Giant Bomb Presents: The State of Diversity in Games

Just gotta love this. Someone has a different opinion. Must be an MRA or maybe a troll? Who knows!

@customotto: thank you for this nonsensical reply. I assume you are having stomach flu and can't be bothered to post something more coherent. See? I can post nonsense too and I can reply in a not very sensible manner.

Men and women are sexualized in different ways. What would the ideal, sexy man look like, for a woman? Muscles? Slim prettyboy? Rough and gruff? etc etc. False equivalence in this case is a fallacy. A man with his shirt off, showing off his muscles or a slim, attractive body is as much fanservice to females as a underwear shot or cleavage is to males.

Though it depends on personal taste also. Some men are attracted to Elf's petite stature but turned off by Sorceress or Amazon. Same way, some girls are attracted to (DMC3) shirtless Dante but turned off by the gruffness of Snake despite him wearing a skintight suit.

The idea that men can't be sexualized is the same as saying you can't be racist against white people or sexist against males.

It's apparent in every media, on TV and movies, and like Anwar pointed out, in books as well.

Also there's nothing inherently WRONG with sexualization in media. It's been there for -ages-. It being in video games has as much impact on the real world as violence in the same medium. It's fantasy, fiction. Set far from reality.

And by the way, in Dragon's Crown, Dwarf wears less clothes than Amazon. But that's okay, because he's male, right?

I find it quite annoying that people demand more of said gender, race, etc. in games and the first response people take is that there is a problem with the way we make video games. Why don't we ever look at both sides of the table? Why do they want to see more diversity in games? Is the lack of diversity negatively affecting the writing and development process? Or are people just making demands to make themselves feel better, just wanting to have their way?

I personally wouldn't mind seeing more diversity in games as much as anyone else. But I only want it if that's what the writers and developers actually want to do with their next games. I don't want to force them to do something that perhaps they don't feel entirely confident in, or comfortable writing as they feel they could somehow misrepresent someone. I understand if someone makes a tasteless joke or represents people in the wrong way then people would be upset by the game and want there to be changes in the writing so that it doesn't come off offensive to someone. And if games use misogyny just for the idea that sex sells, then that would call for people being upset because it's totally pointless. But if everything in a game serves the writer's creative purpose and is needed for the story, I don't find any reason to change the way things are just for the sake of change.

I've kinda always thought of this issue and broke it down to a simple sentence I keep repeating... We're taking real world problems and applying them to worlds that aren't real.

There's a few issues. First off I think demanding to at least be different from something previously is a good thing, no? I mean we tend to roll our eyes when we see gameplay mechanics very similar to another game. Stagnation is never a good thing.
Secondly I think there's a fairly strong case that developers actually want to do different things but there's the marketing department either flat out tells them to change or greatly reduces their budget. Devs are already unfairly controlled to these weird standards when there's little evidence it makes any kind of difference. I mean are we really to believe the walking dead suffered sales because it featured a black character? Can any of us say we didn't play the game because of that?

@tdot: When the demands have an agenda behind them, then yeah it's not really a good thing because it's taking away from the creative effort of the writers and developers in order to appease people. I think we have to call into question just why they want such and such character to be in the game in the first place. Like I said, the story should have a character that best fits the situation, and that whatever traits that they have be appropriate to the plot and setting.

Plus, I doubt that marketing would have such a heavy influence on what the character ends up being. Most of the time, when companies need to make that big game, they go for something with a shooting element and online multiplayer. That's the main thing to draw people in. I doubt that race, gender, etc. would really turn people away from a game. Look at how well Tomb Raider did. Yeah, she was established before but as a hypersexed explorer. They toned that down quite a bit but that didn't stop people from buying the game.

Plus it also goes to say that the people who want things to change oughta be trying to get involved and write or develop the games they want to see made, not make others work the way they want them to.

That's not the mob mentality.

No one is threatened about this...it just smells like PC police. Having diversity is great but there is this concept of pushing an agenda of diversity that irks people like me because its not organic and its usually part of a larger political/power play for intellectual shelf space. I would like to meet a large groups of non-neo liberal whites that are up in arms about diversity in gaming. Really niche crowd...

Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy. What are you even talking about?

Somebody needed to say it...

Not necessarily. Not all change is good change.

Gameplay mechanics is something different than the sexuality, race or sex of a character. Gameplay is something you actually do or participate in, so it's apparent that overused gameplay mechanics get repetitive and boring quickly. So you say "Ugh. This again?! I can't do this, I don't like this."

Meanwhile, sex and sexuality--when you turn on a game and it has a white male character as a lead, do you go through the same thought process? "Ugh, another white male lead, I can't do this." A game is much more than the characters. I doubt you would be on the same level of disgusted if the game has a 'straight white male' lead, than if a game has bad repetitive mechanics.

I agree devs should be allowed more freedom to make what they want to make. (But aren't you, who are demanding they include things in their games, infringing on the freedom you want them to have?)

However, publishers, first and foremost are BUSINESSES, like any other. Their goal is to make a profit. If they see something as hurting potential profit, they will try their best to cull it. I am well aware that publishers meddle in development, and most times it has horrible results (Overstrike/Fuse). That same publisher allowed Bioware to have gay characters in their video games. Several Japanese games also have gay characters in their games, sometimes flamboyant, sometimes not.

On top of this, as I said before, devs have their own vision. What they want to create. If this does not include a black female as a lead, and they aren't interested in doing something like that, then what right do you have to demand that they include it? What right do you have to infringe on their creative freedom by demanding they change their work for you?

The Walking Dead offered a LOT MORE than just a black main character. Why did Remember Me not sell, even though it had a black female character as the lead? TWD sold because of reviews, and word of mouth passed around that it was a good game. Remember Me did not sell because it got bad reviews and scores, it was not that good of a game (imo it was mediocre and had potential. Great style too).

Nobody cared about Lee's race to the point where they thought that they should or shouldn't buy it because of his skin colour. If Lee was white, it would not have made a difference, of course, because people went in expecting it to be a good GAME. Lee was good because he was a good character, shaped by your choices. Not because he was black.

So why should a character in a video game be black just because you want them to? Or you believe that it's better that they be black? Isn't that just racism? Because if someone looked at a black character and said "he should be white", people would call it exactly that.

I don't know why I ever listen to stuff like this...

@kcp12: Right on. There's no inherent threat in discussing these topics of racial, sexual, and class-oriented representation. In fact, they exist because of how unpersuasive the topic is to begin with. If anything, the fact that these relevant and often heated discussions have made their way over to video games only validates video games as a powerful medium of conveyance. Conversations like this suggest that video games, like film and music, can have a firm hand in shaping people's ideologies and perspectives of the world.

It sounds scary and many would like to go back to the "old days" (which might I add were riddled with limitations and lack of imagination because of them), but conversations like this lead artists and developers towards creating more responsibly. This is doubly true for AAA's with large budgets. It is perfectly normal to romanticize the sanctity of a creative vision for a AAA or exceptionally visible and consequentially influential title. However, creative challenges such as lengthy character development do come into play and financial accountability from the marketing-powers-that-be are unavoidable. And because of some of these moving parts, it's tempting to forego the complex or unfamiliar character development of particular characters (such as an African-American man) in favor of more palatable social cues.

If I were working on a film, in a short amount of time (and smaller pay for a writer of less experience) I can convey an African-American as a troubled, welfare-class gangster on the come-up in fewer words and scenes than a privileged, agnostically-relatable, well-educated hero out for the good of people of all colors and classes. The Cosby Show is tragically one-of-a-kind. I can do the same in fewer words by making an Asian-American the hyper-objective brains of a group or the asexual sidekick.

Do many realize that Glen from the Walking Dead is pretty much the only Asian dude to get the white girl in a commercial television show or movie? A minority male espousing a white female is absolute taboo in film. Hence, why Will Smith is always opposite latino women. The only movies where this is accessible is when the movie is exclusively about the controversy surrounding it. A recent Cheerio's commercial starring a couple with a black husband and white wife was taken off the air the same day it went up because it received an insurmountable amount of hate towards the idea of an interracial marriage.

That was a huge tangent. The point is that hushing discussions and posts like this one doesn't leave video games pure, sanctified, and neutral. The system has always been broken. These conversations help lift the veil.

Thanks for this, @patrickklepek. Nice to see someone with a soul at such a high level in the industry. One of the good guys.

Interesting coming back to this and seeing the patriarchy warrior that helped ruin Mass Effect.

Also, "We have buggy games so that justifies white dudes making black dude games" was hilarious. The shitstorm from a buggy game and a game that incorrectly portrays a race would be insanely different, anyone with common sense knows that.

I hate this idea of "there aren't enough X in your Y which means you are now a racist".

Diversity has exploded in my lifetime and trying to force it down people's throats is just going to reverse all the damn progress. There's a reason why spraytan is in office, cause and effect folks.

A few years later and I'm not sure if things have gotten better or worse.