If any of the people this article is intended for can muster the patience and calm necessary, I ask that before jumping on twitter or the comment section to make snide remarks, you actually read the entire article. Hell, you might even learn something about the big debate. Preface out, Mothaf%&#ers.

I don't really need to point out that equality in games, especially concerning gender and sexual orientation, has been a big talking point as of late in the industry. A rather large movement of comment section activists and video game journalists think of it as a prevalent issue in gaming. In the below three sections, I'm going to address why this "movement" is largely baseless, self-impeding, and lazy. I will also be delving into controversial concepts such as creativity, luck, and dare I say it? HARD WORK! Your job is to do a "Pee Wee's Playhouse"-style word of the day sequence any time throughout the article that any of the underlined words is mentioned.

PART I: EQUALITY IS NOT THE GOAL

As far as video games are concerned, transgendered people, minorities, gays, lesbians, snakes with two tails, and my right big toe that I sometimes draw a face on already have equality. While shopping on Amazon for a new keyboard, I have yet to see any of them that have "anti-gay keys" listed in the specs. Likewise there is no coding tutorial that I've seen with a white section with no ads and an animated butler that does the clicking for you, and a black section with no CSS that doesn't show up when searched on Google. What these groups do lack, however, is representation on the developer scene.

There is no gay electrician starring in a game where he hops over Powser to save the prince. But why? Well, the answer is quite simple. Nobody has made it yet (not that this solution is a specific solution, read the whole article for the bits on CREATIVITY). For all the people yelling about wanting something, there are very few sitting down and making that desire a reality. Why? Because that takes a lot of HARD WORK. The movement is lazy, ladies and gentlemen and others.

PART II: YEAH, YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE SAME SHIT AS OTHER PEOPLE, DEAL WITH IT

The "equality movement," as I have observed it, owes its largest portion of support to comment sections on sites such as Giantbomb, IGN, and Kotaku. The bulk of these comment section participants are spurred into action by articles posted on these sites by video game journalists. Then there are the people actually doing something to advance their desires, but half of them just end up being counterproductive, as we'll see in a bit.

As far as this large portion of the movement I referred to above, the journalists and comment specialists, their contribution to the end goal ("equality") consists of whining to each other about how developers do not cater to their niche. These people largely complain (mostly to each other, but realistically at anybody they have easy access to) that others aren't representing them. The entire idea of equality is that one has the ability to represent themselves uninhibited by others, not that others should feel obligated to represent them.

This brings us to the few that are being active. We usually get efforts comparable to Gone Home, which (without doing research) I want to believe was intended to be fun at some point, and Gaymer, the most self defeating snippet of existence I've seen in my time on earth. In the case of Gaymer, it directly conflicts with what seems to be the goal of this so-called equality movement by practicing segregation. Last I checked there weren't members of the Hetero Male Master Race Task Force barring entrance to E3 unless you were a straight white male, so what is the point of it? This is a negative attention grab at best, and at worst a horrific display of community ignorance.

What keeps something like Gone Home from being the Super Mario Bros that propels the developer to being the next Nintendo? Certainly one may argue that times have changed and game development is different now, but realistically Mario was facing a smaller and less interested market in his day. This is where CREATIVITY and LUCK come into play, moreso the former. Mario (Mario is an easy reference, but this applies to other established game franchises as well) was a creative and fun game. Gone Home is crafted solely around the story, with gameplay that boils down to walking and reading. There is no fun in experiencing Gone Home's gameplay. There is nothing fun or imaginative about walking around an empty house. Most people do that in the course of a day and are very bored with it, and thus seek out other forms of entertainment (see: Video Games).

Say Gone Home had crafted a novel idea. Not indie retro platformer #823923 and not walking simulator house edition, but something with compelling, fresh, and addictive gameplay. The only thing keeping it from sinking to the bottom of the Steam barrel is LUCK(barring a fairly hefty advertising budget, which very few startups have). Countless good games get lost among the others, and barring hefty advertising bills, there's not much to be done about it except crossing a whole lot of fingers and hoping the idea catches on.

Let's be honest. The video game industry is a shitty place unless you have a reputation, and it's easy to make the wrong step and lose fans. Developers and publishers desperately need to hang on to what success they find, and expecting them to abandon that user base in favor of a smaller interest group (a large portion of which many suspect don't even buy or play games that often) is not only selfish and lazy, but impractical, as it likely ends with situations like Capcom's current state.

PART III: ACHIEVING THE GOAL WITHOUT INCITING ANIMOSITY AND LESS BITCH TEARS IN THE COMMENTS SECTIONS

Nobody cares about your pity party. Money grubbing businesses don't care unless you have millions of dollars to counteract the opinions of the countless other people with money. Game developers and publishers are business people. They will do what's smart financially, only rarely taking risks. Let's take a look at Atlus. They make games for a very particular group of people because they know that group of people will buy their games. They've become good at it. Almost all Atlus developed games have striking similarities because they're trying to appeal to the people who have historically bought their games and they can trust to do it again. Representing a whole new audience at the potential loss of sales is not good business. Feelings don't dictate that sort of thing. That notion will either be ignored by the developer or accepted by them and have countless fans of the series lose faith in the company.

The entire point of this article is to say that whining doesn't fix problems, HARD WORK does, and no matter how much "raising awareness" a group does, it doesn't change the fact that they are fighting a slow and tiresome battle to have others fix problems for them. Instead of trying to force already established franchises, Support CREATIVE games that fit your niche on Kickstarter or Steam Greenlight, and eventually one of them will get LUCKY, and whatever niche you want to exist and represent you will slowly come to exist. Then, like Atlus, said developers can safely develop games for said niche and make Chie the best girl and turn a profit, eventually even leading other franchises to use mechanics that are now proven to be widely accepted into their games, and viola the group will suddenly have great representation in the gaming industry. THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT THESE ISSUES SHOULD BE CONTAINED TO THEIR OWN GAMES. I AND COUNTLESS OTHERS WOULD GLADLY PLAY A GAME REPRESENTING THE LGBT COMMUNITY IF ONLY THEY ARE FUN. However just like every other niche, game mechanic, andanything else having to do with large businesses making major development decisions, this has to be explored and proven first.

PRODUCTIVITY, GET TO WORK YOU FUCKERS, SHIT I'VE BEEN TYPING FOR SO LONG STOP