g-a-y supergroup

Sexuality has nothing to do with the game just like Manti and Sisters wedding and all the other heterosexual relationships in the canon.

Gay SGs are not about attention seeking they are about playing with other GLBT people and yes even straight people. Like you said it's a game relax let people have their gay SGs. Does it bother you that much? Is it ruining your fun? If you feel that they are attention seekers then ignore or petition them.

Your explanation dosent make sence as far as i can see it cant be a GAY or GLBT SG if strait peopel can join as well the description just dosent fit it woud be like creating a theamed all robot SG and then allowing in organics its not a all robot SG any more.

Further personaly speeking i wouldn't join a gay SG simply becaus it was a gay SG whats the point i mite not get on with any one in it but if i happened to team with some members of a gay SG and i got on with them and they invited me to there SG i would join. Put simply i judge the indeviduals not the group

Solitaire, I think there may be a certain point being missed between you and some of us - I'm not sure if this is a cultural difference, or a misunderstanding, but I'm going to take a stab at explaining it from my perspective:

1) I'm straight.

2) I know some people.

3) Some of those people are homosexuals or bi, and I know at least one trans-gender individual - possibly more.

4) What they are like as people matters more to me than their sexuality.

5) I quite literally have no comprehension as to how a man can feel attracted to another man, but that doesn't mean I refuse to accept that other people feel that way.

6) I flat out do not care about someone's sexuality, as long as they are a pleasant individual.

7) Because of all of the above, the decision to advertise sexuality is something that I just don't understand.

A person's sexuality is their business. It has no bearing on my relationship with them, unless they let it. I like to think I'm pretty tolerant, but I also know that there are people who aren't. Well, those people are bigoted pigs who don't deserve the time of day.

I'm not suggesting that LGBT people hide their sexuality - I'm saying that since their sexuality is entirely secondary to their worth as a person, I do not see why it matters so much. I'm proud of being a God-fearing, white, middle-class, heterosexual male in a stable marriage, with a tortoise in the back garden, a cat who went missing a few weeks ago, and who loves and respects his country and Queen - I have precisely zero interest, though, in joining a "group" of any sort that is specifically tailored to any of those features of my life, for the simple fact that I also love the wide diversity of human culture, and THAT is far more important to me than the other stuff.

Well all i can do is agree to disagree as there are a few examples of how the game does refer to sexuality in this thread already, if you care to read back. All the opening post has done is look at it from a different side of the coin and dared to ask/talk about it.

Because ppl are sexual some more so than others and its ppl that play this game, even you say you have a gay alien, well why? why should an alien have any sexuality at all ? and why should it be gay anyway?

Tho ironically gay aliens in the comic world do get positive story lines unlike most bis and gays. Wonder why that is ?

Thanks shadowe that pretty much sums up my veiws as well

But that is you and every body isnt you, for some ppl sexuality is important and sexuality does appear in game lore.

here is an anecdote, at one point in game i was in an SG for about 18months and the ppl in there were great i got to know them all very well stuff about their families what they were doing, births deaths marriage ect. Yet they knew nothing about my life they just assumed i was straight that my partner was female. I was so over whelmed by their worlds that i really didn't wanna risk offending them by introducing my world to them. As it turned out they where accepting but it was a risk, if i had been in a known gay friendly sg from the start it wouldn't have taken 18 months to finally be comfortable sharing those details. And feel part of something.

I said she's a hybrid. She's actually a blending of a female human, a male cat and a (sexless?) Kheldian. She's gay because at the time I created the character my wife suggested it (and before she actually became the hybrid she now is) and I thought "why not?". I think she just didn't want me getting up to any shenanigans as a male character with female characters. Go figure.

She's also loosely based on one of my best female friends in the world, who also happens to be a lesbian, and the girl who introduced me to my wife.

That's your own fears that caused that, not the people you were interacting with. You can hardly blame the folks you were gaming with for you being too scared to share personal details with them.

People either accept you for who you are, or not. If it's the latter, that's their problem, not yours.

Yes but those fears are grounded in negative experiences. Its hard for some to get out of negative feedback loops that takes courage. A little help like a gay friendly sg or an gay/bi npc hero would help more than you think

I'm not sure if this will work or I will get flamed for it by try to imagine COX where the majority of players were gay all the SGs were by default gay all the NPCs were gay their bios were gay themed yet you were straight along with some others, at what point do you think you would stop and ask yourself ok where do i fit in here?

At what point does my sexuality become a question of fitting in within the game?

They like superheroes, they like MMO's. I like superheroes, I like MMO's. Therefore I fit in on the ONLY relevant points in the context of a superhero MMO. Just because they are attracted to the same sex is of little to no relevance. Hell, it's not even relevant for them to know what sex I am, or age, or country of origin, or ANYTHING except that, by evidence of my presence alone, I like at least 2 of the same things they do.

Like Shadowe (and just everyone else I know in this game), I couldn't care less if you're gay, straight, transgendered, black, yellow, green, a psychopath or even French (j/k!). You like superheroes, you like MMO's. That makes you a person I'll probably enjoy gaming with. Nothing else matters.

Well, it could be worse... It COULD be all swingers and gadabouts!

You seem to have a healthy approach to this issue but I cant help thinking that because you are ok therefore everyone is and the world is perfect. Yet for some it isn't but there are positive things that can be done to help.

For me in 10years of gaming as I reflect back I see more females and more GLBT ppl are joining MMOs, that's a brilliant thing and can only be good for all, yet to keep these ppl engaged some things do need to change and TBH this thread in its self is one of those things

Well I guess I'm one of the two posters who quoted you and that you you responded to.

So I'll explain why I've not responded since.

You started your reply to me with:
Whereas my actual post had said:
Notice the 'It strikes me' and 'you seem' - I wasn't putting words in your mouth or misquoting you. I was stating a personal opinion the your post came across to me as saying that there was an in-game bias shown by the lack of non-heterosexual relationships in the games dev-created content, and that I thought tit a shame that you seemed to have this view.

As far as I can tell very we know nothing about the sexuality of all but a very few NPCs in-game. Good - that's how it should be. This is a superpowered MMO not some kind of interactive afternoon soap opera.

Unless there's an important plot point or it really is vital to the character background, then I don't care what the NPCs do to what (as long as living entities are capable of giving informed consent)!

You went on to comment about "the Husband/Wife agro comment". I had already addressed that in the post that you were replying to, stating that I know non-heterosexuals and non-married people who occasionally refer to their partner as 'the wife'. These people are not married, and so it is not a legal wife that they are referring to.

As you say you make an assumption when people say 'the wife' - that is your assumption and, whilst probably correct more often than not, is not always going to be correct.

I see capitals used like this and it looks like the poster is getting a little worked up/emotional.

On this subject I can understand that. It's an emotive subject for many and it's very possible that you've suffered discrimination in RL before now.

But, coupled with the apparent miscomprehension of posts, this possibility of emotional involvement with the subject leads me to believe that there's a high possibility of flames from any response to be made.

Hence I didn't make a response - well, not until you posted that we seemed to 'freeze up' on you.

If you look at the thread, I think just about everyone hopes the OP finds an active SG that they can have lots of fun with - it's just that with only 2 or 3 possible exceptions the posters don't seem to think it matters what kind of SG the SG is.

You should be able to join any SG without suffering bigotry. And if you do suffer, whether from an SG or not, then make the GMs work - it's what they're there for.

My freezing comment was about my IE freezing up on me when I was trying to write responses to Themess and shadow. I tried 3 or 4 times each was a long thought out post but after the last time of freezing I gave up.

Yeah i was gonna come over but i didnt wanna start all over again, in the end i decided to join the Gaymers new CO sg when it gets started. Will come back if server transfers ever get going but ty for the invite

I wonder if part of that is down to ignorance in the younger demographic that many games have. Last stats I saw CoX had an older playerbase than the industry average and it's always come across (in-game and in the forums) as more mature than many games.

Of course you always get the odd 'unelightened person of questionable intellect' - but that doesn't mean that they are representative of the majority. And usually if I've seen racism/homophobia or pretty much any serious discrimination in-game then the common factor has been how most people have shouted down the bigots...

Oddly, depending on the exact question/context and possible answers, I'm surprised that it wasn't a higher percentage for 'somewhat hostile' as you can't eliminate all the bigots, and all it takes is meeting 1 or 2 to potential sour a game and leave a lasting impression of hostility.

Again I'd guess a young demographic is partly to blame.

But this isn't really an ailment of video games, but merely a reflection of ignorance and slang usage in general.

This only starts to change when the word stops being used in a derogatory sense in any realm of life.






About the only things games developers can do to stop it being used like this are:

• make GMs punish this sort of abuse, and make the policy well known
• censor the word 'gay'

The first possibly has prohibitive costs (for the first case, although maybe not for it used as an abusive epithet).

The second causes some annoyance among parts of the playerbase (as seen earlier in this thread when the word being censored was commented as being a failure to acknowledge homosexuals even exist, iirc).

Hell - I bet that when many people who do use gay in the first case (i.e. that's so gay meaning it's lame/poor) they don't even consciously link it to homosexuality. Many slang words lose there derivation/meaning and get used just for general effect...

e.g. Calling someone an illegitimate child is a great insult to many, even though actually being an illegitimate child isn't seen as such a big deal (if at all) anymore. Peopl euse the word as it is a word that causes a reaction, rather than using it for its meaning.

In this case, I'd say, petition and adopt a sticks and stones approach.

Hell - have you ever looked at how many heterosexual characters/relationships in games are written in a cringe-worthy manner??

And that's even given that those game developers probably have more direct knowledge of heterosexual relationships. Many game developers just make a complete mess up of relationships and emotional content full stop.

So maybe some of the stereotypical representations are just because all characters are stereotypical to a great degree. Heck - I bet that some of the people who designed stereotypical gays were really trying to do what they thought was a realistic, non-stereotyped character. It's just that they fail.

The 'refusal' to add gay characters may be along a similar line. WHat if the developers are worried that they couldn't write a realistic gay and would end up unintentionally falling into a stereotype or a parody?

Wouldn't it be better of the devs to not create a gay character in this case than to risk doing something that potentially harms players views on homosexuality??

Of course theres a difference between some hideously stereotyped camp queen and a well-intentioned attempt that didn't work... but it may be hard for a player to know the difference in the devs intent.


As for most of these results, I'd guess that more context/background is needed.

If that's just in games in general then 'so what'?

If it's in games where there is an established explicitly heterosexual community (i.e. groups of straight gamers who see their heterosexuality as a defining feature) then that doesn't sound good. But surely if it's player-organised groups/communities then it can be easily rectified by starting a gay group/community.

That last sentence may seem a bit odd since I obviously side with the 'you don't need a gay SG' side on this thread. But it's entirely consistent with the fact that I am not aware of any CoX groups or communities that are straight and see that as a defining/qualifying feature.

i.e. I don't know of exclusively/overtly straight SGs (and if there were, it sounds like it may, possibly, be EULA breaking) so exclusively/overtly gay SGs aren't needed imo.

Of course, if anyone sets up a gay SG then I've no problem with it. And I wish it great success - I just don't see one as being a neccessity.

My apologies, I misunderstood.

I thought it was an extreme case of being given the cold shoulder!