Take a closer look:<\/p>\n So what we have here is an in-game ad for a drink being marketed as a way to \u201cMix It Up.\u201d It features a feminine-appearing person with an erect penis-shaped bulge inside their clothes. This is problematic. It portrays trans people as exotic and abnormal. And it\u2019s hypersexual. It tells people who have no day-to-day interaction with trans people that those people are deviants, sex objects, or both.<\/p>\n Naturally, many trans people and their allies took umbrage to this. But CDPR was undaunted. When Polygon\u2019s Charlie Hall interviewed the artist<\/a> responsible for creating the advertisement, they had this to say:<\/p>\n Cyberpunk 2077 is a dystopian future where megacorporations dictate everything. They try to, and successfully, influence people\u2019s lives. They shove products down their throats. They create those very aggressive advertisements that use, and abuse, a lot of people\u2019s needs and instincts. So, hypersexualization is apparent everywhere, and in our ads there are many examples of hypersexualized women, hypersexualized men, and hypersexualized people in between.<\/p>\n This is all to show that [much like in our modern world], hypersexualization in advertisements is just terrible. It was a conscious choice on our end to show that in this world \u2014 a world where you are a cyberpunk, a person fighting against corporations. That [advertisement] is what you\u2019re fighting against.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s a fine sentiment, and it might make sense to someone without a horse in this race. But, as Polygon\u2019s Stacey Henley recently pointed out<\/a>:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t buy it. While a cutting critique of queer commodification might have been part of the idea\u2019s nucleus, the outcome is a commodification itself, objectifying trans people as creatures of deviance, defined by their genitals and suitable only for sexualization or rejection.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And I don\u2019t buy it either. Henley goes on to point out that CDPR has a long history<\/a> of being called out on social media for transphobic \u201cjokes\u201d. Worse, CDPR tripled-down on its questionable behavior by making a cis-gender cosplayer portraying \u201cMix It Up Girl\u201d a finalist in a contest it held. The model then defended her portrayal of \u201cMix It Up Girl\u201d by stating that cis people also face harassment and violence \u2014 note: trans people are significantly more likely<\/a> to be the victim of violence than cis people.<\/p>\n All people have their own struggles. Many cis men and women face acts of harassment and violence on a daily basis as well<\/p>\n \u2014 Yugoro (@YugoroForge) October 20, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s what\u2019s wrong with that: It\u2019s simply not appropriate for a cis person to portray a tragically offensive trans character.<\/p>\n And finally (no, I haven\u2019t forgotten to make good on what this article\u2019s headline promises): the plot twist here is that Cyberpunk 2077 is among the first highly-anticipated AAA games purported to have a queer-friendly character creation system. But let\u2019s just pump the brakes a second here because it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n Apparently you can designate a masculine or feminine-appearing body independently of designating them male or female, but which voice-actor you hear (feminine or masculine-sounding) when your character talks depends on whether you have a feminine or masculine-appearing body type. And, you guessed it, that\u2019s problematic.<\/p>\n Henley put it best in their article<\/a>:<\/p>\n The fact that Cyberpunk has fixated on the junk as the ultimate feature of a trans person, yet given no consideration for voice, and then repeatedly joked about customizable genitals in its marketing efforts, shows the complete lack of a trans perspective in both the design and in the advertising of the game.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I was excited for this game<\/a>. Finally! A character creator that gives players realistic choices instead of arbitrarily limiting social constructs!<\/p>\n Instead, it just appears that someone simply said \u201cwell, just remove the gender references then.\u201d The game\u2019s played in first-person. As Henley points out in their article, that means you won\u2019t see your character\u2019s junk but you will hear their voice.<\/p>\n Okay, enough background. You were promised answers to some of the stupidest questions in gaming and you\u2019re going to get them. Starting with: why \u201cqueer people are so mad\u201d about something as silly as a canonical piece of fictitious advertising in a cyberpunk dystopia.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll also cover: why do queer people want to ruin video games? Why does every game have<\/i> to have queer people in it? And why can\u2019t queer people just make their own games?<\/span><\/p>\n Because, as many fearful gamers have predicted, at the rate things are going every single game from Mass Effect to Madden, from Metal Gear to Myst, will have to be at least 50% queer, right? <\/span><\/p>\n No.<\/strong> Those are all stupid questions. <\/span><\/p>\n Queer people don\u2019t want to ruin video games. When we say we want representation, we don\u2019t mean we want developers to just go queering up their games all willy-nilly. We just want fair<\/em> representation. <\/span><\/p>\n And we do make our own games<\/a>. They\u2019re excellent<\/a>. But those games don\u2019t do as much to sway how straight\/cis people see us as the AAA ones that portray us negatively<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Outside of \u201cqueer games,\u201d queer representation in gaming is abysmal. The number of openly queer characters are few and far between and, more often than not, we\u2019re portrayed as promiscuous deviants. <\/span><\/p>\n And when we\u2019re given providence to create queer characters or play our characters as queer, we almost always end up with a Mass Effect situation where queerness is directly, and exclusively tied to romantic and sexual situations. Despite the fact that my Dragon Age character lives in a world where people are openly racist and devoutly religious, for some reason my character\u2019s queerness almost never matters unless I\u2019m trying to bed someone. <\/span><\/p>\n Queer characters are often \u201cquirky\u201d villains, promiscuous allies, and tragic background characters but they\u2019re seldom the reliable hero (or anti-hero, as the game\u2019s lore might prescribe). And even when we are \u2013 there\u2019s a kickass non-binary robot in Borderlands 3 \u2013 we\u2019re still not normal, FL4K\u2019s an inhuman construct. <\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/12\/mixitupolygon-116x210.jpg\")
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