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Same Sex Pairing?


Xientie

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I know romance isn't a big deal to first year students who are just settling into Academagia, but what about second year students and upwards, there are bound to be numerous romantic encounters, especially with greater frequency as you climb up through the academic years.

 

So my question is. When it comes around, will same sex pairing be available i.e boy + boy, girl + girl?

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  • 3 months later...

Bright day

What is the main issue in inclusion? The amount of extra writing?

 

In some other thread you mentioned "love flags", will it be possible for players to disable these if they do not see them fit some of their characters?

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What is the main issue in inclusion? The amount of extra writing?

 

Other than the Devs' not alienating any side of very contentious and emotionally charged Real Life social issue, I'd imagine both the additional writing and some increase the complexity of the systems for both NPC and player relationships would be a non-trivial increase to the development workload.

 

However, I'm confident the real explanation is the desire to prevent alienation of potential customers, hence their position of "we won't include non-heterosexual student relationships in retail game, but we don't care if mods are made including them".

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It's worth noting, though, that many games, both of small independent developers and of big name companies allow same sex pairings in their games with, as developers have spoken, no reportable loss of money and the amount of fans picked up overcoming by far the small amount 'alienated' by the idea that people who aren't straight can, gasp, have a game where they can play a character like them. I can pull out statistics and lists upon lists on that. David Gaider, writer for Bioware, had some notes on the subject when it came to Dragon Age 2 and a poster claiming that as a straight male gamer, the romances for female and gay players were taking up space that could have been better used for them:

 

The romances in the game are not for "the straight male gamer". They're for everyone. We have a lot of fans' date=' many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don't need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant... and that's ignoring the idea that they don't have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The "rights" of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent "right" to get more options than anyone else.

 

More than that, I would question anyone deciding they speak for "the straight male gamer" just as much as someone claiming they speak for "all RPG fans", "all female fans" or even "all gay fans". You don't. If you wish to express your personal desires, then do so. I have no doubt that any opinion expressed on these forums is shared by many others, but since none of them have elected a spokesperson you're better off not trying to be one. If your attempt is to convince BioWare developers, I can tell you that you do in fact make your opinion less convincing by doing so.

 

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as "political correctness" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

 

(...some specific notes about the game...)

 

And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that's my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.[/quote']

 

 

I can understand if the simple explanation for Academagia is that 'It's too time consuming to write', but I wish that even if they won't allow a gay romance in game, they would allow us to play our character as gay without writing them as automatically heterosexual.

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Everyone;

 

To chime in here to make certain it's clear: at present, we do not support homosexual romance in the game due to the amount of writing required to support both kinds of romance for both genders. It's possible (even, perhaps, probable) that we will eventually introduce it in game via new characters added to the game expressly for the purpose of supporting this kind of relationship for those who want to play homosexual characters. It's certainly not an alienation issue: PC Gamers, as a population, are generally very accepting of homosexuality, provided it's a choice. Life Simulation gamers even more so.

 

It's definitely the case that unless you *choose* it, the game shouldn't make a choice on sexuality for you- see Mikka's comment on the Suggestions & Improvements thread.

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More specifically, Bioware fell to the 'girlxgirl = hawt and okay', but 'guyxguy = GASP no (male!)Shepard can't be gay!' trap, which I almost find as being worse then if they just didn't include it in the first place (seperating it from their first Star Wars game, which did have a lesbian romance option but no gay male one, but Juhani felt much less 'look, girl on girl is sexy lol' then Liara did). But thankfully they'll be mxm romance in ME3, which is making a lot of people happy. Of course, considering that we've been whining on the boards since ME1, I figured it would happen eventually.

 

...now, Lucas Arts still being freaked out about it so it's hard to tell how things will go with the Old Republic, but, well, small steps.

 

 

Anyway, I'm really, really, really happy to hear that, Legate, and eagerly look forward to you folks adding a few characters that might lean that way: there's a lot of us who would appreciate it, and I hope you do get to go forward with that! The characters you guys write are all so interesting, too, that I'm sure their presence would be appreciated even by those who don't want to create a character who leans that way.

 

(Still continuing to work on my modded characters, though. XD Put so much work in to them so far that I giving up just would be unfun!)

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I thought Dragon Age 2 was being hated by the fans tho.

I mean, if Academagia was set in Kirkwall, we'd probably have about 30 locations only and nothing else and you have to enter a duel every minute because someone fall down from the sky to kill you and your choices in adventure will never matters :(

 

@Mikka: Do you have an description of our little fella there? It doesn't hurt to write up a few events involving him after all xD

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Ooo, Legate. I really need to get to work, then. :)

 

I definitely do, Creme. However, I'm almost at the point where I'm going to do what I figure is an alpha- horrible portraits and unfinished adventures, but as a begging effort to have people put them in, inform, and then see if the AI is cooperating and they're actually doing useful things. When I do that, I'll post description and what I was going for, as to hopefully be of help for anyone else who would like to contribute (which would be really, really nice <3).

 

 

As for DA2, hee. The hate for it comes and goes: it gets horrible ratings on metacritic, but around half of the reviews mention either that it's not DA:Origins or the Witcher 2, and thus it sucks. It's hard to really tell- it seems to have sold well enough for the creators to be happy, and I personally thought it was of good quality (if not excellent, but I'd say the same about DA:O), but... lots of complaints.

 

DA2/Academagia would be incredibly amusing. You're right: 30 locations, duels by the day, attacks from the sky, everyone you meet is an idiot, buttt... your clique-members would gossip about you just at the edge of hearing range, and they'd say the most hysterical things, and that would make it almost worth it.

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  • 1 month later...

As I recall, nope- then again, I'm in the crowd who played DA2 once, and gave up on the franchise.

 

That said, might I ask what the difficulty is in making same-sex relationships? If there's anything to be taken from DA2, then why not the 'every love interest is bi' option? Especially since I doubt Academagia will have voiced characters; as I see it, shouldn't it be a simple matter of changing gender pronouns? We don't have to go into the complications our world suffers; just have the world be relatively liberal, and we're done.

 

Then again, I'm not a dev, so I might be talking out my arse, I dunno :)

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Everyone is bi is, I think, a good choice when you have a small group of characters. Bioware only had four (well, five if you count Seb, but I usually forget to) love interests to work on and had much harsher deadlines (and, yeah, voicing). However, with a large cast, I'm not sure it's an ideal. Certainly, I can imagine that certain characters already written might be bisexual, and I think if the mod tools in later years are made more cooperative for people with slow computers, you'll likely see mods turning favorite character A bi (or gay, even). And certainly, it wouldn't be hard to write everything as gender neutral. To me, though, I ask this: why settle?

 

There are many stories that work for both a hetrosexual and homosexual relationship. In fact, I would say that the majority of stories work for both. But there are a few that don't. A story about the PC (with a poor background) romancing one of the richer students in their fourth or fifth years could easily lead in to their plans for marriage afterward. Whether the PC character is being shunned by their romance-interest's parents due to them not being worthy of being a parent for the next generation heir or because they don't have the ability to create that heir are both interesting problems- and yeah, sure, they could be combined in to one.

 

Or Straight Romance can focus on the first, and Gay Romance can focus on the latter, meaning each problem is given full attention and focus rather then needing to balance both.

 

Using the mod tools, one can create a student who is basically the same as all others. You can write their adventures, quirks, programming, events, abilities- it all works out. The only thing that is at all a limitation is the portrait, and faking a portrait is a lot easier then needing a full voice and model as you would for Dragon Age 2. That means that the only thing stopping people from modding in 70 gay students to go with the 70 straight ones is, well, time.

 

This is sort of round-a-bout, but what I am trying to say is: if we had the limitations put on us like the Dragon Age II limitations place, I would definitely agree. But as they're not really there, I think creating students as straight, bi, and gay is fine. I do hope that we'll see some official students discover that hey, maybe they're actually bi as the years go on or have some gay students transfer in, as official is always going to get more noticed then modding- but even with modding, things'll go okay. I think.

 

There are difficulties right now with the programing, however. The flirt and courteous gestures abilities cannot be altered: you can't can't make a character only be flirted with by boys when they're a boy without that character being listed in game as a girl, and vice-versa. You can sort of stop the character from flirting and courteous gesturing themselves (mostly by having them avoid gaining the abilities due to severe personality negativites, and by having them avoid raising relations with the opposite sex- not ideal, but it works), but you can't stop them from being flirted/courteous gestured at.

 

Hopefully next year that'll be flaggable or otherwise alterable.

 

 

 

Oh, as for Darkspawn, I think they gave around five different answers, with none of them being definite. Reminds me of White Wolf, actually.

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  • 1 month later...

From my game: Neta Xemutre succeeded at using Courteous Gestures on Neta Xemutre and Prudence Cossins.

 

I'm glad cause both are in my Clique, but on the other hand: the ability is for using on the opposite sex. So a bug or something that answered the question of this thread. :)

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It's a bug that drives me nuts, too, as there's no way to predict it to actually behave. Cyrus used to hit my male Avila student with that all the time (as well as Show Off). Yet, obviously, it also does work with the opposite sex.

 

Flirt does usually seem to work for NPCs that they only hit the opposite gender, but quite a few of the others are a bit iffy.

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  • 1 year later...

It's worth noting, though, that many games, both of small independent developers and of big name companies allow same sex pairings in their games with, as developers have spoken, no reportable loss of money and the amount of fans picked up overcoming by far the small amount 'alienated' by the idea that people who aren't straight can, gasp, have a game where they can play a character like them. I can pull out statistics and lists upon lists on that. David Gaider, writer for Bioware, had some notes on the subject when it came to Dragon Age 2 and a poster claiming that as a straight male gamer, the romances for female and gay players were taking up space that could have been better used for them:

 

Dunno about your "lists upon lists", haven't seen them, but the one example you mentioned is a different story.

BW's games have been increasing the amount of that kind of content over the years, attracting the audience over the years as well. At the present distribution of their fanbase a decrease of volume of such content would notably hurt them in fact.

 

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as "political correctness" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

 

(...some specific notes about the game...)

 

And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that's my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.

 

Don't know who D.G. was arguing with, and what audacious claims the poster had made (though I vaguely recall seeing a similarly sounding topic, and if this is it, than, indeed, he was dealing with an outright jerk), but some of those arguments are disputable.

 

The majority of majority (any majority, not just in this particular case) are calm and silent about the division by which they are classified as majority. They are content, they have no reason for passionate expression of their views and ambitions. In basic terms, "they don't give a damn". There's a term "silent majority" it exists for a good reason.

 

Than, there's the "vocal majority" which is not the part of majority that is vocal, but rather the majority of all those being vocal. Sometimes it's the same, some times it isn't. It's views are rarely ever the same as majority, as, like stated above, the majority doesn't give a damn, or, more precisely, has next to no views (they have "passive views", so to speak).

 

The majority doesn't always have things go their way, there are several examples of minority being on the bright side of the division, not majority. The division between rich and poor is one shining example of that.

 

But in any even the majority is almost always content. When it isn't, the divisions soon resolve themselves. Examples of such "resolutions" are revolution and genocide.

 

There are calmer dynamics of divisions, but these involves continuous although seemingly peaceful (any takeover, regardless of how "fair", IS an aggressive endeavour) redistribution of "privilege" (I'd use the term "assets", but this one will do).

 

In a sense, what happened with BW's content "distribution" is an example of such dynamic.

 

And while the shouts of parts of vocal society "give us and none else" are indeed egoistic in nature, those shouts cut very close to the real issue.

 

Let's cut off briefly and study this example:

 

There's a mathematical problem described as following.

 

A competition is being held between two towns. For it to commence all the competitors need to gather in one place. The preparation costs are insignificant, and the only concern is travelling. The question is - where to hold a competition to minimize the travelling effort of participant?

 

Solution.

Total travelling effort=(Travelling effort of competitors from A)*(Amount of competitors from A) + (Travelling effort of competitors from B)*(Amount of competitors from B)

Placing a meeting point anywhere other than between A and B is an obvious waste of travelling effort, so:

(Travelling effort of competitors from A) + (Travelling effort of competitors from B) = Effort needed to travel from A to B

 

Modifying the first statement:

Total travelling effort=(Travelling effort of competitors from A)*(Amount of competitors from A) + ((Effort needed to travel from A to B) - (Travelling effort of competitors from A))*(Amount of competitors from B)=(Travelling effort of competitors from A)*((Amount of competitors from A)-(Amount of competitors from B)) + (Effort needed to travel from A to B) * (Amount of competitors from B)

 

The factors shown in italic are constant.

 

Total travelling effort=(Travelling effort of competitors from A)*((Amount of competitors from A)-(Amount of competitors from B)) + constant amount.

 

It is now apparent that, if A has more competitors than B, travelling effort of competitors from A should be minimized. The minimum being zero.

 

And the answer is - Hold the competition in the town that more competitors hail from.

 

Back, to the present discussion. Reality gives us much more complex problems, bringing in extra towns (which is a calculable change), brining in extra coefficients to effort (which is an easily calculable change) and finally making those coefficients dynamic (which is the hardest complication). But the root of a problem is the same - who to give the extra slack to, in order to get the maximum total benefit.

 

Granted, that's not the problem which vocal moronity has in mind, but they cut pretty close to the point. When deciding who to handle "privileges" to, the altruistic things to consider are: how many people will you please, and how much will it please them (the aforementioned dynamic coefficient). Egoistic view usually follows close to that, except it considers the value of "returning" pleasure, rather than the given pleasure.

 

Ideally, it moves away from majority until, due to coefficients dynamics, the following balance ensues.

 

(Size of majority) * (Appreciation of majority) = (Size of minority) * (Appreciation of minority)

 

In case of more "sides" we simply compare more statements.

 

The method is always the same - find the side with the greatest total appreciation, and keep feeding it until, due to dynamic coefficients, that stops being the case.

 

This is the rule of both the altruistic distribution, and egoistic distribution. (Except in egoistic case you put the quotes to the words "appreciation", and get a different result)

Any other distribution mechanic is neither altruistic, nor economically efficient.

 

So yes, the majority has more "privileges", and that's how it goes in any altruistic scenario. You feed those who's need is greatest first until their need is greatest no more.

 

Granted, not everyone in the world is an altruist, but the egoists follow close behind, and as long as potential for financial "appreciation" isn't dramatically distorted (it is distorted in our case, but not dramatically) the situation favours majority, and there's nothing to be "righteously furious" about in it. (There's a shit-load of ground for pretenders though, which reside on both sides of vocal society).

 

I can understand if the simple explanation for Academagia is that 'It's too time consuming to write', but I wish that even if they won't allow a gay romance in game, they would allow us to play our character as gay without writing them as automatically heterosexual.

Just how do you envision a character "role-playing" his affection with no suitable targets?

I can see two ways. But one of them (being alone) is already an option, and another one is a case for lawsuit.

 

Although, the game DOES write-out a number of "romantic" thoughts of the character, but if the development team is willing to go that deep I'd like to use this chance to request an option for the character not to display any "romantic" strings at all. If we get options like that, than the first logical option to request is this one - not being romantic at all. It's as close to the middle ground as one can get, AND it's an actual viewpoint to boot.

 

Continuing the topic though, there are other concerns to consider.

 

We "owe" a lot of social phenomena to our scientific development, or rather to social spread of practical application of our scientific development.

The phenomenon this thread describes as "same sex pairing" is no exception.

To avoid the long subject I'll make the explanation as short as possible.

Standing against (keyword, AGAINST, not just "outside of") the society's views takes a lot of courage. The more of "them" and the less of "you" there is, the more it takes. Obviously, as more and more people "take up the position", the required courage threshold gets less and less. "Jumps", in which these thresholds move, depend on the size of persons (the ones attempting to cross the threshold) informational space. And once there's no more people to take the position at current threshold the movement halts.

 

Point is, a lot of currently widespread viewpoints would have never become widespread without the existence of global communication (and, IMO, in the field of influence on society, internet checks-out as negative, but that's a separate long topic), and the one in question is one of those.

 

I'm no scholar of Academagia's lore, but I've seen no evidence of global communication there, and a few hints to it's non-existence. (Correspond, for example, is described as being done through letters). In such an environment a lot of social phenomena seen in modern society are hardly believable, unless of cause they were dominant since the forming of society, or unless their society is considerably more forgiving than ours, which, in turn, judging by their methods of education, is also hardly believable. And, up to current point, we've clearly seen which viewpoint on the question in question is dominant in the world of academagia.

 

Of cause it doesn't mean that such viewpoint does not exist there, but at the very least, few would be brave enough to be vocal or even open about it. (And there we have Bioware, who make unbelievable happen on a regular basis... And I'm not just talking about our current subject)

 

Last, but MOST IMPORTANT, we have a game about a group of children (In fact, when I clicked on this topic's link, I though the topic "Same Sex Pairing" is about friendship progression and it's comparison to romance progression, or in other words, how detailed the friendship gets), sure, they are mature enough to cast magic, live away from parents, choose their own education and ... do research (???), but they also learn grammar, play bucket pranks, and as a group's average, look nowhere close to puberty.

 

Should romance even proceed any further than holding hands at this point? Sure, maybe closer to year 5 some of them might be physically old enough to learn "how the flowers do it", but that's about it.

 

Yes, I know, we already have flirting and things like "Voice of favours". But do we really have to push our adult urges any furtherer into an other wise, "kid's tale" themed environment? I definitely don't think so.

 

Even if we do decide to break that unspoiled idealistic world, let's do it properly. These kids haven't even learned about sexual attraction yet, how the heck can they have a pre-defined disposition at this point? Right, they don't, and where do they find it? Same place we do - they mimic what they see around them and check if the role fits! (and that's the dominating reason why the whole topic is so polarized in our society)

 

Although, to be frank, I'd hate to have to break away from a romance just because one of the kids found out that "they are of a different kind", but that's the only right way to go about a romance that started before puberty and includes a kid who's "different".

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Adrian;

 

Wrong forum, and wrong thread...but I want to know too. :)

Short version: There's an implication that the chantry version is more or less accurate, except that the Golden City was already corrupt by the time Tevinter mages made it there.

 

Shesh... they really did make an effort to make their monotheism look as revolting as possible...

 

Long version - http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Darkspawn

 

I'd be willing to bet that whatever information appears on the subject will make it into this page. That is, if I'd ever be willing to bet anything.

 

That's the courtesy of the internet (one of them anyway...) - you don't have to pay for excruciatingly boring games and their milking DLC in order to legally learn their plot at least at "retell" level.

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  • 1 year later...

I agree with a lot of what Mikka said on page 1. Everyone being bisexual works in some games, but might not be a good fit for Academagia.

 

Anyway, what I came into this ancient thread to say is that I'd love gay/bi romance options, either official ones or via mods. But even if there aren't any official ones I'd really like some NPC's to be officially non-straight. You wouldn't even have to make a big deal out of it, just putting it there so that some players would notice would be enough for me. Just to acknowledge that, you know, non-straight people exist. You've got all these actions to influence members of the opposite sex, as well as being able to spend background points on being popular with the opposite sex, and there are some characters whose profiles only describe how popular they are with the boys/girls. When the game mechanics aren't also acknowledging that non-straight people exist, this kind of sends the wrong message.

 

I find Academagia to be a very realistic depiction of a school. Realistic, but depressing. There are a lot of romance-related rumours and intrigue, being popular with the opposite sex is an important coolness factor, there's a lot of bullying going on and, as far as we know, no student or teacher is non-straight. I can understand why no one would want to be open about their sexuality in a school like that. (The students don't use homophobic slurs, though, so I guess in that respect it is better than reality.) Having a few NPCs that aren't straight (at least so that it's notable in the game mechanics or is mentioned briefly somewhere) might improve the school atmosphere.

 

I don't mean to sound like this is the single most important thing to be changed and that if you don't change it the game series will be terrible. All in all, I think Academagia is a school full of wonder and magic and excitement. I'd love to go there. This one aspect of Academagia just happens to bother me.

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