I get that people want an LGBT character, but...
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Whether or not this is important isn't a subjective feeling, it is an objective fact.
This is a video game. You did not buy a video game just to play as an LGBT character. It is objectively not important. We don't need it for game balance, or optimization, or anything.
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Important is literally a value judgement word. AKA subjective by definition.
The fact that someone lost their job is important to them. The fact that someone somebody doesn't know lost their job is not important to them.
Like this is basic first grade 'facts vs opinions' stuff (as wrong as that dichotomy is because subjectivity is actually a complicated topic that people have been fighting about for so long that it was old hat when the toga was all the rage). You can't ontologically prove something is important.
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Whether or not this is important isn't a subjective feeling, it is an objective fact.
It's subjective. You're only looking at what you want and then claiming that's "objective". For example:
You did not buy a video game just to play as an LGBT character.
No, you did not buy a video game just to play as an LGBT character. Who are you to say why other people make purchases?
We don't need it for game balance, or optimization, or anything.
Just like we don't need new characters or perks. We get those things because people want those things. You don't even need video games to begin with. Sometimes, people just want things and it's perfectly OK to give them those things if it doesn't harm anyone (which having an LGBT character won't).
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Then it is objectively important because the creators of the game said it is important for them. They want to be inclusive with their game.
why did you quote my post and not the one that I responded to though?
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they kind of were, nobody asked for them to have girlfriends/husbands
besides, whose to say a gay character would be forced if its just a part of the character?
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It really comes down to this:
Straight and cis people have literally billions of relatable characters ranging from well written to ######### trash pieces only included to sell a romance plot to relate to and see themselves in/across.
All we want is a little slice of that. To see a relatable character to yourself on T.V. or in video games, movies, etc.
It doesn't need to be all the highest quality, best written characters the Earth as ever seen either, normal characters that exist simply because they belong to the world are good enough when they aren't shoved in your face to meet a quota.
How many games are there were you play a gay male lead? Who cares if it's never brought up again or shown he's gay in any way, it's just nice to have that relatable trait shared.
When you have so many you're drowning in it it does not seem very important, but when you've been deprived of it you see it very differently.
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it doesnt matter to YOU. as a gay man myself, id like to see someone that i can relate to in a game i like
is it required? not really, but having someone i can relate to just feels nicer. this is why people were crying tears of joy when Elodie was released, since to a lot of people that was the first character in a game that represented them in a game.
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Thats a vise versa....you are forcing the character to be "Trans/LGBT" and you can't simply ask a "Fictional" character what their agenda/sexuality/identity its all depending on the creators themselves and its a HARD force of unnecessary pandering without proper representation.
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It's only important that I have representation of my perceived 'normal', everyone else is just SOL.
-bigots everywhere, probably
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Okay, this is probably going to be a bit long in general, but hey, bear with me.
Firstly, I think when people are asking for an LGBT+ character, they are going specifically for Survivor. Let's be honest, nobody wants to say Freddy or Leatherface was the first LGBT+ character in DbD because they're both horrible people in general. Including, say, Buffalo Bill and calling them transgender would probably ruffle more than a few feathers in general.
On the same token, there is the issue that, well, DbD is a horror game and the characters aren't so much Survivors as they are victims. Even if they manage to escape, they are stuck back in the next Trial where, let's be honest, their chances aren't so great. While I'm all for representation, I'm not so sure that's the best way of doing it. But I'm just a small part of both communities and I'm not sure my opinion counts for anything.
As of right now, at least on the Survivor side, DbD has done a pretty good job or representation (I could easily argue that Killers are overwhelmingly white, male, and American, but that also has to do with Slashers being an overwhelmingly American product of past decades). I'll break down the stats by what is on the wiki and what they "appear" to be (please note, I am using vernacular here because preferred terms go on and on and everyone can argue them--just ignore my language if it offends you as it is not intended to). There are 24 Survivors currently.
12 present as male. 12 present as female. None present as anything other than that.
15 present as White.
4 present as Black.
3 present as Asian.
1 presents as Latina.
1 presents as Middle Eastern.
All 24 present as cis, or at least cis-passing.
1 non-licensed character canonically has a wife and a child. Please note that this does not mean that one is heterosexual.
It can be argued that Laurie, Quentin, Ash, Nancy, and Steve are heterosexual, or at least hetero-presenting, but that does not mean that they have not "experimented," so to speak. Nor does them being in a canon hetero relationship define their sexuality.
7 characters, to me, present as "young." Yes, I know they are all 18 or 21 or whatever DbD says, but I'm old and young can be a range. 4-6 present as "old."
There are characters from China, Japan, Germany, France, Jamaica (living in Japan), Lebanon (living in the US), Sweden, Canada, etc.
Would I like a confirmed LGBT+ character? Sure, why not? Would I like one of each? WHO CARES as long as they bring decent perks? I'll probably keep playing Kate because the dirndl is just too pretty. ;)
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I couldn't care less if there were no straight white males, *I just want the game to work.*
And don't throw around the word "bigot". It doesn't help.
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Honey I can promise you that's not true. Lie to me and others all you want, but you can't deny that simply human fact of wanting relatability.
And we all want the game to just work but that's exponentially harder than writing up another character.
And it's a very bigoted/close minded thing to not care about other groups of people when your own needs are satisfied.
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Who are you to say whether or not my needs are satisfied?
And relatability isn't some "simply human fact." I LITERALLY do not care if the characters are all lesbian leprechauns.
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Just for the record
Freddy is pedophile, which is not as such included in the LGBT+ community at all and shouldn’t be associated with it
Bubba is not transgender and just mentally more than unstable. He probably doesn’t even see genders at all.
Buffalo Bill is explicitly NOT transgender, that is pretty well described in the books at least, I don’t know how it was depicted in the movies though.
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I believe when it comes to gaming or any entertainment of the sort as portrayed by media, if there's always gonna be LGBT characters involved; then it shouldn't be no big deal. Why should people get riled up if they're included or not? The only thing that can be bothersome is if people don't personally connect with what appeals to characters just because they're not exactly like them; that's an entire different bias and can be a loser standard by that manner. Of course companies would cash in with such cliche ideas because they're a business, videogames are a business people and even so, representation in movies and TV shows is something that appeals to a larger audience as well. Do they actually care about who they're appealing to? Maybe, but even if that's the case these people are just trying to make money off their product which could very well be their reasoning for allowing development of said character(s) to be involved. There are various of factors to keep in mind here, sure the character(s) that are to be in the game soon could be either gay, lesbian or transgender whichever they want to identify as. If anything being relevant could just be relatable towards modern day events to add to the realistic portion of the game.
Other questions such as:
"Will this save the playerbase from reducing?"
"Is this actually gonna be beneficial for gameplay mechanics?"
"How efficient are these survivors/killers perks?"
"Let's see their spicy lore, is it already available in this new tome?"
Are more leaning towards technical issues the game has to offer, the least we can tackle this subject down is with drama. I've been in many communities so far and what ends up happening are that the main issues tends to be a drama of a shitshow which kills down a community, players can still enjoy basic game functions and still have fun; just don't think people will actually communicate because of dramatic reasons. This is probably one of the few reasons why developers and community managers tend to not listen to some criticism in feedback and questions regarding for a future Q&A stream, it's probably most likely correlated with negativity and drama. This just happens to be one of the few games people can love to hate at the same time. I'm only giving my two cents on this thread, so don't go and try to cancel me because of my thoughts, otherwise I'll enjoy my snacks as I read.
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Trust me, I'm very much enjoying my coffee by this bonfire I accidentally created
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That's the thing. While the community rejects these people, one can argue that they fit. I don't necessarily agree (but my opinion isn't the only one). But, Freddy was apparently not picky in his choice of victims and Bubba is... well, complicated.
Drag is also a contentious issue in general (I would argue that Bubba isn't really in drag, but you know, he sorta is). I'm an ostensibly bisexual male in a heterosexual relationship and I can wear a dress (I actually do fairly regularly if you consider long tunics to be dresses) and call myself Lady Ladidagofrickoff and I'm still gonna be six and a half foot tall, 270 lbs, and have a pretty nice beard. But on the same token, I can say that now I am female and there is nothing anyone can do to argue with that, despite me being, well, pretty obviously a Jeff, so to speak.
And I was using Buffalo Bill just as an example. If you want a more salient example of a real-life Killer that would be a BAD inclusion, look up Dean Corll. But don't, because I don't want to have to buy you the brain bleach to get that out of your head. :)
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‚Accidentally“
sure. But I am enjoying my tea just as well, don’t worry 😉
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Your representation needs. I don't know if your actual hunger/boredom/thirst/shelter needs are being met.
What I'm trying to say is it's extremely easy to not care when your representation saturates the market and the culture you live in. If you didn't have a horde of relatable characters you would probably feel less apathetic on the subject.
It's almost exactly like black people and the civil rights movement, only this time you can't so easily identify them by skin color. They were a "minority" but still need representation, good characters they can relate to in media to know they aren't thought of as lesser.
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For Buffalo Bill and Leatherface sure they might fit. Not really as transgender but maybe as queer or something. But pedophiles don’t fit, for obvious reasons. Them being killers is another thing, I do think that they also should consider creating LGBT killers, don’t exclude them from this just because killers tend to be bad people. LGBT should be treated just as straight was treated before in the game.
I looked Dean Corll up, don’t worry, you can’t disturb me that much. He wouldn’t fit just because he was a real human being and BHVR said they would not add those ever.
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I'll be honest, I can do the same with the Killer base and things are just WONKY there. But that is largely due to American horror not being very much focused on chick slashers (Mama Vorhees excluded here).
There are 22 Killers (due to slightly more Survivors being released, blah blah blah).
Roughly 6? present as women (I am counting Legion and the Twins as half both here).
15 present as men.
1 is a Demogorgon.
Arguably, one can make the point that both Freddy and Pyramid Head are non-human and thus don't really fit a gender, but they're both dudes, dude.
15 present as White. 14.75 really (Legion again).
3 present as Black, if we are counting Lisa, who really doesn't present as anything. Also, why in the heck haven't we had another Black Killer in forever? CANDYMAN GO!
2 present as Asian. Also another aside, why are the only Asian Killers Japanese? We have a Korean and Chinese Survivor, why not use some other cultures, BHVR?
1 presents as basically Babylonian for a fantasy version of Babylonia.
13 of the Killers are explicitly in America. 1 is in Russia, 1 is in Babylonia (again), 2 are in Japan (yeah, thanks), 1 (4) is in Canada, 1 is in France.
There needs to be more diversity in Killers, seriously!
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Dude, I get it. We all hate pedophiles, seriously. That doesn't mean that someone who diddles both boys and girls doesn't go both ways. It is one of those things we all have to kind of accept (in my opinion) and go "Yeah, so he is bi, who cares, he is a piece of garbage and I'm glad he got burnt to ashes."
The thing is, saying bisexuals are only attracted to those who had their magical birthday also invalidates a lot of LG people (god, it sounds like I'm advertising for a brand here) who had their first experiences at the hands of someone a lot older than them (hi there, not gonna bring it up here). You can be bisexual and a horrible freaking person. That doesn't make you suddenly not part of being bisexual.
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There is actually a suuuper complex history of queer themes in horror. Horror is both weirdly really bad to gay and trans people, but also weirdly empowering. Again, its critical to remember how absolutely representation starved the LGBTQ+ community is, which makes this entire discussion of 'should a survivor be casually gay?' be met with a resounding "yes, probably more than one even."
For example the Hayes code prevented gay people from being anything BUT villains, which was a problem because a lot of people in Hollywood were relatively gay friendly. This resulted in a lot of dimensional, highly sympathetic villains. But also, horror villains often represent a sort of vengeance. Sure, its bad Jason is killing all those people, but at least early in the series he is striking out against representations of callousness and shallowness that resulted in 'That tragic day.' Obviously coding sexual liberation as that is a problem, but still.
This is why there is such a massive affinity for horror among queer people. There is also the fact that often horror slashers or monsters need to conceal their true nature from those around them, were born that way, and if the world was set up differently they wouldn't even be monsters.
Even the really REALLY bad representation like Sleep Away Camp has some elements in the sequels that sort of turn what is essentially the trans killer into a sort of avenger, especially because in the original movie its not very subtle that everyone is fairly unkind to her before she has even done anything.
All that is to say that a LGBTQ+ killer wouldn't be the worst thing ever. We need queer characters to be allowed to exist in EVERY role. And all sorts of different types of stories. It isn't 'incorrect' to have a killer who happens to be gay, nor is it incorrect to have a killer who is a killer because the awful state of the world forced them into it because they are gay, but in that case ideally it should be pretty clear it was a tragedy that it happened and not a case of 'being gay makes you evil,' and we should almost certainly get a good survivor or three in first.
A good example of this is Nurse's history is pretty heavily linked to the lack of power women had in her time period making it impossible for her to stop an injustice occurring, while say... Spirit has very little going on with her gender, as an example of how you can A: Have a killer who has an element we don't want to demonize both be an important part of their story or not, and B: how that element can make them more sympathetic, dimensional, and in a way horrific because you empathize with them more.
Like low key I am creeped way more out by Wraith's backstory as an immigrant who was taken advantage of so many times and now permanently is forced to kill against his own will, being physically mutilated by The Entity to force him to do it, than Clown who is just kinda an evil murder pervert. Doesn't mean Clown is a 'bad' character, but the fact I can imagine myself in Philip's shoes (or lack thereof) position and be kinda upset and unnerved by it knowing how powerless he was to stop anything that happened to him makes him more interesting to me. But maybe ghost face is more interesting to someone else thematically, and that is cool and why you want diverse stories, especially in games with a huge selectable roster.
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They also don't have to have been bad people to become killers. Nurse was pretty chill but slowly lost herself over time. Yeah it's the token tragic backstory gay character but at least it's better than nothing.
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We need representation for all if we gonna be so ignorant to those who are disabled/disfigured.
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We have. Hillbilly is disfigured. Ash has his hand/arm amputated. Deathslinger has something with his leg. Claudette has some skin condition(don’t remember which one). Yui is cross eyed.
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we neeeeeed more.
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Nobody said anything against this though?
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Never said anyone was just adding we need more.
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This. The number of content creators I saw literally in tears over her made my heart warm.
If people in media and videogames can do their part to make that happen for more people, is that really problematic? Of course not. But certain groups want those of us that are not of their norm buried away where they don't have to recognise we exist.
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But why even start this completely off-topic request in this thread?
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I am a member of the LGBTQ+, and I don't want to be pandered to. If they were to add a character that was nothing more than a rainbow flag that shows how inclusive BEhaviour is without adding anything to lore or the game overall, I, and I'm guessing several others, would be angry at how they show inclusivity through a character that only has the personality trait of "Homosexual" or "Transgender" etc..
I know that good can be done with a character that is an LGBTQ+, but don't just make them for the sake of making them, and putting no effort into them. Don't pull a Disney on us.
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Its just lore, your desire for gameplay is not affected, its not the same people working on it soooo it does not matter to you at all so you can close this thread.
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Why do people want a "LGBT" character? As in anything on that spectrum would satisfy them? Say they add a female lesbian as a character, is a male bisexual supposed to be like "Oh cool I'm being represented!". Look at that nonsense that happened with Cyberpunk, they had no problem being inclusive of various people, then people started screaming because the LGBT characters weren't exactly as they wanted them to be. Theres no value in appeasing people who want these characters.
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Currently we only have characters with confirmed heterosexual relationships and thus it feels like anything LGBT is deliberately excluded (which it kinda was up until the devs said they won’t exclude anymore).
and yes some people would be satisfied with anyone from the ‚spectrum‘ because it would ackowledge the existence in general, and LGBT people often go through similar struggles throughout life.
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Why is representation so important? I find it to be classless and obnoxious. To add a character for the sole purpose of them being of a minority doesn't do anything for anyone. Do you think people who are anti-LGBT are going to go "wow, they added a DBD character who is transgender, I really need to re-think my position on this..."? Do you think most normal minded gay people are going to be 'proud' that they added a gay character just so they can now 'fit in'?
Diversity for sake of diversity is pandering and I don't know why this topic gets brought up so much around here but I really wish it would just die on the hook.
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It’s important because it will definitely help in showing that LGBT+ people are not any different than straight people. It actually could make people think about it, help people that are unsure about themselves or others in their lives to see that it doesn’t define who they are. I am not only talking about representation in DbD of course, but since DbD represents characters with heterosexual relationships it should only be normal to also include LGBT.
no one said they should add a character with the only trait being LGBT. Literally nobody wants that.
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If you think a videogame character is going to change anyone's perception on reality you are living in a fantasy land.
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No. One sole inclusion won’t change anything. Never said that. But inclusion in media generally does help! That’s why I have stated that I am not only referring to DbD.
But there is still literally no reason to exclude LGBT from DbD lore.
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There is no reason not to, but to put it simply,
Why fix something that isn't broken?
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Because it was actually broken. The devs have seen their mistake and they are ‚fixing‘ it.
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I say this as a straight dude. Why can't we let LGBTQ+ people have their representation? I can name right now if you asked me the characters in this game that reflect one or more things about me. A lot of LGBT people don't have that, at least not to the degree they would like.
What's the problem with being more inclusive? If the character is well written, adda something to the lore and just happens to also be LGBT, that's a good thing. It means more people are happy, and isn't that a good thing?
It doesn't affect me in the slightest, and if it makes people happy, I see no harm in it. I personally couldn't care about representation, but it is very important to some people.
On the note of pandering - this entire game is pandering. It panders to classic horror fans, it panders Silent Hill fans, it panders to Halloween fans, and so on. Most media is pandering in some way. Hell, considering the Entity is an eldritch, inter-dimensional monster with no form and a buncha tentacles, you could say it's pandering to Lovecraftian, cosmic horror.
"It would be pandering" is not a valid excuse when the game is built on the back of pandering.
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As I gay person I agree. I don't see how a gay survivor/killer would really be NEEDED in the game. Would it be cool? yeah sure. I want them to be a character first however not just a survivor solely made to be there for the LGBT community.
This is just my thoughts on the matter.
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I dont want that kind of caracter in dbd.
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"It would be pandering" is not a valid excuse when the game is built on the back of pandering.
I'd go one step further and say that every product ever made is built on the back of pandering. That's literally why things are made, because people want to buy them. It's the basis of capitalism - you pander to a specific group of people with your product.
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Well, sucks to be you in this case I guess.. because we definitely will get them.
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Want or....forced to by SJWs? Lol. Please.
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And this is precisely why people don't want a gay character in DBD, we don't need gay people in every aspect of everything in order for it to be 'normal'. Gay people are overly represented in mainstream media now as it stands.
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Nothing's broken. You (not you specifically) aren't any worse off if you don't get an LGBT character.
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