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[prazision]

Perhaps it is too late for this game (I hope not, as there are two full months left and we have hardly any non-alpha footage so far) but hear me out:
1. The Basic Approach.
In BioWare games, no matter what your PC's appearance or personality is, LIs (of the "appropriate" gender) will fall in love with you. This establishes, quote strongly, that the intent behind the romances is that the PC is "irresistable" - Leliana will fall in love with you if you're a svelt, gorgeous Elf or an ugly, pudgy Dwarf.
Given that, I think this concept should be extended to gender.
Whatever gender you play, the game orients itself to you - play a female Warden, and Morrigan is a lesbian. Play a male Warden, Alistair is gay.
In case this would "offend" anybody, have "sexual orientation" be a trait you pick at character creation.
Some might say this would take too much resources. Considering how few lines of dialogue are actually involved in the romances (compared to the amount of dialogue in the game as a whole) it shouldn't be much of an issue.
Now, why do this at all? Because it is clear that allowing all players to experience as much content as possible is a good idea. I was very disappointed that I was required to play a Male Warden to romance Morrigan. And as a bisexual male, I found the Zevran "romance" to be an insulting token inclusion, since there was no love, no "romance", with him. Just sex. Nothing approaching the deep sense of connection I felt with Leliana's romance path, for example. I felt my male Warden was closer to Sten than Zevran!
I understand that at least one m/m romance has been hinted at for DA2. I would love some confirmation that it is a proper "romance" and not a fling. I do not need to hear which character it is, just one simple confirmation that it is a loving, real relationship would be nice.
If such an announcement would negatively impact sales, however, I will understand if this is not discussed. BioWareEA is, after all, a business, and as a bisexual man I certainly understand being shunned by certain people, and unfortunately gamers are not perfect and sometimes have prejudices.
Thank you for your time, and if you agree, please show your support in this thread.

[Stanley Woo]

I was afraid of reading this discussion because it has always been a sensitive one that people could very easily take to very bad places. Thanks to everyone for keeping it (mostly) civil.

[David Gaider]

Just a few comments on this topic:

* No matter what happens, it would never be a situation of "the entire party hitting on you". All romances we do, no matter how they're set up, are going to require at least some interest expressed on the part of the player. Having a romance-specific icon should indicate when that's possible. While I agree that the idea of a character hitting on you first is realistic, it's not ideal for a game... and breaking it down to some kind of up-front menu choice that says "do you want a romance?" or "what sexuality would you prefer?" is getting just too blatantly meta for something that's a secondary element to begin with.

* There's absolutely nothing wrong with making all romances accessible to any gender. It just requires a different approach, from a writing standpoint-- you could have a situation where the sexuality of the character is subjective (meaning if you're romancing them and they're the same gender, then they're either gay or at least gay-curious, but otherwise they're straight) or they simply don't discuss it or discuss their past relationships-- meaning it's a romance with the player and sexual identity isn't part of the equation. It could also be that all the romances are bisexual to everyone... but that'd be my least favorite option.

Would we do this? I'm not really going to say one way or the other-- but if we did I think it's safe to assume we wouldn't set out to implement it in the worst way possible.

[David Gaider]

In Exile wrote...
Sure. But that might be a big deal for them. I mean, you implicitly acknowledge it via the bold. Questioning yourself is character development - the writers have to accomodate that.

If the question is raised. We could choose to shine a spotlight on something or not. Why everyone would assume we'd take the most awkward way, I'm not certain-- there are lots of ways this could be done, if that's what we wanted to do.

Well, sure. You can write them that way, but you have to change what was written about them. If Alistair is by, for example, Duncan might not be a father-figure to him who he loves in a familial way, but rather someone who he loves in a romantic way.

Or he could be the exact same father-figure he was in DAO.

We could indeed have made Alistair and Morrigan same-sex romances in DAO. It would have required how we set up the romances themselves to change, and possibly we'd need to look at some of the dialogues to be about different things or have different branches-- but it could have been done, if we went out of our way to do it.

People are inventing some silly excuses in this thread. There are many ways you can approach the issue to make the implementation not ridiculous. It will never be cost-free, but it needn't be crazy, either, and it needn't be a situation where everyone is coming onto everyone and constantly talking about how they sleep with both men and women.

[David Gaider]

AlexXIV wrote...
So I have to ask. Why didn't you do it? Or why didn't it fit their characters? I am just curious now because I always thought the reason was 'too much work involved' which I completely understand and agree with since there are more important things to work on.

It's not free, as I said-- and there really seemed to be no point because Morrigan was not interested in women and Alistair was not attracted to men. That's how we thought of them, and the idea of having bisexual characters was something we were going to try out... it wasn't a question of "why wouldn't we?" but "why would we?" Because we had such a tradition of doing it prior? We had two characters we concepted as bisexual and accepted the extra costs with.

If we started out and said "the goal is to make all romances accessible to all players" and we were willing to accept the costs there as well, we could arrange the romances to make the costs as low as necessary and keep the impact on players who weren't seeking gay content minimal. That's not always going to be the goal, however, but it's a perfectly acceptable one.

[David Gaider]

Mistress9Nine wrote...
I don't mind straight only romances as long as there isn't a double standard. What bothered me in DA is that you had 2 str8 and 2 bi options. No strictly gay options. It's easy to say "We didn't do all bi romances because the characters would've needed to be written differently" but I can't really accept it as an excuse until this works both ways.

We didn't (and won't) do strictly gay romances because a romance is very expensive content-- both from a writing, cinematic and testing perspective. It's one thing to add the extra costs to piggy-back on top of an existing romance plotline (and by this I don't necessarily mean "add gay option to straight romance"... it could just as easily be the reverse) and quite something else to have a romance created from whole cloth.

All content has a cost. Sometimes people forget that we as developers create content -- not romance options. It's not solely about whether you have the choice and how fair that is, but whether or not we can afford to make it and whether it fits into the rest of the project we're making.

Modifié par David Gaider, 14 janvier 2011 - 08:35 .

[David Gaider]

davidk1991 wrote...
It's not so much making every character bisexual, it's making the love interests potential romances for any Hawke. A bit like in 'The Sims' games, any Sim has the potential to be flirted with etc. but it doesn't mean every character in The Sims is bisexual.

Indeed.

The problem with such a scenario, according to some, is the need to reconcile the fact that the character(s) in question could be gay -- even if they're not gay for the character they're currently playing. Such a character would either need to be canonically bisexual (such as Zevran, who says that he sleeps with both men and women no matter whom he's romancing) or would need to have a subjective sexuality (meaning the character is straight if the player is the opposite gender or bisexual/gay only if the player is the same gender... and presumably interested). Neither seems ideal, especially to people who feel the need to identify what the character "really" is.

All I suggested in my posts on this thread is that it need not be such a big issue, were this the route we chose to take. A character need not discuss it like Zevran did, and thus shine a spotlight on what they "really" are -- I know it's a shock, but we could have the character's story revolve around other things than their sexuality. It really depends on what goal we set out for ourselves when we begin designing the romances.

As for people concerned about the meta-aspect of "could my romance be gay for some player in another reality" ...well, they'd simply have to get over it in such an instance, wouldn't they? No matter which way we go with romance issues, someone's bound to be peevish.

[David Gaider]

Elite Midget wrote...
It isn't that hard to see what has happened and is continueing 'to' happen. That is the truth that I see and it is truely mesed up. What's worse is that Bioware is useing a 'convient' excuse to discriminate against Gays/Lesbians when we have games like New Vegas that has a Gay and Lesbian closely carved into it's story and the game 'still' sold millions.

See? This is why we can't have nice things.

I'll point out, first off, that the New Vegas characters had very little romance to speak of, as well as no cinematics involved with said romance. Thus their "romance" is very cheap. We'd have nothing against having a strictly gay or lesbian character in our games... so long as you couldn't romance them. Our romances make for very costly content, after all, by our own choice. That's how we want to do them, and thus it affects just how much we can dole out. It's not candy.

If you prefer to think we should create content without any regard for reason, and only think of how much "justice" it provides to people-- and that anything else is a cover up-- well, that's super. But we do not have the luxury to think that way.

Perhaps you might want to seek out the comments I've made previously with regards to the cost of romances and why things are as they are. Or maybe you have and you simply choose to see it your way anyhow. That's too bad-- despite the fact that games aren't much of a vehicle for "social justice" I think we've been pretty even-handed in keeping as much content as we can for a small group of our fanbase... yet evidently that's simply not enough for some folks. Again, too bad.

As it is, let's pull this back to the topic at hand and keep things civil, shall we? Or we shall have yet another thread closed down, not by homophobia but by militant campaigners who evidently can't see the forest for the trees. Which, again, is too bad.

Modifié par David Gaider, 18 janvier 2011 - 08:35 .

[David Gaider]

Elite Midget wrote...
Still doesn't change that you made 5 characters missable in Dragon Age Origins yet somehow that isn't seen as wasteful. Especially since some of those characters are romance options as well. It is wrong and yet you tell me that it's too costly?

We're not arguing that everyone must see content in order for it to be considered cost-efficient. The difference is how many people could see it (or use it, in the case of followers). In the case of characters that are optional to get in the first place, that's still everyone. In the case of gay romances, that only applies to the percentage of people that would even be interested in the content to begin with.

Which is not insignificant. I've never said that our gay fans are insignificant or even implied such-- it's simply small, and thus our willingness to provide content must be realistic in its application. You can ignore that if you wish, but we have no agenda here... unlike yourself.

And once again, for the last time, I'd suggest putting this topic aside. This is not the point of this thread, and will inevitably get this closed.

[David Gaider]

Last warning. This is not a "complain about Bioware's handling of gay romances" thread. Rather than close down a thread that was, up until recently, rather polite in tone, I will simply start handing out bans.

[David Gaider]

The Accused wrote...
A pity, I was enjoying seeing the views of others and the reasons for why things are done the way they are and why things can't be changed or why they should be changed.

This has been done before, in other threads-- which tend to get locked just because bringing real-life politics in here is a recipe for an argument, especially when coupled with belligerent, confrontational language (on any side, to be honest). Keep the topic related to DA2 directly and keep the tone under control, especially when it comes to such a sensitive topic, and we'll be happy to let the discussion continue. Thanks.

[David Gaider]

jlb524 wrote...
I think some just don't want to share their treasured LI with the other gender. But, as mentioned by others, I don't think it should matter what others do in their games.

I recall, after Jade Empire came out, there were a number of female gamers who were upset that their only LI, Sky, was shared with male players. His sexuality was subjective, but they felt their already small "share" of the romances was lessened by having him also available to male gamers (or female gamers playing male characters) in other games/realities.

Rational? Not really, especially considering that it involves a metagaming aspect that only someone who, say, comes to the forums or goes online to find out all the possibilities would even know about. But the element of possessiveness exists even so. Not that this is necessarily a reason to do or not do romances in such a manner, just that there's always going to be complaints from some corner.

[David Gaider]

Matchy Pointy wrote...
Couldnt female characters there also romance the princess (I suck at remembering names today)? Though maybe it was their only male LI that it was about.

Yes, it was that their only male romantic character was "tainted" by the fact that, in some games, he had a romance with male PC's-- even if he was straight in the game they were playing. Considering male players had two romances, this evidently compounded the insult.

Did every female gamer feel this way? No, not even close. Yet the laments were consistent, and perhaps tied more to the perception (at the time) of female gamers being a maligned minority given unfair balance in the romance department. Sound familiar?

[David Gaider]

RinjiRenee wrote...
Damned if you do, damned if you don't, is what this all sounds like to me.

This is why "but people will be upset!" is generally not a good reason for us to avoid doing something. People are freaks.