In the most recent years, developers have been trying to appeal as well as create fan-bases of particular genres, e.g. action-adventure, role-playing, science fiction, FPS, etc. As most people know, gamers come in all shapes, sizes, and even sexual orientations.
On March 7, EA decided to raise this elephant in the gaming community in the Full Spectrum event. The publishing company believes that more should be done to support the community. For the most part, heterosexual protagonists have dominated games with very few representatives of the LGBT community within the seemingly wide-ranged demographics.
EA themselves have tried to appeal to the gay community through The Sims games with the relationships and even marriage. Although the games can allow the player to have homosexual relations, issues came about in regards to marriage. Initially, the first game only had the option to "move in" with their same-sex partner. Its predecessors have actually displayed a welcoming to the idea of long-term partnerships between same-sex Sims.
The most recent example happens to be with the update to their MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic where a planet allows same-sex relations. Despite explaining to players that the option was a bit late, EA received backlash from both anti-gay and even gay supporters.
The Full Spectrum event was indeed an eye-opening event to address this issue within the gaming community, because there needs to be more representatives even more story-lines, which will make the LGBT community more inclusive. Evan Narcisse, editor in Kotaku, writes, "RPGs are a genre where progressive inclusion of gay characters and storyline possibilties can happen easily, because those games are all about options and crafting a virtual identity."
Adding characters from the LGBT community will add more diversity in games to come.
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