Hubba hubba

Thanks to the prevailing wisdom that all video gamers are hormonally charged heterosexual men, most developers design their wares with that demographic in mind. As such, it should be no surprise that big-breasted babes abound in much of the software sold in stores today.

That doesn’t mean gay guys are left with no one to ogle when they fire up a game on their PlayStation 3s, Xbox 360s or Wiis. In fact, more than a handful of hunks have paraded across the screen over years, with the following list highlighting the hottest:

Guile (Street Fighter series)—The Street Fighter series has hosted a number of hotties over the years, but Guile stands head and shoulders above the rest thanks to his military background. (After all, who doesn’t like a hot guy in a uniform?) He loses a few points for the weird ‘do, but everything else is so spot on that it can be overlooked.

Leon S. Kennedy (Resident Evil series)—Leon Kennedy proves you can be fashion-forward even while working to rid the world of zombies. Thankfully, he seems to be a looker even without the bomber jacket, tight jeans and manicured mane. Now Capcom (the game’s producer) needs to give him a few alternate outfits to prove that point. Here’s an idea: Maybe he could run around in his tighty whities in the series’ next sequel?

Kratos (God of War I and II)—Why is this guy hot? Well, for starters, his designers were inspired by Greek mythology—Hercules in particular. Unfortunately, they also made him sociopathic. Considering it looks like he stepped, dripping with sweat, out of a particularly steamy piece of Gladiator fanfic, I’m willing to give him a pass for not being completely sane.

You say gamer, I say gaymer

If you’re gay and you’ve been surfing the Web for any amount of time, you’ve likely come across “gaymer” once or twice. The increasingly common portmanteau—a word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings—refers to gay (as well as lesbian, bisexual and transgender) folk who are fond of video games.

Gaymer is hardly the only gay portmanteau around. Everyone’s heard and used “gaydar,” of course, and “gayborhood” is making its way into more and more headlines--not to mention water-cooler conversations--every day. Go to UrbanDictionary.com and you’ll find even more examples of this typographic trend, including “gayngsta,” “gaythiest” and even “gayby boom,” which refers to the present-day increase in gay and lesbian parents.

Just because a few Net denizens glom onto a new word doesn’t mean it’s going to be accepted by the masses—or that it will be admired or adored by the few. Take gaymer: Although the neologism has only been around for a few years, it has been both championed and reviled in that short span of time. Atlanta’s Chris Vizzini liked the word so much he built a website, Gaymer.org, around it. Head over to GayGamer.net, though, and you’ll find a slew of people who are far from fans of the term.

David Edison, the site’s associate editor, counts himself among that crowd. “I’m not crazy about cutesy slang that incorporates the word gay into any rhyming syllable,” he says. A recent poll on the year-old site found that 34 percent of visitors agree with him (they’d like to stick with the old standby, gamer), while 27 percent prefer to call themselves gay gamers and 39 percent go with gaymer.

Calling all gay geeks

Do any of you spend time in the forums on sites like gaygeeks.org, gayintellectuals.googlepages.com or gaymer.org?

If so, I'd like to interview you for an article I'm working on for a North American magazine aimed at the LGBT community.

Sorry, I don't know these guys--I stole the image from another site.

Feel free to contact me at me at bryanochalla dot com if you're at all interested.

The Advocate: Are Video Games Getting Gayer?

Well, it seems 50% (or more) of my posts these days promote articles I've written for The Advocate. Sorry about that. The good news is that I plan to post much more frequently from now on - which should mean that self-aggrandizing additions such as these should be fewer and farther between.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: the article I wrote for The Advocate. The headline - "Are Video Games Getting Gayer?" - says it all, I think. My answer to that question apes the answer given by the folks I interviewed for the article: Sure, but they still have a long way to go.

For example, Brenda Brathwaite, a veteran game designer and the author of Sex in Video Games, told me that while video games have grown up a lot in the last few years, “we still haven’t seen the kind of normalization [of LGBT characters and story lines] that we’ve seen in movies and on TV for some time. We still haven’t had our Brokeback Mountain moment.”

Don't expect that to happen until more members of the LGBT community involve themselves in game design and development, she adds. In the meantime, “a bunch of straight guys will be trying to make games for the gay community, just like they used to try to make games for women.”

Here's a link to the full article - http://www2.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid107493.asp - in case anyone's interested.

The Advocate: Apple's Gay Poster Boy

The Advocate published another of my articles on its website today, this one about Steve Demeter, the guy behind the hugely popular iPhone game, Trism.

I had a great time talking with Demeter for this article, with the following being my favorite part of the conversation:

“I’m totally out in my private life, but I’m not sure about being out professionally. I’m not worried about a backlash or anything like that, I’m just not sure that my being gay has anything to do with my business and the kinds of games we’re creating. It’s not like we’re making ‘gay’ games.

“I’m proud of the fact that I’m gay and that some of the guys who work with me are gay, but at the end of the day all that matters is that we put stuff out there that’s high-quality and that makes people happy.”

Read the article in its entirety here.

The Advocate: Microsoft Tries to Mend Rift With "Gaymers"

Yesterday, The Advocate published (on its website) an article I wrote about Microsoft's policy of suspending the Xbox Live accounts of gamers who include "gay" or "lesbian" in their gamertags or profiles.

Read the article here: http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid75481.asp

Money quote: Stephen Toulouse, program manager for policy and enforcement on Xbox Live, told me, “We have heard clearly that customers want the ability to self-identify [and] it's our job to provide this in a way that cannot be misused.”

Unfortunately, Toulouse wouldn't say how or when Microsoft will provide that ability to LGBT gamers, but acknowledging a problem is the first step to solving it, right?

The Advocate discusses Queer Power (the video game)

The latest issue of The Advocate (with the lovely Rebecca Romijn on the cover) features not one but two short articles on gay gaming--and they're both on the same page!

For starters, Atlanta's "Fruit Brute," proprietor of Gaygamer.net, does the Q&A thing for writer Morgan Kroll. Just below that is an article I wrote about the Internet-based game, Queer Power, a hilariously nasty little fighter in the vein of Street Fighter II.

Here's a link to my article, if you don't happen to subscribe to or regularly purchase The Advocate.