The Witcher 3

As one of the few game companies out there to demonstrate an awareness of queer characters and queer sexuality — even going as far to include scenes of sexual activity — why would you sabotage that potential progressiveness by the decidedly offensive material given to Deathmold in the Witcher 2? Are you aware that given the absolutely minimal representation of queerness in the medium, every representation is incredibly influential, and that your characterisation of Deathmold as a degenerate, vain, possible rapist whose only textual sexual encounter is immediately followed by his violent murder in a way not dissimilar to a hate-crime is an incredibly neglectful choice to inflict on your queer and progressively minded audience members? Do you realise that images like this contribute to the social acceptability of minority bashing and exclusion and to queer teenage suicide, in a way not mitigated by the (arguably positive) representation of the other queer characters in the text?

Can we expect The Witcher 3 to be as tone deaf when it comes to sexual minorities?

Or something a bit more condensed, whatever.

edited 17th May '13 6:48:03 PM by Nicknacks

(sigh) Because those aren't loaded questions. Just saying you could phrase em better.

edited 17th May '13 11:04:57 PM by MarkVonLewis

Sure.

So do tell us what the responses are, if you get around to asking these.

Oh come on.

No, but I've been spat on.

I've got no idea if you know what it's like to be queer, but take it from me that it fucking sucks at times. The Witcher 2 makes it very clear that I'm not a part of its intended audience, to put it lightly. In fact, it's grossly offensive and homophobic, and I'd be interested in seeing the producers consider the consequence of their (hopefully unconsidered) narrative choices.

Make no mistake, I'm not talking about gladhanded equal opportunity patronage. I'm talking about not being represented as a walking piece of shit first and only, and of not having one of the rare explicitly queer characters in video-games, ne popular fiction, be a vain, sadistic, unattractive rapist who engages in a turn off unsubjectivised sex before being castrated and subsequently murdered. i.e. play up to most, if not all, of the reductive stereotypes associated with male homosexuality before being sexually neutralised in a manner reminiscent of a hate crime.

Because that's fucking terrible.

Or should I be grateful he's not a paedophile instead?

edited 18th May '13 2:13:18 PM by Nicknacks

I'm invoking Twitter rules: 140 characters or less :p

You're a journo, you can make it fit.

This is an interview. My job is not to ask incredibly complex questions, just take down incredibly complex answers

"Do you intend to treat queer characters with more tact and sensitivity than you did Deathmold in 2?"

There ya go.

Legitimate question.

You can make it fit 140 words, is what I mean.

It's not a topic I've seen anyone bother to pursue with them, usually the closest we get is asking questions about why the camera likes to linger so much on female bodies than it does with males, and we get some dismissive response about it's not exploitative, it's adult.

No one asks about why the only black character in the setting was a villain, and no one asks why the male queer character was so fucking terrible. (And I expect them to make some point of Phillipa or whatever in reply to this, like the cases are remotely equal, and she didn't suffer from a great deal of male-gazey problems herself. Or perhaps to fob it off with "You can't expect all characters to be whiter than white. It's not The Witcher's way," which is just false parity and ignores the fact that the representation they chose ties into years of prejudicial and abusive discourse and practise.)

I know that any journo is pushing their luck to ask even one of these questions rather than choosing to pursue the conversation and follow them up on points, but what's the point of the interview if you're just going to explore the same old topics that everyone else will be? Anyone and everyone will be asking about how big the game will be, who'll be there, how it'll react to choice or how the open world will function or whatever. That's redundant to ask again.

Jonas, you're queer and you've got the technical skills to ask follow up questions given your line of work. I respect those things. Could you perhaps ask what their intentions were behind the inclusion of queer characters in The Witcher 2 was, then suggest that there was some mishandling of Deathmold in particular, and then emphasise that he really was terrible and totally tone deaf when (I feel) they inevitably downplay it?

Hmmm. I wonder if that puts the cart before the horse a little? I think there are a few easy ways to wriggle out of that.

edited 18th May '13 2:42:34 PM by Nicknacks

Probably. I just tossed that out, so it's definitely not airtight or anything.

" The Witcher 2 makes it very clear that I'm not a part of its intended audience, to put it lightly."

You're talking about the game series in which you can commit statutory rape. There's a ton of stuff that's offensive in this series. If you have a problem with it, send a message to the developers yourself, don't try to get someone to use their job to push for equality by questioning game developers.

edited 18th May '13 9:19:18 PM by stripesthezebra

JAF did ask for questions. Nothing wrong with there being some hardball ones, even if JAF doesn't end up asking them.

edited 18th May '13 9:57:38 PM by CorrTerek

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, setting of the game is apparently really medieval I guess its like having Victorian setting with realistic treatment of people who were treated crappily in Victorian times and then being offended by it. I don't really know whether that is good or bad thing.*shrugs*

Then again, this is about only such character in Witcher 2 being really abhorrent person? Well, thats worse, but I haven't played the games so I don't really know enough to comment on whether its "justified"(I've heard that EVERYONE in Witcher 2 is a horrible person) or not.

edited 18th May '13 10:02:36 PM by SpookyMask

It's not about people in-universe thinking homosexuality is wrong(male-on-male, of course, lesbians are still super cool), or even having a gay guy who is evil.

It's that the scene in which he is revealed as gay is also the scene where he tries to rape some dude he keeps as a sex slave. He then, in the very same scene(which brings up the question of why bother to reveal his sexuality in the first place), gets his balls cut off and shoved down his throat before dying pathetically.

If we take the logic that it is permissible to accurately inhere the values of the historical text as well as that text's semantic qualities, then there should be no problem releasing a novel that, say, explored the positive qualities and necessary need for the Klu Klux Klan's campaign to liberate the United States of the threat posed by the rebellious slave races. But that'd be racist, and would be rightly denounced as such. (See: Birth Of A Nation.)

The Witcher 2 isn't even an accurate representation of contemporary medieval fiction, in content or form. it has more in common with 20th century literature than historical texts (I mean, it's based on a series of novels, a model of writing that's only existed for the last two hundred years or so). There's no reason why it's necessary for it to be aggressively retrograde in its queer characterisations. They're not making the game for a medieval audience, after all. They're making it for a modern one, and should be judged by contemporary standards for fiction.

There are a few good characters, and many who run the gamut. Deathmold's one of the worst.

edited 19th May '13 12:22:28 AM by Nicknacks

Dethmold's death had absolutely nothing to do with his sexuality and plenty to do with the fact that Deathmold was holding the Temerian princess captive.

I don't give a rat's ass that he died, but about how his death scene(and, by proxy, the scene outing him as gay) was portrayed.

edited 19th May '13 1:09:09 AM by JotunofBoredom

All this talk of the Witcher reminds me - I need to go beat my one buddy with a goddamn grounding rod that I lent it to that up and sold it to cover his own financial woes.

Considering their half-assed, dismissive responses to RPS's interviews about Cyberpunk and whether the trailer was sexualising the girl in it, I doubt CDPR would give an actual response to any critiques about Dethmold in twitch2.

I mean RPS was going overboard with that whole angle but even then the devs being interviewed didn't even attempt to consider any implications to what they were writing.

Questions:

What's the inventory system going to be like? Are we still going with the list or back to a more grid based system like twitch1?

Are we likely to get more choice of main factions than Humans and Elves? And will that translate to a set of choices that are more branched out than simple Binary options?

"I've heard that EVERYONE in Witcher 2 is a horrible person"

Yeah they are, but that's no excuse for Dethmold, he was just insulting, and I understand why people would be offended. Alot of the Witcher is, honestly, unjustifiably offensive. I just don't think it's fair to ask someone to use their employment as your medium of protest, especially when it's clear that CD Projekt is prejudiced, and all someone could accomplish is starting an argument with them.

Edit: Well, I guess Triss, Zoltan and Dandelion are ok. And maybe Ves.

edited 19th May '13 8:29:50 AM by stripesthezebra

Obligatory "best RPG ever" vid.

edited 11th Jun '13 1:49:06 AM by googlebot

"Where the concept of choice will take on new meaning..."

Lol. There's over-the-top advertising and there's claiming that your game is going to reorder the way language operates.

Why yes, I am going to take every opportunity to tear this thing a new one. Though when they produce videos like that, they're just making it easy on me.

"A Crowning Achievement of RPG Genre"

Oh boy....

But then CDPR also said something like how open world gameplay with a strong emphasis on story had apparently never been done before. All in the game I guess.

edited 11th Jun '13 2:23:59 AM by ShadowScythe