Indeed! Claims without proof are meaningless. Any appeal to what "the" gaming community likes/wants/rejects is spurious on its face. There is no one gaming "community", there are lots and lots of individual gamers who may, or may not, share some beliefs/traits that other gamers share.

A couple of hundred negative reviews, or downvotes on positive reviews doesn't say anything about a gaming community that doesn't actually exist. It just shows that some people who game think X about Y game/expansion.

It's akin to saying that "the" gaming community prefers FPS over other genres, or that "the" gaming community thinks this or that about anything. A non-existent entity can't "think" anything about anything. When people invoke a spurious community, it makes the rest of their argument suspect as well.

Enjoyed your post. :)

Are you really asking why it is not in itself racist to build an imperfect and believable world? You even acknowledge that moral, social and political themes should be included in games.
But if I'm reading you correctly, you believe that anything goes, that any issue the author feels strongly about should be included in the work. If that's your stance, I disagree. Postmodern issues like transgenderism have no precedent in the Forgotten Realms (because magic) and its insertion is incongruous as a result, never mind that the topic is still controversial in real life. Concepts such as war and slavery, however, have existed for all of human history and as such they are universal. That's why they work.

Just because people don't dislike gays doesn't mean that they want gay characters awkwardly forced into a game for "diversity". Just like how the trans person on the Steam forum ripped Beamdog to pieces for how horribly they shoehorned the trans person into the game. There's massive backlash against this game, check any gaming forum. Only people who A) bend over and spread their cheeks for SJWs because they're terrified of being called a name like "racist" and B) blind fanboys who openly admit that the game is horribly flawed but "I don't care, I'll buy anything that says Baldur's Gate on it!" are defending this game. Seriously, go read other gaming forums.

Since you want to talk about "inclusive" shit, I'll reiterate what I've said Lloth knows how many times in this thread. No one is opposed to gay / trans / autistic / whatever special fucking snowflake characters being in a game. What people are opposed to is 1) awkwardly forcing those issues into existing franchises where they conflict with the existing lore / game universe and 2) putting them in with a political agenda of "You must like <special snowflake with victim points> or you're a horrible person!" shoved in your face and with the writers / developers openly stating that they are pushing an agenda. If you want to cover those issues in an RPG, awesome - but do it in a unique game that you created and write the characters to be GOOD people and not some shit like Dragonspear where it's "Hi, how are you? Did you know that I believe that I'm something other than what I physically am and I want to chop my dick off? K, thanks, bye!" That is just TERRIBLE writing and that's exactly the kind of thing that was called out on the Steam forum by the trans person (I say person because I have no idea if they're FtM or MtF). The problem is that writing good characters and creating a unique game takes effort and talent (and Amber Scott openly said in the Kotaku interview that Beamdog won't make an original game because it's "too much effort"), which most people who really want to put those issues into games don't want to put out.

If you make a good game with good writing and don't berate your customers, gamers will buy it. It's not a complicated formula, but unfortunately people who self-identify as SJWs refuse to put out the effort in the first two parts and just cannot stop beating people in the face with their personal opinions. For me personally, I like RPGs that have varied plot points / character interactions when it MAKES SENSE in the game. I like having bi-sexual / gay relationship options in Dragon Age / Mass Effect and I definitely pursue those paths in some playthroughs. However, I'm very against forcing those things into Baldur's Gate when it completely conflicts with the existing game and is very poorly implemented on top of it.

Flame wars are fertile ground for mischief and I honestly cannot think of anything. I have dishonoured my family.

Bruh.....that's a lot of text. You must really be angry. You realize how silly it is to get angry over a video game character right? It's silly. Just have fun and try to keep things in perspective.

It's the issues in the context of the game world that matters. Many people are racist against drow because the vast majority of them are evil. Those that aren't evil are either killed off by Lloth in fairly short order or are powerful enough (or have powerful enough friends) to withstand her assassins. Their nature is enforced by a powerful evil goddess.

The Red Wizards of Thay are bigoted misogynistic a**holes. That's what makes Edwin such a fun character. It also makes his final fate hilarious because of the poetic justice.

Shoving a trans person into the world just to have one is... meh. Why would being trans in Faerun be such a big deal? This is a world where the divine can and often do take on opposite genders. A world where genders can be changed with a potion or finding a wizard who can cast a 5th level spell. Why would the first words out of your mouth be 'I used to be a man'?

If there was a dialouge tree where you could learn this eventually it would be okay. If there was a quest to get a potion that changed genders and you learned about this character that way this would be okay. But all she is is trans. Nothing else.

That said she is just one character and that alone won't stop me from picking up the expansion. What will stop me however is that fact that I played through the EE of BG1 + 2 already. Beamdog sucks at writing ANY character. They are just plain terrible. It's their inability to write decent major characters that bothers me.

I'll make my unwanted opinion known for a second here about this.

I think people are overreacting to the content in Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear.

I'm no fan of SJWs but I really don't see anything too bad here. The trans and bisexual characters in the game don't bother me. The Minsc quip about "ethics in heroic adventuring" is at worst silly and somewhat out of place, but not really offensive. One could see the Minsc quote as being almost being in a positive light.

My only issue is with the writer calling the original sexist. Yes, she's a self admitted (ironically or not) SJW. But honestly, I don't see anything particularly awful about the lines in question.

Now, I have heard someone mention there's a line about "mansplaining" but I haven't seen this. That to me would be utterly asinine and, depending on how you see it, bigoted. Barring that though, I think people are overreacting a bit.... but.... I can understand why people are upset, as well.

Anyways, might as well get used to it. This is the future of video gaming. AA and AAA devs are going down "social justice" route. It's hip and trendy and people mostly do it to yell "look how progressive and cool I am!" but such is the nature of post 2010 game industry.

You don't have to bend over and take it. If people give bad reviews to games with SJW content and refuse to buy it, game companies will stop putting that content in. As small as Beamdog is, this game's failure could completely sink the company and destroy the careers of some of the employees (like their main writer and their CEO). That's solid motivation to other companies not to put that crap in their games.

Found this article:

http://www.craveonline.com/entertainment/972903-gamers-flood-baldurs-gate-expansion-negative-reviews-introduces-transsexual-character

The article makes some good points.

It’s also a shamelessly opinionated piece that deliberately misinterprets the issue at hand and does its best to present a black-and-white good guys vs. bad guys scenario.

The thing is, claiming that the problem is ”because it has a transgender character” or whatnot is not presenting the complexity of the issue at all, but making it look so is, of course, as common a tactic as is the strategy of attacking large swathes of population in a blog and then using ”they criticize me because I’m a woman/[minority name]” as a defense against any and all counter-criticism.

Thing is, games are not separate from the real world that produces them, so it’s impossible not to interpret them in that context. When someone shoves his political agenda in your throat, it’s as hard to ignore as not thinking that a movie presenting a socialist utopia in the 70s would not be addressing real-world politics.

This article does a somewhat better job of presenting the issues.
http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2016/04/baldurs-gate-siege-of-dragonspear-sjw-themes-sees-gamers-asking-for-refunds/

Even if racial tensions between good and well species have their place in a (game) world, the interactions between members of said races have to be racial in nature. What else could they be? And -I'm going to get a serious bashing now- it is not believable and natural to have a whole race flagged as evil.
Sorry, but that is not what good writing is about. I like the Forgotten Realms Setting and it works well for me. But there is a reason why R.A. Salvatore invented a certain good drow. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been much point to his novels.
And I do not believe that anything goes in writing - on the contrary. It's one of the biggest challenges to create a consistent world. And that means to be very precise and restricted in what you include.
The inclusion of a transgender character in BG without a real story to back it up?
Well, I think it's a bit unnecessary and silly. Like, let's say, golden pantaloons.

When you become part of a large swathe, you take on a lot of elements you cannot control. A lot of the dialogue out there on the net, as well as in here, really is as simple as you deny it to be. Those of you trying to control the narrative and the message will never be taken seriously if you continue to turn a blind eye.

If you want the internet to believe they got it all wrong, then you need to start checking those that really are making it about hate instead of ignoring them and exploiting their strength in numbers. Your silence makes people assume the worst, and how can you blame them?

Also, someone is going to have someone else's agenda shoved down their throat no matter who comes out on top. It's you or them. So maybe you're all overestimating just how effective it is to parrot that line a million times.

Viconia: racism shoved down our throats
Mazzy: can't get the job she wants because of her... well, race again I guess. Shoved down our throats.
Aerie: rape shoved down our throats. The writing gets rather intense here.
Jan: height-challenged person compensates his shortcomings with technical gadgets and vegetable fetishism. Shoved down our throats.

Seriously, if I read that phrase again one time, I'm going to shut down my internet and go for a long walk. There must be some sensible people out there. Going to look for them.
Then I'm going to shove it down their throats.