Oh, rage day. How I love these.

I will start with the notable absence of a pod-cast or post in the last couple days, just to get the drab details out of the way before I get into what I actually want to talk about. It turns out all my fancy expensive pod-casting equipment decided to not work last Sunday and no amount of mad fiddling could get it to agree with us. The frustration of this was compounded by the fact that we have made the same equipment function perfectly in the past, but merely forgot what horribly convoluted combination of settings was required to make it all run properly. After several hours of trying we gave up in defeat and thus nothing was posted. I'm going to spend the next week trying to get those settings back, but if I fail utterly we'll either do a work-around involving a video camera or just proceed with the type up alone.

H'okay onto the rage.

I recently ran across an article pointing to a post made on the Bioware forums concerning one of their recent games; Dragon Age 2. To be brief the game is a medieval setting Role Playing Game that has you control a tiny band of heroes as they saunter about saving the world or rescuing some one. The goal of the game is frankly secondary - it's one of the side features that's gained the spotlight in this debate. In an attempt to expand the dynamic of the game Bioware implemented a romance system. Your main character could interact with many or all of the members of your band and engagement them in a romantic relationship. This varied slightly depending on their games I believe, but that once again isn't the point. The point revolves around one's capacity to make those relationships homosexual. You can make your own character male or female and regardless of that choice can still pursue any of the available members in your group.

It's worth stepping back at this point to note this is actually a secondary feature. It's not even one of the main selling points of the series unless you categorize it as apart of the 'good characterization' that Bioware is frequently praised for. It does, none the less, remain only a single facet of that feature.

It appears some one has a serious issue with this being present in the game. Of course, this being the Internet I don't mean they hosted a protest or anything, but instead they've brought it up in a long and actually quite well written and polite post on their main forums. It's available here in full. His point centralized around not so much that homosexuality is bad (though he makes special note to say he personally finds it disgusting), but that by including it in the game Bioware is neglecting the majority of the fans. He then goes on to start quite estimates and percentages on how many male straight gamers and homosexuals play the game respectively. He blatantly state he's just ball parking these and that he has nothing to back up his number, nor even attempted to do any research, but feels confident enough that he's correct to base his entire argument around it.

Frankly I'm not actually going to pick apart his estimate that 80% of Bioware fans are male and straight, or his tendency to create arguments out of illusionary facts, because everyone does that. It's just part of being human it seems. No, what concerns me is the jump in logic he makes. It's an enormous leap, that I'm sure many people reading this will have already seen despite my deliberate vagueness. The basis of his argument is that it only makes good business sense to make a game entirely for the majority of the fans because making it for the minority (He places homosexuals at 5%) would lose them sales. At no point does he ever sit back and examine in detail the likelihood that any of those "80% male straight gamers" simply don't care in the least that there's an option for homosexual relationships in the game.

He seems to be of the belief that since he is male and straight and found the homosexuality and attemps to make the game 'all-inclusive' a negative trait that the 80% who fit the first two attributes will agree with the latter. There's no reason, no logical branch to step out on to make this connection. There's nothing, absolutely nothing to support this claim. Yet he holds to it like a flag. He even goes so far as to say, I quote;

---"I've seen many complaints about weak characters and weak story. That is also my complaint and I believe stems entirely from trying to be "all-inclusive". By trying to appeal to so broad of audience, you've left a game in which many people are disappointed."

'Many'.

There's no numbers, there's no research. There's nothing that he can point to in any kind of statistical sense that prove that Bioware made a bad decision by including this. There isn't even any sort of numbers he could pull up to try and prove that there's more gamers seriously upset by this than there are Homosexuals happy with its inclusion. There simply isn't anything at all.

Even still, that's not what makes me angriest. It's the quality of his post and the politeness of the way he phrases all this. It's like he's trying to carefully explain something painstaking clear to those who just don't understand. He's obviously a person who's used to reasoned and well stated arguments with a clear intention of not simply stating an opinion but convincing the opposing side. So how the hell did he miss one of the largest and most outrageous assumptions I've ever seen in an argument outside of politics? What caused the massive break in simple reasoning? How did a mind that meticulously examined several issues and made pointed counter arguments to them before they were even raised fail to notice that it's standing on thin air?

The irritation I feel is perhaps only outweighed by the bafflement.