RPG studio BioWare has always been, for lack of a better term, “woke” with LGBTQ+ characters and romances over the studio’s decades of game releases. From lesbian Jedi guardian Juhani in Knights of the Old Republic and same-sex romances in Jade Empire, BioWare quickly became the face of LGBTQ+ inclusions in video games with Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
Now that BioWare owners Electronic Arts have been acquired by investment firms Affinity Partners and Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, there is a sizeable worry that the studio will be forced to drop representation of queer communities and other progressive groups to please investors, especially as gender transitioning and same-sex relationships are deemed illegal in Saudi Arabia.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, former Dragon Age director Mark Darrah explained that it’s “hard to imagine” being forced to drop its historic LGBTQ+ characters simply due to the fact that many fans buy their games for that level of choice.
Darrah explained that studios that don’t have a history like BioWare might be influenced, saying: “what you might do [if you’re the Saudi government] is just come in and put your thumb on the scale and push their messaging in directions that you want, in directions that make you look good, or at the very least steer them away from messaging that makes you look bad.” However, for a studio with a “track record” like BioWare, then meddling can have some dangerous consequences.
“It’s hard to imagine that you have BioWare pivot from having very progressive messaging to having the reverse because it’s what the government wants,” he explained. “It’s hard to imagine that the public perception of a game that comes out of BioWare even if you do do that isn’t apocalyptically bad. So in that case you either have to decide that you’re willing to just leave it alone, or you have to think that they don’t fit any more within the goals of this new organisation.”
Nevertheless, the Saudi group’s ownership of EA will likely have some effect on the future of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the gaming giant’s wider portfolio with developers “that haven’t shipped anything in a while” likely to be influenced, or forced, to be censored. However, when it comes to BioWare games, or massively successful franchises like The Sims, the wise move is to not rock the boat too hard… at least at first.
Darrah also notes that the wider portfolio of EA isn’t what the Saudi investors are most interested in with the majority of investments by the group focusing on sports-related IP with the former BioWare developer noting that “75% of EA’s money last year was made through live services, a ton of that were the Ultimate Teams from FIFA, or Football Club, and Madden.”
At the time of writing, BioWare is working on the long-awaited Mass Effect sequel, and it will likely involve some level of same-sex relationship options and other LGBTQ+ characters. After all, Mass Effect was many gamers’ first introduction to same-sex options in a video game, it’s a core part of the series’ DNA, and it would be real censorship if it was removed from the series’ return.
