Scenes from GDC

Entry #9, 4:15 p.m.: Talking about the things we don't talk about

In addition to the lectures and the panels at GDC, there are roundtable discussions. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the two I went to turned out to be lightly attended and loosely structured. Perhaps it was because they were held on the last day of the conference. Whatever the reason, it wasn't really surprising that there were only about fifteen people in Speaking Out: Exploring the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transexual) Game Development Community. After all, how large can the LGBT game development community be? But it was disheartening to see only twenty people in Women in Game Development:The Other 360 Days (the title is a reference to the rest of the year after the conference). Personally, I think one of the biggest problems with gaming is that it's made by and for boys. I wish more people would recognize that by showing up to this discussion instead of, I don't know, going to hear Richard Garriott talk about Tabula Rasa or standing around on the concourse by the cheesecake ATI poster while noodling around with their free copies of Brain Age.

Both sessions had the ebb and flow and sudden flares of any conversation in a small room where 20 people care, perhaps even overcare, about an issue. I don't mean to be patronizing, but there was something almost sweetly naive about the suggestion that if publishers bought ads in Seventeen and Cosmopolitan, maybe more women would be attracted to gaming. There was a lot of venting, a few suggestions for action, and some articulate points made by very smart people who should be heard in larger venues. Because if gaming shunts itself into the same cultural ghetto as comic books, this exclusion of women will be one of the main reasons.

The LGBT (am I really supposed to put it that way, since hardly anything was mentioned about bisexuals or transsexuals?) session was more charged. I have no idea about the delicacy of the issue for developers, so I'll refrain from naming names, but there were definitely a few "names" in this room: people who have been in the business for a long time and who offer a provocative and carefully considered position. There was a feeling among the few people at the roundtable that there should be more gay content, although there was no agreement about what that meant. Is it niche games targeted specifically at a gay audience? Or is it gay issues folded into mainstream games? And as someone pointed out, any overt gay themes would be tagged by the ESRB for "sexuality" and would get an M-rating. Which, I feel, is entirely appropriate, and would hopefully be applied to any games with overt heterosexual themes.

But the fact of the matter is that right now, games have a hard enough time getting heterosexual content right, much less addressing something as delicate as LGBT issues. But as the cross-section of people who play games increases, as phenomena like WoW and Second Life provide a context for social expression, and as developers like the people in that session explore new ways to express the themes that are important to them, that may very well change.