You’d think we’d have it all figured out by now: Don’t alienate your players with offensive comments. You could lose more than just their dollars. But sometimes, that message gets lost. Recently I was working on a project when I came across some offensive dialog. If it had been the N-word, I’m confident that it never would have made it onto the page. But it wasn’t… it was directed at another oft-maligned group. It was the N-word for gay men.
How does this happen and more importantly, how do we stop it? The LGBT community has gotten some press of late in the industry. Gamasutra reported how one gay developer was named “the official guard dog against homophobia.” The developer said: “It proved useful to the project and very educational for my co-workers.”
But what if you don’t have a watchdog on your team? Or your writers don’t have the internal watchdog built in? Fear not, noble developer! GLAAD, the gay and lesbian alliance against defamation, specializes in solving just that problem. Contact GLAAD with any concerns or questions, and who knows, you might get an award for your trouble.
Oh, yeah, and that offensive dialog? I changed it to reflect its real purpose and took out all offensive references that ultimately did not further the story.
N-word for gay men… n-word for gay men…
NutterButter?
Haha! Begone, you– you– nutterbutter!
Just in case it wasn’t clear, I was speaking metaphorically, not literally, about the N-word