Coming Out on Top: Been There, Done That

The game features unabashed and unashamed visions of gay men’s bodies as objects and foci of sexual desire, but those visions are entirely unchallenging, uncritical and, frankly, boring. What does an unending tide of sex-hungry, perfectly sculpted, taunt muscle men with huge, porn star cocks add to the discourse of gay men and sex? Nothing that we haven’t already seen a thousand times. It’s exactly the same thing I saw in those Euro softcore films in the ‘90s. It’s exactly the same thing I saw in the gay riff on American Pie, Another Gay Movie. In fact, if you go look for “gay and lesbian comedy” on Netflix right now, you will probably see these tropes play out before your very eyes in movie form as recently as last year.

And surprise, the popularity of these tropes in many ways stems from their acceptability to the notions of gay male sexuality that persist in the straight world. On the Kickstarter page for Coming Out, the author discusses thematic influences, including Japanese comics such as boy’s love (though she uses the term “yaoi”) and gay manga. In point of fact, she effectively says that men in boy’s love are too “lithe and pretty” while those in gay manga are “hairy, burly guys,” so she “simply drew the guys I wanted to see but couldn’t find.” To put it bluntly, she created men whose bodies she was interested in.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. I think it’s expected of a creator, to some extent. But it is part of the problem. The game was created by someone who has commensurately small stakes in our discourse about gay male bodies, in the same way that men who create media from a woman’s POV—as the game’s developer rightly asserts—frequently get it wrong because they also have low stakes.

I want to point out that the two cultural touchstones she’s talking about—boy’s love and gay manga—are two very different contexts. Boy’s Love (BL), broadly speaking, comes from a different starting place than gay manga (sometimes called “bara,” though please see this link for why the term “gay manga” is preferred), which is typically considered to be by and for an audience of gay men. The differences in body types reflect not just the different desires of those perceived target audiences, but also cultural expectations about gendered bodies by those audiences. Japanese gay manga are frequently the only place I can find media images of bigger or fat gay men that are unreservedly sexual… and the reason for that is because images of bodies like those found in Coming Out on Top are massively prolific and dominant in the US already, and have been for some time.

Sadly, the game’s florid descriptions of what are relatively basic sexual acts struck me as painfully dull rather than erotic or interesting. They were decidedly mechanical, lacking in any of the warmth, humor or awkwardness I associate with sex between cis gay men; instead, the relentless focus was on dicks dicks dicks, bodies bodies bodies, with an explicit still image to match. The sexual experiences of newly out gay men in particular—young ones who are confused, and too eager, and scared—are never this porn-perfect. In truth, whenever things got sexy in the game, I tended to immediately flip into fast forwarding through the description. The still images were occasionally nice—as much as I was irritated by the “closeted jock” storyline, I thought Brad was kinda hot and the scene of Mark giving him a blow job after a tutoring session was sexy—but they were easily appreciated and then moved past.

In the end, this strongly gives me an impression of the game as by a straight woman, for people other than gay men. This doesn’t preclude it being enjoyed by gay men, who are not a monolith, and who certainly don’t share all of my preferences or feelings. But it does emphasize the idea that a supposedly gay experience is being packaged and sold for the benefit of others. This view of consumable gay male bodies is at its silliest with the optional “Beard” and “Body Hair” toggles for each major male character, which allow you to add a beard or what I would call a “light dusting” of chest hair to each character at your whim.

Lest it seem like I am singling out Coming Out on Top, my frustration with the hegemonic perfection of gay male bodies in other games is equally high, even those with gay men at the helm. While I am a big fan of Luke Miller’s My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant, for example, that game has practically no body type diversity at all. Designer Robert Yang consistently makes games with male bodies as objects of desire, though they are not always specifically coded as objects of gay male desire. However, Yang’s work also tends to relentlessly portray the same muscle-toned, hegemonic male body that Coming Out presents. At the 2014 Different Games conference, for example, Yang demoed Get Better Soon, an Oculus Rift “gay clubbing simulator” where players wandered a space full of infinite identical beefcake, literally moving through it by focusing their gaze on men’s asses. At the time, I remember thinking the core idea was fascinating… but that the execution made me distinctly uncomfortable, since for someone who doesn’t fit that perfect molded gay male body (like me, admittedly), such clubs are often openly, literally hostile spaces.

But while Miller’s game defuses this with humor and campy charm, and Yang’s work is at least attempting to engage creating games with queer content in novel ways, Coming Out on Top feels old and tired, a throwback to an era that as an adult I’ve moved past. 18-year-old me, who had no frame of reference, would have been agog at the heavy description of oral sex over an explicit still of a hot cock, thinking “I want that, I want to be that.” But 36-year-old me, looking back almost two decades later, wants more… and perhaps, more importantly, wants better for the gay guy who’s 18 now, looking for definition on what he can be. I want him to see actual gay experiences reflected, not a packaged and unrealistic version set up for the consumption of people with little stake in his future.

I think the biggest disappointment, though, is that there is lots of media space for representation of gays and lesbians now, but we are basically wasting it on reaffirming the same stories and tropes we’ve been telling for a very long time… and it’s possible that these stories are hurting us, not helping. The reality of gay male desire is bigger than Ken doll hot bodies frosted with optional chest hair. So while I don’t necessarily have a problem with a wacky gay sex romp, I find it difficult indeed to be excited over it.

Todd Harper is a games researcher, writer and critic who looks at games and gaming culture from a cultural and media studies perspective. He’s particularly interested in issues of gender and queer representation and diversity. He tweets rather too often at @laevantine and blogs probably not often enough at Stay Classy.