I am a player who focuses on plot and immersion. I don't pay much attention to these factors. Unless they greatly affect the direction of the plot, I can ignore them.
unproductive argument
No.
If those things are added for the sake of adding them, they are distracting. It is an artificial thing. Every stone is hand crafted and put there with a purpose. If there are things that only scream: look, how inclusive the setup is! The developer scratched all check marks for diversity and representation... Nah. That's screaming to me, that they care more about self represenstation and virtue signalling than about the story.
So if there is a story purpose or it is part of the main story, ok. Tell the story. Otherwise, it breaks immersion. Makes you wonder why it is there.
While not lgbt, nor a game, I recently watched Red Riding Hood (2011), an adaption of the fairy tale about the wolf and, well, little red riding hood. There was a priest that had an entourage of soldiers. Two of them were Black and one looked Asian. While such a thing might have been historically possible, it distracted. It served no other purpose than to show off the film makers virtue. They could have hand waved it with an introductory line, that the priest would have been a travelled man that collected all sorts of exotic followers and gear. Must have missed that. Oh, and the immersion breaking was, because none of the remote villagers even bat an eye about seeing those soldiers. Most of them never would have left their village. They are not cosmopolitans. All that was missing was a lgbt subplot to round it off - and none of the religous villagers having an issue with that to fully break immersion.
For rpg, if there is no romance in it, why even mention the sexuality of characters. If the game developer does, but does not include romance related plots, that was an informed quality of the character for the sake of mentioning it.
I wrote what I am complaining about and why. I even wrote that this particular thing could have been historically accurate, but was not explained. So it left the viewer wondering why it was there, and it was presented in a way that protrayed remote villagers in a dark ages setting as citicen of the world with modern attitudes. And they could have easily explained it away without trying.
Adding modern things in such a way is cheap and immersion breaking. For movies and retellings it is also cultural appropriation, if you change certain things.
There is another way! Like they did with Sherlock Holmes, when they just made a retelling in modern times. There is that tv series, where "Watson" is a women and happens in the USA. And the other one that told the classic tales, but with a modern setup, including smartphones.
I am playing games and watching movies for entertainment, and not to get spoonfed the agenda of the creators of those things. If it serves no story purpose, what purpose does it serve? And those things are fully artificial. Everything serves a purpose. My interpretation is, that it serves to show off the virtue of the creators. To "educate" the public with their values and agenda. That is manipulation. I do not want to be manipulated, no matter how noble someone might think the cause is.
Also I have the opinion, that if outside factors like agenda of the develoeprs decide the story elements, that quality suffers. The things are not written to improve or tell the story. They are written or changed to achieve some goal. Like to be compliant to this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority . It is also the concept why this here is usually not adding to quality https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Executive+Meddling&ia=web
So, no, I was not complaining that a fairy tale was not historically accurate. I was complaining that they changed certain things for the mere sake of checking some checkmarks.
Now, if you were to make a game/movie about little red and the resident tomboy nicknamed wolfgirl and their secret relationship as a plot device, since the religous people would not allow it, that would serve a story purpose.
If it's just an anecdote in the plot, I don't think many people will mind. However, if you want to convey a moral message, it must be done well. Disney is not a good example to follow in that case because they deliver their messages in a crude and insensitive way.
The main thing is to make the message open to interpretation so that, when the player interprets it, they assimilate it more easily because that interpretation is partly their own creation.
There is also how some players try to immerse and identify with the protagonist.
The protagonist having vastly different core qualities can make that difficult. Sure, the protagonist does things, that no normal person would ever do. Like fighting dragons, doing magic or generally be the hero of a tale. That leaves the mundane everyday life things to relate to the hero. Like having love interests. Or a sexuality.
So it is a tricky thing to include lgbt elements. Attach it to the main character and risk estranging that character from the majority of potential players. Attach it to a side character to just have it for the sake of having such sub plots? Making the story centered on those elements or having them just appear?
Would gay Mario trying to find his gay platonic prince friend in another castle be a distraction or an incentive to play the game? I go with distraction. Trying to rescue the princess is just about one of the oldest hero tale tropes. It is not relevant, but only serves as an alibi motivation. Any other reason would have done the trick.
the lesbian variation
One can always subvert or change a trope.
What did trigger your interest in the game? The "twist" of trope, the gameplay, graphics, previous knowledge of the developer's works?
Probably the yuri theme, seeing how that game was made for a yuri jam.
Did you play those Mario games because of the romance plot?
Would gay Mario trying to find his gay platonic prince friend in another castle be a distraction or an incentive to play the game? I go with distraction.
“Sorry, Mario. The prince is in another castle.”
Is that distracting? A genderswap wouldn’t matter for gameplay. Change the title and alter the character design a little; everything else could stay the same.
Then those of us who for our own reasons dig up the rare stories about saving princes would have increased interest in the game.
A genderswap wouldn’t matter for gameplay.
Exactly my point.
Then what is the genderswap for? Probably to give a known game a twist for a new audience. But creating a distraction for the previous target audience.
That works well in indie games. Carve out a nieche, find an audience. You won't cater to the masses, but you will also not compete against the games catered for the masses.
There are a lot of people that exist. But if you tell a story, you do not include all sorts of variations, just becaue they exist. Trans people exist too. So do children, disabled people, body builders and chain smokers.
So at which point would trans muscular smoking baby Mario in a wheelchair be a bit of a distraction in a jump & run game, that never actually adresses any of the highlighted qualities? Surely it must be a sign, if someone get's distracted by this and just plays another game.
My point is, that if you have gay Mario do the jumping, you better involve the gayness in the story in a satisfying manner. Else it is just a distraction. An informed quality.
There is nothing wrong with having gay Mario. Or muscular wheelchar Mario. This is a story decision of the writer. It is not a random chance roll of the dice what the story is about or what qualities the characters have, out of a pool of existing qualities.
If Mario would jump in the 1950s, he would have probaby had a cigarette in his mouth and depicting him as a non smoker would have been the distraction. In the 1890s it would have been a tobacco pipe, especially if he were to solve crimes. This "distraction" is about information value. The expected thing is the thing with the least information value when it happens. A stereotypical plumber from Italy having a mustache and being hetero is not news.
Presenting him with a full beard or as gay, is news. It subverts the trope. Being done good it is an interesting story. Though after glancing at tags, there seems to be a certain lack of gay jumper heroes. 170000k platformers. And maybe 500 gay/lgbt https://itch.io/games/genre-platformer/tag-gay https://itch.io/games/genre-platformer/tag-lgbt But I assume there is also a certain lack of hetero platformer heroes, since that quality is of no concern for jumping. Or as I phrase it, a distraction.
But we're not talking about cigar-chomping bears in a wheelchair. No-one was proposing that. We're talking specifically about one particular kind of representation, done by and for people who care about that for whatever reason. Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy.
Besides, that's a suspiciously specific type of character. I'm beginning to have questions.
We're talking specifically about one particular kind of representation, done by and for people who care about that for whatever reason.
Then you have been reading this discussion vastly different than me. The setup of this discussion was not players that seek lgbt content and subsequently find it. So I approached it as the situation where lgbt content is added on top, as the original post described it. The title of the thread can be understood differently, like a poll, like if people would care for 3d elements in a 2d game. And while I agree in principle with "Unless they greatly affect the direction of the plot", I go further and say, it distracts a bit and often comes across as bad writing or trying to appear inclusive. I would like to see such qualites either worked in satisfactorial or not at all.
If your reason for having an lgbt hero is to appeal to people looking for lgbt, that changes everything! Of course it is not a disctration! It is the whole point why the hero has that quality.
I picked Mario because he is well known and because his games would work no matter his sexuality. So adding lgbt elements to a Mario game would be such a situation. For this topic with rpg, Link might have been better, but many people do not even know his name.
I'm with hadhad@Had2Apps on this one. I don't have a problem with the phenomenon of sexual minorities itself, but the way things are currently being "forces" and everybody who does have critics about it being "transphobe" before even examining if the points are valid or not,is what gets me in a negative view on the subject.
For anyone wondering what happened here:
Someone, E, made a reply and got blocked for that reply. E was told by the blocker, it was due to trolling.
E could not accept that and went on to insult the blocker and spin theories that the block was not due to trolling, but for other, personal, reasons.
I foolishly tried to point out, that E was literally told the reason and that E's posting indeed can be seen as trolling.
Then E went on to start insulting me and twisted my words several times and tried to shift the discussion about how I am a bad person. It got confusing a bit, with E even literally claiming to have trolled me. I kid you not. At last I was accused of accusing E of trolling and E finally blocked me and later removed comments. The part where E claimed to have trolled me was very disturbing, hence the longishly escalation.
Please, do not go against the persons in a discussion. Go against their points, if you disagree with those. And what irks me, how hard it is to understand nuances for people. Some in this thread got the impression I do not like lgbt games. The irony is, I do. But I want to see them done in a satisfacatorial manner. And not as a checklist excercise.