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Dead By Daylight Should Just Go the Apex Legends Way

Apex Legends is easily leading the field right now, in my honest opinion, with representation done right. Upon release, they already had two confirmed LGBTQ+ characters. They didn't make that a selling point, they just simply exist and it is normal. As of now, they have 5 confirmed LGBTQ+ characters with the rest implied in some way, either bisexual, straight, pan, and etc by in-game interactions.

Apex doesn't leave a lot to just speculation, building their characters confidently and releasing them as (usually) fleshed out personalities. You wouldn't know in game at all (besides some new interactions). It is honestly impressive that before games had to start coming out publicly to announce they suddenly care, Apex was being diverse and creative as hell (and please let me know any other games that did the same, I'd love to see more examples!)

That being said, it honestly super helps to do two options: Make your characters (or a good portio) DEFINED, or leave them open to interpretation. Having defined personalities means everyone knows everyone and it helps not only with more representation, but it doesn't cause an outroar when you suddenly announce someone is LGBTQ+, because people usually find out in their lore on release. It doesn't have to be a huge deal either, again, they are a normal part of life. All Gibraltar has in his lore is "his boyfriend" and that is an easy representation if I've ever seen some.

Leaving it ambiguous is what DBD was doing for a while, meaning you can make whoever you want representation. They aren't all straight, they aren't all LGBTQ+. In fact, there are still people that consider Felix not straight, which he might not be, who knows, but by now officially revealing an identity, it is causing a backlash. Mainly through homophobic people lol but also because it wasn't organic at all. Think Blizzard with Soldier.

Ironically by revealing David was gay as a big announcement as the "first gay character in Dead By Daylight", David is in fact losing some of his character. Even if the tome it is written great and done well, by making it a big announcement, David is going to be known as the gay character, and sadly while trying to choose David to be the gay rep to avoid having a character be based around being gay, that is all that is associated with the David name.

After 6 years, it's better late than never, but I'm surprised it hasn't happened much sooner if it is something you take so seriously, seriously enough to collab to just write a character gay. Felix had lore that referenced wife and kids, it isn't a huge announcement, it is who he is. Dead by Daylight needs more of its characters actually explored if it is now something that is taken seriously. There are plenty of characters that are just ignored in terms of lore and cosmetics, and it would be a great opportunity to give those characters popularity while also giving yourself more credit.

Any representation is good representation as a friend said, just make it natural. It is always bound to be controversial but just making it natural like games like Apex has done usually leads it to be brushed off so easier.

TL;DR: DBD should have more characters explored naturally through their lore instead of keeping them as vague as they used to. Also maybe work on how you do announcements in a community noted for its toxicity lmao

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