Professional opinion on video games

Hi Beefy Titans!

So in order
"what do I think"
Queers aren't represented enough of course, BUT I think we can't really give a straight (haha) answer to that, as today "games" don't really mean anything anymore (so many indie games, that propose more inclusive or even dedicated content).

"Can we expect more of it in the coming years?"
Of course, like in all the other media, the questions will be more "how fast?" and "how much in AAA?"

"Also there seem to be two main (but not only) approaches regarding representation: one where sexuality plays an important role and the other where sexuality is pretty much mentioned once and forgotten. Which approach do you think game companies prefer?"

I don't think "companies" prefer one or the other. The first one (important sexuality) is the most obvious to observe, often in RPG, or games where character are written enough to allow a relationship to grow. In this category, queer representation is a noisy battle, because journalists are gonna write about it (you can have same-sex romance in the game!!), queer associations are gonna celebrate, anti-LGBT will ask boycott, etc...
The second one is for me (and that's very personal) the most important, it's a bit like in movies/series (and it's something that's starting to happen with Netflix), is "just" having LGBT characters, but who are just "normal/human". Like you meet someone, talk to him/her, notice in his/her desk wedding picture marrying same-sex person (The cop in Jessica Jones, casually adopting a child with his male partner, that kind of thing).
This one is the less advanced, and it's a shame because that's the most important for the normalization.

The big battle today is at the publisher level, often studios want black main character, lady main character, queer main character, but publishers are stopping them.

Hi!

Yeah Bioware is quite a black box. What is sure is all the marketing material is more EA's fault (no representation in the trailers).

I would advise you two articles with kinda different outlook on the situation
www.gamasutra.com/view/news/308054/Andromeda_dev_chalks_up_some_of_the_games_problems_to_a_lack_of_diversity.php
www.gamasutra.com/view/news/301320/Opinion_A_requiem_for_Mass_Effect_Andromeda.php

What is sure is this development was certainly the worst Bioware have experienced. And when you do a RPG that big, as a manager, you want to get sure there is no blocking bug, no lag, no crash, and you don't review romance dialog certainly written by an intern. Not an excuse what so ever, but when you see what Bioware can produce when they're at their best, you know that on MEA the problem was more than "just not inclusive enough".

I think also, the problem is that game that scale (you have the same problem with Ubisoft), can't really correct anything wrong when done in the development. It's such a huge project (on several sites for Ubisoft) that if something bad have been implemented, nobody will take the decision to scrap it and redo it, as they're too scared to side effect and they don't want to take this responsibility. There is a lot of "that is crap, I hope someone will ask to change it", but nobody wants to be that person. Add to that massive time pressure, and you have often disaster like that. If you don't focus on the gay aspect, but on other elements, I'm sure you can find lot of others similar problem, that looks mad, but aren't the result of a "real decision", more a "lack of decision".

First of all, today, video game is the biggest cultural/entertainment industry (above books, music, films). And that worldwide. So you can imagine that inclusivity is a very different topic in Sweden or in Japan (and I'm even not speaking about the difference in a same country like the USA). Of course, like everywhere you can find sexist, racist, homophobic people, but what I have experienced inside studios is that this people are a minority compare to the rest of the society. My theory (and I'm not sociologist), is that workers often are highly educated and/or artist and often have suffered to be different in the past (when "video games were for weirdos). So they are often smart and sensitive people, that want to create cool or even political stuff. That is really true in small and medium studios.

In bigger studios, more money, so more people that are not interested in games (people from finances, business schools etc...) and the mentality can change quite a lot (and imagine a company like Ubisoft with studios in Paris, but also in India and in Abu Dabi, hard to have "the same" mentality everywhere).

And then, (main) publishers, that are comparable to any big marketing/selling company, lots of white 50+ dudes, often old school.

That said, what about players feedback analysis.
Big studios/publishers like Ubisoft, work mostly with statistics, they know what the player do, what they don't, when they stop playing. "Infiltration quests were only played by 5% of people, let's get rid of that".

Smaller studios tries to be closer to their community, and often try to speak to a specific audience (strategy games fan, historical games fan etc...)

Usually, they don't listen to toxic comments (racist/sexist/homophobic...) but the publisher can. And then uses statistics to force a studio to change some elements of the games "this game with black main character made 10% less money, next one it has to be a white dude". Of course you can often make the numbers say what you want them to say, so it's really about publisher philosophy.

I bitch a lot about publishers, but when I talk about them, I mean "the big and medium one". There is more and more indie publishers that are amazing people (and often have been created by people from studios that couldn't stand anymore working with "conventional" publishers).

So to answer your question, no I don't think actively anti LGBT people have a real impact on games (as the KKK doesn't have an impact on black people representation in games). But as long as a society will tolerate these people and their behaviors, you will have tensions around the release of any production that don't fit what they consider acceptable or not.