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Just an addition:

The is a new article on minorities in video games (not adventure specific) on Gamasutra at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030827/adams_01.shtml

It may require login to read it.

The screenshots are examples of the visual style, not final versions from the game. The carnival picture which, as you say, was posted in the c&c forum  a while ago, was the image that established the look of the game. It will however be remade - after watching a documentary about surfers in LA, I decided that it should be on a pier instead.

I hope to have more backgrounds and character sketches up within the next few weeks, along with a website.

BTW: Can anyone tell me how to change font size in forum posts (for headlines etc.)? And is it possible to "left align" images (not just [ left ]image.gif[ /left ], but so that the text following it goes to the right of it rather than below. Is this making sense?), like you can in html?

[Game Features]

While acquiring some rare prints from the estate of a deceased collector, film archivist Dinah Burroughs stumbles upon a disturbing but strangely hypnotic silent film by Conrad Gray, a long forgotten director of the 1930's and 40's. What begins as a routine assignment becomes a waking nightmare in the city of dreams, as Dinah's obsessive research into the film and the fate of its enigmatic creator brings her deep inside the dark mirror image of Hollywood's glamour and glitz.

The mystery soon engulfs her, turning Los Angeles into a paranoid twilight world of sunshine and noir, where seeing is no longer believing. A mirage of false memories, where the border between authentic and imaginary is disintegrating, forcing Dinah to question her eyes, her mind, and the medium of film itself.

The gameplay takes the form of investigation, research, and interviews, as you move through dilapidated Sunset Boulevard mansions, tomb-like studio vaults, dusty newspaper archives, and a rundown Hollywood hotel, its former glory long gone. The puzzles will be firmly embedded in the plot: Scrutinize clips from Gray's movies on the editing table and analyze film stills with computer aid. Gain access to the director's personal notes in the library's restricted collection, and track down his few still living co-workers, to expose two terrifying secrets; one fifty years old, another spanning centuries.

Game Features
• Ã, Full length mystery adventure in the Gabriel Knight tradition
• Ã, Well researched storyline blends fact and fiction, weaving threads of film history, philosophy, and esoteric religion into a rich tapestry of horror and suspense.
• Ã, A cast of 15 highly developed characters to interview and befriend, to suspect and seduce.
• Ã, More than 30 locations to explore in a contemporary, real world Los Angeles as strange and magical as any fantasy or sci-fi setting.
• Ã, Unique visual style employing the rough look of set design and costume sketches.
• Ã, Original approach to sound and music inspired by the audio design of David Lynch.

Technical features
• Ã, Hi-color backgrounds in 640x480 resolution.
• Ã, Fully animated characters with hand-drawn dialog close-ups.
• Ã, Custom GUI similar to the expanded Sierra interface of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.
• Ã, Digital music and ambience tracks.

Ã,  Ã,  Ã, 

Scheduled release dates: Demo, cancelled. Full game, winter 2005/2006.

28 June 2005

Check out the end of the thread for a couple of screenshots of the game interface.

1 September 2004

Oh look, it's already time for my twice-a-year update to this thread
I have absolutely no idea where the last seven months went. And it's quite obvious that Shadowplay is in no state to be released this Christmas as promised - if the demo is out by then, I'm happy. Hence, you might have noticed that the release date has been postponed another year. Let's hope it's not quite that bad, but better be realistic.
If anything, the time spent away from actually coding and animating Shadowplay strengthens the actual storyline and design of the game, as the little free time I have, whenever I'm working abroad, is dedicated to research and pen-and-paper scripting. Thinking and rethinking the game countless times should help to catch the worst design flaws before they are implemented, and generally make the whole process more structured. If I don't have a computer near me, I'm not tempted to start scripting a situation just to see how it would look in-game.

Check out my recent post at the bottom of this thread for more progress info. Thanks to Vel for reviving this thread

12 February 2004

The last few months have been pretty crazy. As you may know, the adventure fanzine The Inventory wrote about Shadowplay in its last issue (sadly it looks as if it will be the last issue ever ). When Dimitris Manos contacted me about the preview, I had actually decided to stop development while finishing my thesis. But all of a sudden I had to whip up a batch of new screenshots along with a detailed press release. A month or so later, I'd casually mentioned my game to an acquaintance who writes for a Danish gaming magazine, and all of a sudden he wants me to write an article on amateur game development! From there everything just went insane. Now they want me to write two more articles this month, and the same acquaintance offered me a job as game tester for Electronic Arts. So now I'm travelling to Sweden for three weeks next month to playtest the translated version of the third Harry Potter game! This is part fantasy come true and part surreal nightmare. Everything is just moving so fast, and I don't have much time for neither my thesis or Shadowplay.

Oh yeah, Shadowplay, that was what I'm supposed to talk about here, right? I've got a lot of backgrounds done. The movie star's mansion was the hardest part. I wanted it to resemble the house from Sunset Blvd. so I grabbed hundreds of screens from the DVD for reference. The film is black and white though, so what color should it be? By a coincidence I discovered that the derelict mansion in Rebel Without a Cause - which is a color film - was shot at the very same house, so that solved the problem.
The drawing style of the characters has been finalized. I think I've found a good compromise that removes most of the Poser look from the characters while still making my work much easier than animating by hand. Several of the characters are now designed. I only need to paint the special textures. Using 3D allows me to do some very cool things, like giving the sidekick character Lucas a different shirt to wear every day. without having to redo every single frame.

Apart from that, amazingly I just keep on researching. I've found so many new facts and rumors from the old Hollywood days, that I just have to include somewhere. So I plan on rewriting the story yet another time. I promise you, it will be nothing like you've ever seen in a game before.

7 October 2003

My monitor broke down a few weeks ago, so currently I'm working on my old 14" in 600x800 resolution, which sucks. I did manage to color a background for my tutorial in the latest issue of the AGS Ezine though, so production hasn't halted entirely. But I've given up on doing anything in Poser until I get my new 19" monitor, because the interface takes up so much screen space that it's impossible to work with in low resolutions.
The same technical difficulties have delayed the website now that I can't test how the tables look in 1024x768 - but I'll probably put together a temporary one before the end of the month. Some new screenshots - I'm currently working on the Sunset Blvd. mansion - should be released along with more story and character info on the website.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot to mention. I've purchased a video-grabber card, so now it'll be much easier to gather reference pictures of Los Angeles. And I won't have to wear out my video tapes or my VCR while sketching architectural details or constantly rewinding when trying to grasp the geography of some location (thank God that Hollywood filmmakers are so cheap and lazy that they never leave town. Once you realize exactly how many Los Angeles landmarks are used as movie locations, you'll never search for still photos again).

1 September 2003

Shadowplay is now officially in production. I've been developing and researching the story for more than two years, and the time has come to turn the rough storyline and all the pieces of dissociated knowledge, as H.P. Lovecraft used to call them, into a real design document complete with puzzles and dialog. I'm quite surprised how all the plot elements - fact as well as fiction - are falling nicely into place. At times it seems as if I've actually come across a real mystery similar to the one in the game.

For the last few months I've experimented with different styles of art, and have now settled on a sketchy pencil-and-watercolor look, a bit like the style you see in set design sketches for movies (there are some incredibly pieces on the Se7en and Fight Club DVDs). I think this will work very well for the atmosphere of the game. Technically, I draw the backgrounds by hand, then scan them and color them digitally - it beats trying to cover up mistakes in water color, and it allows me to create differently lit versions of a scene without redrawing the entire background. Characters are created and animated in Poser 5, then output with the program's sketch renderer and colored frame by frame in Photoshop. Faces may be drawn by hand - like the dialog portraits, and a few static characters - and then merged with Poser bodies, if I don't find the original renders expressive enough.

While finishing the design docs, I'll be drawing dialog portraits and "establishing shots" of locations (exteriors shown when visiting a location for the first time). The walking characters and interiors will have to wait until I know exactly which animations and which background elements I'll need for the interaction.
Further down the line I'll need someone to help out with the music. I'm recording the David Lynch-style ambient sounds myself, but there are at least Ã, two pieces of real music in the story - at a party and as a movie score - and it would be nice with a theme/credits piece as well. It'll probably have to wait until the demo is finished though. Until then it'll be difficult to convey the atmosphere I'm looking for.

Shadowplay is © 2003 Camera Obscura

I'd say Gabriel Knight 3 and Grim Fandango. Obviously "recent" is a very relative term.

I think that was an ok discussion, all things considered. A bit disorganized, but I'm entirely to blame for not being enough to the point in my first post.

I choose Goldmund to host next week's discussion, if he's up to it that is. Maybe he can show us all how to be prescriptive rather than descriptive.

Maybe this is a really dumb suggestion, but couldn't you use characters instead of objects for droppable items?

Looks good, and it's quite smooth-looking for so few frames. But there is one thing: Unfortunately I don't have a gif-animation program here, so I can't view it frame by frame. But there's just something wrong with the frame just before the one where you see the top surface of the bed. I don't know if the perspective is wrong or if it's too big a jump between two frames, but it looks like the top surface just pops out of nowhere in the next frame.

The same with Malcom from Kyrandia 3. The same with Laverne or Hoagie or Bernard. Maybe it's just me but if the game doesn't give me a reason to think about the sexuality of the character then there's no reason for me to question it.

Aw, come on, surely Malcolm was gay, and thinking about it, probably Brandon from Kyrandia 1 as well! Man, those Kyrandia games are SO gay Seriously though, in fact, I had thought of using the Day of the Tentacle example myself, but I chose Sam & Max instead. Both games are so far from the realm of sexuality (It's probably a good thing that DOTT isn't a hentai game, I don't even want to THINK about what they'd do with those tentacles - and what about Bernard and that hamster?). But sexual orientation was really just an example. DOTT uses plenty of other stereotypes (nerds, roadies, geeky girls) as a shorthand to character - in fact, your first impression of the characters come from their VERY stereotypical visual appearance. Of course, later we learn to like them and to start to see them as individuals rather than types, which makes all the difference and is probably a good example of how minority sterotypes could be used in a positive way - Will & Grace did this with the Jack character (I know this isn't what you were saying, but I just thought it was an interesting angle). Learning to appreciate "the other" instead of just presenting more acceptable, veiled versions of it.

When I was little and played Zak McKracken I thought that Leslie and this other girl on the moon were lesbian, whereas the game was totally devoid of sexual innuendo

Funny, I had the same thought the first time I played it (11 or 12 years old). Except, making it even more queer, I never was quite sure if Leslie was a boy or a girl.

Seven, there's a black guy. Night of the Living Dead of all movies starred a black man AND a woman and it came out back in the crazy days! Boondock Saints, sure. And Willem is a main character and his journey is more important than his sexuality. Even terrible movies like Fifth Element had a black president who was also a terrible actor. Predator 2, Lethal Weapon, list goes on.

I won't comment on The Pelican Brief, because I fell asleep halfway through. As for your other examples, I do agree, except for two movies: Seven and Lethal Weapon. Lethal Weapon was a typical buddy movie, and black/white couples have more or less become part of that genre because much of the humour is based on the difference between the characters. (48 Hours, Money Train, White Men Can't Jump, Rush Hour 1 and 2 (ok, so Jackie's not exactly white, but still)). I think Seven played on these conventions within a very different storyline (Somerset, just like Murtaugh, is getting "too old for this shit" and is about to retire, and Mills, like Riggs - notice how even the names are similar - is his opposite, a man of action, kicking doors in rather than going by the book).
But of course there are movies with strong black main characters. Especially within comedy. Eddie Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg made TONS of movies in the 80's, and actually I'm quite surprised that there isn't a "wisecracking  black cop"-game out there.

I don't have much time, so while it's not good etiquette in these discussion, I'll just fire off a few unrelated replies:

fleh i feel a fool cause i don't think i'm being very clear in what i mean. i think i was just overwhelmed with your 30 page post. and i had a final point but it's outta here... goddammit

That's the same way I felt after writing it. I knew I had a point, but I plain forgot it.

From the few boards of Hitman I played I figured that he was gay. Does this matter at all to the gameplay? Not at all.

Ah, no, it doesnt matter to gameplay, but does it matter to story and character development? Certainly. Of course Hitman hasn't much of a storyline, most of it is built on cliches, but one of the cliches the game DOESN'T contain is that of a love interest. If he did indeed get romantically involved with that girl from Lee Hong's brothel, one of the later levels would most likely consist of rescuing her from some evil-doer.

Adventure games are so much more than just gameplay. And story and characters are it's most important elements. Who cares about the puzzles if you don't care about the characters?

(For the record, I never imagined Hitman as gay, I just figured that the clones were asexual - you don't really want a genetically modified killing machine to get personally involved, do you?)

Does the sexuality of the main character matter at all? Unless it's needed for the plot or the puzzles then no not at all.

Does it matter for the plot and puzzles Sam & Max (better not get into THEIR relationship ) that the main characters are a dog and a rabbit? Not really, but it sure as hell define them as characters. I think the issue here is to get rid of the assumption that everybody is straight until proven otherwise. Not to speak of the whole gender thing, that straight males are expected to find any attractive, available woman intersting. I can't even count the the number of games where I've played through romantic subplots with total disinterest because of the dull female characters (GTA3 being the worst recent example).

Look at Quest for Glory 3. Almost every human character besides the player character was black, because the entire game world was based on Africa and I think they did a good job of avoiding stereotyping beyond the obvious cultural similarities. I think on a whole, QFG is a series that, because of the game worlds, involves a lot of good minority characters. I think that might be why it's one of my favorite series.

I always found it interesting that the Hero was always the outsider. Wherever he came he had to prove himself to be accepted. And I think that's a pretty good point in this whole discussion. That the "minority" actually was the majority culture in each of the games (although there were a few foreigners stuck in Spielburg).

The magazine replied with the example of The Swordmaster -- Not only was she black, but a woman, and thus a good example of a minority character in a major adventure game role.

I never even noticed that she was black, which I suppose is a really good thing. I remember that she wore green though, for some reason. But it shows that she was so well developed that you didn't consider visual characteristics.

btw in heart of china the "chinese sidekick" was potrayed much better than the "hero" not only that, but you could play as him, many times his skills being neccesary in order to win the game!

I agree. And I think that the character switch  made the female love interest much more compelling as well. However, the kung fu fighting chinese servant IS a pretty old stereotype, straight out of The Green Hornet (Bruce Lee played his sidekick at one point). But maybe that's what they were going for - the game seems very much inspired by 1930's adventure serials. I think The Pink Panther movies also play on this stereotype in the relationship between Clouseau and Kato.

What was the last film you saw or book you read that *starred* a racial or sexual minority?

Exactly. Unless a movie is ABOUT being gay (often "coming out" movies such as In & Out) or about racial issues (like the aforementioned Devil in a Blue Dress). Nobody ever HAPPENS to be black or gay or whatever. It always plays a role somehow. I've heard good things about Willem Dafoe's character in The Boondock Saints, but I haven't seen it yet - and I don't think he's the actual star.

Sorry if this whole discussion got pretty disorganized. I hope future hosts take note and limit their topics further.

[From my own point of view as a designer]

Minority characters in adventure games pt. 3

From my own point of view as a designer
I've gone for a slightly subtler version of the first example. Dinah Burroughs, the player character in Shadowplay, my game-in-production, is written as gay. It's mentioned a couple of times during the game, but the idea is for the player to just pick up on it from details, a long time before it's actually spoken. Certain posters on her walls, her way of dress, her hairstyle, the way she approaches people of each gender. It should feel natural that she falls in love with the nice woman next door, perfectly in tune with her personality.
The things I've been most worried about are 1) turning her into a stereotype 2) being overly political correct, and 3) making lesbianism a male turn-on. And, not surprisingly, all these things are in conflict with eachother. She can't be a butch stereotype, but on the other hand she can't be too feminine to avoid being too attractive to straight men, like something out of Basic Instinct or Bound. And still I have to take into consideration that my choices aren't made out of political correctness, but what's good for the game. Very frustrating.
I was pretty enraged when I read that the player character in Razbor Studios' Legacy: Dark Shadows is the victim of a rape which “made her a man-hater and influenced her sexual preferences.” Not that this isn't a perfectly valid characterization, which could probably be the basis for a very interesting character. But what annoyed me was that the stereotype of lesbians as man haters, and the idea that “something must have happened” to make them prefer women over men (by this train of thought, lesbians aren't defined by their relationships with women but by their lack of relationships with men), is probably the oldest one in the book, and one we've finally killed off, or so I thought. But after rethinking it, it's obvious that one lesbian doesn't represent all lesbians, she is an individual with her own back-story, and somehow I must respect that. I still think they're going to exploit her lesbianism into soft-core eroticism, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

The problem with stereotypes is that you group people together, without respecting them as individuals. The problem with political correctness is that it doesn't allow for too much individuality either. My character's lesbianism and her own issues with it are used as motivation for her introvert lifestyle and play an important part of her background story. As well as in her relationships with others. Is it alright to have a somewhat mentally unstable and insecure gay character, or a black master villain (or Italian Mafiosi, or sadistic Vietnamese prison camp guards, or angry Scottish groundskeepers and on and on and on). Or should we allow political correctness to limit our storytelling?

My view is this: Yes, it's alright, and yes, you can use anything, even though it's a stereotype. But ONLY if you do it for a reason, only if it's needed to make a point, not if you're doing it out of laziness, because it's how things have always been done (this goes the other way too, not all old Chinese men are wise. Maybe you should rethink that character, if nothing else for the sake of originality). Don't let yourself be ruled by political correctness, but don't let yourself be ruled by preconceived ideas based on other people's representations. Look at the world, do research, talk to people, base your ideas and opinions on your own perception of the real world, not just the media.

That's it. Certainly not an example to be followed by future discussion hosts. I wonder if anyone actually reads all this through. I somehow hope they won't -GG

[Implementing difference in game design]

Minority characters in adventure games pt. 2

Implementing difference in game design
What does any of this have to do with game design? Well, first of all, as with any other media, it DOES make a difference how you represent reality. Movies, literature, television, and computer games, they all affect our way of perceiving the world around us. If fiction keeps on showing the same images of that, which we might not be too familiar with, we build our opinions on those faulty representations. One of Michael Moore's main points in his anti-gun documentary, Bowling for Columbine, is that television establish a culture of fear, by portraying blacks as the threatening “other” in cop shows and on the news. Breaking negative stereotypes, and offering positive visibility, is always a good thing, in any media.
Secondly, as adventure games are growing more mature â€" one of the few positive side effects of the marginalization of the genre â€" they are bound to deal with themes closer to our lives than the fairy tale worlds of King's Quest. Looking at some of the AGS games currently in production (and an already released one like Dada: Stagnation in Blue), it's obvious that as we have grown up, so have our beloved adventure games. But in dealing with mature themes, it's important that we don't repeat the old stereotypes, which Hollywood has only started getting rid of in the last decade or so, and which the game industry are still using in their simplified versions of the real world.
But more importantly than any of that, dealing with minority characters (and other taboo topics for that matter) can renew and enrich our genre and open up for brand new game situations and issues. Of course I'm writing of more serious and story- and character-based games here. If you want to do another Monkey Island or Sam & Max, you might not want to get involved with issues of race, gender and sexuality. An example: The movie Devil in a Blue Dress has a pretty standard film noir plot, but there's a difference, the main character is a black detective, and the conflict he encounters during his investigations expose the bigotry and racism of the 1940's, turning it into a far more interesting story. The same is true of a movie like The Crying Game, where an IRA member falls in love with the girlfriend of a soldier he's killed. Pretty ho-hum storyline â€" except â€" she turns out to be a pre-op transsexual, which means he'll have to confront his own homophobia, a conflict paralleled to his political doubts. (sorry if my descriptions are inaccurate, it's been years since I saw those films).

Identification and minority player characters
While designing my game, it suddenly occurred to me, that I was writing a story set in Los Angeles, a city where less than half the population are white, and I didn't have a single black or Latino character in the game! So when creating a new location, a museum of optical illusion, I wrote the curator of the museum as a black man. Is this being overly political correct? Do such considerations turn an otherwise well developed and interesting character, into “the token black person”? It's easy to plant minority characters in minor roles (as the GK watchman example shows), out of political correctness or whatever. But for them to really add something to the game, they must be written as part of the plot, and nobody is more important to the game story than the player character. What is it with minorities and adventure games? Why aren't there any minority player characters? Is it the old issue of identification: that most gamers are white heterosexuals, and designers don't think they can identify with a character of another ethnicity or sexual orientation? The same seemed to be true of gender for many years, but these days female player characters are becoming the norm. Aren't adventure role playing in its truest form: taking on the identity and personality of someone else, someone much different from you, and letting yourself be transported into a fictional world? Is it possible to trick people into accepting this identification?
With a non-white player character, the player encounter this fact the minute the character appears on the screen, and either choose to accept it, not accept it or not notice it (as in the example of Earwig). The latter may be preferable, unless you are using race as a theme in the game â€" in that case you might want to establish racial issues in the in-game society in a scene early in the game. Of course, in games with all black (let's say a spin-off game with the tribal warriors from QFG3) or all Asian (any Hentai game, really, although they are drawn with “European” features) game world, there is no issue. But let's, for now, consider the though of a gay player character, something that isn't immediately obvious. Imagine these two examples:

1) You're playing a Police Quest-like game. The game starts with the morning briefing at the station. You go through a day full of exciting incidents, making arrests, investigating crime scenes, all the usual stuff. At the end of the day, you return to your house and discover that your character shares his home and bed with a same-sex lover. Would you be surprised? Would you feel misled? Would it make a difference for your identification with the character for the rest of the game?

2) I've always admired the Quest for Glory series for its multiple paths, and puzzles that suited all tastes. If you didn't want to fight, you could sneak your way past, or dazzle the enemy with a spell â€" defining the personality of your character in the process (it somewhat limits the game that you can't choose a female character, but I think the need for huge amounts of extra animation explains that). In Quest for Glory V you could choose between four women to court and finally marry. What if the options were expanded slightly to include a male character? Maybe that buff sword smith? Would the inclusion of that option somehow detract from the other choices? Do you think only gay players would choose that option, or would it be an additional aspect of playing a role?

What is the better approach of these two, if any? Making the player comfortable, making him identify with the character, and then springing the surprise. Or letting him choose his own orientation by his actions (in this example the “default setting” is bi rather than straight â€" why are all characters to be considered straight until proven otherwise?)

This is getting embarassing. Is there an award for the longest post ever? Anyway, on to part 3!

[Game Design Theory Discussion: Minority characters in adventure games.]

Game Design Theory Discussion: Minority characters in adventure games.

Warning: This article contains storyline spoilers for a number of early-to-mid nineties Sierra games.

First of all, let me apologize for the lateness of this post â€" it hadn't expected to have to come up with something at such short notice. Also, I apologize for the longish post. I tend to ramble on when I find a subject interesting. If it bores you, just skip down to the final passages I'm not very happy with how it turned out. At some other time I might rewrite it into an article or two.

Remember the old watchman raking leaves at the New Orleans cemetery in Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers? You could question him, but he would never give you any important information. In fact you had no reason to interact with him at all, he wasn't even part of a puzzle. Apparently he was just there to add atmosphere. Or could it be that Jane Jensen added him to have ONE black person who wasn't more or less dodgy? Every other black character was either part of the voodoo cult or, as was the case with the shopkeeper, obviously knew more about the murders than they pretended to.

Boyz N the Hood
LucasArt also had several over-the-top ethnic stereotypes in their games â€" the African tribesmen in Zak McKracken and almost everyone in the Monkey Island games â€"  but somehow this seemed easier to accept within the realm of comedy (satire, even), and, I must add, in far away locations like Zaire and the 17th century Caribbean. But the Sierra games of the nineties were often set in modern day urban locations and were full of racial prejudice. In Police Quest 3, your Hispanic detective partner turned out to be crooked; not only stealing drugs from the evidence lockup, but also involved with the satanic cult behind a number of serial killings. In Police Quest 4, the first in the series to be located in LA rather than the fictional Lytton, nearly all the suspects were black, from the gang members in South Central (“This be my ‘hood. I be Raymond Jones da third”) to the rap-star in Beverly Hills. Maybe not so surprising coming from the man who was LAPD police chief during the Rodney King beating and the following riots. (In an even less surprising plot twist, the real killer turns out to be a white man, but not just any white male: a transvestite in the Norman Bates tradition, (cross-)dressed to kill, obviously inspired by the transsexual psychopath in Silence of the Lambs.)
Of course there are other, if not positive, then at least neutral, representations of black people like Captain Hall in PQ2, but for the life of me, I can't remember a single black player character in an adventure game (Maniac Mansion doesn't really count, because it had multiple player characters, and Dave still was the main one). And while a number of Asian player characters (still in games with multiple player characters) have popped up, it has often been in subservient roles â€" the ninja sidekick in Heart of China, and Grace who does the research that Gabriel can't be bothered with.

(It should be noted that while many kids' games such as Mixed-Up Mother Goose allow the player to choose non-white characters, the intention here is for the child to choose an avatar similar to him or herself.)

Visibility
This week's topic was inspired by two things, starting with, something rodekill said in a recent post: ”I actually made Earwig as an experiment. First I wanted to see if anyone would point out the fact that he wasn't a white kid (No one did, and most people I asked later said they didn't even notice).” On the same day I read that thread, I attended the Copenhagen gay pride parade. And while watching all the stereotypes go by â€" the dykes on bikes, leather men, drag queens, and tanned young men dancing suggestively in nothing but their briefs â€" I thought about rodekill's remark. Obviously, the psychotic and ultra-violent Earwig isn't a positive black role model, but at least he was one of the first black player characters. And in the same way, while these “freaks” cemented a number of gay stereotypes, they were at least visible and made it clear that there is a significant gay community, because unlike racial difference, sexual orientation isn't immediately obvious.

“Not that there's anything wrong with that”
The Leisure Suit Larry series was as homophobic as it was sexist, and its representations of gays as stereotypical as its women. In LSL3, Larry's wife Kalalau left him for an “Amazonian Harley-riding former-cannibal lesbian slot-machine repairwoman” (interestingly, the parser actually accepts “dyke” but not the less offensive “lesbian” as a synonym when looking at or talking to Kalalau!). And in LSL6, clicking the zipper cursor (that alone says it all, doesn't it?) on Gary Fairy, the lisping towel attendant led to a classic Sierra-style “death”-screen with Larry and Gary walking off into the sunset, hand in hand.
I suppose that's to be expected from the adolescent mind of Al Lowe, but even the more mature Sierra games are less than friendly in their portrayal of gays. Bruno, the florist who buys Gabe's father's painting in GK1, is a bitchy queen complete with ponytail, pink tank top and mincing walk. Jean, the effeminate concierge in GK3 was rather harmless. Nevertheless, Jane Jensen found it necessary to let Grace remark that she couldn't imagine what Jean did in the evening, and in fact, she'd rather not try. A comment that would seem more fitting for macho Gabriel.
Fags are easy to make visible through stereotype, but lesbians are more difficult. While the least bit of femininity in a man is a sure sign, masculine qualities in women are often seen as spunk. There's a fine line between tomboys and dykes, and while Maureen in Full Throttle belongs to the former, her female biker buddies would be welcome in any gay parade. Maybe for the same reason, gay women are often portrayed in couples. Semi-closeted lesbian couples â€" a mainstay of Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries it seems â€" pop up once in a while, in The Last Express and in GK3, where butch Estelle and Lady Howard, as Gabriel remarks while searching their room, “traded a room with two beds for a room with one.” “Not that there's anything wrong with that!” he adds, echoing the classic Seinfeld line.

Stereotyping
The problem with stereotypes isn't that they are necessarily wrong. As any pride parade shows, these people DO exist, just as there are black criminals in the rough parts of LA. But they also tend to turn members of these groups into types rather than individuals â€" as if being gay or being black defines a person in all other aspects as well. But in the case of homosexuality, they are often the only way to reveal the person's sexual orientation without being very outspoken, like April's sex-obsessed landlord Fiona in TLJ, or the flapper in the bathroom of the speakeasy in The Dagger of Amon Ra (“I have a cramp in my leg. Could ya massage it for me, honey?”).
Stereotype is used as shorthand to convey something that isn't immediately perceivable. In many ways it's these stereotypes that allow us to read characters as gay, without it actually being said. For all we know, Bruno the florist and Jean the concierge could be as straight as Gabe, but we automatically perceive their mannerisms as “gay”. Apparently, gay relationships is a touchy subject in the US - the logic being that homosexuality must somehow involve sex (while straight relationships doesn't?), and that's not something American kids should know about. The fact that you could have same-sex couples in The Sims bumped the rating from suitable for everyone to suitable for teen gamers. And The Longest Journey had difficulty finding a US distributor, in part because of the openly lesbian character.
The only games that really have managed any real kind of homoeroticism have been horror games such as GK2 and Phantasmagoria 2, which already have high ratings for gore. “Nothing is too controversial for Phantasmagoria”, Ken Williams once remarked, and apparently that included homosexuality as well. Although Trevor, Curtis the player character's best friend, was certainly a classic fag, he was also one of the most likeable and least kinky characters in a universe of mental illness and kinky S/M. Curtis own bisexuality was more portrayed in a more disturbing fashion: “As an alien creature, he is neither male nor female, and is attracted to both sexes”, designer Lorelei Shannon says. And when Curtis asks his psychiatrist if his bisexuality might be the result of his mother's forcing him to crossdress as a child, she agrees. It seems designers are more comfortable with well-defined gay characters (around the same time gay-best-friend characters started appearing in almost any romantic comedy) than more fluid sexual identities. Von Glower in GK2 was sexy but also frightening, the classic fluid (in more ways than one) sexuality, often labelled homoeroticism, of the vampire story transposed to another monster: Von Glower is, more or less, Anne Rice's Lestat as a werewolf.

Edit: Not surprisingly the post turned out to be too long, so I cut it in two. The rest follows below

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It's shareware, but you can use it for 40 days.

Ok, cool. I expect it to be posted within the next hour or two.

I'm not sure what's happening here. SHOULD I post my discussion topic or not (still needs some tweaking but should be ready within an hour or so)? And no, it's not a socio-economic analysis, although it IS in part descriptive (looking at older games), the main part consists of thoughts on representation, stereotyping and political correctness in regards to racial and sexual minorities, in part inspired by something rodekill said in a recent post: ”I actually made Earwig as an experiment. First I wanted to see if anyone would point out the fact that he wasn't a white kid (No one did, and most people I asked later said they didn't even notice).”

Edit: And I should add - I approach it taking interactivity into consideration. If I didn't, it might as well be about books or movies.

And by the way, DGMacphee is the MASTER of symbolism - his thoughts on the subject are really interesting and could certainly influence the future of AGS games.

I scored a proud 60%

That football question threw me off though: "Would you rather meet or be your favorite football player?" and I'm like: "Favorite football player?"

Yay, another Myst clone

That was really interesting - but I have to say this: Thank GOD for paper and pencil! Just THINKING about making 20 or so backgrounds with all that work makes me wonder what was really so bad about text adventures

[Minority characters in adventure games]

I'm sorry that I'm taking so long with this. But 1) I want to do it properly, as an example of how I think these discussion topics should be presented, and 2) I'm just really busy with my thesis, and this turned out to be more time consuming than I thought it would be.

I had hoped to start the discussion today, but it'll have to wait till tomorrow. Sorry about that. I can however reveal the topic, so you can start thinking about it. This time it's content related rather than technical:

Minority characters in adventure games

MrColossal: Love the pose in the second sprite. Very cute. Reminds me of a guy I saw at the gay pride parade this weekend