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View Full Version : Clive Barker interview and a poll for general gaming



Rock_Starman
10-22-2007, 04:27 PM
Here's the interview: http://gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox360/games/features/142588.shtml

But I wanted to take a poll about this part specifically:

"One of the reasons I made the decision to move to San Francisco was to be part of a writing community that supports and realizes me as a *** man writing and creating art to motivate and change a cultural identity. For someone like you who was lived and worked in so many artistic communities, how have issues of gender affected you in the game community?

CB: Well, trust me when I say I have plans. One of the characters in Jericho is a lesbian. It's very hard in a fist-person shooter to do things with the delicate issues of gender and to explore who she is when she puts the gun down. If you put the gun down some monster's going to eat you. One day I want to be part of a team that creates a game with a *** man or woman in the lead role where they are casually sexual, just as heterosexual characters are casually sexual in games, and have the public be perfectly comfortable with it. My belief is that audiences are perfectly comfortable with it already. I think it tends to be people in marketing departments that are most frightened by those types of ideas.

As a *** man I've been writing about *** men and women from the beginning, from my first three Books of Blood. A screen writer came to see me a few years back. As he was leaving I could tell he had something to say so I said, "you obviously have something on your mind, what is it?" and he said, "I don't know how to say this so I'll just come out with it. You wrote a story a few years back called 'In the Hills, the Cities' with two *** protagonists and there was a sex scene between the two of them. When I read it that was the first time that I realized there were other people out there like me, and I realized you must be one of them because you described the taste of sin, I tasted my own soul and I was 14 and I knew you must have tasted it too." He was crying when he was saying this.

This is why I believe fantasy, and I'm not totally comfortable using that word, but it can sometimes, by leading you through a higher realism, lead you back into yourself, back into the mythic self, the deep self, the sexual self. Interestingly that story, both my agent who was ***, and my editor fought ferociously for me to not publish it because it was my first book and what was I doing identifying myself as a *** man. They thought I was killing my career right there. That story won several awards for best fantasy short story and that was the end of that. I've never knowingly had any bad judgment made against my work because of my sexuality.

I've had bad judgments made against my work because people don't like the way I talk about religion but I've never had anybody complain about the blow jobs. I think we're going to eventually get to the place we games will give us all these freedoms and all these intimacies of all the poetry in the world. We're not there yet, but we'll be there soon. The more voices like your's and mine that are heard will make this community better."

Chthonic
10-23-2007, 12:03 AM
He's been beaten to the punch, though. Fear Effect, anyone?

Thrashdragon
10-23-2007, 01:21 AM
I wouldn't play it. People's sexuality is their own business and I could care less what they do in their bedroom, but my character in a game needs to be someone I can at least somewhat identify with. For the record, I also tend not to enjoy games with female lead characters for the same reason.

DShiz1029
10-23-2007, 01:30 AM
Jericho blows. I played the demo and was not impressed. This game is so unoriginal, lesbians or no lesbians...

WingsOfSteel
10-23-2007, 01:41 AM
I wouldn't play it. People's sexuality is their own business and I could care less what they do in their bedroom, but my character in a game needs to be someone I can at least somewhat identify with. For the record, I also tend not to enjoy games with female lead characters for the same reason.

What about games with alien main characters?

Thrashdragon
10-23-2007, 02:03 AM
What about games with alien main characters?

Good question! I can't think of one offhand, but I must have played something with an alien main character (besides Destroy All Humans, that was just bad so I stopped playing it for different reasons). I guess since I don't have a problem playing an Orc or a Tauren, then as long as it was male and straight it'd be fine. Species and race don't matter to me. Interesting that I find it easier to identify with say, an enormous green tusked creature than a *** man or a woman.

Whoa, I just reread that article, I had no idea Clive Barker was ***. Guess I couldn't play him as a character either. Heh. I've always enjoyed his short stories but he can't seem to put a decent novel together.

Chthonic
10-23-2007, 02:38 AM
I wouldn't play it. People's sexuality is their own business and I could care less what they do in their bedroom, but my character in a game needs to be someone I can at least somewhat identify with. For the record, I also tend not to enjoy games with female lead characters for the same reason.

It's funny. I usually prefer to go with female characters, whenever I'm given the choice. I figure that if I'm going to be staring at a character's ass for several hours, it might as well be a chick.