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[ElitePinecone]

The GDC vault has put up David Gaider's presentation from earlier this year on sex, sexuality and romances in videogames.

It's a really insightful overview of romances in Bioware's games since Baldur's Gate II, including the internal discussions they've had over certain characters and situations.

Interesting telemetry relating to Dragon Age - 24% of players completed the same-sex romance with one specific character from either DAO or DA2, David didn't specify which character.

Also, he gave some more context to the anecdote in the development of DA: Inquisition where a plot point dealing with 'creepy violation' of an off-screen character in a quasi-sexual sense was changed when the writer who created it realised how it could be misinterpreted, thanks to peer review from the rest of the writing team.

There's a larger discussion towards the end about the representation of gender, sex and sexuality in the industry as a whole, given increased scrutiny on games as a medium like film and TV.

The whole presentation is definitely worth taking the time to listen to, I think it's a pretty reasonable and constructive beginning of a conversation about the benefits of the industry being more inclusive (or, at least, less *exclusive*) and what Bioware in particular is doing in this area.

[Taint Master]

Does every game have to have social commentary now?  Can't Dragon Age just be fun?

ElitePinecone wrote...

Interesting telemetry relating to Dragon Age - 24% of players completed the same-sex romance with one specific character from either DAO or DA2, David didn't specify which character.

It was Leliana, obviously.

[Elrena]

I just finished watching that talk, and the amount of times I wanted to high five Mr. Gaider went off the charts. It was illuminating, empowering, and I loved every moment of it.

[ElitePinecone]

Taint Master wrote...

Does every game have to have social commentary now?  Can't Dragon Age just be fun?

Amazingly enough, he answers that in the video.

Surely listening to it before complaining about the topic it covers is a reasonable thing to do.

[Rawgrim]

How does the game know if you romance the same sex character in DA2, anyway? The game itself doesn`t recognize the PC`s gender.

[Taint Master]

ElitePinecone wrote...

Taint Master wrote...

Does every game have to have social commentary now?  Can't Dragon Age just be fun?

Amazingly enough, he answers that in the video.

Surely listening to it before complaining about the topic it covers is a reasonable thing to do.

Yeah, I'm listening to it now.  We'll see how this goes...

[Solas]

awwww it won't load for me

[syllogi]

Rawgrim wrote...

How does the game know if you romance the same sex character in DA2, anyway? The game itself doesn`t recognize the PC`s gender.

Both games have to recognize the player character's gender for dialogue checks (and romance options in the first game).  DA:O has achievements for each romance, and I'm sure DA2 has markers in saves indicating who your character romanced. 

[Gill Kaiser]

Is there a mirror anywhere that will work on a smartphone? Eg. Youtube?

[Paul E Dangerously]

1) I still don't agree with the reasoning for the way DA2 handled romance (and presumably the way DAI will, as well) but that's been beaten to death.
2) The cynic in me wonders how many of that 24% accidentally tripped Zevran's route in DAO.

[ElitePinecone]

Rawgrim wrote...

How does the game know if you romance the same sex character in DA2, anyway? The game itself doesn`t recognize the PC`s gender.

They collect a lot of statistics behind the scenes that's sent back to Bioware's servers - and it's an opt-out system, so virtually every player who connects to the internet goes into their data. 

It's apparently a powerful development tool, because they get access to how players actually play the games (rather than what they write about on forums, say). 

[ElitePinecone]

Gill Kaiser wrote...

Is there a mirror anywhere that will work on a smartphone? Eg. Youtube?

I don't think it's up on YouTube, does this link work?

http://www.gamasutra...ty_in_games.php

[hawketheman]

I think Gaider overestimates the difficulty of empathizing with other people. Women are basically just men with boobs. Of course it may be hard for a white male to imagine what it's like for a woman to live in a patriarchal society, but all of us have at times in our lives experienced some kind of alienation or been in minority.

One thing i disliked about DA2's handling of bisexual romance is that it made Thedas seem a bit too utopian. A medieval setting should have sexism, racism, biggotry and predjudice that the PC can rebel against.

Modifié par hawketheman, 20 juin 2013 - 12:54 .

[NRieh]

How does the game know if you romance the same sex character in DA2, anyway? The game itself doesn`t recognize the PC`s gender.

It does not recognize player's gender, but if you're connected to servers you're sending them all sorts of data about your PT, which obviously includes PC gender. Also, don't forget that they have a gender and age info from your origin\\bsn profile.

Thanks for the link, it's great. But...did I understand it right, DG was the person responsible for KOTOR romances as well? He took part in Carth Onasi?

[JediBeagle]

Thank you for sharing the link op! Interesting topic very well presented. After watching this and hearing all he had to say about the industry as well as his own experiences in working with the topic for so many years I am all the more happy David Gaider is the lead writer for DA: Inquisition.

[Mykel54]

So if a 24% of players completed a s/s romance, and that is reason enough to make more, then why don´t we get more playable races again? A majority also played as human in DAO, but others prefered playing the elf or dwarf characters. Yet we didn´t see those races being playable again in DA2 or DA3. So for some things game statistics are important, and something to consider when making new games, but for other things they can be ignored.

I think this is more about making political statements than about the game itself. Which is fine, nobody can be indifferent to everything, but then bioware should be more honest about why they´re doing it, and not pull statistics to justify their actions.

[Rylor Tormtor]

hawketheman wrote...

I think Gaider overestimates the difficulty of empathizing with other people. Women are basically just men with boobs. 

Are you sure you know what the meaning of the word empathy means? It is not assuming that all experiences are the same as yours so by default you have insight in to other people's experiences.

Or, you could just be an idiot. 

[Elrena]

hawketheman wrote...

I think Gaider overestimates the difficulty of empathizing with other people. Women are basically just men with boobs. Of course it may be hard for a white male to imagine what it's like for a woman to live in a patriarchal society, but all of us have at times in our lives experienced some kind of alienation or been in minority.

One thing i disliked about DA2's handling of bisexual romance is that it made Thedas seem a bit too utopian. A medieval setting should have sexism, racism, biggotry and predjudice that the PC can rebel against.

Racism
Humans vs. Elves
Humans vs. Dwarves
Dwarves vs. Elves
Dwarves vs. Humans. 
There is /plenty/ of racism in Thedas. 

Biggots and Prejudice

Mages vs. Templars. 
Casteless vs. General Dwarven Public
Qun vs. Everyone.
And many, many more.

Having diverse LI's doesn't make Thedas seem utopian at all. It just reflects reality - gay people didn't only start appearing in the twentieth century. We've been around since the dawn of humanity. 
I'm not even going to comment on the 'men with boobs' thing. I think you know exactly how stupid that statement was.

[keightdee]

Ahh, can't wait to watch this when I get home from work!

[Huyna]

"Our number one  priority is to ship the game." - 36:56

Sums it up.

з.ы.
Funny thing.
When  he talks about male/female "lead", one of the pictures portray Lee from "Walking Dead".
I, myself, after playing the game got the impression, that Clementine was major hero of WD.

Modifié par Huyna, 20 juin 2013 - 02:04 .

[hawketheman]

Elrena wrote...
Having diverse LI's doesn't make Thedas seem utopian at all. It just reflects reality - gay people didn't only start appearing in the twentieth century. We've been around since the dawn of humanity. 
I'm not even going to comment on the 'men with boobs' thing. I think you know exactly how stupid that statement was.

Sorry. I realise I did not state my argument very clearly. I did not mean to say that I did not want bisexual characters in the game. It is just that in DAO I got the impression that Thedas was a quite homophobic world, which seems realistic. This is reflected in the romance dialog and made the gay romances more interesting. Kirkwall is perhaps more openminded, as sexuality doesn't seem to be much of an issue at all. I don't feel very strongly about this issue, tough. The developers can do what they like.

Please comment on "the men with boobs thing". I could easily rephrase it into "men are women without boobs".

[Thomas Andresen]

Rawgrim wrote...

The game itself doesn`t recognize the PC`s gender.

Yes it does. Does Carver/Bethany say "brother"/"sister", or "sibling"?

Nrieh wrote...

But...did I understand it right, DG was the person responsible for KOTOR romances as well? He took part in Carth Onasi?

He wasn't lead writer, that was Drew Karpyshyn, but he was on the team. Either in an interview or on his blog, he talked about it, and how he didn't like writing science fiction.

[Andraste_Reborn]

Mykel54 wrote...

So if a 24% of players completed a s/s romance, and that is reason enough to make more, then why don´t we get more playable races again? A majority also played as human in DAO, but others prefered playing the elf or dwarf characters. Yet we didn´t see those races being playable again in DA2 or DA3. So for some things game statistics are important, and something to consider when making new games, but for other things they can be ignored.

Making different races playable - especially if its going to have a meaningful impact on the game, and not be merely a cosmetic choice - requires a lot more zots than making same-sex romance options available. Allowing a player to be an elf or a dwarf or a kossith would require extra dialogue, more armor models, altering cut scenes to allow for different character heights - perhaps even different voice actors since different species often speak with different accents in Thedas.

Same-sex romance, on the other hand, requires a few lines of different dialogue here and there. So bisexuals are cheaper than dwarves. If 25% of players enjoy something relatively cheap, I can see why BioWare would consider it worth including. The fact that around 30% of players enjoyed something relatively expensive may not make it worth it for them. And I say that as someone who loved playing a dwarf in Origins.

Modifié par Andrastee, 20 juin 2013 - 02:12 .