Actually, I'll Take the Flood.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm pretty Liberal. I'm perfectly fine with homosexuality and the like in video games, really, it's totally cool. The developers though, it's like they've never met an actual homosexual person. Here's a hint: they don't hit on anything that moves, nor do they announce that they're gay every few minutes. Maybe some guy does, but fuck that guy. The worst for this is anything recently made by BioWare. Hell, in DragonAge 2 you lost points if you turned a guy hitting on you down in any of the four occasions he tries to make a move.

Which brings me to this eldritch abomination, The Arkh Project. Let's put aside the awful writing, complete lack of any creativity and general sense of weaboo one gets from any of their previews and just address the game's goal: 

"To make a game that focuses on queer people and people of color as main characters, and beyond that, allow people who are tired of mainstream gaming to have something completely off the wall and step into a new role".

This is so carefully treading the line between advertising and propaganda.

Why why why why why. They're not under-represented, hell, it's been talk of the town for the past year or so. People of colour? Since when has racism been an issue in gaming, plenty of games feature black people and Asian people and all bloody people under the sun. It's never been something that needed addressed, it's the 21st God-damn century, not the 1950's. Now, those of you who have more opinions than brain cells right now are thinking that maybe I don't see the issue, maybe I'm just missing the bigger picture. I'm really not, you know why?

This game is a scam, the whole project is. At some point the creators sat down and thought to themselves: "what kind of people are well-off, have too much free time and are easily manipulated"? Not politicians, but the good folk on Tumblr. Some of the worst of our generation who are just bored and look for issues to be angry about (shut up, I have plenty of reasons to be angry about things). So when they hear "under-represented people" and "video game" they get so excited they throw off their lensless glasses, run out of Starbucks and tweet everyone they know about The Arkh Project.

The thing is, you don't hear much about homosexuallity outside of BioWare because sexual orientation has very little to do with anything in the vast, vast majority of games. The hero's saving the day, not exploring his sexuallity, there are more pressing things at hand. It's like picking up a copy of Diablo II and saying potted ferns and under-represented in it, it just doesn't make any bloody sense. Then you take it one step further and make a game about potted ferns and how evil non-plotted ferns are. 

Coming soon: The Plant Project. Like on Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Reddit and Google+.

What happened to tolerance and compassion? My favourite quote is "tolerate all but the intolerant", and it works perfectly here. That is my issue with this thinly veiled, cancerous scam that will no doubt get plenty of donations and make it to a finished product; it will then go on to cause controversy and make everyone angry at folks like myself for actually having a God-damned brain.