Many of you may have seen some of the news coverage that has centered around Star Wars: The Old Republic in the past 24 hours, however, it is not the kind of coverage our beloved game would like to see, nor should it. There seems to be a flurry of information surrounding this “Gay Planet” debacle.
Most folks have heard of the FOX News article that contained some information about Rise Of The Hutt Cartel that seems somewhat out of place:
The gay planet will appear only in an expansion pack called “Rise of the Hutt Cartel,” and it will include characters with canned, flirtatious dialog for same-sex players. The move has generated controversy among everyone involved, with some calling for a separation of sexual preference from the game, and others lambasting what they say feels like digital segregation.
However, this article isn’t attributed to any author or attributes no sources to the article other than Jeff Hickman’s State of the Game post he made recently. Most folks, especially current and former BioWare employees were quick to jump on FOX News for their reporting.
However, what is less known and a bit more strange, is the fact that the FOX News report is merely one in a few articles on this topic today. Other similar articles headlined at other sites such as Destructoid and International Business Times. Seeing as how this information has now been out since January 2nd, one would wonder why this torrent of coverage over this issue came out now. While there is a decent amount of animosity directed towards FOX and these other outlets, it seems the main antagonizer has gone mostly uncovered.
Much to everyone’s dismay, FOX is not the fine inventor of these falsity’s. The origin of these articles appears to be a fairly controversial opinion piece at PC Games N written by Steve Hogarty. This piece features some fairly strongly worded thoughts on the idea of SGRA’s in SWTOR.
Why have all the space-faring homosexuals been exiled to Makeb? Even weirder: why do players have to pay real money to visit this extraterrestrial homo-haven?
It also becomes somewhat mean spirited at different points, coming short of accusing BioWare Austin of bigotry against homosexuals.
Maybe it’s appropriate that Makeb has stirred up this much melodrama. Seeing it attacked so viciously by the few blinkered players who haven’t had their backwards views censored by forum moderators actually makes me feel strangely protective of this little gay planet, even though in practice it’s a terrible sort of gay zoo, a homosexual holding pen borne of BioWare Austin’s old fashioned attitude and lack of foresight.
While the article raises some interesting points regarding the way in which SGRA is being tested in SWTOR, it seems to go about it in an incredibly sensational way that detracts from the topic to try to grab the attention of news sites, which, they apparently have succeeded.
After reading the PC Games N article, it becomes somewhat obvious that this is something of an attention grabbing piece. What is more frightening is how multiple news outlets took this and ran with it as a prime source rather than reaching out to BioWare Austin for comment or doing some research to find out what might be going on in this expansion. While there is no lack of controversy surrounding FOX News, Destructoid and others, it seems odd that this many sites would create news stories based on what is nothing more than an attention grabbing opinion piece, rather than a true, objective news source.
Is this the last we hear of the so-called “Gay Planet”? Will this controversy continue or grow? What do you think, TORWarriors?
TORWars Podcast #152: The Terrors of Nuturing the SWTOR Community
I think the biggest problem with internet media taking the main stage from print is the fact that every unemployed journalist feels like their opinions, use of alliteration, and clever puns is a substitute for accurate sourcing and integrity
Sounds like what im doing here, lol.
To be fair, I tried so hard not to include some kind of pun.
We know how mangled and poorly done this story is only because of our intimate knowledge of the subject. It makes me wonder how many other stories news sites have done that have been similiarly mangled, but I was unaware because I was not intimately familiar with the subject.
Scary thought.
Happens all the time and it’s usually Fox News complaining about it. Poor show on their part.
This is how bad journalism always worked. Take a non issue, pump it and make it appear much bigger that it is. We are talking about a couple of same gender flirt dialogue options available to some NPCs in Makeb and not some kind of porn. Absolutely not a big deal.
But that is EA/Bioware’s fault too. They should have incorporated this option placing NPCs in some existing planets with a minimal quest line for free in some content patch and not to an expansion that the player has to pay for. Hence “Pay 2 Gay”, even if i am hating the title and the notion.
Any self respecting gay male could tell you this was going to happen. Nobody puts Baby in a corner, and that’s effectively exactly what Bioware did. The fact that this kind of attention surprises Bioware only goes to show that they are very bad at judging not just their game, but the public as well.
Esras I am baffled by your comment, I sure hope I am just misunderstanding you.
I must admit to feeling genuine anger towards this article. I find I cannot even call it “journalism” as that implies something that is objective and reporting the facts. This article and the subsequent pieces are hack jobs, ill researched, attention seeking pieces of trash. I don’t understand how sites can get away with reporting trash like this and it’s at times like this that I begin to realize just how far we’ve sunk where so called news sites aim for sensationalism over facts.
That aside, what continues to baffle me is the constant negativity the so called mainstream news sites give SWTOR. I follow a lot of other news sites and blogs about WOW, Rift, GW2 etc and there is nowhere near the negativity that this game continues to generate. Is SWTOR perfect? No. Does it deserve this much negative press? No. I actually wonder how many of the people writing these pieces have even bothered to play this game with an open mind.
All this just reinforces to me how great a resource the torwars team is to the community. While you guys aren’t always objective and sometimes dive off the deep end (remembering the shaved wookies here) at least I can count on you to base everything off of solid facts rather than mostly flimsy supposition. Please keep up the great work!
Just to make it clear I meant the original piece, not Brian’s piece…. Must remember to make things clearer!
At first i was like
D:
Then i was like
Anger clouds the mind….to the dark side it leads….and apparently the land of poor grammar, spelling and unclear comments….
Why does a planet that has a handful of “same sex” flirting options get called the Gay Planet? More to the point, Why does anyone care?
Personally, i don’t care about the flirting options. My characters will avoid them. BUT it’s nice that they are there. There are gay players in the game. They are entitled to gay flirt options.
For those players sakes, and not my own, i hope that Makeb is a testing ground and by years end, gay and lesbian players will be able to have a samesex companion.
This also proves what i’ve always believed. News agencies don’t care about reporting the news. They report what will make them money. “The fair and decent expansion with more options for character sexual preference.” will not get as many views (and as such, money from ads) as “the gay planet.”
I think I haven’t seen a planetary issue get this blown up since Alderaan met the Deathstar…
Sensationalist and dumb, all of the reports have done zero research in my view as everything I’ve read or heard about the expansion is not about SGRA except to say that there will be the availability of same-sex romance with an npc (I assume, one male and one female). Done, on to the next point.
So gay planet? Not unless the residents of Makeb are universally happy happy happy…
Well, the PC Games N guy originally stating his opinion, I can’t blame him for that. It’s a valid opinion, if a little overstated.
How ‘news outlets’ take that message and run away with it though, reporting it as if it was fact, that’s a whole different matter and indefensible. But yeah, it’s Fox News/Murdoch Press after all.
Well, some of the blame belongs to Bioware as well though. Their communication on this subject was horrible. Months of silence about SGR and then BAM, the big, gay planet.
I know it’s not what they said, but if people can easily twist it that way now, something went wrong.
They need to find better PR/communications people.
Planet of the gays:
/spoiler: At the end of the world story it turns out you were just in San Francisco on a Friday Night.
I find it interesting how a none-event (announcing SGRA’s coming with the expansion) to when some hack writes a op-ed piece and next thing you know its the biggest news story.
I think people are giving this hack too much attention. I think if we all decide to let it die now – the story will dry up and go away.
I tend to agree with you, however i saw everyone blaming only one media outlet and not knowing the full extent and idiocy of this whole thing. Hoped to shed a little more light on it for those interested.
As someone who has both a lesbian best friend (and helped set up and support their relationship) and another friend who is vehemently opposed to gay anything…. sigh.. I am not going to call those against bigots, many of them have good points and a right to their opinions. Nor am I going to call the Gays evil or anything like that, my own personal opinions on the subject are a bit more grey and neither side would like. Yay for non universal worldviews and a unqiue culture!
Honestly I hope this brings more players to TOR, and I do worry about Timmy, that average 16 year old gamer whos parents plugged tor out of his life because they heard TOR supports the SGRA issue. Thing is I sympathize with both “Timmy” and his parents.
Field testing SGRA on Makeb makes good sense from a coding standpoint.
Adding it into something new relieves us of the hassle of bugged companion quest chains if they were to try to insert it into them now.
BW has such a good trackrecord, dontcha know, of not breaking something while trying to fix it ever since they sacked 1/2 their QA in may
Saw the article as soon as it was put up, as I frequent all websites on both sides of the spectrum. Couldn’t help but chuckle to myself when I saw the headline.
[Insert tongue-in-cheek speculation as to the ulterior motives of the Republic, Empire, and Hutts in fighting over the so-called "gay planet."]
I think there are many dark rooms on this planet.
What really irritates me as a gay gamer is gay gaming blogs that are criticizing the move. What sends me into a “Click the Dark Side option” rage is that often the writer will admit to not playing the game but still finds fault with this move. Gah! I would love full companion romance options but I’m excited that the game is moving forward in SGRAs.