Armchair Arcade (2006)
http://www.armchairarcade.com
This one gets a little heavy with Foucault, what is "marked" and "unmarked," and other issues—the comments, too, are informative. I found myself agreeing with some of the comments that contested what was in the article, but I also thought the article was pretty good at considering the matter.
Joystiq (2007)
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03
This one is more for the comments left by people than the actual article written.
From the comments I have read in several articles (not just the ones I linked), most posters are not asking for special treatment for gay characters or the flaunting of flamboyantly gay characters. Being gay, or female, or black, or anything other than white male, or even being white male, should not be a central or defining characteristic (although in most games, being white male is a given). A poster, nithron on Joystiq, states:
"My point is that deliberately putting a character in a game that is overtly gay, just to have a gay character, defeats the point, and that really... The sexuality of the character shouldn't be a bullet point in their personality profile or something, it's not really relevent, unless it's the main character and you just HAVE to introduce a love story..."
The inclusion of other controversial topics purely for shock value does not justify putting a particular type of character or event in the game or any other fiction. If not played out effectively, it belittles the topic, and once people are over the shock (if they ever were), it becomes trite.
This is what some of the posters probably don't want but what developers (particularly Japanese) keep making, although I'm not sure if he's supposed to be taken seriously, as I have not played the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
Gay characters are not new in games. It seems in an effort to include gay characters, Western developers mold them into the way that appeals to a typical gamer (young white male—another stereotype, I know). Like the "faultless" hot female heroine designed to placate women who called for more women in games, gay characters appearing in games seem catered to the typical male gamer audience.
What I mean by that is that gay characters are becoming more acceptable so long as they are lesbians or non-threatening NPCs depicted for trivial humor or playing an insignificant role. In Bioware's third Neverwinter Nights expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, the player is able to develop relationships with his or her companions. If I recall correctly from what I've read a while back (I never pursued the romances myself), if your character was female, you were able to receive undertones of a lesbian relationship with your companions, or if you were male, you would be able to flirt with more than one female companion at the same time (and these female characters would not mind). However, your male character could not enter a quasi-romantic relationship with any same-sex characters that a female character could, nor could your female character charm more than one male character at a time (I believe the female character had only one choice in the male character she could fall in love with).
The decision for the relationship options in Neverwinter Nights may have been a result of time constraint or some other reason, but with the lesbian encounter in Knights of the Old Republic and the recent "lesbian sex scene" in Mass Effect, both also made by Bioware, it is apparent the developers have embraced lesbians (or the male-minded version of lesbians) and yet have shied away from male gay characters.
Whenever a male-male relationship can be explored in games (as far as I know, these relationships are nearly always optional, as opposed to hetero relationships), they are not received as openly as when a female-female relationship is available. The developers provide for the typical gamer audience (although on the Mass Effect forums, there were many posts repulsed by having any sex scene in the game), put in their own biases (well, they do make the games), and look for where the most money lies, which are all not necessarily bad reasons. Another factor that contributes to making male gay characters an issue, too, may be a sensitive individual's annoyance. It's easy for straight men to throw up their arms and sigh, "Just get over it," or, "If you don't like it, then don't play it." However, the abundance of games deliberately appealing to them doesn't lend itself to justifying their frustration on the subject. Gay gamers are also not calling out for more gay characters, but whenever one is included, that character is set apart as "different" whether by the developers or the gamers. This is what the Armchair Arcade article goes into when it talks about being marked and unmarked. I think this also applies to characters who are not white and not male.
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