Tony Perkins: Star Wars ‘surrenders to gay empire’ 
 
 By David Edwards 
 
 Friday, January 27, 2012 16:40 EDT 
 
 An evangelical leader is calling on his army of followers to take action against a software company for allowing same sex relationships to be represented in a new Star Wars video game. 
 
 Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council — a hate group, according the the Southern Poverty Law Center — took to the radio to denounce Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. 
 
 “In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!” Perkins announced during his daily radio commentary. “In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships.” 
 
 “That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ don’t exist in the Star Wars universe. Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t.” 
 
 He continued: “On the game’s website, there are more than 300 pages of comments–a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It’s time to show companies who the Force is really with!” 
 
 In a statement on their website, Bioware explained that same sex relationships were not yet possible in the game. 
 
 “Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature,” the company wrote. “Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.” 
 
 A quick search of Bioware’s forum shows that there are probably not “300 pages of comments” on the topic — and very few if any of the commenters were “angry” about the idea. In fact, most players were more concerned that the featured had not already been released. 
 
 “[I]t does feel a bit like bioware neglected the same sex community,” a player named Romanticyde wrote. “I hope this will be fixed, in any way.” 
 
 Watch this video from Family Research Council, broadcast Jan. 27, 2012. 
 
 (H/T: Right Wing Watch) ||||| [updated below] 
 
 Yesterday AllOut.org took down a petition aimed at shooting back against anti-gay boycott groups placing pressure on EA due to gay characters included in the game publisher's titles. The petition had been hit with what looked like spambots, as well as by obvious spammers who took their disdain of EA to the comments section of the AllOut petition. 
 
 In other words, alongside obvious individual spammers, something was adding duplicate comments to the petition (see, for example) - most of which voiced some sort of support for EA. The names of these spambot comments included such gems as "Fred from Pakistan." In some instances, duplicate comments were repeated three or four times from as many different countries. 
 
 AllOut.org Community Manager, Tile Wolfe, told me yesterday that the site has had no contact with EA whatsoever during the course of the petition. 
 
 "We are not arguing that Electronic Arts is a perfect company," Wolfe added, "but we know that today, on this issue, they are taking an important stand that should be celebrated and supported. Anti-gay groups are the dark-side here, and we’re glad to see so many consumers and citizens joining forces to pressure companies like EA and beyond to promote fair and balanced portrayals of gay, lesbian, bi and trans characters wherever they pop up." 
 
 I also spoke briefly with AllOut.org co-founder and director Andre Banks about the petition and the spam attacks. 
 
 Forbes: Could you speak to the goals of this campaign, its origins and how the idea came up, and maybe similar campaigns you've worked on? 
 
 Also, when did you notice spam attacks on the Yoda petition? I was receiving emails yesterday evening showing images of exact duplicate comments, with absolutely no difference from one to the next save for the name and location of the commenters. These names included ones like "Fred from Pakistan" and so forth. When did red flags start going up? 
 
 Banks: AllOut.org is about one year old, and we are an independent organization that has a fairly straightforward goal - to ensure that everyone, everywhere can live freely and love who they choose without sacrificing their safety or dignity. One way that we do that is by working to change policy. Our most recent campaign has been pushing against an anti-gay "propaganda" law in Russia that would make it illegal to talk about anything gay in the city of St. Petersburg - even creating a gay fictional character in a book or movie would be subject to a crime. The other part of our work is about changing culture and a big piece of that is pushing back against groups like the Family Research Council who bully companies and organizations that take a positive stance on gay rights or present positive, affirming images of LGBT people. We wanted to counter the anti-gay boycott of Star Wars by giving our nearly 900,000 members a chance to show that a lot of people support the decision of BioWare and EA to include LGBT options in the game. 
 
 We have had no contact with EA. Our small team of campaigners developed and launched this idea late last week because we believed - and continue to believe - that we should support EA's decision to distribute the games with gay relationships in the face of opposition. Our focus is purely on LGBT issues and our campaign is only meant to show EA, and other corporations, that there is a large constituency of people all over the world who care about and support LGBT equality. 
 
 We've received many comments, tweets, and emails from gamers all over the world who support the campaign and stand against homophobia. 
 
 Unfortunately, our campaign page was hit with obvious spam bot attacks. Our campaigner in Paris identified the spam and when our tech team came online in New York this morning we took the necessary steps to disable the page. We've been communicating through our twitter (@allout) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/alloutorg) accounts during the process and answering comments about the issue. 
 
 The attacks came from anonymous IP addresses so we are unable to determine the source. We are continuing to investigate but right now it looks like only a few thousand of the signatures came from these spam bots, and the majority were from legitimate All Out members. We're now working to remove the spam signatures and will be updating the campaign page soon with the correct signature count. 
 
 I hope this helps clarify things a bit. We certainly launched this effort as a good natured attempt to stand up for what's right. Thanks for your coverage of this story and please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly for more information. 
 
 Were you aware of the other controversies surrounding EA prior to launching the petition? A lot of people saw this as something of a smokescreen or PR move on the part of EA, and were certainly not aware that no communication between AllOut.org and EA had taken place. What sort of feedback have you gotten so far about this? 
 
 As we researched the campaign, we understood that some people in the gaming community were critical of EA. We believe that whether or not a gamer or All Out member supports EA, they can agree that the company should not be bullied into making gay people invisible. After the launch, we learned about the allegations of EA faking other support campaigns and obviously reject that sort of cynical, self-serving deception. With that said, a lot of people are missing the real story here - the Family Research Council, a notorious anti-gay group, is telling this company, and many others, that gay people have no place in our games, in our media and in our lives. For All Out, and many thousands who have supported the campaign, that is just unacceptable. 
 
 Have you gotten any response from the boycott groups themselves? 
 
 No response from the boycott groups just yet. I'll let you know if we hear anything... 
 
 Regarding the 3000 - 5000 spam comments, do these include earlier duplicate comments (such as identical comments left by two or three separate people from two or three different countries) or are you counting only the flood of obvious spam comments received toward the end of the fund-raising drive? 
 
 Based on the IP addresses, we believe the 5,000 figure includes all spam received in the course of the campaign. 
 
 AllOut has since launched another campaign to fight for gay rights in Russia. You can read about that here. 
 
 At this point, no word from EA on any of this, but it does appear that AllOut.org worked independently of the game publisher and that no coordination took place. There's also no evidence suggesting that any of the spam was orchestrated by anybody, as I noted in my piece yesterday. If anything new comes to light, I will be sure to update. 
 
 One final note. I think people all across this debate are rushing too quickly to judgment. As I noted yesterday, there's no evidence that EA is behind the spambots, or that anyone else is for that matter. In that sense, I think gamers rightfully irked with the company are letting their emotions get the better of them. 
 
 On the other hand, certain members of the gaming press are awfully quick to rush to judgments of their own. 
 
 P.S. I want to qualify two things here. 
 
 One, I'm as quick to rushing to judgment as anyone. When I first heard about this whole petition, and saw the flood of articles about the hatemail, I thought immediately that this was just EA PR - and I bet some of it undoubtedly is EA PR. Furthermore, my entire foray into BioWare-blogging was sparked by my own stupid rush to judgment over homophobia and Mass Effect 3. So my hands are anything but clean in this department. 
 
 Second thing is, no matter who was behind the spambots here, there's no reason people shouldn't suspect EA. They've pulled plenty of tricks in the past that have all been well-documented. The point is, suspicion needs to be grounded in fact before we can definitively say anything. 
 
 Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here. ||||| The Florida Family Association, best known for badgering companies into pulling advertising from TLC reality show All-American Muslim last year, is hard at work ranting about a new target: BioWare/EA game Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn't the first temper tantrum that supposedly pro-family groups have thrown over The Old Republic, just the most recent. 
 
 The headline of the alarmist new missive asks: "Will the makers of Star Wars video games create Darth VaPaula, a (mock) transgender version of Darth Vader - RuPaul, for kids to choose as their action player?" The mock-up image at the top of this post comes from their website. 
 
 
 
 Everything is wrong the FFA's claims. Their insistence that BioWare is going to start gender-bending Darth Vader and warping vulnerable minds indicates a bigoted point of view and a complete misunderstanding of how video games work. Their complaint appears to have nothing to do with reality, either in the physical world or in the game they're panicking over. They insist that, "[I]f BioWare ... adds LGBT characters for kids to select as their action figure it could be something like Darth RuPaula, a combination of Darth Vader, one of the most popular Star Wars characters, and RuPaul, the renown transgender cross dresser." That has no relation to the game or to future changes proposed for it. 
 
 For those unfamiliar with the title, Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively multiplayer online game, where players log into a virtual Star Wars-themed world and play characters they customize heavily from a number of species, appearance, class, and alignment options. All players must choose a gender — either male or female, no third options, nothing non-binary — for each character at the moment of its creation. 
 
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 Romances in SW:TOR, as in other BioWare games, are initiated by the player at his or her choosing, from a limited selection of companion characters. At the moment, only heterosexual relationships are available, but BioWare has promised since before the game's December launch to add same-sex options in the future, which is the source of the uproar. 
 
 The FFA's argument rests on the back of the old workhorse, "Won't somebody think of the children?!" Their alert claims, in among all of the language begging readers to send e-mail to EA: 
 
 An overwhelming percentage of the 1.7 million games sold are being used by children who do not need to be introduced to this propaganda. 
 
 LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) activists are demanding that the makers of Star Wars video games add LGBT characters for kids to select as their action figure when playing the games. 
 
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 Studies observing MMORPGs throughout the past decade have found that overall, the player's average age is in the mid-20s, and that roughly 75% are 18 or older. The game is not designed for or marketed to children, though undoubtedly a number do play; it's designed for people with credit cards, who can pay the monthly fee. 
 
 Children and teens, who never thought anyway but heterosexual, are now given a choice to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in their game player. 
 
 Children and teens, who choose non-social agenda characters, would be forced to deal with lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender characters chosen by other players. 
 
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 I am shocked to find that when I step out of the front door of my apartment into the world, or when I take my avatar and step into a shared virtual world, that I can't control the people I meet. Other people are going to have the audacity to live the lives and take on the identities that they choose, rather than the ones that I choose for them? And here I thought that by sheer force of will, I could make the rest of the world conform to my tastes and expectations alone. 
 
 It's also quite impressive that the Florida Family Association knows that only 100% heterosexual minors have ever picked up this video game! That's statistically amazing. You would think that in 1.7 million active subscribers the odds are somewhere between 50,000 and 170,000 (3-10%) are likely to identify as gay or bisexual, or even mildly curious, but no! This box apparently comes with a built-in filter meaning only straight players touch it. It's the game — not burgeoning hormones, brain chemistry, inherent identity, curiosity, attraction, or even choice, but this one game — that's going to make all the kids suddenly gay! 
 
 Just trying to reach the reality of the game-that-is, instead of the game-that-is-argued-against, is challenging enough. Under that mask, Darth Vader could have spent three films wearing the pinkest, most sparkly lipstick Imperial credits can buy, and no one would ever have known — nor would it have mattered. In the world the FFA lives in, the existence of a same-sex partnership option for the small percentage of players who choose to pursue it magically invalidates all other available choices or paths, and somehow even starts overwriting gender identities. 
 
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 Whether or not any particular group accepts it, queer folk and their allies are gamers too. Sometimes, people choose romances in games just to see what happens, what with games being an essentially consequence-free virtual world. And I refuse to believe that a significant portion of players who choose f/f pairings in games aren't straight men. 
 
 In short, the FFA's values certainly are drawn from a long time ago, but the reality they inhabit doesn't seem to be in this galaxy, or even in one far, far away. Realistically speaking, the Florida Family Association is one very determined man, David Caton, who has an opinion he's determined to bully the world into hearing. And that opinion is about a very strange game in his head alone, not one that actually exists. 
 
 Will the makers of Star Wars video games create Darth VaPaula, a (mock) transgender version of Darth Vader - RuPaul, for kids to choose as their action player? [Florida Family Association, via Kill Screen] ||||| I've seen the images floating around the internet right now, showing how spambots have been used to inflate the signatures on the Allout.org anti-boycott petition we discussed yesterday, which defends EA against right-wing boycott artists. 
 
 (Examples of the screenshots can be seen here and here, though the comments themselves are no longer visible at the petition website.) 
 
 AllOut.org has shut down the campaign page temporarily, stating: 
 
 "AllOut.org has temporarily disabled the campaign page of its website due to a cyber attack by hackers. In the attack, hackers added roughly 3000-5000 comments and signatures onto the petition. AllOut.org is currently in the process of removing those signatures, but can verify that over 60,000 members have sign onto the petition and continue to urge Electronic Arts to stay away from the dark side." 
 
 The Sith are getting a bum wrap here, as always. But I digress. 
 
 More to the point, basically everyone I've seen comment on this has immediately rushed to the conclusion that EA has set up a spambot campaign to inflate signatures and create the veneer of support. EA has been caught with their hands in this cookie jar before, after all, when the game publisher staged a fake protest at E3 over the game Dante's Inferno: 
 
 "Electronic Arts has admitted that the Dante's Inferno protest during E3 was staged by a guerrilla marketing agency," Joystiq reported at the time. "The publisher confirmed to the AP that the firm hired 20 people to hold signs like "Just say Infer-NO" and "Trade in your PlayStation for a PrayStation." There's got to be a better way to promote the game." 
 
 The only problem is, right now everyone is leaping to conclusions and there's absolutely no way to confirm any of it. I tend to hew to the whole "trust but verify" policy when it comes to, well, just about anybody (whether that's other bloggers, industry reps, commenters, or friends and family members.) 
 
 It's possible that EA is behind the spambots, or has hired someone to use spam to inflate the signatures (if this is the case, they should fire whoever it is for such a clumsy job). It's also possible that somebody else is hitting the petition with spam precisely because it could be used against EA. Never underestimate anyone's ability or capacity for deceit. When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. 
 
 The internet is full of tech-savvy people, fully capable of a game or two of three-dimensional chess - something that business and political leaders of all stripes forget at their peril. 
 
 Indeed, it would be a very clever move on the part of anti-EA players to organize something like this - far more clever than EA doing it themselves (though after the Dante's Inferno debacle, one can't set the bar too high.) Again, there is no way to confirm anything at this point. We have our imagination and a bunch of screen caps and that's about it. 
 
 I did reach out to AllOut.org and spoke with their Community Manager, Tile Wolfe, about the matter. 
 
 "Over 60,000 (All Out members) have indeed signed the petition," Wolfe told me, "but you're right -- seeing those spam comments is a bummer. We've temporarily disabled the campaign page after our mini-cyber-attack this morning, but the hackers only left 3000 to 5000 rogue comments in the first place. We want to assure you that we've never worked or been in contact with EA. 
 
 "This campaign was launched in the face of right-wing attacks by the Family Research Council. They targeted EA for the visibility and inclusion that comes with LGBT characters and romances in games like Mass Effect 3 and The Old Republic. 
 
 "We are not arguing that Electronic Arts is a perfect company, but we know that today, on this issue, they are taking an important stand that should be celebrated and supported. Anti-gay groups are the dark-side here, and we're glad to see so many consumers and citizens joining forces to pressure companies like EA and beyond to promote fair and balanced portrayals of gay, lesbian, bi and trans characters wherever they pop up. (More info here.)" 
 
 I will be discussing this matter in more depth with the campaign organizers at AllOut, so expect a follow-up post later today. As it stands, we'll have to content ourselves with idle speculation until more info comes out. Fortunately, idle speculation is one of the major food groups on the internet, so we should all be plenty content. 
 
 Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here. ||||| Nintendo is facing a storm of criticism over its decision not to allow gamers to play as gay characters and form same-sex relationships in the life-simulation game Tomodachi Life. 
 
 There has been disquiet and outrage from a number of quarters despite Nintendo’s statement that Tomodachi life is meant to be a “whimsical and quirky game�? and not a “social commentary�?. This defence in fact seems to have only served to fan the flames ahead of the game’s release in Europe. 
 
 The reaction is understandable in terms of discrimination, but also because of the deep attachments that gamers develop with their online characters. 
 
 I have been researching video game play for more than two decades and I’ve always found issues surrounding character formation, sexuality, and gender in gaming of great psychological interest. 
 
 In one of our studies we found that 57% of gamers had gender-swapped their game character at some point. The practice was more common among women than men. Gender swapping enabled gamers to play around and experiment with various aspects of their in-game character in a way that just isn’t possible in real life. For others it was just fun to see if they felt any different playing as a different gendered character. 
 
 In most instances, the gamers had the opportunity to choose a gender and develop other aspects of their character before they began to play. Choosing to gender swap may have had an effect on the gamers’ styles of play and interaction with other gamers. Whatever the reasons, it was clear from our research that the development of gamers’ online characters and avatars was important to them. 
 
 One of the reasons for the importance of online gaming identities may be because it subverts traditional parasocial interaction. This is when people develop a one-sided relationship in which one party knows a great deal about the other but the same cannot be said in reverse. The most common example of the phenomenon is the relationship between celebrities and their fans. 
 
 A study led by Nicholas Bowman, from West Virginia University, argued that playing video games challenges this concept because the distance between players is reduced or even removed once they enter their virtual environment. The study claimed that online gaming encourages the “psychological merging of a player’s and a character’s mind�? and is critical in the development of character attachment. In this context, the sexuality of a character for a player may be of fundamental psychological importance. 
 
 This appears to be confirmed in another study which presented a scale to assess the connection that gamers felt towards their character. This revealed a significant relationship between character attachment and self-esteem, addiction, game enjoyment and time spent playing games. 
 
 But despite this strong bond, there is a relative lack of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender representation in video games compared with music, film and television. 
 
 Nintendo is not the only culprit but Tomodachi Life has attracted attention because players get to live on an island, take on a character and act out an online life. They make friends, fall in love and can get married. Tye Marini, a gamer from the US, has started a campaign because he wants to marry the avatar of his real-life fiancé. He says some content in the game is only accessible to characters who get married so either has to change his character’s gender or miss out. 
 
 We do have to wonder why the gaming industry is so far behind in this respect. There was for a long time a chronic under-representation of women in games and many people, myself included, argued that this alienated female gamers. This eventually led to developers introducing strong female characters into video games, such as Lara Croft. Maybe the appearance of GLBT characters and role models within games will increase over time but I’m not holding my breath. 
 
 Already a big seller in Japan, it remains to be seen whether Tomodachi Life will be as successful in Europe and the USA when it is released in June. Nintendo’s decision not to allow gay relationships to form within Tomodachi Life appears to be ill-judged, ill-informed, and outdated. 
 
 Games in which identity content can be generated by its users needs to reflect the world in which the gamers’ live. In short, there should be no compromise when it comes to allowing gamers’ to choose their sexuality within the game.
– Electronic Arts is launching a brave new world of gay relationships in online role-playing games, and that's sparking an Internet armageddon. EA has been lambasted by religious right-wingers who fear the dangerous influences of an imagined transgendered "Darth VaPaula" in a Star Wars game, and have begun a boycott against the company. They're being slammed in turn by gay rights activists. Now AllOut.org has yanked its anti-boycott petition off the Web because the petition itself had become a target of an army of spambots apparently launched by anti-gay forces. Complicating matters are suspected PR stunts by EA itself to apparently inflate the war. But that's not the case now, an AllOut spokesman tells Forbes. “We are not arguing that Electronic Arts is a perfect company,” he explained. "But we know that today, on this issue, they are taking an important stand that should be supported. Anti-gay groups are the dark-side here. The Family Research Council is telling this company, and many others, that gay people have no place in our games, in our media and in our lives. That is unacceptable." Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect 3 will allow role-playing participants to not only choose what kind of character they'll play, but for the first time they'll also have an option to engage in a same sex romance.