I dunno, most games the sexuality of the protagonist is completely irrelevant, and in those cases id tell both sides to stop whining or just play a different game

"The game is forcing me to fuck this man, repeatedly"

No one is forced to be straight... Most games don't even have romances.

Like you think Doom Guy is straight because he's clearly a Christian? When I control him, he's the gayest queen in Hell. 🤷‍♂️

I'd much rather play as a woman.

Why do we still attention to tiny loud minority of Gamers^TM^ who whinge about "go woke go broke" and yet these still games sell like hotcakes? Just tell them that if they don't like the game, then don't buy the game.

Never liked this lumping of everyone into oversimplified "gamers" as if it's anything different besides conservatives who happen to play games.

It is always conservatives. In any hobby.

In many cases, not even forced, just given the option to play as a non-straight character in a way that's mostly irrelevant to the actual game!

Would be nice if you could play a gay dude. It feels like most lbgtq representation is only women

"forced" to play

because the path of the gamer isn't a choice™

Honest question, can anyone actually name a mainstream game where the main playable character is canonically and explicitly portrayed as gay?

I honestly can’t even think of one.

Kojima's got this one right. Every game has at least one gay character. You, the player.

Games are not about you and the purpose often is to give you an experience that you wouldn't have as yourself.

Transphobic dudes experiencing gender dysphoria playing as a woman

What's a straight character?

In Skyrim you can romance any of a wide variety of characters marked as "marriageable" in the game's files. That really just means the voice actor was willing to record the marriage ceremony lines. Since voice actors were reused, if a voice actor recorded their lines, most if not all of their characters would be marriageable. To marry a character, you complete a task for them that makes them call you a friend (typically a quest they give you when you first meet them). You then wear an amulet of Mara (the game's goddess of love) and speak to them. They ask if you fancy them, you say yes. They propose marriage, you go to the temple of Mara and be there the next day. During the ceremony you can say yes or no. And the game does not give two shits what your gender is. If you're a male character, you can freely marry any marriageable male character, and vice versa for females. I play female characters because I like to look at them. I'd rather look at a female than a male. And I always marry Mjoll the Lioness because she's trying to tear down the most fun guild in the game, so I move her out of town and make her a housewife. (Her quest is a lot of fun, too.)

In Fallout 4 you can romance maybe half a dozen characters? All of your companions who are not robotic or animal. One of the robots can be converted into an android you can hook up with. You can't marry any of them, and you can romance all of them. None of them care what your gender is. Many have quests you have to do, but even beyond that, you have to push up their approval rating of you, by doing things they approve of (e.g. Matt Mercer's character loves when you pick locks and steal) and by not doing things they don't like (e.g. there's a junkie girl who loves when you do drugs, until you cure her addiction, then she hates when you do drugs). Once they're romanced, you can take them to any bed for a fade-to-black sex scene (neither heard nor seen).

In Cyberpunk 2077, there are four characters you can romance and hook up with, but no marriage. Each one has a genital preference and a voice preference. So you can absolutely be trans in the game. You choose a body type (fem or masc) and a voice type (fem or masc). Depending on your choice, you get 2 people you can romance. The other two will not reach the romance stage with you no matter what.

I guess the characters in GTA are straight? I don't play bro shooters and such. Not my thing. Tomb Raider? Up in the air what Lara Croft prefers. You could take that either way. I love the Life is Strange games and those lean gay/lesbian. In the first one, Max can kiss both a girl and a guy, and it seems equal, but if you read her diary, she has no attraction to the guy, but she absolutely crushes on the girl. In the second one, the guy is absolutely gay, but the focus is on his little brother who is too young to have a sexual orientation (I think he's 8?). It's less obvious in the third one, but that girl definitely has lesbian vibes. And the fourth one is Max again.

This is why games should allow modding.

No one is forcing them to do anything. They can choose to play the game or to do anything else.

I want to be something else when I play games. I don't understand this need to be the same thing I am every fucking day. Bring on other genders, sexes, races, species, colors, limbs, all of it. Let's be different. It's a fucking video game.

Feel like dudes who refuse to ever play as women or in simulated gay relationships are just depriving themselves of some quality content. I haven't gotten to this BG3 playthrough yet, but you can't tell me Ascended Astarion and Ambition Gale won't be the most toxic codependent enabling shit ever, and it is gonna be enthralling to watch that heat up and burn down.