has anyone tried contacting the lgbt media?

[Sekoia]

I also don't have any contacts, but here are two suggestions/leads in case someone wants to pursue them.

GaymerCon http://gaymercon.org/ "GaymerCon is the first gaming and geek lifestyle convention with a focus on LGBT culture." This seems like something that would be of possible interest to them, or at the very least, perhaps they could help direct us to more appropriate contacts.

GayGamer.net http://gaygamer.net/ I skimmed through and don't see any recent articles about City on their site, though they do have some from years ago (this is the most recent). Thus I suspect none of their usual contributors currently play, but they might still be interested. Actually, digging around, the guy who wrote the older City articles is still an active contributor, and he's on twitter: https://twitter.com/WootiniGG

[Soundtrack]

Hi there.  Do we happen to have any other LGBT(etc) hanging around here?  I mean, other than me.  By LGBT community standards, I'm not a very good gay, so they might be more in touch with this subject than I.

But... I've never felt very welcome in Cities as a gay guy.  From what I can tell, it comes mostly from Cities' high population of older people.  I've been in so many arguments about it that I just keep quiet if it ever comes up.  This probably sounds way pessimistic, so I'd love for people to prove me wrong.

Emu, I'm so very sorry that you didn't feel welcome in COH. That's not acceptable to me.

I think I'm one of those "older people" (in that I'm 45...which I think is probably ancient to many who play?! LOL) and I'm a devout Christian... but I can tell you that you're welcome on my team any day. :) I'm @Soundtrack at Virtue (not sure on which server you are), but please feel free to look me up. I'd enjoy teaming with you!

It's funny, (and not to threadjack), but as a Christian I didn't always feel welcome in Paragon City. I remember once asking on the Virtue forums if there was any Christian SG recruiting and I believe I had my post removed due to complaints that I was "pushing my religion on others".

I guess whenever we are not of the majority, we may feel different.

I'll make a deal with you... I'll team with you, if you're willing to team with a Christian.  :)

[ScottyB]

If anyone is part of or knows someone who is part of one of the aforementioned LGBT-supportive Super Groups then it might be worthwhile getting a few statements or even a few paragraphs about what City of Heroes has meant in terms of meeting people and sharing experiences. Whether or not such statements get used for an article by one of the outlets like Sekoia pointed out, it would still be uplifting to know what this game has done as a part of peoples' lives.

[kgiesing]

To answer other questions... I started on Virtue, played on Infinity, then moved to Freedom.  I've experienced a degree of negativity on each, but you can probably guess that Freedom is the worst.

Back in 2008 (I think; might have been 2007) DJ_Blu on Victory sponsored their Q Pride Parade.  I was in touch because I wanted to support the event by giving them infamy (I had what was, at the time, quite a bit lying around from marketeering experiments).  I got the impression that Victory was the go-to server for the LGBT crowd, but I could easily be wrong, and it was years ago now. 

I'm hetero, but my mom is a lesbian, so I really liked the community support the game showed.

[downix]

Hi there.  Do we happen to have any other LGBT(etc) hanging around here?  I mean, other than me.  By LGBT community standards, I'm not a very good gay, so they might be more in touch with this subject than I.

But... I've never felt very welcome in Cities as a gay guy.  From what I can tell, it comes mostly from Cities' high population of older people.  I've been in so many arguments about it that I just keep quiet if it ever comes up.  This probably sounds way pessimistic, so I'd love for people to prove me wrong.

I've seen people gay bash once, and they got the major smackdown in public.

*And I did not even have the largest paddle. My father was a T, and to me it is no different than if they said that to her face.

[dwturducken]

I wonder if there are good heteros and bad heteros.  And which one am I?  *sigh* I'm probably a horrible hetero since I can cook, clean, and operating a sewing machine quite competently.

Actually, this one kind of pisses me off, not to go all moderaty on anyone.  I'm fairly competent in those areas, as well, not to mention knowing how to knit, and I've never felt like those were "girly" or "gay" things to do.  I just have a widely diverse skillset, which also includes carpentry, computers, and basic automotive maintenance.  It's not a predilection toward more or less masculine  behaviors, so much as it's frugality. Why replace what I can fix?

[SithRose]

Actually, now that you mention it, I may have a couple of potentially useful contacts there. Let me poke them and see what they have to say.

[Osborn]

Hi there.  Do we happen to have any other LGBT(etc) hanging around here?  I mean, other than me.  By LGBT community standards, I'm not a very good gay, so they might be more in touch with this subject than I.

But... I've never felt very welcome in Cities as a gay guy.  From what I can tell, it comes mostly from Cities' high population of older people.  I've been in so many arguments about it that I just keep quiet if it ever comes up.  This probably sounds way pessimistic, so I'd love for people to prove me wrong.

Me too, I guess, but I have no contacts within any LGBT+ communities.

I've never had any problems with it in game, but I also seem to have a friends list that is much higher in LGBT+ peoples than is statistically probable if I picked friends at absolute random, so maybe I'm just biased by who I surround myself with in the game.

There's good gay and bad gay?

I wonder if there are good heteros and bad heteros.  And which one am I?  *sigh* I'm probably a horrible hetero since I can cook, clean, and operating a sewing machine quite competently.

I'm bad at being what I am then, because I'm not good at cleaning and I can't sew anything. Maybe you karmatically balance me out or something!

I don't think I've ever seen any LGBT hate playing the game, but I'm probably not as quick to pick up on it if it's in front of me.  I'm certainly not passing judgment, and most of the people I've played the game with regularly over the years certainly weren't.

I do remember somebody sort of very slightly trans-bashing over /hc a while back. It was.. I don't want to say it was purposefully bashing. It started out as a "Lol, women don't play video games" thing and went from here.

Zwill, for what it's worth, was somewhat protective and thoughtful of transgendered people. That really made me feel a lot more welcome.

I'm gonna miss him, as a community manager.

Actually, this one kind of pisses me off, not to go all moderaty on anyone.  I'm fairly competent in those areas, as well, not to mention knowing how to knit, and I've never felt like those were "girly" or "gay" things to do.  I just have a widely diverse skillset, which also includes carpentry, computers, and basic automotive maintenance.  It's not a predilection toward more or less masculine  behaviors, so much as it's frugality. Why replace what I can fix?

I'm sure he was being facetious.

Back in 2008 (I think; might have been 2007) DJ_Blu on Victory sponsored their Q Pride Parade.  I was in touch because I wanted to support the event by giving them infamy (I had what was, at the time, quite a bit lying around from marketeering experiments).  I got the impression that Victory was the go-to server for the LGBT crowd, but I could easily be wrong, and it was years ago now. 

I'm hetero, but my mom is a lesbian, so I really liked the community support the game showed.

I think Victory was the 'unofficial' LGTB+ server, in the same way that Virtue was the 'unofficial' RP server.

Though I could be wrong. Despite my orientation, I rolled all my characters on Virtue after migrating from Infinity.

Please don't make light of this.  I really don't appreciate the use of stereotypes.   No matter what ideological high ground you're coming from, being homo- or bisexual is different than being hetero.  I'm a boy who likes boys, you're a boy who likes girls.  It's just not the same...  When you're in a minority, becoming a community is a necessity.  Hence there is no "heterosexual community".  Communities have good and bad elements, and I've experienced some serious negatives.  I say I'm a bad gay because I have never been particularly well-received by anyone in the community except my boyfriend, and we started off long-distance (we've been dating for almost three years now).  I actually don't have any gay friends, save for him.  Poor me, right?  I don't mind it so much, but I've never fit in with a mostly gay community. 

To answer other questions... I started on Virtue, played on Infinity, then moved to Freedom.  I've experienced a degree of negativity on each, but you can probably guess that Freedom is the worst.

With all this said, I am proud of who I am. Though I prefer to avoid conflict, I am not afraid to fight for who I am..  I'm truly glad to hear that Cities has helped people, but it's never been that way for me.

I don't think that makes you 'bad' at being gay or whatever. Not all LGBT people want to 'ghetto' themselves away from the world.

Wanting to avoid conflict makes a lot of sense. It takes a specific sort of person to be able to go out of their way to make ripples and connections within any sort of community. That isn't to say one is superior to the other. Just it's not really for everybody, and it's a bit selfish to make you think you're inferior because that's not the calling for you.

[SithRose]

OK, I have a friend who's in the blogosphere for the LGBT community. He doesn't play MMOs. He says "I want to blog about this... pass on the word... I just wish I had a summary to explain the issue- I just don't understand."

Can we whip together a good press release for the LGBT press? Something concise, that addresses "This is what the game has done for our community. This is how it's helped us. This is how we've been able to cope with being in the closet/bigotry/hatred/fear. This is how other games *haven't* treated us." with examples that will make non-gamers sit up and take notice?

I can write something for autism. I've got personal experience with that. I've already posted on a few autism boards. But I'd REALLY rather get someone who's actually IN the community and has seen the differences between COH and other games to write it up, for people with NO MMO experience to be able to understand.

[frostcoh]

Feel free to wave my name about, but I personally don't have any media contacts.  I would however be more than open to interviews, either email or phone.

I've tried contacting Joe Jervis (@joemygod) but nothing panned out.  Maybe someone could contact Andy Towle?

[SithRose]

I've tried contacting Joe Jervis (@joemygod) but nothing panned out.  Maybe someone could contact Andy Towle?

My primary contact here is Lee Harrington, who's more active in the kink world, but is also a very strong LGBT advocate and blogger. He WANTS to blog about this. He WANTS to let people know about it. He just doesn't do MMOs, so he doesn't know where to start from. Hence my request for a press release type post for people who *aren't* MMO players, to give them a reason to CARE about this game and why it's going away...and what it could have done for them.

[Vulpy]

Hence my request for a press release type post for people who *aren't* MMO players, to give them a reason to CARE about this game and why it's going away...and what it could have done for them.

How would a testimonial from a white heterosexual male from a culturally insular part of America who came to appreicate LGBT issues in a new light by interacting with other players of CoH do?

Not that I know such a person, or anything.

[Aquashock]

I'm not the best writer but I can try my hand at something. Gay girl here, if it wasn't obvious from my first comment in this thread. ;)

[SithRose]

Vulpy and Aqua, BOTH would be immensely helpful.

[Minotaur]

I think Victory was the 'unofficial' LGTB+ server, in the same way that Virtue was the 'unofficial' RP server.

It was/is. The gaymers were on Victory as was RAF (the R is rainbow, can't remember exactly what the rest is, alpha force ?).

I haven't seen many of them about for months, but they were mainly active in US time while I'm in Europe.

[emu265]

It was/is. The gaymers were on Victory as was RAF (the R is rainbow, can't remember exactly what the rest is, alpha force ?).

I haven't seen many of them about for months, but they were mainly active in US time while I'm in Europe.

Wish I had known that sooner.

[Vulpy]

Here's what I've got. It's a first draft--if any of the language might be offensive, or if any part of it is hard to understand, let me know. I'll post a final version when I'm happy with it.

Hello. My name is unimportant, but on the internet I usually answer to "Vulpy." I'm here to tell you a story. It's a story of a community I'm glad to have been a part of, what that community taught me, and where I hope that community is going. It is not, however, my story.

That's going to make this next section a little boring, I'm afraid. You see, every story requires context, and the context in this story happens to pertain to the narrator—that's me. But if you'll humor me, I think this part is at least as important as what will follow.

I'm reasonably representative of a part of the country that exists at an odd intersection. On one hand, it is temperate and verdant enough to support the sorts of economic activities that have sustained humanity for most of its history. On the other, the terrain is arduous and rolling, with rocky mountains as far as the eye can see. That geography colors the psychology of Southern Appalachia: we, as residents of the area, are largely born from residents of the area. There has been very little movement in or out of the region in the centuries since its European (largely Scottish and Irish) colonization. We've gotten along just fine on our own, thank you very much, by being resourceful and tenacious...and by clinging to what is believed to be safe and effective.

So, you see, the jokes about "hillbillies" have some smattering of truth to them, as all the best jokes do. We are poor, we are white, we cling to our beliefs tightly, and we view outsiders with suspicion. But we are changing, slowly. I can remember a time when people within walking distance of my childhood home didn't have running water, and I'm not an old person. Now, almost all of my cousins have smartphones.

I, more than most of my peers, embraced technology. Living in an area so rural that the nearest gas station was half an hour's travel away meant that I even turned to technology for entertainment, and became an avid video gamer. Two short decades later, I live in a modestly-sized city with a high-speed internet connection that brings the world to me. I have more choices in entertainment now than before, but I've found that video games—especially online, community-based games—are an efficient and constantly-varying source of entertainment.

This is where the story truly begins. Almost eight years ago, I began playing the massively-multiplayer online (MMO) game City of Heroes. It let me live every nerd's fantasy by proxy: I could create my own comic book character in any way, shape, or fashion that I wanted and lead them into battle against the forces of evil. While doing so, I began to meet people I never would have had a chance to meet otherwise: a drug addiction rehabilitation counselor from Michigan. A video game beta tester from French Canada. A vice-president from a semi-major bank in Arizona. Someone whose resumé includes installing audio equipment and fixing motorcycles in Northern California. Writers. DJs. Teenagers. Kids. Grandparents.  People I never could have met in Appalachia.

And I talked to them, using a little tiny chat interface in the lower-left corner of the screen. I learned about how they saw the world, what challenges they faced. I appreciated that each life was different, almost incomprehensible to me (as my life was to them). But there was beauty in that, too. The differences powered that drive to communicate, to learn more.

It is my understanding that, among MMOs, City of Heroes has a large and well-organized LGBT community. I have never had a cause to interact with this community as a whole, but I can understand the appeal. After all, a great deal of the game's conceits center on customizing the player experience: unlike the real world, no virtual citizen of Paragon City is going to insinuate that your game character is less of a person for having a gender identity that doesn't fit neatly into clearly-predefined roles. The game world accepts your character as you are—gay, straight, transgender, asexual, robot, alien, sapient plant mass—with no expectations placed upon your background or identity.

But, as I said, I never had reason to interact with the LGBT community in the game as a whole. But I did have many chances to interact with members of that community. Usually, we would bond  over in-game experiences—defeating a difficult enemy, say—before striking up conversation afterward about who we were and where we were from. On the few occasions someone has admitted to being non-heterosexual or non-cissexual, it has often been with some measure of apprehension. So, I talked to a few of them about that.

The stories I've heard as a result aren't mine to share. I've given my word that I wouldn't, and I will hold to that word here. However, as a result of hearing those stories, I've grown to appreciate the unique challenges faced by LGBT people in American and abroad. So, I began to wonder: what would it be like to internalize a story like that? I began to play with the idea in a safe, consequence-free environment, using a fictional character to give me a solid outlook on the issues at hand.

I write, sometimes. I mean, I wrote this. But I write fiction, too. One day, if you read a story about a young man with powers of illusion who struggles to cope with his identity as a gay person in light of his father's conventional view of masculinity, I hope you'll think of me. That story started because someone from Southern Appalachia—who barely had cause to think about LGBT issues before—met some people who lived very different lives while playing a computer game.

City of Heroes is scheduled to be shut down on November 30, 2012. The game is apparently profitable, but its publisher is refocusing its business aims. If you'd like to know more about City of Heroes and the effort to save it, visit http://www.savecoh.com

[Vulpy]

Nuts. Realized a couple of ways I could improve that, but...I'll wait and make all the changes at once.

[Kurrent]

You might want to look at the websites AfterElton and AfterEllen.  They both focus on gay issues, AElton for men, AEllen for women, and both of them have pretty high traffic and exposure in the LGBT community. Advocate magazine is another high-volume media outlet; it's one of the oldest magazines for the community, predating the Web as we know it today.  And while it's not aimed at the LGBT community, has anyone contacted Wired yet?

As a gay woman who predominantly plays on Liberty, we have a very active group of gamers who are gay or bisexual.  There are many SGs who are gay-friendly or even gay-predominant (Sisterhood, Mistress's Girls and Looney Bin are the three I have had the most involvement with), and it's very rare to encounter a hater.  For the most part Liberty gets along regardless of sexual orientation, and because of that there don't seem to be that many LGBT-specific groups--they just haven't really been necessary, because we've always been part of the greater community.  At least, that's my theory. 

Without a doubt, CoX has earned a place in the LGBT community.  It has been one of the few places where we as a community have been accepted unconditionally by a vast majority of the player base and developers.  We've had weddings, anniversaries, holiday parties, all with the community's support and even with some of the developers attending our events over the years.  For many of us, CoX has taken the place of Facebook as a social network for everyone to meet and interact, and I'm going to miss it greatly if it does go away.  I think it definitely qualifies as something worth making the LGBT community as a whole aware of, and I'm actually a bit annoyed I haven't already thought of that.

[DrakeGrimm]

BUMP! FOR GREAT JUSTICE!