|
| |
 |
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 a forum for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment
ABOUT About This Site - RSS Feed Ian Bogost (editor) Gonzalo Frasca (editor) SPONSORS
COMMUNITY
|
|
No Marriage, Gay or Otherwise, in Middle Earth April 28, 2007 - by Ian Bogost One of our more popular posts here on Water Cooler Games is a mention three years ago about gay marriage in The Sims 2. Just last week, Turbine and Midway released The Lord of the Rings Online, sure to become an absurdly over-discussed and possibly popular massively multi-player game. The debate seems to have begun around the very topic of gay marriage. Today, Salon published a story by Katherine Glover: Why can't gay dwarves get married in Middle-earth?. Apparently Turbine's solution to the quandary was just to pull marriage from the game entirely. The article covers many themes, including social interaction in MMOs, gay gamers, and marriage in virtual worlds. Despite the apparent popularity of marriage -- and moreso sex -- in virtual worlds, Turbine justified the decision to axe the feature as an issue of adaptation fidelity:
"The rule that we tried to follow across the board was: if there's an example of it in the book, the door is open to explore it," [Turbine game designer Nik Davidson] says. "Very rarely will you see an elf and a human hook up, but it does happen; the door is open. Dwarves don't intermarry with hobbits; that door is shut ... Did two male hobbits ever hook up in the shire and have little hobbit civil unions? No. The door is shut."
Davidson also cites Tolkein's conservative Catholic background as further justification for the decision. I don't agree with SCAD professor and sex in games expert Brenda Brathwaite's objection that videogames require "abdicating authorship and letting a player explore a world," but I am happy to see a debate like this taking place. GayGamer calls it a "cop out"; more discussion at GamePolitics and Kotaku. (thanks to Dakota for the link) POST A COMMENT
TRACKBACKS
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.watercoolergames.org/mt-tback.cgi/777
Links to weblogs that reference No Marriage, Gay or Otherwise, in Middle Earth will be listed here.
|
|
|
|
SELF PROMOTION
RECENT ARTICLES My new column: Texture
Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on how videogames are tactile. But unlike paintings and plats ... Liz Losh on the NASA MMO Fail Recently I made some strong remarks about NASA's decision to pull (or "reconfigure") the funding plan for their long-planned educational ... iTunes App Store can reject you for any reason Following my occasional series of gripes about Apple openness (1, 2, 3, 4), I thought I'd share a part of ... Boxing Politician Games. Again. It happens every election cycle, it seems. Games that allow players to make their favorite candidate box against their least ... Me on Advertising and Games in the Guardian If you read the Guardian, you may have noticed that they are running a series of articles and opinion pieces ... Libery City Satire I am a Gorilla NASA MMO Update: Brains Pulled, not Funding NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0 Air Traffic Chaos FAVORITES Does expression come in HD too?
Food Force
A Force More Complicated
PSP and Performance Intelligence
A Review of the Leapster
ALSO VISIT
|
|
|
|
RECENT COMMENTS
Ian Bogost on
Libery City Satire
tanner on Libery City Satire Tele3dworld on NASA MMO Update: Brains Pulled, not Funding Tele3dworld on NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0 Ian Bogost on NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0 ADVERTISERS 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © Ian Bogost & Gonzalo Frasca, unless otherwise noted. Re-printing for commercial purposes by permission only (contact us: ). Re-printing for educational purposes is allowed with proper attribution. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
