Star Wars: The Old Republic and its new ‘Gay Planet’

Star Wars: The Old Republic and its new ‘Gay Planet’

Peril of the Pink Planet

BioWare wants to take you to a gay bar. Or rather, a gay planet. Star Wars: The Old Republic is being updated to include a rather inelegant solution to its lack of gay characters – a planet called best gay hookup apps for android Makeb where all the homosexual elements of the galaxy can be found.

Makeb will appear in the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion pack, and will include characters with “flirtatious” dialog for same-sex players – a move that some feel amounts to digital segregation.

This attempt at compromise has had the unfortunate result of making everybody unhappy. Gay players now feel like a gated afterthought, while homophobes are spewing their pathetically predictable outrage at having to share the vastness of space with some gay people.

“ It will ruin the game and make a lot of people leave it,” reads one such utterly selfish comment.

While BioWare’s catching a lot of heat from all corners, and the idea of a single planet housing all the gay elements of the universe comes across as alienating and just plain weird, I find it hard to be totally mad at the studio here.

It’s true that Makeb makes the idea of gay relationships look more of an afterthought than ever, but most other videogames still struggle with after-afterthoughts, and you’d be hard pressed to find many other mainstream studios with a more consistent track record of not being shit about acknowledging homosexuality. Not to mention, the source material wasn’t exactly a guiding light on the topic, so BioWare’s been bolder than most others have been.

Makeb itself is something of a stop-gap while BioWare works on companion characters with which to enjoy “same gender relationships,” something executive producer Jeff Hickman admitted would take more work than expected. Læs videre “Star Wars: The Old Republic and its new ‘Gay Planet’”