(In progress) Diversity in E3 2015 Conferences

Hi everybody. Representation of real and fictional people of different backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, body shapes, ages, and sexual orientations matter. If you disagree with this premise, stop reading. This is not a thread about arguing that premise. Instead, with a focus on narrative and gameplay only in so much as it touches on character, here's where I'll build a comprehensive review of E3 press conferences based on diversity. I'll start by posting the game analysis, and then go back and watch for the people. So look for that section to be empty for now.

If you wish to join me in this, add your observations from conferences I haven't seen and I'll add them in the original post. The point isn't quotas. The point is being aware of representation. The message a company sends when they create diversity in their games and have diversity in their staff is one of inclusion and progress. It's important to look into that. I'm going to do all I can to not skew this analysis. But if I mess up, let me know.

Bethesda

People (unfinished):

Newly announced or shown games

Microsoft

People (unfinished)

Newly announced or shown for real (like first gameplay) games

Thoughts on these two:

Bethesda has good diversity in Battlecry, which few people care about, and introducing and leading with a female character in Dishonored is a move forward. That said, in both Dishonored and Fallout, the potential diversity was undermined. In the first, still being able to play as Corvo means the game either has two distinct stories or its story is gender blind. Fallout had the amazing moment of Todd Howard creating an aging black dude only to revert to boring as fuck young white guy for the demo. It was really surreal.

Microsoft showed a pretty diverse pallet with lots of women (7/9 in games without character customization), but fewer people of color. The only skin-showing human being dark skinned in Gigantic is notable. Gears 4's protagonist is the most boring white dude ever. At least Marcus had a bandana? Overall, really strong gender diversity.

More to come later.

Personally, I don't like going to such lengths to categorize people. But I hope someone gets something from this?

A 666th post that is a racial analysis is bound to ire somebody but I'm all for this.

Analyzing and separating this stuff into groups/tables and then comparing them as statistics seems like an unfortunate way of looking at this stuff.

If the purpose of this thread is to be a non offensive analysis, it has failed already.

What's the point of this again?

@kierkegaard: Might it be just the tiniest bit premature to judge all of these characters based purely on what your impression of their genetics is... without any of us actually playing the games.

I'm all for detailed analysis in context, but this seems like the most fruitlessly superficial way to explore diversity possible.

Something about "judging a book by its cover" comes to mind.

(also, you call two characters "boring" based purely on their skin color alone. I know you're probably trying to say that you yearn to see playable characters who differ from the expected mold. I do too. And I'm thrilled that it's what we saw a ton of this E3. But maybe try and find a less racist way to express that?)

(also also, it's pretty insensitive to even guess at a character's gender based on their physical appearance. Sex and gender are completely different things, and it's pretty disrespectful to anyone who doesn't identify with the largely fallacious binary categorization, to imply that you can know that about someone (even fictional game characters) from looks alone.)

I'm a skinless supremacist.

You guys think you're sooooOOOOOooooo good with all that skin, eh? Well...you're not.

Ion understands the plight of my people.

I can't really put my finger on it, but something about the OP makes me want to strangle a kitten.

What is "at least Marcus had a bandana" supposed to mean?

I'm all for celebrating diversity in games, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how much better this E3 is in that regard, but this is a very crass and reductive way of looking at it. I'm sure you mean well, but would it not be better to talk about specific examples rather than just boil it all down to a spreadsheet?

@bisonhero: As a sexless, genderless, formless being of pure energy I salute you and support you in your struggle against the skinned supremacy.

Uses "Person of Color" to be PC about it.

Uses White to explain people, of quite fucking literally, European Decent. Greater Europe. Literally FRANCE, GERMANY, SWEDEN and NORWAY.

If you won't say Black or Brown, what makes it okay to call everyone else White, without knowing a sliver of who they are? It isnt justifiable or even remotely "politically correct" to group one subsect of people together, but chose not to protect everyone else. People would be equally upset if you said "European" for all the white people, but put BLACK for Aisha Tyler.

If you're going to do something as extreme as this post, go all the way, or dont go at all.

I'm a BROWN GUY and this upsets me. Im indian. Come on man. India Dont Care.

@bisonhero: Are you from Horizon?

@hassun:The truth comes out at last! Now we know why you never sleep.

Quotas baby, quotas!

You know what, it was kind of nice seeing a good mix of male/female as leads in the games shown. 2 new interesting IPs that pop right into my head (Horizon: Zero Dawn [Sony], Recore [Microsoft]) had female leads.

Not sure why, but for the first time watching an E3, I actually had the though spring into my head that "Huh, every lead I've seen so far is white. Kinda weird."

Eh, just my thoughts as I was watching E3. Not gonna dabble into this matrix much; seems like people are upset about it. I don't see anything wrong in the idea other than maybe some poor execution.

It's one thing to discuss diversity in gaming, but to keep a tally on the ethnicity, gender, age, and weight of every character and presenter seems like too much to me.

We're too damn busy to deal with i cendiary posts at the moment. Locking this down.