Friday, February 12, 2010

A straight, middle-class family man's take on the 'lack of homosexuality in space'

I've been following Brad Gallaway's Drinking Coffeecola blog for a while, but I haven't mentioned it (as far as I can remember) here until now.

What prompted this change of pace? Well, yesterday Gallaway, who is "a straight, middle-class family man who is most often assumed to be white," waxed poetic about how "bitterly disappointing" it was for him to find that BioWare removed same-sex relationships from its recently released PC and Xbox 360 title, Mass Effect 2.


"I found it incredibly disappointing and almost cowardly, in a way," wrote Gallaway, who serves as senior editor and critic of GameCritics.com when he's not blogging or writing horror, fantasy and sci-fi books and short stories. "Including comprehensive alternative options wouldn't take away from the experience of anyone who chose not to partake of it, and would serve only to let gamers of varying orientations feel more included. 

"I can’t honestly see a downside, and can't think of any justifiable reason why such options weren’t included given the content of BioWare’s previous works," he added. "In the absence of such logic, I would hate to assume that BioWare felt it acceptable to include alternative options in its ‘also-ran’ titles, only to remove them and ‘clean up’ its most important franchise. I hate to say it, but the phrase ‘second-class citizen’ comes to mind."

You took the words right out of my mouth, Brad :)

Read: 'Shiren, Clash of Heroes, and The lack of Homosexuality in Space' (at drinkingcoffeecola.blogspot.com)

3 comments:

Viewtiful_Justin said...

I definitely agree with all of this. It's a ridiculous choice, and I second that vote about cowardice.

Anonymous said...

BioWare don't have to do this because it's their own decision.
Just develop a homosexual video game by yourself and sell it.

Bryan Ochalla said...

Thanks for the post "anonymous." Neither I nor Brad nor anyone else suggested BioWare "has" to to do this. It just seems strange that they would take the option out of Mass Effect 2 given their past embrace of it (in the recent Dragon Age: Origins, for instance).

Also, if I had the ability to develop a game, you can bet I'd make a game with some sort of LGBT bend to it. Unfortunately, that's not the case, so I'll just keep writing about them :)