Players of Star Wars: The Old Republic can opt for gay relationships now that the creator of the game, BioWare, has allowed for lesbian, gay, transgender and “interspecies” relationships as part of the game’s plot.
While LGBT allies and activists have praised the move, other groups are not as enthusiastic about its same-sex partnerships. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has called the video game’s homosexual relationships as “the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists… in a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side.”
Perkins made the comments on his radio show titled “Rebel Fleet Surrenders to Gay Empire.”
As to parents who allow their children and teens to play the game, Perkins added: “their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking.”
Bioware stands behind its decision to incorporate LGBT relationships into the video, explaining, “Many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature.
The game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.”
Pink News added:
In 2007, Bioware included a lesbian storyline in its Mass Effect game.
The “scene of lesbian intimacy” led to the game being briefly banned in Singapore.
The Family Research Council supported a move last year to drop Haruki Murakami’s critically acclaimed Norwegian Wood from a New Jersey school’s reading list, citing the “homosexual agenda”.
The organization was classified as a ‘hate group’ in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a listing it called “slanderous”.
The game was announced in 2008 and developed by teams in Austin, Texas and at Bioware’s headquarters in Alberta, Canada at an estimated cost of $150-200 million.
Released in December, the updates which include gay characters have yet to be implemented.
Lol that guy is just so so clever, i’m sure he is very pleased with his little puns. My kid brother plays this game, and I’ve had no interest in it whatsoever, it just got a lot cooler.
I hated watching my brother play games where women were always the sex items for dominating heterosexual males. Why wouldn’t game makers always broaden their audience by being open to same sex and trans experiences in the game. It just makes sense from a business perspective. The rest of the haters can suck it. Plus, perhaps R2D2 and the other robots are in gay relationships! tehehe