In Playboy: The Mansion, players can organize parties at their mansion. In expanding the party customization options in the expansion pack, lead designer Jeb Haven said they added the option to create “gay parties.” As he says in one interview,
“We couldn’t change the fundamental system, but there were certain things we could do to allow more choice for the player. You could have gay parties, for instance. The direction we chose was to give the player more freedom for customizing parties. If you happened to invite only guys and had them dress up in only their bathing suits and added a volleyball net, it would be a gay party.
We didn’t have the animations to include male-male interactions, so we couldn’t add that: the animations were gender-specific. It was mostly a technological thing, because philosophically it would have been a fit with the license and for our company. But I did push for living a larger variety of fantasies. We set up a dance floor, and although we didn’t have animations to make men dance together, they could dance by themselves – facing each other.” (tiny dancer, 2007).
We have not been able to find any videos of players taking advantage of this option, so if you have one please get in touch. As it is a possibility, but not explicit part of the game, we are listing this as a possible example of an Easter Egg.
LGBTQ references in this game:
Citations:
- Davis, R. (January 28, 2005). Playboy: The Mansion: Review. Gamespot. http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/playboy-the-mansion-review/1900-6117471
- Morris, C. (2005, May 18). Video games get raunchier. CNN/Money. http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/18/technology/personaltech/e3_nakedgames/
- Tiny Dancer. (2007, March 9). Gay by design: Interview with game designer Jeb Havens. GayGamer.net. http://gaygamer.net/2007/03/gay_by_design_interview_with_g.html
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