Controversy flared on Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic forums after the words "homosexual," "gay," and "lesbian" were auto-censored, and a moderator insisted that those terms did "not exist in Star Wars."
Hoo boy, here we go again.
The story as we understand it, thus far: Players on the official Star Wars: The Old Republiccommunity forums began to discuss how Bioware's upcoming Star Wars MMO - and its playerbase - would handle same-sex relationships. As more and more threads started popping up about the issue, the discussion grew more heated. Eventually, forum moderators began locking the discussions.
Naturally, telling people that they can't talk about something only encourages them to talk about it more. Before long, the forums were auto-censoring the terms "homosexual," "gay," and "lesbian," as they would for regular profanity. Community manager Sean Dahlberg attempted to decisively quash the controversy by posting in one of the threads in question protesting Bioware's apparent discrimination against the GLBT community:
As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars.
Thread closed.
The story, of course, doesn't end there. After a few hours' worth of "scheduled maintenance" downtime, the forums reopened - with the three banned words no longer censored. The thread in question has since been reopened, and Dahlberg's post removed (Edit: Whoops, it wasn't removed - it's just back on Page 4 now. Thanks, Nyanya!)
So, controversy over, right? The whole thing seems kind of silly of Bioware to do - after all, recent Bioware games have specifically enabled characters to pursue same-sex romances, like Jade Empire or Mass Effect. Hell, even the first Knights of the Old Republic had Juhani - who, if the game is to be believed, had a female lover. So for Bioware to suddenly do a 180 on the matter seems rather odd.
Of course, one might also argue that Dahlberg's comment was more forward-thinking in nature, and that he wasn't saying that people with same-sex relationships didn't exist in the world of Star Wars... but that a more advanced society wouldn't see any difference between a homosexual relationship and a heterosexual one. Hence, the terms "gay" and "lesbian" wouldn't exist in Star Wars.*
Either way, Bioware handled the entire thing rather poorly, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the issue rear its head again down the line. This isn't the sort of matter that just dies down quietly, after all.
*So yes, fangirls, you can still write your Obi-Wan/Anakin slash fanfiction. You just can't refer to them as "gay" in it anymore.
It's because Jedi Knights believe spraying their Midiclorian juice all over each other is just the "Ways of the force". Just like Hobbits think that spraying their magic is for the Empire/Shire etc
But to be honest, I never once even thought about the sexuality of the inhabitants of Star Wars, I mean, interracial relationships were working just fine, why should same-sex interracial relationship not work?
Considering Bioware's previous track record... I'm betting that if they have a relationship system or something in their KOTOR game, homosexuality will be allowed.
This is where things get out of hand. When you have people who want to bring the issue of homosexuality in video games because they want the issue of homosexuality to be known.
What ever happend to just sitting down and enjoying a game?
People who complain about how their sexual preference is not present in a video game they play need to realize that is one of the last things in the company or the designers mind and this applies to homosexuality and heterosexuality. If there is a love interest the focus is on the romance and not the SEX.
There are so many more important issues for the homosexual awareness community need to focus on and video games isn't one of them. If they want games that focus on homosexuality and not on gameplay then make their own god damn game. Don't be surprised if it does not sell well because the key element of gameplay was sacrificed to support the awareness of homosexuality.
It's here and it is going to stay but there is no need to push your views on others. That is something I don't tolerate.
painfull2006: Im not homophobic but I do not believe any type of homosexual content belongs in video games
Its an MMO and if i recall they said in the star wars universe, so its not like they have decided this, its just the way it is
Why not? Especially in a MMO where players create their own characters, even.
Tenmar: This is where things get out of hand. When you have people who want to bring the issue of homosexuality in video games because they want the issue of homosexuality to be known.
What ever happend to just sitting down and enjoying a game?
People who complain about how their sexual preference is not present in a video game they play need to realize that is one of the last things in the company or the designers mind and this applies to homosexuality and heterosexuality. If there is a love interest the focus is on the romance and not the SEX.
There are so many more important issues for the homosexual awareness community need to focus on and video games isn't one of them. If they want games that focus on homosexuality and not on gameplay then make their own god damn game. Don't be surprised if it does not sell well because the key element of gameplay was sacrificed to support the awareness of homosexuality.
It's here and it is going to stay but there is no need to push your views on others. That is something I don't tolerate.
Whoa, here. Where are you getting sacrificing gameplay to focus on homosexuality? Three of Bioware's recent titles - KotOR, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect - at least had some form of a same-sex relationship if the player chose to pursue that. Did that affect the gameplay at all?
Also, from how I understand it, outrage was over what people saw as Bioware banning any discussion about GLBT issues in SW ToR on the forums, not about a perceived reluctance to address the issue in the game itself.
painfull2006: Im not homophobic but I do not believe any type of homosexual content belongs in video games
Its an MMO and if i recall they said in the star wars universe, so its not like they have decided this, its just the way it is
WRONG. It's an mmo RPG, which means, if male character Iwhuppssithbuttocks wants to roleplay as a gay character in a relationship with male character iwhuupsewokfurrybuttocks, they can do it just fine.
Even having NPCs, or quest-givers who are homosexuals and could potentially even have a quest based on, you know, doing certain things to attract that member of the same sex, same sex-different race :p would be just fine. It's not like we are being bombarded with homo-friendly quests, not like we are getting bombarded with hetero-friendly quests either as far as I recall.
But it certainly has to do with the fact that the relationship the player had with party members were always hetero-friendly. It's not that bad if my male PC would prefer Carth over Bastilla, even if keeping Bastilla in slave vestments and a slave chain was much more satisfying for my tastes.
A response I posted about this on another forum, slightly edited:
'I think we need to remember that this is the internet, and that the forums for that game will no doubt be quite large because this game has a lot of hype around it: do any of you really expect these discussions to go smoothly at all times with none of the homophobic bigotry so typical of the internet? Not all forums are mature: hell, even the Escapist can be bad enough and this is one of the more mature forums out there. Maybe the mods just realised that it was more trouble than it was worth thoroughly moderating these threads, and instead are taking the blanket ban approach to prevent any homophobic comments.
Excessive, maybe, and I'm not agreeing that that would be the best way to deal with the problem, but I'm just trying to show a different perspective here to simply saying that the forums mods just don't like homosexuality.'
Good for Bioware for sticking to their guns...unlike Microsoft....who apologized to them.
I want to laugh, but it just wasn't funny. Of course, I only want to laugh because if you were serious, I'd have to insult you, and frankly I'm too tired for that.
painfull2006: Im not homophobic <---yes you are but I do not believe any type of homosexual content belongs in video games
Its an MMO and if i recall they said in the star wars universe, so its not like they have decided this, its just the way it is
Prefacing a statement with "I'm not [racist, homophobic, sexist, etc] doesn't mean whatever comes after it isn't [racist, homophobic, sexist, etc].
Anyway, the part of this that really outrages me is that they censor profanity on their forums. How could they? G*ys. Gosh.
Good for Bioware for sticking to their guns...unlike Microsoft....who apologized to them.
I want to laugh, but it just wasn't funny. Of course, I only want to laugh because if you were serious, I'd have to insult you, and frankly I'm too tired for that.
I would be glad to attempt to do it for you miiiilord.
The Dude With An Ugly Face, go uninstall life. Vamooosh!
Star Wars is a part of my most precious childhood memories; sorry, but I don't want any gayness in it. I hope Bioware won't turn the next game set in the Old Republic into a Gay Pride parade because of this incident.
Good for Bioware for sticking to their guns...unlike Microsoft....who apologized to them.
I want to laugh, but it just wasn't funny. Of course, I only want to laugh because if you were serious, I'd have to insult you, and frankly I'm too tired for that.
painfull2006: Im not homophobic <---yes you are but I do not believe any type of homosexual content belongs in video games
Its an MMO and if i recall they said in the star wars universe, so its not like they have decided this, its just the way it is
Prefacing a statement with "I'm not [racist, homophobic, sexist, etc] doesn't mean whatever comes after it isn't [racist, homophobic, sexist, etc].
Anyway, the part of this that really outrages me is that they censor profanity on their forums. How could they? G*ys. Gosh.
Haven't you learned anything from South Park? You have to be a *** to say *** or you will get beeped. See?
I don't think that BioWare is adverse to homosexual options in their games. Look at Jade Empire. Hell, you could be straight, gay, or have a 3-way! THAT was new territory.
Kukul: Star Wars is a part of my most precious childhood memories; sorry, but I don't want any gayness in it. I hope Bioware won't turn the next game set in the Old Republic into a Gay Pride parade because of this incident.
Wow, no homosexuals are allowed in Star Wars? That's not offensive at all (/sarcasm). Atleast Hitler had the decency to acknowledge that the Jews existed before killing them all.
Good for Bioware for sticking to their guns...unlike Microsoft....who apologized to them.
I want to laugh, but it just wasn't funny. Of course, I only want to laugh because if you were serious, I'd have to insult you, and frankly I'm too tired for that.
I would be glad to attempt to do it for you miiiilord.
The Dude With An Ugly Face, go uninstall life. Vamooosh!
It's so good to have people for this sort of uncouth work. My will be done.
Haven't you learned anything from South Park? You have to be a *** to say *** or you will get beeped. See?
Apparently I should watch more TV. I didn't know it taught things about real life! On that note: ******* ******* can go **** themselves. (It's like a fill-in-the-blanks, except instead of vocabulary words, you use fowl (hurr puns) languge)
ElephantGuts: Wow, no homosexuals are allowed in Star Wars? That's not offensive at all (/sarcasm). Atleast Hitler had the decency to acknowledge that the Jews existed before killing them all.
Only 27 posts till Reductio ad Hitlerum. Fallacious argument!
Good for Bioware for sticking to their guns...unlike Microsoft....who apologized to them.
I want to laugh, but it just wasn't funny. Of course, I only want to laugh because if you were serious, I'd have to insult you, and frankly I'm too tired for that.
Start insulting me. I was dead serious. I absolutely can not stand gays. Their existence is intolerable.
ElephantGuts: Wow, no homosexuals are allowed in Star Wars? That's not offensive at all (/sarcasm). Atleast Hitler had the decency to acknowledge that the Jews existed before killing them all.
Only 27 posts till Reductio ad Hitlerum. Fallacious argument!
Well I do always make a point of bringing Hitler into conversations. But I don't think that detracts from them. Quite the opposite, I find references to Hitler, Nazi Germany, or the Holocaust as extremely useful tools with which to make points by comparing them to the topic at hand.
Good for Bioware for sticking to their guns...unlike Microsoft....who apologized to them.
I want to laugh, but it just wasn't funny. Of course, I only want to laugh because if you were serious, I'd have to insult you, and frankly I'm too tired for that.
I would be glad to attempt to do it for you miiiilord.
The Dude With An Ugly Face, go uninstall life. Vamooosh!
Nice tag-team. But honestly, the censoring issue? Who gives a crap...I'd prefer that they didn't apologize, as that just seems to be a bs move to me. I don't like that they did censor the words, as I think that is a stupid thing to do, but I can respect the decision made by the people in charge. They just need to deal with the situation.
ElephantGuts: Wow, no homosexuals are allowed in Star Wars? That's not offensive at all (/sarcasm). Atleast Hitler had the decency to acknowledge that the Jews existed before killing them all.
Only 27 posts till Reductio ad Hitlerum. Fallacious argument!
Well I do always make a point of bringing Hitler into conversations. But I don't think that detracts from them. Quite the opposite, I find references to Hitler, Nazi Germany, or the Holocaust as extremely useful tools with which to make points by comparing them to the topic at hand.
No. It just doesn't. If you compare everything that you disagree with to Hitler and Nazi Germany, then it detracts from your argument itself. Saying that BioWare not catering to the desires of a portion of a small minority who may or may not be even interested in playing the game compares to the organized murder of over 6 million people is simply childish. Think of something else to compare it to. We'd all appreciate it.
Do Gays Not Exist in Bioware's Star Wars?
Controversy flared on Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic forums after the words "homosexual," "gay," and "lesbian" were auto-censored, and a moderator insisted that those terms did "not exist in Star Wars."
Hoo boy, here we go again.
The story as we understand it, thus far: Players on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic community forums began to discuss how Bioware's upcoming Star Wars MMO - and its playerbase - would handle same-sex relationships. As more and more threads started popping up about the issue, the discussion grew more heated. Eventually, forum moderators began locking the discussions.
Naturally, telling people that they can't talk about something only encourages them to talk about it more. Before long, the forums were auto-censoring the terms "homosexual," "gay," and "lesbian," as they would for regular profanity. Community manager Sean Dahlberg attempted to decisively quash the controversy by posting in one of the threads in question protesting Bioware's apparent discrimination against the GLBT community:
The story, of course, doesn't end there. After a few hours' worth of "scheduled maintenance" downtime, the forums reopened - with the three banned words no longer censored. The thread in question has since been reopened, and Dahlberg's post removed (Edit: Whoops, it wasn't removed - it's just back on Page 4 now. Thanks, Nyanya!)
So, controversy over, right? The whole thing seems kind of silly of Bioware to do - after all, recent Bioware games have specifically enabled characters to pursue same-sex romances, like Jade Empire or Mass Effect. Hell, even the first Knights of the Old Republic had Juhani - who, if the game is to be believed, had a female lover. So for Bioware to suddenly do a 180 on the matter seems rather odd.
Of course, one might also argue that Dahlberg's comment was more forward-thinking in nature, and that he wasn't saying that people with same-sex relationships didn't exist in the world of Star Wars... but that a more advanced society wouldn't see any difference between a homosexual relationship and a heterosexual one. Hence, the terms "gay" and "lesbian" wouldn't exist in Star Wars.*
Either way, Bioware handled the entire thing rather poorly, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the issue rear its head again down the line. This isn't the sort of matter that just dies down quietly, after all.
*So yes, fangirls, you can still write your Obi-Wan/Anakin slash fanfiction. You just can't refer to them as "gay" in it anymore.
(Kotaku via VG247)
(Image from Penny Arcade)
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