On Gaming and Being Gay

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything in here, but I just need to get something out.

Recently, I read this article about EA, a gaming company that has a wonderful heart and put out a video for the “It Gets Better” project.  If you don’t know about that, Google it and start paying attention more to the news.  Anyway, there was one part that really got to me:

“This is definitely a bittersweet story. On the one hand, how wonderful is it to see a video game company reaching out to gay teenagers? In a typically straight-male-oriented sector, it’s pretty amazing to see diversity and acceptance championed… And then we have the comments that have come since the video has been posted and, well, it kind of proves the point, doesn’t it? Bullying is alive and well among video gamers…That employee probably didn’t expect what happened next. A slew of anti-gay comments have popped up online. It seems that some gamers have little interest in seeing EA stand up for gay rights.”

Damn.  The sad part is that I’m not very surprised by this.  Being a pretty avid gamer myself (I wouldn’t say hardcore, but I am definitely more than casual), I can say from experience that the gaming community, for the most part, is not very open-minded and rather homophobic.  Again, I know not everyone is and that there is a large portion of the gaming community that is liberal if not part of the LGBT community themselves, but it cannot be denied that many people who game are bigots.  This is especially prevalent in the younger male gamers, and even more especially in younger male gamers who play first person shooters I’ve found (by younger I mean early teens-young adulthood).  In many a Counter Strike game I’ve played, phrases such as “you fucking faggot” or “that was so gay” pop up nearly all the time, and it’s rather disconcerting and angering for me.  Unfortunately for me, I’m a girl and gay, so that’s two things against me (since the people who say the aforementioned slurs would probably discriminate against a female too), so I don’t bother saying anything when I know I’ll most likely be dissed.

I just wonder how long it will take before the gaming community is mostly if not completely accepting of gays and the words “gay” and “faggot” aren’t used as synonyms for stupid and idiot.  Actually, I’d prefer if the latter weren’t used at all.  The point is though, hopefully the gaming community evolves enough that Square Enix’s video will be more praised instead of hated upon by gamers.