Mass Effect's Gay Debate Shows Gamers Have Growing Up to Do
Another year, another great game in the Mass Effect series and another idiotic controversy to go along with it. With previous installments, the game has drawn the ire of the “family” crowd who doesn’t believe that an M-rated game should even hint at sex, overlooking the mass slaughter of humans and humanoids that makes up the game’s core premise. Blue alien buttcheeks offend their sensibilities, and as such the barely PG-13 “love scenes” landed the game national news coverage.
Now with Mass Effect 3?s release imminent, an even more dreaded bogeyman has now reared its head: GAY sex. The horror! After two games of featuring man/woman, man/alien and alien/woman love stories, the option now exists to make your Commander Shepard what I believe is the first gay video game lead in history.
Of course, as the word “option” implies, being gay is not mandatory. For the hetero crowd there are still plenty of sultry space women and curvy aliens who share your preferences. Or you don’t have to pursue the romantic angle at all, as the entire relationship side plot is optional in ALL the games.
But now fresh fuel has been added to the fire as the “gay sex” scene from the game has leaked onto YouTube. I have a hunch that it won’t remain online by the time this goes to print, but the reaction has already been chronicled. There are far more dislikes than likes on the video, something usually reserved for those awful reply girl shorts or when people throw kittens down stairs, and the comment section is the most hateful, vile, cesspool of internet ignorance I’ve seen outside of 4chan. A few samples:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/02/mass-effects-gay-debate-shows-gamers-have-growing-up-to-do/
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