won’t Let Players Hide Homosexual Romantic Options http:\/\/t.co\/gFDTxpBVy0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 gameranx (@gameranx) January 23, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I go to this link with a good deal more annoyance than fear, not at BioWare, but at the idea that this is even somehow remotely newsworthy. The article begins, “Dragon Age: Inquisition<\/em>\u00a0lead writer David Gaider won\u2019t hide the game\u2019s homosexual options behind some sort of sexuality toggle.” Yes,\u00a0<\/em>sexuality toggle<\/strong>. Because players shouldn’t have to be subjected – apparently – to unwanted advances from a person of the same\/opposite gender. Because that never happens in real life.<\/p>\n

Of course, what the request really means is “Please create a toggle so that I can continue to live my privileged straight male existence without ever having to be hit on by a man.” Gaider responded with this:<\/p>\n

“when it comes to content options like the so-called \u2018gay toggle\u2019 \u2026my question would be \u2018why?\u2019 We don\u2019t allow the player to de-select other sorts of content. A \u2018violence\u2019 toggle? A \u2018mention of slavery\u2019 toggle? A \u2018sexual situations\u2019 toggle? Why would we have a \u2018gay\u2019 toggle? Even if that was just to set the player\u2019s personal preference, and we didn\u2019t think that was incredibly on-the-nose to put up front, would de-selecting the \u2018gay\u2019 toggle mean a player should expect to encounter no gay characters? Ever? You don\u2019t think there are those who would interpret it as exactly that?\u201d<\/p>\n

The point of including certain experiences in the game is to allow players choice, not privilege. In fact, the whole of the\u00a0Dragon Age\u00a0<\/em>experience is largely about confronting privilege and persecution, teaching players how to negotiate persecution of either themselves or their family\/friends (especially in Dragon Age II<\/em>, where the player must either play as a mage or have a sibling who is a mage, an oppressed class in Kirkwall). The game forces its player to confront these things, so why would Gaider’s team allow players to deliberately avoid something that might make them uncomfortable and force them to broaden their perspective?<\/p>\n

And that’s not even addressing the bigotry that a demand to “un-gay” a game actually demonstrates.<\/p>\n

Good on BioWare for taking the high road here and supporting diversity in games and the gaming community, despite the fussing of certain privileged fans. Good on them for being willing to take the risk of alienating their supposed demographic of the 20-30something straight white male by forcing “him” to experience the possibly unwanted advances of male digital characters. Good on them for being unwilling to compromise their ethic just to cater to the supposed image of what a videogame should be – and good on them for creating a precedent that future games will hopefully follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So today Gameranx is apparently feeling like messing with my (perhaps excessive) emotional attachment to the\u00a0Dragon Age series. First, they post that Dragon Age 3: Inquisition Might Drop Romance Options http:\/\/t.co\/vTeEfXtih5 \u2014 gameranx (@gameranx) January 23, 2014 I have a … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9127,9134,9128,9136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-gaming-community","category-leadership-studies","category-videogames"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6XN03-cu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}