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You'd be shocked if I told you how many people I know who were either in those movies, or were involved in the production.

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Working on a VN to teach lower-conversational Japanese, and a guide to living in Japan.
It's a very long dev process.

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I think that outcry was more because:
1. They drastically changed Anders' character from Awakening, from a sarcastic but good-hearted mage to Angsty McAngst Angst.
2. He hits on you no matter what you do, the very first time he meets you, and if you ignore it he gets offended.


But back on topic, I'm another person who would really like to see more trans-gender and asexual characters, especially in non-romantic roles. It's a bit of an unfortunate implication to put the only gay or trans-gender or whatever character in the game as a love interest. It's almost like saying that the only thing they're good for is for lovin'.

That all depends on where you are. I could possibly run into multiple New Zealanders in one day (seriously, I swear half your population is here). My sister was married to a New Zealander. Then again, Australians are almost as obscure XD

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The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

Yeah, New Zealanders move to Australia because we don't need a visa, the culture isn't so different, jobs are easier to get, and the pay rate is much better.
There are almost no Australians in New Zealand for the same reason.

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Working on a VN to teach lower-conversational Japanese, and a guide to living in Japan.
It's a very long dev process.

You could help me with my game A LOT by filling out this anonymous 10 question survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6GR57YB
Massive thanks to everyone who has already filled it out!
You can see a Q&A about the survey here: http://tinyurl.com/SurveyQandA

I suspect it's because most players are exclusively interested in one gender or another, at least over the amount of time it takes to play a single game.

Say you're male, and you have three romance games - BxGGGG, BXBBGG, and BXBBBB. If - at the current time - you're into girls, which game do you pick? If you like guys, which game do you choose? I'd argue that the audience for the middle game is relatively small, which is why you don't see many games like that being made.

When there aren't many games of a given kind, I suspect there's another effect in play. If the only two choices are BXGGGG and BxBGGG, you might have some of the underserved BxB fans playing the BxGGGB game. As sufficient BXB choices become available, the BxGGGG and BxBBBB games will tend to dominate over the BxBGGG ones. (I think this is why there are so many GxBG games - and why those will likely become less popular as more games for girls exist.)

The question is, how much, as a creator, do you want to try to satisfy your audience? And that's an important question - there are many reasons to create games, ones that don't really require people to play those games. Just realize that the further you are from what the audience wants, the more obscure the outcome will be. (All things being equal.)

So I think my general point is - especially when it comes to romance, the audience will be found in the niches, rather than the center. In an ideal world, where all niches are equally served, then the best strategy is to aim at one of the niches as well. When a niche is underserved, then aiming somewhat outside one niche might also gain audience fom the underserved niches.

If a game is focused on something other than romance, mixed romances become a lot more acceptable - aim for the center, and you'll get people from all niches. Even there, you probably have to be careful what's in a particular playthrough - lest you turn the audience off by giving them something they've indicated they do not want.

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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming" - Theodore Roosevelt

Auro and I did a game that was (for the most part) BxBBGG and most people were pretty okay with it. Papillon mentioned the concept of a story presenting gay characters as normal and I think that's very important. We got quite a bit of praise for one of our gay characters because people were pleased that he was shown to be masculine and didn't fit into the ~fabulous gay~ stereotype that we're often force-fed by the media.

That said, I think what PyTom says is very true. If a player is a boy who likes girls and he has a choice between a BxGGGG, BxBBGG, or BxBBBB game, he will generally pick the first one. It's just a matter of getting more for his money because there's a higher chance of him being interested in more of the love interests. If he picks up the middle game, he probably will only be interested in 2/4, so he won't be able to play as much of the game. Less bang for his buck, so to speak. And don't even bring up the BxBBBB game to your average straight male gamer. XD

A BxBBGG game like ours is pretty tough to sell. Luckily our game was free and we didn't have to, but I mean... I see my friends talking about prioritizing JVN purchases all the time. "I was interested in X game, but ended up buying Y game because it had more characters/voice actors I'm interested in". People just have to prioritize their purchases and so if they don't think they'll be as interested in a game because of the romantic choices offered, it's sad, but inevitable.

It's worth noting that we did get a rather vocal minority that was outraged that BxB was even in our game and a few people who hated the character I brought up earlier just because he's gay. There were probably more people like that who simply didn't speak up. There are many fangirls who will get annoyed if there is even one GxG route in an otome game because "they don't want to see that gay stuff in their otome game". Never mind that the route is optional, it just shouldn't exist at all, in their opinion. So then it's just a matter of whether or not you want to cater to people like that. :/ Auro and I sure don't. Whenever we get a homophobic comment related to our game, we just roll our eyes at it and go on our merry way.

Haha Auro and I are working on a commercial BxB game now, which is quite tough. Though the VN is really more plot-driven than romance-driven, so there are a surprising number of people who normally aren't into BL who are still willing to give it a try, I'm not really expecting it to do as well as a BxG or GxB game of similar quality. That's always a possibility people will ignore the gender/sexuality labels on your game if the story is interesting enough, it's just not one you should count on.

/tl;dr

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter

Yeah, I felt some of the outcry was that he was SUDDENLY gay. Like, I met and adventured with him in Awakening, and we had all these conversations and life or death situations, and we were awesome battle buddies because he was always quick with the humor. Then, I meet him in DA2 and he's all -
"Hi, I'm gay! Love me!"
"I'm sorry, I'm not interested in you like that."
"Well, screw you! I hate you!"

Also, you know. All the sudden angst. What the heck is character consistency? It really felt like Bioware suddenly decided they needed a gay NPC, and wanted to have a returning party member and went - "Aha! Two birds with one stone! Mages are kind of girly, right? Anders can be gay!" I feel like it would have gone over better if it had been a brand new party member that was gay - and you know, didn't treat you like crap if you refused to date them and just wanted to be friends instead.

As to the topic, if the protagonist is a cipher for the player to fill, I think gay options should be present. Mass Effect for example - you could choose literally EVERYTHING for female Shepard. Her alignment, attitude, skills, sexuality, etc. You could choose everything for male Shepard EXCEPT he could NOT be gay. Because . . . . lesbians are hot and gay guys aren't? I don't know what the logic was, but I suspect that was it since Bioware created a whole race of pansexual aliens. Who were all female.

If the player is playing a specific character - I can understand that character only being straight or only being gay. But otherwise - why not have the options there? The game I'm working on has homosexual and heterosexual options available - 3 of the former and 4 of the latter. Since the protagonist can only be one gender (a girl) it makes it easy for me to create homosexual options that don't feel forced or weird. It can get a little . . . fridge logic-y if you can be a boy or a girl and suddenly every possible love interest is a raging bi-sexual. It makes character consistency hard to do. That IS something I admired Bioware for doing with NPCs in the Mass Effect games - either an NPC swung that way or that didn't. Or you know, I totally would have hooked my female Shepard up with Jack, cause Jack was awesome.

Ah, you talk about Ristorante, right?
Loved that game, especially since you outdone all the cliches by first having them (like the tsundere character and the ever-go-lucky one and the extremly shy one), just to turn it upside down xD


Well, but I kind of noticed something simliar.
I once added a lesbian pairing into one of my mangas and most were ok with it (some were even all "Go for it!!"), but suddenly people appeared that starting insulting the characters, the story (that didn't center around it) and me. Because I disturbed their nice gay porn or however you could call it ôo

But I mean, thats why the tabs are there. You put a "BxB, BxG" int the title so why do paople appear to tell you, you ruined YOUR game by making gender X an option?
Sure, if the game is great and the style is too, they could be frustrated to have a limited variety of possible partners. But you can't get everything ôo
If I would argue with Nacom about every Harvest Moon partner that was totally not my taste, it would be a loooong list (the Harvest Moon DS game for girls alone had so many ugly male characters...), but the games are still great and I appreciate the work behind it. So there is just the choice: still buy it despite the characters or don't buy it.

Especially, since it is - like you said - optional to go the gay/straight way.
No one forces you if you don't want. And if you go that way unknowingly and don't want to go further when you realize it, then you can just start anew or shut the game down. Taken from the comments one would think that people are too stupid to use their computer and just stop playing the gay route. They kind of sound like they were forced to see and read stuff they didn't want (seriously, I always saw something like that once and that was in the anime Naruto, where Naruto and Sasuke kissed and every boy had to endure that gay moment. Did they die from it or even stop watching? No, the action (and boobs from female Naruto) kept them).

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I never played Awakening, so I can't speak on that front, and if that is the case for some it's a totally legitimate criticism. He hits on you whether you are male or female and so then it would be more about him being out of character rather than him being gay. However, I did see a fair bit of outcry that expressly stated that they felt that by Bioware listening to feedback and creating these options for homosexual relationships, they were catering to the minority and not properly catering to them (them being the straight male crowd). I kind of remember one stating that the effort they but into creating homosexual characters would have been better spent creating more girl love interests, since they are, in their opinion, the target audience. So I can definitely see why it could be a legitimate complaint, but I can also see it just being anger at not getting everything you want. There is also the question of if the gender had been switch, if say Morrigan had popped up and was romancable by a female Hawke, would there have been so much outcry and a heap of 'I'm not buy Bioware games not ever!'? The question really is where is the anger coming from and why.

Not saying every game ever should have gay options all the time, that wouldn't be right for some games and creators do have a choice about what they do and do not put in their games. However I always think it's good to consider ALL your options and ask yourself if this is the way you want to present the story, if you could add more to it by adding in these perspectives, if you want to create a dialogue between yourself and other groups. Just saying that defaulting to norms might not always be the way to go all the time. There are a lot of people in the world and many stories to be told.

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The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

As long as it is an option and being straight (or gay) has no negative effects, there's no legitimate reason for excluding the 'gay option' because you can always say 'thanks, but no thanks' and move on with your life.


One in seven people are gay according to some estimates.

If you have four straight romance options and make the fifth gay, that's statistically plausible and inclusive. A player looking for a gay option will probably accept that homosexuality is not as common as heterosexuality and at that number of options, all love interests have only a 1 in 5 chance of being followed anyway. In a pure dating sim, I suppose that a gay character will be a path never travelled for a straight character, but when that gay romance is only part of the relationship you have with the character (as in many story-based games) then there's less reason to write it off as a poor return on investment.

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Recent work - iSchool Dreams: First Semester / iSchool Dreams: My Valentine (iPhone / iPad, dating sims)

It can't also be assumed that ONLY homosexual people (or bi or pansexual or other) are the only people who will play the homosexual paths. I'm straight and I'll play whatever path as long as it's interesting (and sometimes even if it isn't if I get to complete things). I would suspect that their would be a number of other people who play for the story and don't mind who is what gender or sexuality, so you are looking at a bigger audience than just gay people. Some people still won't be interested and that's okay, but some people could very well be interested regardless of their own sexual preferences. It's the same for when you play as a different gender or a different person. You get to see different things. Though I must say I am an advocate for well written characters and stories so I don't have to rely on my sexual preferences to stay interested.

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The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

But there is the thing that you are female.
For whatever reasons, woman accept gay relationships much easier then men. Men accept heterosexual encounters and lesbians, but gays are often met with extreme homophobia.
So a game that has a gay option with lesbians is in general more welcomed then a gae with gays as gay option, because most females go with everything and the men will choose the woman action.

So it is again a thing of target audience

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That's just a social construct that could very well change, and the world would be less hostile for it. If you look at French Neoclassic art, men of that era were particularly interested in the male nude (fascinating look at the male gaze on other males). Homosexual references are littered throughout all of history. There is nothing inherently 'natural' about the homophobic situation of modern times that says that everyone can't be a little more accepting. The whole judging thing is just not a healthy ideology and ends up with a whole heap of people being repressed and bullied, gay and straight. There is nothing wrong with people being gay and by extension there is nothing wrong with consuming media that includes gay material. It won't harm anyone, it won't turn anyone gay, it just means that socially they are viewed the same as everyone else on a empathetic level, and that is a GOOD thing.

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The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

Really? I suppose I must have spent too long around gay men, because I have never really found that I have an issue with gay romance. I suppose gay sex might be outside my comfort zone, but I get squirmy at hetero sex-scenes too.


I think you might be my new best friend if you keep this up. You are right; pandering to homophobia is ridiculous and only perpetuates the cycle of stupidity.

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Recent work - iSchool Dreams: First Semester / iSchool Dreams: My Valentine (iPhone / iPad, dating sims)

I know that it is generated. Just look at ancient greek and rome, there were lot's of men that had lust boys as lovers aside their wife.
Or the nordic culture where almost everyone is at least bisexual (just look at Loki who does it with seriously everyone).
I myself live in a open enviroment where most of my friends are open-minded and accept it. But, like I said, many of my friends are also gay, bisexual, asexual or at least bi-curious which makes it easier to accept "differences".

But in western culture men are almost trained to hate gay men, I think.
I'm becoming a teacher and boys start already at a very young age to differ from girls in that part.
Girls start with "But if they love eachother it's ok" while boys go "No, that is wrong, my daddy said so!".
It's somewhat simliar to the thing with woman and sexual themes like anal sex or masturbation. Woman get educated to dislike talking or even thinking about it, resulting in girls often starting to think about these themes between 14 and 17 while boys start as early as with 10.

Sure, it can disappear someday, just look at that canadian couple that brings their children up while hiding their gender, wanting to make them independent from gender roles.
But right now it's more or less a fact that most woman accept (not always like, but accept) homosexuality while men only seem to like lesbians as long as they themself are not bisexual or gay.
Believe me, I also hope for the day to come soon when there will be no more discussion about it. But the people arguing with "It's against nature" the most are men (the only exception could be religious people since most religions have the menxwoman-image).

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