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Bioware fire-fighting reactions to SWtOR's 'gay ghetto' planet

nickcv

Member
I like it how that one idiot gamer quoted in the news article is all "it's a family game", as if gay characters are some R rated, disgusting stuff that shouldn't be shown to minors or something.

you have no idea how many people think like that.

one of my co-workers talking about a gay pride parade here in my town:
"they are doing it on the beach? i take my daughter there, how am i going to deal with it? she can even still remember the time our apartment got robbed"

yeah... he did compare the shock of seeing your apartment robbed to a gay pride parade
 
This game needs to go f2g

tumblr_m76ifjg3vk1r98rtso1_500.gif
 

Midou

Member
you have no idea how many people think like that.

one of my co-workers talking about a gay pride parade here in my town:
"they are doing it on the beach? i take my daughter there, how am i going to deal with it? she can even still remember the time our apartment got robbed"

yeah... he did compare the shock of seeing your apartment robbed to a gay pride parade

Reading that, I thought maybe the apartment was robbed by super effeminate robbers.. but now I realize he is just a terrible person.
 
Yet everyone keeps ignoring that this is just the start and they have stated more gay relationship options will be added to the game, including all new companions with such options. It's not going to be locked down into one single planet.

Does anyone else feel this to be a publicity stunt?

No way. They posted about this 2 weeks ago and no one said anything. Suddenly one website posted an article making ridiculous claims about a "gay planet", and from there other web sites started their own articles based on the same article and spinning off in their own direction. Fox News posted a ridiculous article suddenly about it.

It was a paragraph on their blog directed to the fans on the forum done 2 weeks ago and suddenly it's a big controversy?

Are these (gay or otherwise) romances part of the main plots?

No and that is also why this is so silly. They are just adding in random NPC dialogue choices that will be gender neutral. They will be adding companion characters with actual romance options in the future when the class stories are expanded since companion characters are part of each class story. This whole thing is just the beginning of them making changes to the game to add the requested gay option for players who have been wanting it.
 

danmaku

Member
Maybe if the new expansion took place in more than one planet, it wouldn't have looked like an attempt to put gay relationships in a ghetto.

However, the complaints from "normal" players are much more disgusting than whatever Bioware is doing with the game.
 

JDSN

Banned
The fact that they couldn't foresee this reaction tells me they deserved it, anyway, time to make up some homophobic email to fix this.
 

nickcv

Member
Yet everyone keeps ignoring that this is just the start and they have stated more gay relationship options will be added to the game, including all new companions with such options. It's not going to be locked down into one single planet.



No way. They posted about this 2 weeks ago and no one said anything. Suddenly one website posted an article making ridiculous claims about a "gay planet", and from there other web sites started their own articles based on the same article and spinning off in their own direction. Fox News posted a ridiculous article suddenly about it.

It was a paragraph on their blog directed to the fans on the forum done 2 weeks ago and suddenly it's a big controversy?



No and that is also why this is so silly. They are just adding in random NPC dialogue choices that will be gender neutral. They will be adding companion characters with actual romance options in the future when the class stories are expanded since companion characters are part of each class story. This whole thing is just the beginning of them making changes to the game to add the requested gay option for players who have been wanting it.

i know you are right, but still how could they have not seen this one coming?
 

Alucrid

Banned
I'll copy something someone said on the other thread, because i think what he said make more sense than the usual "WTF stupid Bioware" posts on this forum.

Oh. Well that makes sense for both it being on the one planet and being behind a paywall. Sensationalist journalism strikes again.
 
i know you are right, but still how could they have not seen this one coming?

I don't see any other way they can avoid it, the content was not in the game at launch and they have to add it in somehow. They already pointed out that it would be very difficult to add it into the current game since they would have redo a ton of recorded dialogue and remake bunch of cutscenes instead of working on actual new content.

No matter what they did, it was going to cause some problems for someone, especially since it would likely always be stuck behind a paywall of an expansion.

This is just a small content pack too and the start of them putting in SGR relation options to the game, it's not the end and they are not going to lock it away all to one planet.

It's all quite silly seeing how Bioware has been one of more friendly devs when it has come to gay relationships in their games.
 

Valnen

Member
Yet everyone keeps ignoring that this is just the start and they have stated more gay relationship options will be added to the game, including all new companions with such options. It's not going to be locked down into one single planet

Of course, people just want to hate on Bioware, they don't need logical reasons for doing so. The game is free to play now, so of course new content is going to be behind pay walls. And what did people expect? To add this content to all planets, for free? THAT'S entitlement.
 

Kinyou

Member
Very weird.
So you land on planet X and all of the sudden the companion who accompanied you for 50 hours through the game will hit on you?

What happens on planet x stays on planet x, I guess

Of course, people just want to hate on Bioware, they don't need logical reasons for doing so. The game is free to play now, so of course new content is going to be behind pay walls. And what did people expect? To add this content to all planets, for free? THAT'S entitlement.
I can understand it though.
Afaik is the new content add-on not free for subscribers either.
Bioware said early on that they'll add same sex romance options, they never mentioned that you'll have to pay extra for it.
 
Very weird.
So you land on planet X and all of the sudden the companion who accompanied you for 50 hours through the game will hit on you?

What happens on planet x stays on planet x, I guess


I can understand it though.
Bioware said early on that they'll add same sex romance options, they never mentioned that you'll have to pay extra for it.

No, they are not adding gay option to existing companions. They are just adding npc dialogue options to this new planet that don't have gender restrictions like the game had originally, but not fully romancable characters yet like the ones currently in the game. For example during a quest you can flirt as some dialogue options with random npcs you meet or swoon them, but they are not full on romances that you can have with select companions.

New companions will be added in the future content that will have option of gay romance, but they aren't touching the characters already in the game. Such companions will be added when the character classes have their story lines extended. This digital content pack is NOT extending individual class stories.
 
Of course, people just want to hate on Bioware, they don't need logical reasons for doing so. The game is free to play now, so of course new content is going to be behind pay walls. And what did people expect? To add this content to all planets, for free? THAT'S entitlement.

Or, people with expectations from playing Valve's two F2P games, which is why I find it kind of a rip off.

But maybe I'm spoiled.
 

Kinyou

Member
No, they are not adding gay option to existing companions. They are just adding npc dialogue options to this new planet that don't have gender restrictions like the game had originally, but not fully romancable characters yet like the ones currently in the game. For example during a quest you can flirt as some dialogue options with random npcs you meet or swoon them, but they are not full on romances that you can have with select companions.

New companions will be added in the future content that will have option of gay romance, but they aren't touching the characters already in the game. Such companions will be added when the character classes have their story lines extended. This digital content pack is NOT extending individual class stories.
Ah, alright, now I get it. That makes much more sense.
 

Patryn

Member
Bioware was damned if they do, damned if they don't. They were getting a lot of criticism for not including it in the first place, and the longer they delayed the more flak they were getting, so they roll it out, and now they're getting criticized for not including it everywhere, despite that being basically impossible.

I expect even more criticism if they go in and make all the companions bisexual. Better to just make new companions that are gay.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
one gamer wrote on the forums. “Please, please, please Bioware, Lucasarts, and EA do not allow SGR in Star Wars The Old Republic. It will ruin the game and make a lot of people leave it.

OH NOES THE HOMOSEXUALS WILL SINKS THE TORTANIC! *Tortanic is already underwater and laying in a trench for months after hitting the iceberg*

Anyway, I didn't know it was just that one planet. Which is pretty insulting, but I wonder how much Lucasarts is part of this fiasco.
 
Bioware was damned if they do, damned if they don't. They were getting a lot of criticism for not including it in the first place, and the longer they delayed the more flak they were getting, so they roll it out, and now they're getting criticized for not including it everywhere, despite that being basically impossible.

I expect even more criticism if they go in and make all the companions bisexual. Better to just make new companions that are gay.

Yea no matter what they were going to do, it was going to cause problems. They really needed to have this stuff in the game at launch since it would take a ton of work to add it to the entire previous content.

Even if it was free, it still would be an issue since it's "one planet" even if more is coming in the future.
 

beje

Banned
This was really poor taste, both in concept (gay NPCs secluded in a getto, way to go in 2013. What's this, a 90's B-tier comedy?) and execution (behind a paywall). They should have just done nothing at all, but harm is already done. They do a very weak favour to the LGTB community and surely negates every progress in normalization done by games like ME3 or The Sims in just one sitting.
 

Moff

Member
"gay planet"? this is ridicoulous

they promised SGR from the very beginning, now they are holding up to their promise and add them in the next content patch.

and yeah, this content patch consists of only 1 planet, and it will finally have npcs that allow same gender romance.

to turn this around and call it a gay ghetto or a reservation for homosexuals is wrong on every level
 
This was really poor taste, both in concept (gay NPCs secluded in a getto, way to go in 2013. What's this, a 90's B-tier comedy?) and execution (behind a paywall). They should have just done nothing at all, but harm is already done.

Doing nothing at all is somehow better? This is a very important issue for people and it had to be added in somehow. To many it would have been insulting to just ignore that part of the community. This is just the start of them adding to the game
 

HooYaH

Member
No, they are not adding gay option to existing companions. They are just adding npc dialogue options to this new planet that don't have gender restrictions like the game had originally, but not fully romancable characters yet like the ones currently in the game. For example during a quest you can flirt as some dialogue options with random npcs you meet or swoon them, but they are not full on romances that you can have with select companions.

New companions will be added in the future content that will have option of gay romance, but they aren't touching the characters already in the game. Such companions will be added when the character classes have their story lines extended. This digital content pack is NOT extending individual class stories.

I'm quite interested how they are going to do storyline extensions. Some companions, you're
married
to, unless they are going to allow affairs? But presumably, with the way they are handling f2p and content, it might die before we even get more individual storyline extensions. They still haven't fixed some bugs since launch...
 

Annubis

Member
Doing nothing at all is somehow better? This is a very important issue for people and it had to be added in somehow. To many it would have been insulting to just ignore that part of the community. This is just the start of them adding to the game

Exactly how big is the gay community on SWTOR?
Assuming a million subscriber (or so they say), I seriously wonder how many vocal few wanted homosexual relationships in an MMO.
 

Moff

Member
Exactly how big is the gay community on SWTOR?
Assuming a million subscriber (or so they say), I seriously wonder how many vocal few wanted homosexual relationships in an MMO.

you dont need to be gay to choose gay options in videogames.

I would not have called it a very important issue though, but it was one of their big promises since launch. and I am glad they hold up to it.
 

Aeana

Member
Bioware was damned if they do, damned if they don't. They were getting a lot of criticism for not including it in the first place, and the longer they delayed the more flak they were getting, so they roll it out, and now they're getting criticized for not including it everywhere, despite that being basically impossible.

I expect even more criticism if they go in and make all the companions bisexual. Better to just make new companions that are gay.
Seems like the majority of the complaints are from people who aren't gay. As expected.
 
I'm quite interested how they are going to do storyline extensions. Some companions, you're
married
to, unless they are going to allow affairs? But presumably, with the way they are handling f2p and content, it might die before we even get more individual storyline extensions. They still haven't fixed some bugs since launch...

You can already have affairs with characters even if your married with some of the class characters.

Exactly how big is the gay community on SWTOR?
Assuming a million subscriber (or so they say), I seriously wonder how many vocal few wanted homosexual relationships in an MMO.

Kinda hard to count that no? But should they be ignored? To many it is a very personal thing even if it's just a video game, it's about acceptance of their lifestyle choices. Been huge threads since before launch about it and anger for it not being in the game in the first place.. Bioware fans especially were expecting it from their games previous acceptances.
 

Perkel

Banned
Seems like the majority of the complaints are from people who aren't gay. As expected.

I think much of this problem is that Bioware just use it to sell game not to do anything with it that makes sence. Gays in Bioware games are just bad and stereotypical.
 
I am guessing that the way the game system is constructed it would be incredibly hard to insert same sex relationships in earlier parts in the game. This was probably the simplest way to do it while keeping development costs down in making the content.
 

Patryn

Member
Seems like the majority of the complaints are from people who aren't gay. As expected.

At this point, people will take anything related to Bioware as an opportunity to complain about them. It's like it went around shooting everyone's puppy.
 

Kusagari

Member
I think much of this problem is that Bioware just use it to sell game not to do anything with it that makes sence. Gays in Bioware games are just bad and stereotypical.

I think the gay people who wanted this in would already have experience with how Bioware handles the issue.

If they still wanted it, who are we to complain?
 

Sojgat

Member
Just seems like standard Star Wars single-biome planet design to me. Forest moon, ecumenopolis, desert planet, water world, gay planet... :)
 
This has to be something with the way they add new content to the engine and not that someone said "I've got two words for you guys; Gay Planet" and went off the rails from there.
 

massoluk

Banned
This is a new low for you Bioware.

Separate but Equal for Gay? Lordy. Never mind that it may be due to technical difficulty, but how did they not see this as a bad idea?
 

Perkel

Banned
I think the gay people who wanted this in would already have experience with how Bioware handles the issue.

If they still wanted it, who are we to complain?

Gamers that will eventually play that content ? And knowing Bioware it will be in your face ?

I'm not speaking for myself because i don't have slightest interest in playing SWTOR nor any MMO in future. But i played infamous Dragon Age 2 and it was downright offensive.

edit:

How can we even defend idea of gay planet ? It's human segregation. Instead of implementing it in all galaxy in believable way they just throw planet for geys.
 
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