Mobile app Ultimate Gay Fighter forced to change name
“The prospect of a potential lawsuit is very intimidating,” said founder Michael Venker. “We don’t have the funds to compete with their take-no-prisoners approach.”
‘An unnamed mixed martial arts promotional company’ is known for aggressively protecting their brand, as the developers of Ultimate Gay Fighter recently discovered.
‘An unnamed mixed martial arts promotional company’ is forcing upcoming title Ultimate Gay Fighter to change its name.
The 2D fighting title is currently in development for iOS and Android.
“We have a trademark pending, but the prospect of a potential lawsuit is very intimidating,” founder Michael Venker told Polygon. “We don’t have the funds to compete with their take-no-prisoners approach.
Venker described the disgruntled party as claiming the UGF brand and related mobile gaming product threatens one of their reality TV series/fighting competition brand.
We offered them solutions, but this company remains firm in believing our Ultimate Gay Fighter brand threatens their brand, despite vast differences in our customer base and product.
“This potential legal situation already delayed the game several months as we deliberated our options. Our mobile gaming product is vastly different from their brand and related products. At the end of the day, our strong belief in releasing this game remains most important, and we did not want to lose everything we have worked so hard for.
The issue of whether the banned name is funny or offensive was addressed in a previous piece.
In Ultimate Gay Fighter, players take on the role of a variety of iconic gay caricatures, including a drag queen, a butch lesbian, an Asian ‘twink’, a gym bunny, a golden-chain wearing African-American rapper and a drunken bisexual woman. Each character wields a comedic ‘gaytality’ move that makes reference to common LGBT jokes.
The game has attracted media interest, some positive, some not. It was due to be self-published by Handsome Woman this month but has been delayed, according to a company spokesperson, “due to interest in the brand from a large organization.”
The game’s critics say the humor is undone by stereotypical portrayals and a limited perspective, while Patrick, who is gay, says the game is supposed to be funny for anyone who enjoys the diversity of LGBT culture.
“Being a queer identifying player I do find some of these characters funny,” said Todd Harper, a researcher on queer representation in gaming at MIT. “But on the other hand a lot of these go to places I just don’t want to go. There are all these playable characters, but only two women one of which is a ridiculous lesbian stereotype and the other is a slut shaming bisexual. The range of stereotypes for gay men is very wide but the range for other aspects of the queer community is very narrow. That is kind of cringe inducing.”
“It’s not necessarily bad that we have these stereotypes in games, it’s bad that there isn’t really another option. There are already so few gay characters in games, and then there is this, that is full of stereotypes.”
Responding to the criticism that the game offers a lot of two-dimensional stereotypes, the game’s maker Michael Patrick told Polygon that was the whole point of the exercise.
“It is based on the 2D games of the 90’s I grew up with, but there’s nothing deep to be pondered in the characters,” said Patrick. “I believe that if you have the ability to laugh at yourself and someone’s perception of you based on a stereotype, you can ease social tension and realize that stereotypes don’t define a person, yet there can be truth in them. The humor and camp of UGF is meant to be taken at face value for entertainment. I say let’s just laugh, enjoy it, and live our lives.”
“I took common misconceptions of what all lesbians and bi-sexual women are, and made of fun of it. I mean, when Sappho Ethridge hits you, she says ‘move in with me.’ How can anyone take that seriously?”
Developer Handsome Woman Productions will now poll fans for suggested new names.