I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Insane

Our thoughts about the famous Cracked.com.

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat Jul 16, 2016 10:56 pm

Are you saying that the symbiote was a space catholic? 'Cause that seems a little to realistic for spiderman.
  • 5

User avatar
NathanLoiselle
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 4484
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:49 am
Location: You'll Never Know!
Show rep

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Jul 17, 2016 12:05 am

I think it's weird that people would single out a proud trans character as being anachronistic or immersion-breaking in this particular case. I haven't played Siege of Dragonspear, but I played the Enhanced Editions of BG1 and BG2 that BeamDog made, and most of the characters and story elements they added were jarringly out of place and broke the immersion in half with a sickening "crack".

The saving grace then was that they were just updating the original Baldur's Gate games and adding a few bells and whistles. Since the original games were written by BioWare, the core of the story was still excellent, and the mechanical and graphical updates were worth the tacked-on new characters and sidequests. When Siege of Dragonspear came out, though, I for one shuddered at the thought of what BeamDog would do with the task of creating a new BG game from scratch.
  • 5

"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby DashaBlade » Sun Jul 17, 2016 2:42 am

Crimson847 wrote:I think it's weird that people would single out a proud trans character as being anachronistic or immersion-breaking in this particular case.


Especially since in the tabletop setting, there are magic items that can change your gender. Also, it's not anachronistic because Faerun (the world where Baldur's Gate exists) is a different planet, not medieval Earth. I would have thought the dragons and elves and beholders would have given that away, but I always ran D&D games as "It is the current year, but in a world with magic instead of advanced technology."

For the record, I don't give a flying fuck whether there's a trans character in a game, particularly not one in a game based on D&D. I've *played* characters who have had their gender switched, their alignment switched, and even have been transmogrified into an entirely different race (when an elf gets turned into a dwarf, it ain't pretty, let me tell ya). If one of my gaming group had as their backstory that they're questing for a magic item to turn them into (whatever), I'd allow it, because hey, it gives me a vague idea of a plotline we can do after the one I have planned. If someone wants to have as their backstory that they're questing for a cell phone, we can do that too. I'm easy.
  • 9

User avatar
DashaBlade
TCS Chomper
TCS Chomper
 
Posts: 1069
Joined: Sun Apr 21, 2013 2:21 am
Location: Waving my hands at passing cars
Show rep
Title: Crazy Cat Lady

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Jul 17, 2016 4:13 am

DashaBlade wrote:
Crimson847 wrote:I think it's weird that people would single out a proud trans character as being anachronistic or immersion-breaking in this particular case.


Especially since in the tabletop setting, there are magic items that can change your gender.


Also true in the video game in question.

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Girdl ... Femininity

Also, it's not anachronistic because Faerun (the world where Baldur's Gate exists) is a different planet, not medieval Earth. I would have thought the dragons and elves and beholders would have given that away, but I always ran D&D games as "It is the current year, but in a world with magic instead of advanced technology."

For the record, I don't give a flying fuck whether there's a trans character in a game, particularly not one in a game based on D&D. I've *played* characters who have had their gender switched, their alignment switched, and even have been transmogrified into an entirely different race (when an elf gets turned into a dwarf, it ain't pretty, let me tell ya). If one of my gaming group had as their backstory that they're questing for a magic item to turn them into (whatever), I'd allow it, because hey, it gives me a vague idea of a plotline we can do after the one I have planned. If someone wants to have as their backstory that they're questing for a cell phone, we can do that too. I'm easy.


That's nice for you, but personally I'd be less than pleased if a video game based on the Forgotten Realms setting featured a quest where you have to find Elminster's lost iPhone, and I don't think it would be unreasonable for others to be displeased either.
  • 4

"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby DashaBlade » Sun Jul 17, 2016 5:05 am

Crimson847 wrote:That's nice for you, but personally I'd be less than pleased if a video game based on the Forgotten Realms setting featured a quest where you have to find Elminster's lost iPhone, and I don't think it would be unreasonable for others to be displeased either.


They'd call it a "long range communication crystal" or something in that setting, since it's powered by magic and all. I bet ya ten bucks that if it was given a wizardy sounding name, nobody would notice.

Like so.
  • 4

User avatar
DashaBlade
TCS Chomper
TCS Chomper
 
Posts: 1069
Joined: Sun Apr 21, 2013 2:21 am
Location: Waving my hands at passing cars
Show rep
Title: Crazy Cat Lady

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Jul 17, 2016 5:54 am

Okay, so you don't actually mean a cell phone, just something else that serves a similar function. Can we agree that including an actual cell phone would clash with the setting and be immersion-breaking? Yes, Faerun isn't medieval Earth, but it's still an established setting with particular norms and conventions that can be broken.
  • 2

"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
User avatar
Crimson847
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 3195
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:18 am
Show rep

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby gisambards » Sun Jul 17, 2016 12:23 pm

Crimson847 wrote:
DashaBlade wrote:
Crimson847 wrote:I think it's weird that people would single out a proud trans character as being anachronistic or immersion-breaking in this particular case.


Especially since in the tabletop setting, there are magic items that can change your gender.


Also true in the video game in question.

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Girdl ... Femininity


Well there's something they could have put in to actually make Nizhena's character a little more worthwhile - they could have had a quest where the player has to find her a Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity, as an analogy for surgical transitioning. Anything more than just one poorly-written "I am trans, hear me roar" speech and then them never mentioning it again.
  • 7

User avatar
gisambards
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2088
Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:45 pm
Show rep

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby Paradox » Sun Jul 17, 2016 2:16 pm

http://www.wowhead.com/item=112090/tran ... c-tincture

I was actually surprised to not see any complaining about this.
  • 2

[Signature removed for nonpayment.]

The artist once again known as Dox.
User avatar
Paradox
Resident Dickhead
Resident Dickhead
 
Posts: 2243
Joined: Wed May 27, 2015 6:56 pm
Location: Dunbar, WV
Show rep
Title: True Neutral

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby Marcuse » Sun Jul 17, 2016 4:15 pm

It's probably not worth me reinventing the wheel by echoing most people's comments, but:

For these gamers, it's only censorship if they liked what got removed. It's only free expression if they agree with it.


I'm increasingly coming to the opinion that this is true of both extremes of the spectrum, and the problem isn't their particular political leaning, but their addiction to hype, drama and protest that's at issue. I don't understand the need for people to make media that aligns with their audience's political leanings all the time, mainly because that's impossible. I think that it's not a proper engagement with media to insist on it being changed in order to suit one opinion or another, and the alt right/SJW dichotomy should be completely ignored.
  • 16

User avatar
Marcuse
TCS Sithlord
TCS Sithlord
 
Posts: 6592
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:00 pm
Show rep

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby sunglasses » Mon Jul 18, 2016 2:34 pm

I'm incredibly tired, and there are a number of people who do it here, of when anything non-binary occurs some persons screaming endlessly about SJWs, etc.

I'm just tired of it.
  • 13

TCS Etiquette Guide

Rules and FAQs

Zevran wrote:Magic can kill. Knives can kill. Even small children launched at great speeds can kill.
User avatar
sunglasses
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 11541
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 2:52 pm
Show rep
Title: The Speaker of Horrors.

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby 52xMax » Wed Jul 20, 2016 3:46 am

A little late to the party, but reading this article gave me all of the cancer. Each one of its entries is plagued with all sorts of contradictions, exaggerations, double standards and straight up lies, so much that I don't think I could get through one sentence that I didn't disagree with. I could explain it in detail, but then this would become longer than the article itself. And of course a cracked article on video games would not be complete without smearing gamergate, because what's the point of having a dead horse if you can't beat it?

I'm just going to highlight some of the worst bits:

1. I have seen gameplay footage of the game in question, and I think neither side is right and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, in that the character interaction feels artificial, but it's also unobtrusive as long as you don't encounter that particular character along the way. But if every NPC in the game behaved the same way, I'd probably ragequit and throw my controller against the screen because it's really annoying and unnecessary. Also everything gisambards said.

2. They bring up a list of trans characters in popular games only to belittle them because they're too cartoony or hypersexualized (since when is that a bad thing?), then on the very next paragraph they complain about the whole industry defaulting to a couple of character types and the lack of variety. Because consistency be damned.

3. Everything "bad gamers" do is bitch and overreact, even though that's pretty much what the kind of people they support do all the time, to the point that some of them make a living out of it. When it's gamers leaving a bad review on a game they paid for and were disappointed by it, they call it harassment, but when the professionally outraged critics (who oftentimes don't even play the games themselves) call for changing stuff they don't like until they get it, that's a victory for free speech and diversity. And when the gamers make a mod instead of whining until the developers do their biding, that's bad too. For reasons.

4. "For these gamers, it's only censorship if they liked what they removed. It's only free expression if they agree with it".

That's the line that directly follows not one or two, but three examples of stuff that got changed because the developers caved to unreasonable demands from SJWs. Because these people absolutely lack self awareness.

Then they cite Alison Rapp's firing as an example of a hapless victim of a harassing campaign, never mind that the actual reason she was fired was because she was using her public twitter account (that she used in an official capacity as a Nintendo's PR representative, mind you) to promote her services as a cam girl, where she was often wearing Nintendo merchandise. And while I don't think there's anything wrong with her additional source of income, it's kind of hard to sell to her employers the idea that they should censor some parts of a game for being sexually suggestive in a way that would damage their corporate image (some mini-game in the Japanese version of Fire Emblem: Fates that was removed in the American port), while she was also using said corporate image and her ties to the company to market herself for services of an erotic nature. And while it's true that the only reason all of that came to the surface was because gamers that were mad at the changes dug through her accounts until they found something they could use against her, the reason "Nintendo heroically decided she wasn't worth the PR problem" actually had more to do with the fact that companies usually hire PR people to solve PR problems, not to cause them. It's the same reason that woman who made that AIDS joke on a plane en route to Africa was fired by her company.

5. Briana Wu. Need I say more?





I'm not going to pretend to even begin to understand what being trans is, and obviously some of the hate they get is sadly too real and it's something that needs to change, though by their own admission all the examples quoted on the article are what is considered "shitposting" on image boards and thus not a real reflection of of gaming as a whole. Also, being a vociferous douchebag who demands to be addressed a certain way with no rhyme or reason is not a very effective way of making friends. The best thing to do is probably let it happen organically, the only thing that complaining about it will do is likely attracting the trolls.

Contrary to what sites like cracked and kotaku portray (which is weird since they both cater to a "gaming" audience, but I'm not going to tell them how to run their business) gamers are, in my experience (YMMV), a very inclusive community. They don't care if you're a guy or a girl; straight or lgbt; white, black, green, purple; as long as you carry your weight and are willing to be a part of the game, the rest doesn't matter. Just don't be a Leeroy Jenkins.


"God damn it, Leeroy"
"At least I got chicken"
That cracks me up every time.
  • 3

"When in doubt... well, don't ask me!"
User avatar
52xMax
Knight Writer
Knight Writer
 
Posts: 3058
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:38 pm
Location: In all the wrong places.
Show rep
Title: Salmon the Wise

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby TheSyrupNugget » Wed Jul 20, 2016 7:39 pm

One bone I have to pick is about character creation:

In Mass Effect, what's stopping you from (for example) deciding that, in your mind, Shep was female at birth and transitioned prior to the story? You made the character, you're entitled to fill in blanks as you want.

It's not like most of these character creation systems let you personally mold the character's genitals, or have "conforming to a rigid gender binary" as an important backstory staple.

Yeah, I agree, trans and NB characters should be represented better, and trans/NB gamers have as much of a right as anyone to see themselves represented positively in media, but complaining about there being no "trans" options in a character creator (which... what would that entail, really?) just seems like a reach to me.
  • 8

User avatar
TheSyrupNugget
Jedi Knight
Jedi Knight
 
Posts: 417
Joined: Sun Apr 21, 2013 11:49 pm
Location: British Columba, Canada
Show rep
Title: Nugget of Syrup

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby Grimstone » Thu Jul 21, 2016 3:25 am

rowdyrodimus wrote:If there is a reason for the characters sex (and by that I mean gay or straight, cis or trans, that type stuff) as an integral part of the story, then great write it in and make it a part of the character. If it's not important to the story then it's just being done because they know it will get extra buzz.


It's possible to have a trans character in a game for the same reason you would have a cisgender(I think I'm using this term reasonably here) male or female in a game, which ultimately boils down to "just because". Other possible reasons that I can think of: character customization, complexity/realism, different perspectives, add to story/character development, to give a character.. well, character. Basically, anything more than an asexual non-gendered object is just extra details added to flesh out the game.

Example of a game that (almost)has no extra/unnecessary details:
Image

TheSyrupNugget wrote:In Mass Effect, what's stopping you from (for example) deciding that, in your mind, Shep was female at birth and transitioned prior to the story?


Nothing, I do this kind of thing all the time in RPGs(customize a character with a certain theme or backstory in mind that isn't explicitly included/mentioned in the actual game) but I don't think this is the point. For example, I might decide to imagine that I'm playing an evil character even though the story requires me to be benevolent in order to complete a necessary quest but I would most likely prefer it if an evil alternative existed

It's not like most of these character creation systems let you personally mold the character's genitals, or have "conforming to a rigid gender binary" as an important backstory staple.


True, but I could see games with more complex character creation systems(like elderscrolls) being trans character friendly without it seeming too out of place/shoehorned into the game.

complaining about there being no "trans" options in a character creator (which... what would that entail, really?) just seems like a reach to me.


I imagine such a feature is a lot less likely to be included in game(s) if nobody asks/complains for it. As for what would such a feature entail? Well, I'm not trans so I really don't know. Maybe it would mean that in a game with detailed character customization options that traditionally male/female traits aren't locked to the character's assigned gender.

Edit: I'm not talking about anything specific to the linked article, just the concept of trans characters in general.
  • 2

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."
User avatar
Grimstone
TCS Guerilla
 
Posts: 2160
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:52 am
Show rep
Title: Creature of the Night

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby gisambards » Thu Jul 21, 2016 4:02 am

Grimstone wrote:I imagine such a feature is a lot less likely to be included in game(s) if nobody asks/complains for it. As for what would such a feature entail? Well, I'm not trans so I really don't know. Maybe it would mean that in a game with detailed character customization options that traditionally male/female traits aren't locked to the character's assigned gender.

The Sims 4 allows the player to create transgender characters. As well as no longer segregating hairstyles, clothes, and I think voices by gender, it also allows you to select whether your character can impregnate female Sims or be impregnated by male Sims regardless of the gender they look like.
It's that latter one that particularly strikes me as what makes it explicitly allowing one to make trans characters, as it's not really anything new to allow men to wear women's clothes and women to wear men's clothes (Saint's Row 3 and 4, the Fable trilogy and Fallout 4 all allowed cross-dressing). This added feature effectively allows you to create a woman with a penis or a man with a vagina, without explicitly having to tell you that's what you're doing.
With more story-driven games, however, I'm still not sure what it would bring. The transgenderism would add so little, I might as well just create a (presumably) cis character and pretend they're trans, if that was what I wanted.
  • 5

User avatar
gisambards
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2088
Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 11:45 pm
Show rep

Re: I Put a Trans Character in a Video Game/ Gamers Went Ins

Postby Grimstone » Thu Jul 21, 2016 5:11 am

gisambards wrote:This added feature effectively allows you to create a woman with a penis or a man with a vagina, without explicitly having to tell you that's what you're doing.


Yeah, this is completely in line with what I described.

With more story-driven games, however, I'm still not sure what it would bring.


I guess it would add about as much as (more or less)most other details included in stories/games(hair color, dying clothing, the amount of eyebrow skew you gave your skyrim character, etc).

The transgenderism would add so little, I might as well just create a (presumably) cis character and pretend they're trans, if that was what I wanted.


And that's perfectly fine, I literally give 0 cares as to whether or not a game explicitly includes trans character(s) or not. My argument is that there's really no reason to argue against including trans characters in a game and that it makes about as much sense as a lot of other details already included in games so why single it out.
  • 5

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."
User avatar
Grimstone
TCS Guerilla
 
Posts: 2160
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:52 am
Show rep
Title: Creature of the Night

PreviousNext

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests