The precarious decision by a video game development company when bringing social issues to the forefront of a sports-themed platform, indicates the initial steps of the multi-billion industry attempting to capture an entire marketplace highlighted by a truly diverse audience.
As the average gamer is a 35-year-old male, the brash and risque controversial campaign may have profound consequences on the future evolution of the classic gaming foundational architecture and the complications of infusing virtual reality. This a clear example of the echoes from the Oregon Trail effect on modern video game philosophy.
According to the New York Daily News, British video game developer Sports Interactive, Ltd, is not just welcoming gay footballers into its roster of randomly generated electronic players populating the digital English Premiere League, but celebrating the addition to the team with a resounding news announcement utilizing the in-game media personalities. Allegedly, the gay player option will be absent from the version of the game released in Muslim countries. While the majority of gaming sporting frameworks, emulating the major professional sports include the presence of media as a sidebar to the player against computer, or player against player action in announcing trades or the results of the games, this is the first instance where the realm of sexuality will be garishly and blatantly forced upon the end user.
Of course, the time tested driving mechanism for video game narratives has been a complete arsenal of sexual overtones in piquing the interest of a juvenile male audience. The old adage of “sex sells” has been the force behind the best selling series “Grand Theft Auto” in allowing players the reward of delving into the world of prostitution as a brief respite from the world of drugs and organized crime. However, the major gaming counterparts to the trio of professional sports giants in the US, have abstained from including the glamorized extracurricular intoxicating glorified dream world of modern day athletes, who are fueled by multiple endorsements. Football Manager 2018, distribute by the venerable Sega online conglomerate, will welcome with open arms the signing of a homosexual athlete with a ringing positive sentiment, and the gamer controlling the electronic football club will immediately witness a subsequent and sharp increase in revenue, as indoctrination is apparently now a base ingredient of source code. Of course, the creators floated the idea of including an option for hecklers and players to openly disparage the British National Anthem. The US version, will feature a plethora of flag burning and a renegade group of ex cons as marijuana wielding soccer hooligans, who hijack the stadium during the honoring of the stars and the stripes and sing ballads to Lenin.
The culmination of this shear insanity laden with radioactive hypocritical misgivings, is the idea that the sexuality of an athlete is of no importance of consequence to that individual’s positive contribution to a team or a sport. At least that is what the folks of the gay rights agenda have been pushing for decades. And they are absolutely correct. Most people do not care. In a society and world, where the majority of the population believe that the sexuality of an individual is a non-issue, why do certain activists continue to do their worst and pollute various and sometimes obscure mediums with tiresome false imperatives marinating in wayward agendas? Greed? Self-Aggrandizement? This idea completely defeats the reasonable assumption that as competitors prepare for battle, sexuality along with politics, are buried beneath more important and pertinent information.
As the fantasy land narcotic of video gaming is evolving into a viable alternative to the ebb and flow of reality, it is only a matter of time before virtual reality becomes the next ideological world war. Unfortunately, the first shots have already been fired.
Read the full New York Daily News story here.