Our presentation topic is studying sexuality in video game. We are based on the reading, “Hot Dates and Fairy-tale Romances: Studying Sexuality in Video Games” which is written by Mia Consalvo. In this article, she focused on the construction of sexuality become an integral element of characterization and storyline in games and explored the presumption of heterosexuality is portrayed as social norm in the video games.
She analyzed with two perspectives which are concept of “game” and concept of “play”. Concept of “game” referred to the representation of the characters and heterosexuality. Concept of ‘play” focus on the activity of gameplay. It explored that how a player manage his desire for the main character. She used Final Fantasy IX as a case study. The game represented ideal heterosexuality through the central character’s sexual orientation and the female character image. We will use Evangelion Chinese as an example to reflect her analysis. From the video games, we can see that heterosexuality is portrayed as norm which is similar to traditional media representation such as film.
Also, as Consalvo has mentioned about homosexuality in video games, we has used some examples to examine homosexuality factor in video games. Although The Sims can let the player to choose the character’s sexuality, homosexual couple still has many limitations when playing the game such as they cannot marry and have a baby. On the other hand, Japan BL (boy love) game is about gay male which included sex scene. However, these games are not targeted at gay male, but female player. It is not a game which specific to homosexual players.
We agreed that heterosexuality portrayed as norm in both video games and traditional media text. However, there are still spaces to explore the homosexual issues in video games.
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I agree that the player choose the character’s sexuality in The Sims, but it is limitations when I play the game. I was playing The Sims 1 for couple of years, and still playing The Sims 2 now. It is no ways to get marry for the homosexual couple and have a baby. If they want to adopt the baby, they adopt him with single relationship, not with couple relationship. For the Japan boy love games, I think the game companies would like to earn more money instead of real homosexual game. As the female players love to play the games, they produce more, and earn more money. Besides that, the stereotype of Boy love game, boys look like girls and sometime I think there is one boy and one girl, not two boys in the game.
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