User:NothingAboutFlowers/sandbox

I'm a radical dude who likes to draw and write. My focus for this course will be depiction of women in video games.

=Draft=

“LGBT characters have been included in video games as early as the 1980s and 1990s.

Some games, for instance, originally included trans characters, such as Birdo from Super Mario Bros, Poison from the Final Fight series, and Flea from Chrono Trigger. Due to adherence to Nintendo's quality standards and translations based on preserving gameplay rather than literal meaning, these characters' identities were altered or erased in translation.

Video games are a heteronormative media. According to industry professionals interviewed by Shaw, reasons for this heteronormativity include the demographic of those who play games, the views of those who create games, the risk of backlash in the industry, and the storytelling limitations of the medium.

Choice based LGBT content, such as optional same sex romance in Bioware games, is a low- risk form of representation that occurs only in video games. When representation is included, it is often through these in-game choices, which place the responsibility for representation on players instead of developers. Because they afford the most opportunity for player choice and in game romance, genres such as RPGs and MMOs are the most LGBT representative. Another low risk method of LGBT representation is "Gay window gaming," which is LGBT representation that is either subtle or avoidable in games that serves to appeal to LGBT players without alienating straight or homophobic players. This can occur in sandbox games such as The Sims.

In games with LGBT characters or the option of an LGBT avatar, some aspects of marginalization that occur in contemporary culture are depicted despite the game's overall adherence to reality. These real social constraints are imposed on a virtual world due to the way games are constructed and the community that inhabits them. Games are made using the same heteronormative basis seen in contemporary culture, and this shapes narrative and characters. In both reality and World of Warcraft, LGBT people are silenced and viewed as abnormal by the rest of the community.

Both members of the industry and LGBT players prefer LGBT representation to be normalized in game narratives rather than made to seem abnormal or special. There are no games produced specifically to appeal to an LGBT audience. LGBT players prefer this so they can avoid marginalization in the gaming community.

LGBT gamers use queer readings of media to compensate for their lack of representation in it. As concluded in a study by Moravec, this “imaginative play” is the most common method LGBT gamers use to relate to in game avatars that are typically created for a presumed straight male player to relate to. ”

Hello! Thank you for helping me revise my first draft. Based on feedback I have received, I have both revised and expanded my contribution, and have added it to the Portrayal of LGBT Characters section. I still welcome any feedback on it, and I will take any suggestions you may have.