LGBT Themes in Video Games - Marketing To LGBT Consumers

Marketing To LGBT Consumers

It has been widely assumed that young, white, heterosexual males are the force driving the industry forward. That belief was strongly challenged by the record-breaking success of The Sims. Maxis had resisted Will Wright's goal of creating the title on the grounds that "girls don't play video games", and the title was seen as being one that did not appeal well to young heterosexual males. In the 1990s the industry began to make some efforts to market games to women by creating software titles with strong and independent female characters as seen in Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. Some video game companies are now moving to further expand their marketing base to include the perceived market of affluent homosexual young men by including LGBT characters and supporting LGBT rights. BioWare has included female same-sex scenes in Mass Effect and allowed sexual interaction between any gender group in Dragon Age: Origins. In Dragon Age 2, this was taken even further by allowing all romance-able party members to be romanced by either gender (with the exception of a particular DLC-only companion) as opposed to the first game's option of having to pick between two bisexual rogues.

Even some games that are considered appealing mainly to the non-traditional demographic continue to censor homosexuality. For instance, despite the tremendous success of The Sims, even the most recent version of the franchise suppresses homosexual identity. Autonomous romantic interactions exist only for heterosexual characters by default. In The Sims 3, players must manually initiate multiple same-sex romantic interactions before a character will be "converted" to homosexuality and begin to engage in such interactions autonomously. The town will be marked gay-friendly, unlocking the autonomy for other characters. If a player does not force at least one character several times to engage in same-sex advances, the player's town will have no visible homosexuality.

Critics of the suppression of gay identity often come to the conclusion that, as homosexuality is normalized in broader culture, it will be in video games as well.

A 2006 survey exploring gay gamers was the first academic study of any gamer group. With about 10,000 respondents the survey exhibited a reverse bell curve of gamer sexuality, with most people identifying as either completely heterosexual or homosexual.