Upon reading the article, it helped me notice several things about FF9 and The Sims that I never paid attention too. I owned FF9 back when it first came out and it was a good game but it never occurred to me at the time that Zidane was animated with feminine features. According to Mia Consalvo, Zidane is represented as feminized by his long hair, phsycially small in stature, clothes with lace and a lack of muscles. Not to mention having a tail which didnt help him either. However, Zidane is persistent in maintaining his hetersexuality by acting girl crazy and pursuing his love interest, Princess Garnet. This act makes him still worthy of being a normal (heterosexual and male) hero. The article points out the erotic triangle theory. According to the theory, two men in a buddy action movie compete over a woman who is either single or the girlfriend of one of the males. Both men suddendly try to compete for the woman and their interactions become more intense as they vie for dominance. But ultimately they are not as interested in the relationship with the woman as they are intheir relationship with each other. Both guys displace their feelings for each other into the safe area of friendly competition over a woman.
But Mia Consalvo points out that if a gay male or heterosexual female plays FF9, their identity with the character, Zidane, becomes more difficult as they are forced to flirt with another woman (Garnet). In regards to the Sims, it's said that players have an option to only have heterosexual sims characters. Although heterosexual couples in the sims have the privledge to get married and have a baby, a gay couple is retricted from marriage and must wait for the game to decide when they can go to an adoption agency to adopt a child. I've never played The Sims but I found that a bit shocking and interesting that a popular game like that actually did that.
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