Even if you weren’t one of the chosen few, you can still get a lot from watching what went on at the panel. I pulled some quotes I thought were interesting, but really, there’s much more wisdom and points for discussion to be had from the total two hour run of the panel.

In particular, I call your attention to the Part 6 and 7 clips where the panelists talk about the importance of having gay characters in games and respond to that effed up game, Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!

VIDEO: GLAAD’s Panel on Homophobia & Virtual Communities [GLAAD Blog]

For the same-sex picture, taken at PAX last year, he won a prize package that included a limited-edition T-shirt and a voucher good for $US240 at the Electronic Arts Store. In an email back to EA, he declined the cash chit with a few suggestions of better uses to which they could put the dough:

1) A new sexual-harassment training video/seminar
2) Another PR team to try to spin this whole debacle of a contest into a positive light
3) A direct phone line to EA’s legal depart to use before you try anymore PR stunts
4) Six copies of your game when it releases, since I know you’ve lost at least that many fans with this stunt
5) Or the next time you go to Hooters (for the wings, of course), leave a $US240 tip for your waitress in a karmic way of balancing out what has been done to the booth babes of SDCC due to this contest

He adds: “There is a part of me that hopes I wasn’t just “randomly chosen” and that you guys wanted to include my picture to help save face. That maybe on some level all the negative press and feedback actually got back to you guys and you were trying to include more than just guys drooling over girls.”

However, he’s not allowing them permission to use his photo. In that light, we’re not gonna republish it either, you can see it and the remainder of his message back to Electronic Arts on his site.

Update: Runner-Up for #Lust Contest [Gay Gamer.Net]

Caryl Shaw, Senior Producer at EA’s Maxis
To developers: “Who doesn’t want to be a gay super hero? Are you thinking about this stuff when you’re making your game? Well you should be!”

Dan Hewitt, Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association
About the ignorance of the general public toward gaming: “We need to come together. We need gay and lesbian gamers to step forward. Come out, and then come out again as gamers.”

Stephen Toulouse, Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement, Xbox Live
On expressing sexuality in Gamertags: “Who we choose to love is part of our identity.”

Cyn Skyberg, Vice President of Customer Relations at Linden Lab
On expressing sexuality online: “The process for how we display ourselves as we really are [determines] what are the values we have as a virtual community.”

Flynn DeMarco, founder of GayGamer.net and Kotaku alumnus
On blogs and gaming sites censoring the n-word, but not the other f-word in headlines: “They need to let people know that it’s not okay [to use that word].”

There were two other issues that came to mind as a result of the panel that, sadly, I didn’t encounter until after the Q&A ended. The first was brought up by my friend over at GamesRadar, Henry Gilbert: On Xbox Live, you can download McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden icons – so is the message that it’s somehow more acceptable to express political orientation than sexual orientation?

The second issue stemmed from the part of the panel where moderator Justin Cole brought up the Flash game Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!, where players have to shoot gay men to keep from being raped: I thought to myself, what if you re-skinned the hunter to be a woman on her way home late at night from a club? Would that somehow make the game more acceptable because it removes the anti-gay sentiment? Or is it equally uncool because the game still advocates murder as a solution to sexual assault?

Discuss.

Cole used commenters’ responses to his post, The Impact of Homophobia in Virtual Communities, to drive discussion among panelists Caryl Shaw (Senior Producer at EA’s Maxis), Dan Hewitt (Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association), Stephen Toulouse (Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement, Xbox Live), Cyn Skyberg (Vice President of Customer Relations at Linden Lab) and Flynn DeMarco (founder of GayGamer.net). Read on to see if you made the cut.

First up was McLuvin’s comment about flaunting sexuality. Next was GameBuddy, continuing the discussion. Then came bLaZINcOdE3’s comment about the “gay mafia” forcing companies to hold “token meetings.” OrigamiNinja’s comment about how harassment makes the game less fun made it in, as did Nnooo’s about whether or not gamers can expect Mario to save a prince instead of a princess someday. User saulpimpson’s comment steered talk toward developers refusing to make games based on gay or gay bashing content. Then DanoruX’s tongue-in-cheek “this is so gay,” statement got a discussion going on “innocent” slurs. Phydeaux’s comment on “play to file” introduced the topic of abuse reporting in online communities. Lastly, ach77 made it in as part of a general statement that gay gamers just want to have fun like every other gamer – and to introduce the founder of gay-centric World of Warcraft guild, The Spreading Taint who happened to be in the audience.

Aside from being shamelessly proud of Kotaku commenters, I was interested to see how Kotaku alumnus DeMarco reacted to comments from his ex-audience. He did almost half the talking at the panel and demonstrated the most gaming expertise. Whenever an issue was raised, DeMarco could name at least two games in response whereas everyone else just fell back on their own games (like Shaw’s Spore and Skyberg’s Second Life) or defaulted to Halo.

The other big talker was Microsoft’s Toulouse, but I think he was being targeted. At the beginning of the panel, Cole presented a video that outlined the issues facing gays and lesbians in online gaming. All of their in-game examples seemed to be from Xbox Live – most specifically, Halo multiplayer. To his credit, Toulouse responded to almost every issue raised by Kotaku comments and admitted that Xbox Live hasn’t got it right quite yet – but they’re committed to making their community a safe place to game for everybody.

The quietest panelist was Second Life’s Skyberg. It takes all types to make a virtual world like Second Life and I know they’ve had issues that prompted developer Linden Lab to create an adults-only space. Skyberg did pipe up at one or two times to talk about anonymity making it easy for people to use gay slurs in online communities – and made an excellent point that as people invest in their online identities more, this anonymity goes away.

The only dull part of the panel was the Q&A. I’m not sure if it’s because the two hour time limit was almost up and everybody wanted lunch, or because the audience was the choir being preached to – but nobody asked anything that hadn’t been addressed. One lady asked if the “dehumanising” aspect of violent games like Halo brought about gay bashing and DeMarco responded that the problem wasn’t that the game that engendered homophobia, it was that the audience that the game tended to attract was immature and ignorant of gay issues.

In sum, this is what I took away from the panel: Don’t hate the game, hate the player. Or better yet, don’t hate anybody.

Gay Pride Week is one of the biggest deals in the San Francisco Bay Area — apparently, it’s also a big deal to one World of Warcraft server.

GayGamer reports that the Proudmoore Server hosted a fifth annual Pride celebration and parade put on by guilds The Spreading Taint and The Stonewall Family. According to Stonewall’s homepage, this Proudmoore Pride bash was their biggest one yet. Festivities included a Nude Duel Championship, avatar modelling, DJ competition and a user-created parade float competition.

Speaking of parades, I’m going to have my camera with me this Sunday for San Francisco’s annual Gay Pride Parade. Last year I swear I saw Ken and Ryu cosplayers on one of the floats — but as they say, pics or it didn’t happen.

Video: 5th Annual Proudmoore Pride March 2009 [GayGamer]