Dragon Age 2 sparks sexuality in gaming debate

In Dragon Age 2, your character's relationships with NPCs are a big deal. You can make them your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on how you choose to interact with them. One of the biggest choices you can make is weather or not to enter a romantic relationship with any number of NPCs, whether they are a different sex or not. It sounds like a good system on paper, but its implementation has upset more than one fan.

The most notable outcry came on the BioWare Social Network forums by someone with the screen name Bastal, who claimed BioWare "neglected their main demographic: The Straight Male Gamer." Bastal, who referred to The Straight Male Gamer as a proper noun throughout the lengthy post, was upset at the supposed absence of a "No Homosexuality" option in the game, because male NPCs would often flirt with his character. He believed that Bioware should have been less concerned with its female, bisexual and/or homosexual fans because they are allegedly less numerous. 

This prompted David Gaider, the game's lead writer, to defend the game's romances, stating, "they're for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention."

"You can write it off as 'political correctness' if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority" wrote Gaider. "They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want."

This response went over well with many fans, although it still didn't clear the air with others. The mechanics of Dragon Age 2's relationship system still irks some gamers. 

Some even went so far as to start an online petition to get Gaider fired. The petition makers believed the way homosexual NPCs act in-game is insulting. One example was the fact that if players reject the advances of one male character, like Anders, they would earn rivalry points with him.

"This is completely wrong," the petition stated, "homosexuals do not approach people and force them to kiss us, the person that wrote this game should be fired for stereotyping homosexuals in such a disrespectful way."

The good folks over at GayGamer took a look at this, and came to the conclusion that most people's feelings would be hurt if they were rejected, and pointed out that players can earn friendship points with Anders later, no harm, no foul. Not to mention the fact that some homosexual characters will not flirt with the player at all unless prompted. 

A counter-petition to help Gaider keep his job was created, and as of the time of writing, it had more than 1300 more signatures than the firing petition.

It seems that wherever non-traditional values are presented, controversy will soon follow. Over time, however, society may learn to just accept things like this and move on.