Band of Thebes

A Tale of Two Crowd-Fundings: Queer Books vs. Gay Video Game

Hairsplitters may say it's comparing apples and Charles Darnay, but draw your own conclusions from these two recent high-profile crowd-funding efforts for gay projects. One was local, physical, retail, books; the other, a global digital online game. 

BGSQD, the emerging NYC queer bookstore temporarily housed at the Strange Loop Gallery (open today until 4:00pm!) and hoping to establish its own permanent space, sought $15,000 on Lucky Ant. The effort ended last week, at less than 32% of its goal, or $4,795. Because the project failed, its supporters will not be charged for their pledges and the store receives no money.

Coming Out on Top, a sweet video game in which you are a college boy who comes out and must navigate any number of sticky situations, "could be called a dating sim, a visual novel, or an interactive story," according to its creator. (Although the faces here are white, the game has characters who are Asian, black, or Latino. And although the demo is PG-13, the actual game has enough erotic situations to make it 18+) With 27 days still to go on Kickstarter, it has already achieved 433% of its original goal, or $21,120. So far, the game has attracted 893 supporters, including 534 people who gave $10 each and one donor who gave $1,500+.

Welcome To the Future You Don't Want

To spare you a later indignity of asking How did this happen?, please note that video games have had two record-breaking releases this month. Sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 totalled $400 million in its first day and $738 million in its first week. Sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops II exceeded $500 million in its first day. That game features performance capture from Sam Worthington, Michael Keaton, and Gen. David Petraeus. 

With Xbox 360 you can immerse yourself in these games, watch tv, rent movies, connect to live sporting events, you can even dance... but you can't read an ebook. 

Boys Love Playing with their Joysticks: Video Games Get Gay

UPDATE: The NYT on Comic Con. The LAT: "Gay Characters Enjoy Prominence, Acceptance"

While we've been nattering in the literary nursery, that colicky baby called video games has grown into a Goliath bigger than film. Hollywood brays ad nauseum if a movie grosses $150 million in its first weekend, a feat they've only managed five times, but in its first day on sale in the US the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops earned $360 million.

Likewise:

The bestselling DVD of 2011 was Harry Potter & TDH, Part 1 with 7.0 million copies. The bestselling video game was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 at 12.4 million copies.

Total US dvd + blu-ray sales for 2011: $9.5 billion

Total US film box office ticket sales for 2011: $10.2 billion

Total US video game sales for 2011: $17 billion

 Slowly, the nerds of the gaming world are inching toward LGBTQI inclusion. A breakout year was 2009, when Sims 3 finally allowed same-sex marriage (+ nude proposals), and Dragon Age included the clip above. Since then more games have let players steer male characters into gay adventures with hot CGI men. (Or elves. Or brainy aliens.) Even ultra hetero Grand Theft Auto released The Ballad of Gay Tony [wow] about a nightclub owner and his boyfriend in a mafia plot worthy of Elmore Leonard.

Last month, Crystal Steltenpohl posted an exhaustive, four-part examination of queers in video games in the 80s, 90s, and 00s parts 1 and 2. A quicker, lighter look is embedded below. For daily updates, read the blog Gay Gamer.

The geek and gamer paradise Comic Con opens today in San Diego. The event, which has outgrown its maximum capacity of 126,000 attendees, sold out within 90 minutes back in March. You can't say that about Book Expo. Which leads to the question, in the long run, how will teachers keep students interested in static words on a printed page compared to this type of interactive storytelling?

After the jump, two additional gay scenes and two visual stunners.

[For the novice: the pauses in dialogue are where the player chooses a response. Above, the options appear at the bottom of the screen; the player's selection is highlighted.]