Soooo We're Finally Not Going To Dance Around Character Orentation

As you imply in your last sentence, it boils down to "It makes me happy to see people in the things I like, who look like and otherwise reflect me." I'm a white dude, so I don't have to think hard about this, it has never occurred to me. I am validated by default. But it matters a lot to many people (even in some dumb video game about guys with chainsaws chasing the Stranger Things kids through a haunted saloon), as media is a reflection of society.

I'd rather not add real-world politics to the game.

I hope they won't add any crazy climate breaking cosmetics 🤔

I don't particularly care if they have gay, bi, transgender or non-binary (or anything else in between) characters in DBD. But I do wish that they had the foresight to make this decision from the beginning. I'm not particularly fond of the idea of a character that I've put a lot of time, bloodpoints, money or other resources into getting cosmetics for suddenly becoming gay or whatever. Again, I don't have a problem with LGBT stuff. It's just that I don't identify that way and I prefer to play characters that I do identify with. Which is why I can understand where the gay community is coming from wanting to have characters that they do identify with.

I saw this tweet, starting reading the replies, and half of them were going crazy shipping Dwight and David as a couple lol.

Show me one person who's saying that.

Guy over on page 3 mentioned something to the effect of how it'll be nice to have a gay survivor when they choose to play survivor.

Some people are very much prone to identifying with characters, personalities, figures, and so on. Other people aren't. No one in DbD "represents" me, regardless of color, gender, orientation, etc.

Besides, it's a pretty trivial thought process to follow. Changes like this are only made this explicitly because companies know some people look to fictional characters for representation. It's the point I was making in the first post that you dismissed.

That is a poor argument to make. "You should just never play any game ever in case at some point in the future they make a change you don't like." That is basically what you said. To answer your question, as a rule I do prefer to play characters that are the same gender as me. Will I play characters with different genders? Sure. Whatever. It isn't a deal breaker. I might play a survivor that is gay too. But I don't particularly like an identity being forced on a character that I've been playing for a long time. That is the point I'm making.

Why would it matter?

They're not real. They're not real people. They're not connected to you in any way. It doesn't matter if Dwight likes pork chops or not.

I 'think' it's because of the bad rep small parts of the LGBT community have developed. Namely, the people that make their entire life revolve around their sexuality. As if being of a certain sexuality is ALL their life is about, and everybody should be the same.

Nothing against anybodies sexuality. Who you're attracted too is your business, but what hole you stick something into shouldn't be somebodies entire persona. Thus, when tweets like this pop out, it makes others worried that any characters created with a certain sexuality will be their entire backstory.

Not to say there aren't people that are homophobic, or resistant to change. I'm sure there are. Just my two cents.

But from a game play perspective it won't matter. Unless you get the toxic player that claims you moried them because they're gay.

Because it's just cynical marketing and pandering.

They don't actually care, but they want credit for caring. That's why tome fragments about Dave and his boyfriend didn't just appear to fit into the character, but rather BHVR took the opportunity to have legal draft up the most corporate sounding "We like inclusion now that it's June, guys." statement ever.

Don't get me wrong, if some people are made happy by it, then that's great. But do not look to Corporate America for your heroes and role models and representation. There are plenty real, genuine, heroes out there taking real action. If you want people to look up to, look no further than them. Not some hand-crafted, sanitized, token fictional character shoved into a game for Woke Cred.

Show me one person who said they were looking to "Corporate America" (BHVR is Canadian, just so you know) for their heroes and rolemodels.

There you go again.

I never said anyone specifically was. (Even if it's pretty clear that people out there do) I simply suggested NOT to.

I somehow doubt that, say, David's backstory will become "One night David was at a gay bar doing gay things with other gay people and then he left and a rainbow-colored fog swept him down a very gay road to a fabulous campfire where a gay cosmic entity transported him into a gay realm where a gay killer was trying to pierce him with a gay hook." No, this is not going to happen. This is not something anyone needs to worry about (and even if it did happen this way, um, cool?).

If I had to speculate on the actual outcome of this, it would be something like "...and then Claudette's girlfriend was worried sick, because she never returned" in a lore entry somewhere.

I said this earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating, re: "single-issue personalities."

The curse of marginalized groups is that their marginalized status has to be called out in order to shine a light on the problem that exists, to acknowledge the thing that they struggle with. You aren't going to see a character bio that calls out a character's proud straight-ness because that's the "default" and is -- relatively speaking -- unremarkable. It would be amazing to live in a world where people of all colors and orientations were treated with the same social fairness and respect, and for all of this to be -- relatively speaking -- unremarkable in terms of the factors that make up our individual human identities. But that isn't the case, and you can't call attention to it without calling attention to it.

What decision?

Like I said, just doing it. Not having legal draft up the most corporate-sounding statement ever and putting it on social media to announce, "Hey, now that it's June, we thought we'd let you know what a good company we are!!"

It's why members of the gay community are often the first to call out companies for simply "Rainbow-Washing" during the month of June rather than actually being supportive.

And yes, I'm sure every individual at BHVR is a fine person. But companies usually end up being less than the sum of it's parts when it comes to human issues.

But it does matter to some degree does it not? Otherwise why make the distinction in the first place? If it just doesn't matter then there is no reason to state the characters sexual orientation at all. Going by how much of a response this thread has gotten, plenty of people have an opinion on the matter. So at the very least can we all agree on the fact that it does matter.

If Yui isn't a lesbian and Dwight isn't a bi bottom... i will be shocked

Well, that's the dilemma, isn't it? I guess some people do care. Maybe it's just me that doesn't think about it either way.

There are no stupid questions.

BHVR makes public announcements all the time. Like every other company, they have someone (or multiple someones) to draft and publish them. Why are you only making a big deal out of it now?