House Party allows for all kinds of debaucherous shenanigans – things like starting a deadly fist fight, hooking up with the hottest partygoer, or even setting the house on fire could be part of your chosen destiny. At this rager, pretty much everything is on the table (or hidden in the cabinet because we all know what will happen if Frank sees you).
One thing Eek! Games prides itself on is House Party’s inclusivity. Your character’s choices – throwing someone’s drink in their face or making out with your favorite NPC in the bathroom – are entirely up to you. While our NPCs are often based on gender norms and sexual stereotypes, we take pride in flipping those tropes on their heads. Get Frank to like you, and you’ll see what we mean. These partiers don’t care about stereotypes, so you just keep on being you!
Here’s the thing. As we all know, video games haven’t always been this way. While statistics show that 41% of gamers are women and at least 10% identify as LGBTQIA+, most video games target white dudes (Fiorellini, 2021). In so many fancy words: mainstream gaming targets masculine culture, and minimizes or oppresses female and non-heteronormative perspectives (Bishop, 2019). This systematically others and exoticizes non-white dudes (Bishop, 2019) and quite frankly, we think that’s lame.
Alas, that’s how video games came to be – in 1985, the French interactive fiction game Le Crime du Parking detailed a murder mystery where, in the end, a gay drug dealer is a culprit (Fiorellini, 2021). For the time, this was a pretty progressive ending. The AIDS epidemic was in full swing, and the inclusivity of a gay drug dealer opened some discussions on their experience. This trend continued; in 1989, C.M. Ralph released Caper in the Castro to raise funds for the AIDS epidemic, which would be a lot more notable if he didn’t name his characters homophobic slurs (Fiorellini, 2021). Maybe for the time, the slurs weren’t recognized as slurs. Regardless, as Aaron Alford argues in his Medium article, “Representations are essential to constructing reality” (2020). It’s easy to judge games like these from a modern perspective, and perhaps their approaches weren’t ideal, but they began a conversation and provided a stepping stone towards LGBTQIA+ inclusivity.
That said, a quantitative analysis of queer identities in video games found that when compared to other media like cinema and television, queer representation in games is still relatively small (Utsch, 2017). And debatably, what makes it to market is super unhelpful to the LGBTQIA+ community. For example, the developers of the game Final Fight swapped out their female character, Poison, for a transgender woman (Barsby, 2020). Essentially, the developers were convinced that the people playing the game would take less issue with hitting a trans woman (Barsby, 2020) – our guess is they had little confidence in their players’ ability to pack a punch. Last time we checked, aggravated assault is an illegal thing to do to anyone who qualifies as a human.
Indie game developers, thankfully, have done a lot of god’s work to heighten inclusive and accurate LGBTQIA+ representation in the industry (Barsby, 2020) – and we’re proud to be a part of that revolution. Final Fight’s humor is dated and unoriginal; Indie game developers, well, they wouldn’t exist without innovative ideas and creativity.
At Eek! Games, our humor is certainly M rated. But it won’t offend you in the shitty way, it’ll just offend you when Frank knocks you on your ass and you have to restart because you forgot to save your progress before grabbing a Natty Lite in front of him (Seriously? All that for a Natty Lite?).
Everyone – except maybe serial killers? – is invited to our House Party. The game’s hot tub side shenanigans give thousands of options for gameplay, including romancing whomever you choose. However, you need to be careful of the items you grab, the words you speak, and the actions you pick because just one choice can change everything. Whether “everything” means good or bad, that’s your business – not ours.
Now, stop reading and get to partying; the night won’t be young forever (and neither will you)!
References:
Alford, A. J. (2021, January 19). Esports still have a long way to go when it comes to inclusivity: Qrank.gg. Medium. Retrieved September 7, 2022, from https://aaronalford.medium.com/esports-still-have-a-long-way-to-go-when-it-comes-to-inclusivity-qrank-gg-1bddb504338c
Barsby, O. (2020, February 24). The Boar. Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://theboar.org/2020/02/lgbt-representation-in-gaming/
Bishop, K., Malliet, S., & Dhoest, A. (2019). Subversive ludic performance: An analysis of gender and … – JSTOR. JSTOR. Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.11116/digest.6.2.2
Fiorellini, N. (2021, June 2). Venn diagram of LGBTQ+ and gaming communities goes here – jstor daily. JSTOR Daily. Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://daily.jstor.org/venn-diagram-of-lgbtq-and-gaming-communities-goes-here/
Utsch, S., Braganca, L. C., Ramos, P., Caldeira, P., & Tenorio, J. (2017). Queer Identities in Video Games: Data Visualization for a Quantitative Analysis of Representation. Proceedings of SBGames, 845–854. Retrieved July 5, 2022, from https://www.sbgames.org/sbgames2017/papers/CulturaFull/175360.pdf.
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