Open letters to BioWare regarding the m/m romances.

Dear Mass Effect Andromeda team,

I would like to congratulate you on the launch of Andromeda and tell you that I appreciate the hard work you have poured into bringing us fans a new entry in the Mass Effect saga. I would also like to thank BioWare as a whole for creating some of my favourite games of all time. That being said, I’m afraid that I have to express my concern and disheartenment regarding Mass Effect Andromeda’s treatment of gay male romances and love interests.

BioWare has long had a reputation for being inclusive, LGBTQ-friendly and generally ahead of its time regarding the portrayal and inclusion of minority groups in video games. As you well know, your games have gained a big LGBTQ fanbase as a result. Being a gay man myself, I have found great joy and comfort in your games’ LGBTQ representation, especially because most AAA video games tend to ignore, misrepresent or sideline LGBTQ people in general and also gay and bisexual men specifically. Getting to romance Kaidan Alenko with my male Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3 or Dorian Pavus with my male Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition (for example) means more to me than you can imagine not just because they allowed me as a gay man some of the same kind of virtual wish-fulfilment that AAA video games usually reserve for straight men but because these were fully-featured, fully-realised gay and bisexual male characters. They weren’t side characters, they weren’t one-note characters whose sexual orientation was their only or even their defining personality trait, they weren’t added to the games for comedic relief, to poke fun at gay stereotypes. They never felt like they were added to tick a checkbox, either, or like they were the “obligatory gay”, if you will. No, these were characters who had a firm place in the games’ stories, characters who were just as important and who had been given just as much care and attention as their non-LGBTQ counterparts. They were characters who didn’t just contribute to the narrative but also to the gameplay, accompanying me on missions as companions or squadmates, taking a more active role in the games’ events. It is this sort of inclusion and equal treatment of gay and bisexual male characters that made me feel like the game and, by extension, the teams at BioWare respected me, not just as a paying customer or a number on a sheet of paper, but as a person. It made me feel acknowledged as a gay gamer, it made me feel understood and less alone but most importantly, it gave me a bigger sense of self-respect and self-worth because it showed me that, yes, I as a gay gamer was worth developing content for that was just as good and substantial as everyone else’s. Your games taught me that I didn’t have to feel content with game developers treating me like a second-class citizen just because I was a gay man. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the treatment of gay and bisexual male characters in Mass Effect: Andromeda has made me feel like: a second-class citizen.

Of course, Mass Effect: Andromeda still is by and large an inclusive game. It features many minorities including LGBTQ characters and including gay and bisexual male characters. The game is, arguably, more LGBTQ-friendly and inclusive than most other modern AAA video games. However, it does not give gay and bisexual male characters equal treatment, it does not give me the sense that they’re as important as or were given the same amount of attention and care as non-LGBTQ characters (or as gay or bisexual female characters for that matter). It does not live up to the high and admirable standard that BioWare has set for itself with its past games.

But why do I feel this way? What differentiates Andromeda’s treatment of these characters from, for example, Mass Effect 3’s or Dragon Age: Inquisition’s? To begin with, neither of Andromeda’s two gay male romance options was given a unique face, both of them using faces created with the game’s character creator instead. Not only are these of lower overall quality than specifically scanned or modelled faces would have been, they likely also took considerably less time, effort or resources to make which is in stark contrast to the faces of other love interests (at least three of the female romanceable characters and two of the straight male romanceable characters have got unique faces). Generally speaking, gay male romances appear to have received considerably less care and attention on average than any of the other romance types in the game, seeing as both gay male romances are considerably shorter and feature less numerous, less elaborate or detailed and far less explicit scenes than many of the game’s other romances. The biggest issue, however, is that there is not a single gay or bisexual male squadmate in the game. This is problematic because the game generally gives squadmates special treatment over other characters. Squadmates have far more dialogue content than non-squadmates, they have got their own loyalty missions which expand their backstories and further develop their characters, they can be taken on missions and interacted with during gameplay, they are far more heavily integrated into the game’s main storyline and have generally got bigger roles to play in it. Compared to Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, this is a large step back as gay and bisexual male characters have essentially been sidelined. They’re not as relevant to the game’s story or gameplay as other characters, their romance content feels lacking comparatively speaking and far less care has gone into their creation and the creation of their content. All of these factors result in the impression that gay and bisexual male characters and, by extension, gay and bisexual male players are generally less important, less worthy of content or acknowledgement and less welcome than players of other sexual orientations or genders. It makes me as a gay gamer feel less respected by the game and, I’m afraid to say, less respected by you, the game’s developers. By trying to sell me this game, you are asking me to disregard and unlearn the self-respect and the sense of self-worth your own games have taught me. I am sorry to say that I cannot do that which is why I will not be financially supporting Mass Effect: Andromeda, not out of spite or bitterness but because it would betray the principles you have helped me find.

I hope that this feedback will help you further improve your treatment of gay and bisexual male characters (and minority characters in general) and that your future projects will once again live up to the high standards of inclusion and progressiveness that so many people have come to associate with the name BioWare.

-FrozenHarlequin

Dear BioWARE,

While I understand the artistic challenges, I much preferred the handling of romances in DA2, rather than complex romance lock-outs based on the protagonist's gender or (in the other games) species. There is a lot of considerations that go into creating the protagonist, and being able to both play the character you want, and romance the character you like to romance in the same playthrough is really nice.

Regards,

Domi

But they've already said they won't go back to the DA2 approach, so I actually think asking for the characters to be available to everyone will lead to nothing. Just my guess though... I wish I was wrong.

Dear BioWare:

You are leagues ahead of every other developer in your dedication to presenting under-represented groups (save The Sims franchise). You are also some of the most talented individuals whose work I have had the pleasure of taking part in. Thank you for all your efforts!

That said, I will mention that you are under no requirement to appeal to any group or handle the treatments of various groups equally, BUT, I'm under no requirement to support a franchise that does not support me. If your gay male players were given a discount, I would have no problem with the discount storylines, but I paid over $70 USD, so to get an inferior experience for the same price (if not more) makes no sense monetarily to me.

Imagine going to a bakery, and paying $3 for a chocolate chip cookie, but the cookie they give you is a day old, or it has hardly any chips. Yet, the next person, who also paid $3 got new cookies that were fresh and with the right amount of chips. How would you feel? It just doesn't make sense to pay for an inferior experience.

With that said, again, thank you for your hard work, but I will not be engaging in your products anymore because they have (consistently) given me an inferior experience, with no discount.

TL:DR

I pay the same as everyone else, and I should get the same satisfying feeling as everyone else; it makes no sense to pay full-price for an inferior experience. Give your Gaymers a discount if their experience won't match others.

Dear BioWare.

Let's me tell you a story about how I got into your games. It was winter 2015 and my friend was telling me about his playthrough of DA:I. I wasn't really interested, but little did I know... Iron Bull, who was truly the man of my dreams back then, was romanceable by both genders. I bought the game immediately, and played it on my laptop that could barely run the damn game. I was in love. I was in Dragon Age HEAVEN, and had a sick obsession over the franchise. It went on like half a year where my whole life was just Dragon Age, Dragon Age, Dragon Age!

It finally happened, I found a game that welcomed me, and I felt at home. To this day, I have around 1050 hours clocked on Dragon Age Inquisition, and two playthroughs of DA2, and I do not regret any minute of it.

Come Mass Effect Andromeda. I initially had no interest in the franchise, but my friend got me interested. Of course, since it's a new franchise for me, my only motivation to check the game out was 1) it's a BW game and 2) kissing alien boys with my alien PC. Iron Bull was the one that got me hooked on DA, and I was hoping I'd find someone like that for ME. And, well, Jaal definitely was a STROOOONG contender, but we all know what became of that...

So, as I play the game now, I'm... enjoying myself. But I don't feel welcome, or that this game has any interest in giving me that gay content that really shined in DA games. I kind of feel lonely going through the game and I don't feel like starting numerous other Ryders. It just doesn't feel right. Gil is a complete joke to me, I have no connection to him despite playing around 40 hours of this game, his romance is convoluted, abrupt and weird, and there seems to be more effort put into establishing Jill's and Gil's relationship rather than Scott's and Gil's. Reyes on the other hand was a good try, but after seeing the unpolished Scott x Reyes romance scene and hearing how there is gender-specific banter that you forgot to remake for Scott.. I don't feel very good.

Add to all that m/m relationships not having softcore space porn, m/m relationships having less content, there being less m/m romance options, Gil and Reyes having less content, Gil not being at all important to the plot (40 hours into the game and the last 10 hours or so he has had nothing to say), m/m characters not being squadmates, m/m characters only being humans and list goes on and on and on. So yeah, I do not feel welcomed to enjoy this series at all, for some reason.

And let me talk to you about Avitus Rix. He is the only m/m character I care about. Badass gay(bi?) turian who knows how to handle a gun, has a very interesting background and is extremely well voice-acted. Why is it that a minor, minor gay(bi?) character is much more interesting than the two m/m options I have? Why wasn't HE a squadmate?! And he is an alien as well, 4 games, 0 aliens for gay dudes. That's not good. I've said this before: aliens are the marshmallow bits in a box of Lucky Charms cereal. Sure you eat the rest of the cereal, but you really buy it for the actual LUCKY CHARMS, the marshmallow bits. Those are the good ones, those are the jackpot. There is no reason to exclude gay men from dating male aliens, no reason at all. You've shown in MEA that there are aliens capable of loving other men... so there is no excuse.

Overall, it kind of sucks. You built a game that I would have loved to play over and over, but you didn't give me good m/m romance options that would've brought me back to the game over and over and over again. That's a damn shame, because you had the ingredients to make me HOOKED and OBSESSED! But I'm not hooked or obsessed, after I'm finished with this playthrough, I don't see myself going back.

ME3 set the standard for you to reach, and you didn't even reach the bare minimum. You regressed, you went backwards. That's not acceptable.
Please do better next time (if there even is a next time), even though you had to do better now. That's all I can say.

Thank you.

And she'll likely ask Bioware for comment and might just get them to. I believe Patricia is gay or bi, too, so she's likely to have a better grasp of how LGB people feel than a straight person.

I'm not personally affected by this, but you have my support. These is very reasonable critical feedback!

Dear Bioware,

First, I want to say that Bioware games have been extremely important to the LGBT community in terms of representation and my feedback is in no way meant to diminish that. This is something I and many other people in the community are very grateful for. It's because we love your games so much that we're passionate about our inclusion in them. Very few forms of media yet today include LGBT people and gay men, especially, have been largely excluded from being portrayed as heroes in media. It's very rare we're able to experience a quality piece of media in which we're represented as even a central supporting character, let alone the protagonist. This is true not even just of video games, but of movies and TV, as well. Bioware was one of the first outlets that allowed us to experience that and is still one of only a small number of sources for which we can experience a gay male protagonist. The first time I ever experience an adventure story in which the hero could be a gay man was playing Dragon Age: Origins and choosing Zevran as a love interest. I can't understate how much that meant to me. I want to begin by thanking you for providing myself and other gay and bi men with that experience. I hope you understand how much it means to many of us in greater context.

When we already have so little representation available, however, it becomes especially disappointing when we wait for what may be our only chance to see a gay male protagonist as the hero in any mainstream media, possibly all year, only to get substantially less content for which to experience that. Although I greatly appreciate Bioware's inclusion of gay and bi men, we've traditionally been the most likely to get the least romantic content of any demographic. As this trend continues, it becomes more hurtful. Dragon Age has made substantial improvement, but I was deeply disappointed to see that Mass Effect actually backslid on our content since ME3, especially after excluding us for the two games prior. In ME3 we were able to romance one returning squadmate and one crew member, yet ME:A provided only sparse content for one crew member and one off ship romance. Gil wasn't plot important and didn't have a personal quest. It was disappointing that Reyes was not able to join us for things like movie night and wasn't acknowledged very much by the rest of the cast. Reyes also suffered from poor animation in comparison to the female version of his romance, as well as a line from Vetra calling Scott the "queen" or "baroness" of Kadara that seemed obviously aimed at a female character. As well, like many bisexual men, his story featured an ex-girlfriend. In isolation, this is fine, but bisexual men in Bioware games unanimously seem to show more interest in women. Rarely do they show interest in men or have prominent ex-boyfriends. I was overall disappointed that gay men were the only ones not to get a squad love interest, that our options were comparatively low content and that Reyes didn't get as much attention as a male romance as when playing a female character.

In the future, I would be very grateful if you would be mindful of the fact that Mass Effect has excluded gay men more than any other demographic in all four games and hopefully try to change this. While ME3 was at least a step forward, Andromeda backslid in many ways. Firstly, I'd like to express how much it would mean to many of us to have actual squad romances. Every other demographic got two, while we got none. This is probably the biggest disappointment, for me. The squad love interests are able to share so much more time exploring with us, they have personal quests and are usually much more connected to the plot than crew romances. I was especially disappointed how disconnected Gil was from the action and the main plot. It's very uncommon for the gay or bi male love interests to be closely connected to the plot, which is always disappointing. It often feels like our love interests are more likely to be side characters, sometimes even easily skipped. I enjoyed the Reyes romance more than Gil's because he was at least connected to certain plot points and could spend time in the field with you during certain quests. Reyes is a character I've become very fond of, but it was disappointing that he wasn't a squad member and that his content was lacking for a male character in comparison to the more fluid animation for female characters, especially in his last cinematic scene.

Although I am disappointed by the lack of content and the fact that much of the romance seems first designed for female characters with men as an afterhtought, I do actually love Reyes as a character and I'm enjoying what content is available for him. I hope that you won't forget him in DLC and future games, assuming the series continues with Ryder. I would love to see a DLC similar to the Citadel that heavily includes him, as well as appearances by him in other DLC campaigns. Since we got so few options, I hope he'll not be left out because he's an off ship romance. Having spoken to other gay men on the BSN and offline, myself and several others have expressed interest in a Kadara based DLC that could heavily feature him while still being appealing to players uninterested in LGBT content. If the series continues with Ryder, I think a lot of us would appreciate if Reyes could come back as a full squadmate, allowing gay men to experience our first continuing squad love interest ever. This was always something I wish I could have experienced in the old trilogy. The inclusion of an alien love interest for gay men would also be appreciated by many. Thus far, gay men are the only demographic not to have any alien love interests.

To sum up, though I appreciate the effort that was made to at least offer options, unlike the first to ME entries, I was disappointed we were given less substantial choices than in ME3 and much less substantial choices than any other demographic. We were the only ones not to get a squad love interest, only ones not to get at least three options for the achievment, our cinematics are lacking compared to others, among other issues. Despite this, I enjoyed the romance with Reyes and would like to see more of him. I hope in the future we'll be given love interests that are both in the squad and that have a greater connection to the plot. I was very disappointed with the romance with Gil, as so much of the already sparse content is eaten up talking about Jill and setting up for what seems like a too soon question about children. It seems that our gay exclusive love interests are too often more about sexuality than about the story of the game. For example, Gil's romance about gay parenting, Cortez about gay marriage, Dorian's romance about magical conversion therapy. I wish we could get more gay love interests that only happened to be gay. Avitus Rix and Macen were a good example of a couple that just happened to be gay. It would be greatly appreciated if we could get more gay exclusive love interests who's stories were connected to the in game world and the main story, rather than focusing on their sexuality and how it effects their lives.

Again, I appreciate the content your games offer. Being a member of a demographic that gets very little representation in media, especially in the context of being the hero in a traditional adventure story, what you're offering is deeply meaningful for me. I think those that don't share that experience sometimes don't understand how important it is to see these stories through the eyes of gay heroes. Thank you for listening and for giving us a chance to see ourselves in a way it seems most can't imagine.

I was trying to find a way to bring up the personality/sexuality thing, but was having trouble figuring out how to word it. So thank you for bringing it up and pushing this shy person to speak up.

One thing that often comes up with romances in games is that orientation has to fit personality or make sense for the character. Which isn't at all how it works in reality, at least in my experience. 

For example, I live in a small, conservative, religious town, and a lot of my family is close-minded about sexuality (among other things). So looking at my background, my sexuality doesn't really make sense. Because it doesn't work like that. It's just inherent, like eye color or something. Orientation is something that is, not something that needs to be explained by background or personality. It doesn't really need to be justified. It just is.

I would love to see this type of attitude in a game. Or book, or movie, or anything really.

Oh, I wasn't actually commenting on the DA2 method one way or another. Your comment just provided the perfect jumping off point for me to express my views. Sorry if that wasn't clear. 

Dear Bioware

The step backward the Mass Effect team has taken in this game is completely unacceptable. After Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, I was honestly excited to see what would happen now that the company appeared to have gotten over its hang-ups about including options for gay men. I was sorely disappointed.

First of all, I do not believe that non-squad romances are truly equal to romances with squadmates. I admit that part of this is due to personal preference, but the fact that gay men are the only orientation expected to be happy with non-squadmate characters automatically calls into question the idea that there is no difference between squad and non-squad romances. I hate to say this, and I hope I am wrong, but after the argument over the subject around Mass Effect 2, it honestly appears that the Mass Effect team is using non-squad romances so they can give gay men, and to a lesser extent lesbians, the short end of the stick without having to hear us complain about being left out entirely.

Furthermore, the Mass Effect and its "it has to make sense for the character" argument, in conjunction with the lack of squad romances for gay men, has fallen into a very old and very problematic idea that only heterosexual men can be strong; that if a man is not heterosexual, he is weak and not fit to fight for what he believes in. I do not believe that this was intentional on the part of the developers, but that unfortunately does not change what it looks like. One of the reasons I have come to love your company's games so much is because they are among the very few avenues I have to escape that kind of thinking. To have that taken away now, after you appeared to have improved so much, after marketing yourself as having improved so much, honestly feels like a betrayal.

Lastly, datamining of Mass Effect: Andromeda and some older games shows a very unfortunate pattern with dummied out romance content. Dataminers have consistently found that, whether it is because of time constraints, space concerns, or issues of characterization, male/male romance content is always the first on the chopping block. While I do not believe that it is due to active malice, this pattern sends a very bad message to gay male players about where we lie on the list of priorities.

Despite all this, and despite how angry I am, I do still believe Bioware can do better. You have fixed your mistakes regarding male/male romance content before in both Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age II, and I fully believe that you are capable of fixing your mistakes again.

Mass Effect Andromeda team, congratulations on your release.

The game has been fun, but unfortunately I don't have much willpower to finish it. When I first heard that it's a big possibility that Jaal could be bi (or even gay) I was ecstatic to finally be able to romance an alien. When the dataminers revealed that Jaal was bi, I decided to avoid all kinds of spoilers for the game, and spent about 36 hours in the game, before I realized that Jaal's romance wasn't just slow, but not available to Scott Ryder. I was devastated, sad, frustrated and felt betrayed.

I thought that this would never happen, that there would be no way we wouldn't get an alien romance after so long. Dragon Age has never let me down with their romances, yet still manages to up themselves every time. I only started to play Mass Effect because I heard there was a huge possibility that ME3 would have mlm romances. I started it all for Kaidan, and was not disappointed. So when Andromeda was announced, I thought that you were finally listening to our wishes, that we would finally get an alien (squadmate) mlm romance, yet somehow you managed to take several steps backwards​. Why?

Don't get me wrong, I like Reyes and Gil, but they're human, again, and even worse, not squadmates. Please make Jaal bi like he was supposed to be. I don't want to wait for another game, only to be let down again. This is my last chance for you.

Thanks, from a very disappointed fan.

Dear Bioware,

First of all, I want to thank you for being one of the few companies that cares about us, the LGBTQ community. I entered into this fandom late last year thanks to a friend; before that my life as gamer had come to a stop for various reasons, because of college, because I didn't have a good PC, and because of other hobbies. It was Dragon Age: Origins which dragged me back into these wonderful worlds of escapism. And I was thrilled, in awe even, because how many games let you take control of a character where you can be yourself and love without heteronormative restrictions? After Dragon Age: Origins came Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition; it filled me with joy to see how LGBTQ representation had improved, even if there were still flaws here and there.

Then I started to play Mass Effect, and what a ride it was! I forgave the poor representation that homosexual men and women had in the first two games; these things happen gradually, step by step, I told myself. Then Mass Effect 3 came and it was the beginning of something good. The steps taken in 2012 were going in the right direction. Kaidan Alenko, a squadmember and a long time favorite character in the fandom was an option for male Shepard, along with Steve Cortez, an NPC character. They were the first two love interests for homosexual/bisexual men. Thanks to Kaidan I was able to live through Shepard's eyes and enjoy a wonderful and epic love story, even if his romance was just a limited copy & paste of the female one. I felt that I was worthy and included.

Unfortunately, recent events have had me feeling very differently from the way I felt when playing Dragon Age and the original Mass Effect trilogy. First of all I want to talk about the marketing strategy, which has been an awful train wreck as whole. Many people are invested in the romance part of your games; it's a feature that made your company and games unique. The fact that you chose to hide the romance list has done a lot of damage to your loyal LGBTQ fandom because heterosexual players won't ever feel the fear of exclusion; it's just a given and how our society works. We, the LGBTQ community, expected more. You are one of the few companies with integral LGBTQ content, and so this marketing strategy has been tricky and dishonest. The Mass Effect team have been saying how little they can talk about romances, yet the hints about straight romances on social media and the use of the ones in the trailers while ignoring gay and lesbian romances was not the right way to treat our community, nor was the queerbaiting that took place via Twitter.

As for the LGBTQ romances in Mass Effect: Andromeda, I have several points to discuss. First of all I want to talk about the lack of full-fledged male/male romances in comparison to the straight ones. We, gay men, have only two options. One of those is Gil, an NPC character who fulfilled nearly the same function as Steve Cortez, another NPC gay character in ME3. The other one is Reyes, a character who is not even a member of the main crew. When compared to male/female, female/male, and female/female romances, the gay ones are lacking in real content and importance to the main plot of the game. Neither Gil nor Reyes is a squadmate; meanwhile straight men have three full-fledged romances with females in the squad, and straight women and lesbians have two full-fledged romances in the squad. Gay players have zero possibility of enjoying a full-fledged romance in the main squad. This is important because squadmembers will always have the most content, and the chance to take your partner in the field is a plus for many players. This is a big step back from Mass Effect 3 where we enjoyed Kaidan's romance, a squadmate and character with great importance in the plot.

Other things to consider when it comes to gay romances are the lack of effort and resources spent in creating and perfecting them. We were lucky with Kaidan because he was an option for female Shepard, too. Yet Steve Cortez had a generic Character Creator face (same with Samantha Traynor), and the same happened with Gil and Reyes (and Suvi) in MEA. Meanwhile, other romances have real models scanned in for their faces. Additionally, gay and lesbian characters have always been relegated to crewmember status, which follows the ugly trope of "hide the gay away." In comparison to squadmember romances, Reyes and Gil have very little content, about 8-10 minutes for Gil and 15-18 minutes for Reyes; meanwhile, the straight romances have about 20-30 minutes. Crewmembers will always lack banter in the field, loyalty missions, and other content. And when gays and lesbians share a love interest with straight people, as occurs with a bisexual character, our version of the romance is always an afterthought, a copy/paste. It happened with Kaidan with limited and cut content, and it has happened with Reyes and Peebee; their scenes are not polished enough. Additionally, gay sex scenes are always fade-to-black, with no nudity, and the kisses are censored because of certain camera angles. But straight sex scenes like Cora's, Peebee's, or Jaal's are explicit, with nudity and an amount of care that is clearly lacking in the gay ones. This sends an unfortunate message to our community. Also, it's very unfortunate to say that a character has to make sense to be a LGBTQ character, this shows some outdated views of how our community is represented in the media. Personality and character-wise has nothing to do with sexuality.

After months of hints and queerbaiting, we put our last hope and faith in Jaal as a bisexual option, and the situation was out of control when we found out that he was intended to be bisexual and an option for male Ryder through datamining. Why is it always gay content that is cut? It happened with Thane in Mass Effect 2; it happened with Cullen and Solas in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The differences between those cases and Jaal is the time. As I said earlier, I forgave Mass Effect 2 because those were other times; I can sort of forgive Solas and Cullen because of time restraints, but I can't forgive this with Jaal. There have been five years of development and this is 2017. Two limited NPC human options is not enough for us when other demographics have more. We have never had an alien as a love interest, and lesbians have never had a human as a romanceable squadmate. What has happened?

I am very sorry about this situation but I can't support this project with my money. It's too big of a step back in 2017 after a hopeful step forward in 2012. You are a company known for being inclusive, and this only shows that you think we are not worthy. I hope my feedback has made you and the ME team understand how a big part of your fandom feels now.

Regards,

-nickclark89