Is Gender Diversity In Games wrong?

Casting anyone who disagrees with you as misogynistic teens is incredibly reductive and wilfully misses the point. When other groups are included, it is always at the expense of the larger group. It's a zero sum game; there are only so many AAA games being made. It's not hate, it's just culture wars. Gamers have a culture they've developed over the last few decades, and as that culture changes of course the more conservative members among gamers are going to push back. That doesn't make them all monsters. They are simply people with different opinions on what is important to them about games.

[EDIT] I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, if it wasn't obvious. I'm a white male who always plays female characters in games where there is an option. I enjoy the novelty of it.

@rethla: Would you agree that consumers are entitled to complain to a developer (respectfully, of course) if they found a game to be poorly balanced? Or if the game had a crappy ending? Or controlled terribly? Since you're on Giant Bomb, a website dedicated in part to games criticism, I have to imagine you're cool with giving devs feedback when an aspect of their game is subpar. Why then is discussion of diversity off the table? How is that different from me complaining about Mirror's Edge Catalyst's bland story? How is that different than me complaining about Navi constantly yelling "LISTEN" in Ocarina of Time? Why must devs be shielded from this one type of criticism?

@darth_navster: Its ok to complain about the game not being to your liking, thats one of the first things i wrote in this thread. Just dont assume that your liking is what every game should strive for at all time and everyone should be ok with it. Basicly the same as in all discussions about balance etc. on this site.

I dislike the argument that white people don't know anything because they can find representation of themselves easily.

So what? Why are you placing your self worth on whether your race/gender appears in a medium? I'm sorry but I don't understand. I don't care that most rap is overwhelmingly black. It doesn't bother me at all.

I guess I just don't see this stuff. I'm happy in my bubble. I need to shut up about this cus I can't handle the heat.

I don't think that has ever happened. It's like being afraid of the boogeyman.

@fatalbanana: Why do you even read YouTube comments?

I don't think that people who argue against diversity in general are usually wrong. The question everyone who seems to be against diversity should be asking: "What is undiversity and why is it better than diversity?"

PROTIP: You can't argue for undiversity if you don't have a grasp what diversity even means historically, socially and culturally and thats where diversity critics usually fall flat on. During Human History, undiverse policies usually were self destructive economically, socially and even for Humanity, often resulting in great inflictions of human rights. The Apartheid is one, just to give one example.

Its always the same cult like approach and circular reasoning I've seen by people who argue against diversity. It is impossible to fully detach politics and policies out of video games because in one way or another all games reflect them. Even stale, undiverse and generic games like the old Contras are quite diverse if you're from Japan while playing as American dues. American games on the other hand are so diverse because the USA are a multicultural country and their global success is continously happening because of diversity in genders, ethnicities and opinions over time.

Kinda Funny themselves made a video a few weeks ago where they've praised Depression Quest and Gone Home because they're representative and groundbreaking in a sense in which people who lived through these things feel right at home (at least that was their implication). If I would be someone to criticise diversity I would probably start looking for bad examples of representation in Video Games and trying to create a concise argument from them but I haven't seen this happening in this decade.

@wynnduffy: I really doubt this has happened, mostly because your logic implies that people play games before they were fully released (reviewers play review copies, but they're having 100% of the story intact). People may can do that during Early Access, but I don't think I've seen developers getting flak over this at all. I've seen armies of angry people harrassing devs however because famous YouTubers made videos about them but thats a different topic entirely and highly depend on context and is also the question of general decorum.

Asking devs to change something is not "forcing them" by any stretch of the imagination. If you want to deny peoples rights to criticise others, then you're denying their free speech and you certainly do not want that, do you? Of course there may be rude people who're harrassing others for whatever reason, those should be banned from the forums by being rude and counterproductive to the discussion.

Equal treatment is how you fight destructive forms of behavior and ignorance. Compare this forum with the YouTube comment section and doesn't take much to see why so many people think YouTube comments are universally seen as trash.

Feel free to prove me wrong however.

@metalsnakezero: It may just be me, but those who accuse others for being "SJWs" usually enact in the same practises of being overzealous on the internet. Calling others this sort of phrase is the same as a "I know you but what am I?" but as a self-own which is all sorts of funny if you ask me.

That's like saying 'of course killing someone is wrong'. You can't make a blanket statement like that expecting to be carried by the moral highground when there are so many nuances depending on the context.

To please you, I will say this: diversity is always a good thing, including in gaming.

However, the nuance here is that sometimes things are forced in favor of the previous mentioned statement and that is bad. If your reason for picking a certain lead in a game is 'because we need more women in videogames' that's a dumb reason and can or will probably affect the quality of your game. You can create and release 10 games in a row with all women as the lead and they can be fantastic games. You can also release 9 games with a male in the lead and one with a female and be criticized for it. It all depends on your motivation and how you've done it.

To draw this to an outside example, the special forces commando's in my country. There has been some talk on how they don't have enough, or even any, women in them. Now, they want to lower the requirements for women. Why? So they can say there are women in there. The people that do not pass the current barrier of entry will fail in the field, as they must accomplish similar or even more dangerous and difficult tasks. The fact of the matter should be that women also have to pass the tests as they are indicative of field performance. Just by the nature of things, you're going to have less women in such an outfit. That doesn't mean it's 'wrong' or they weren't given a fair chance. 99% of men also fail those tests. It's not about that and shouldn't be.

@rethla: I guess what I wanted to get at was this:

Its also to bad when good gamecreators cant make games because they have to take into account all sorts of political statements before they do anything else or they will get lynched in massmedia.

Why is it a "lynching" when a game is criticized widely for lack of diversity? How is that different from the games press taking No Man's Sky to task for being a whole lot of nothing to do? There are still a substantial number of fans of that game who liked it at launch for what it was, so does that invalidate the middling reviews the game received? Why isn't that a "lynching"?

Because standard non gaming press doesnt care about no man sky but they care about highly political subjects like theres only white people in Witcher for reasons that has nothing with the game to do. Its a larger political debate as opposed to an poorly made game.

I think people are afraid that there is some sort of "diversity for diversity's sake" movement and that any time we now see someone who is of a marginalized group in a game, it must be to fill some sort of quota. I think some people may worry that there is some invisible hand behind the scenes telling creators to add in things that they normally wouldn't be adding, and that that is somehow pushing them in a direction, creatively, that they wouldn't be normally going it.

Of course, often it seems that there is a group of people, perhaps the same people, that complain that diversity is being pushed upon them when a character who happens to be a lesbian pops up in a game, or the main character is a revealed to be a woman, or some other such thing. I speak in nonspecific terms, but there have been issues in gaming over the past few years that fit this mold. So, I think it's a little bit of damned if you don't, but then damned if you do. It's as though there are people that believe any diversity included isn't an organic choice, but appeasement.

Look at what just recently happened with the Oscars. La La Land was the juggernaut, the film to beat. and yet Moonlight ending up winning. If you browse websites like Reddit, there is an undercurrent of complaints that seem to think that the choice wasn't actually based on the quality of the movie, but instead the politics. But, if you go further back and look at discussions before Moonlight won leading up to the Oscars themselves, the talk was overwhelmingly positive and the movie was viewed as a worthy Oscar contender. What changed? Again, damned if you don't have diversity to some, but damned if you do to others, and damned especially if you are successful.

In my opinion, and this is only my own opinion, I think more diversity is a good thing. I think that playing games made by different types of people, from different backgrounds, featuring characters of different backgrounds, in stories that maybe haven't been tried before, is exciting and good for the a growing and maturing industry. This, of course, doesn't assume that having a game like Life is Strange or Never Alone somehow pushes out a game like Uncharted or Doom. I think there is room for everything, from socially conscious walking simulators, to over the top bloody FPS games to Japanese erotic visual novels. The more the merrier.

I also put this to the side and realize that people will always been talking and writing about games, whether they agree with the basic premise of diversity = good, maybe or disagree. I think that there is always room for good natured and polite debate. I myself sometimes think the pendulum swings too far in either direction. Mainly, not every game has to have a bevy of choices to fit everyone's idea of what that character could and should be, but on the other hand, I also believe that it's too easy to make a game with a Nathan Drake-like protagonist and that we should be striving to support alternatives, and convince developers to attempt to create alternatives. The good thing is, there are many games that do buck the trend, most recently with Horizon Zero Dawn, which stars a female protagonist and also sounds like just an awesome game in general. The onus is on us, the consumer, to now purchase the game and talk about the game, so that people in the industry can see that we like this and want more of it.

My main takeaway in these situations is kind of dual layered. There is the thought that the developer needs to do whatever makes them money, and I can understand on a basic level that if something isn't broke, why go through the hassle or "fixing" it? If people buy the lingerie costumes in DOA games, why not keep churning them out? If a white guy who cracks wise is the best choice for a main character, why not write that script and hire Nolan North? That's just good business. Then there is the personal layer, the layer of a woman looking at the industry and trying to reconcile what has worked for years with her own hopes and dreams for what she wants to see and experience in games going forward. My main way of trying to guide our present into that future is spending money on games that try new things and try to tackle things from different perspectives, and also to go online and try to show people through discussion that there is a vocal group of people that will support those choices.

@rethla: It's not about making a statement. It's about thinking deeply about the effects that your game has on the broader audience. It's about teaching game creators that their works do not exist in a vacuum, and that their creative process should be at least consider (if not adopt) the overt and subtextual messages it conveys. No one is suggesting that game creators cannot continue to make whatever their hearts desire, but art means nothing if you do not consider what your audience will think. The discussion of diversity is meant to inspire creators to broaden their understanding during the creative process so that they will not repeat the mistakes of the past, and will embrace new perspectives to flesh out the worlds they create. Almost every game you have ever played (and will ever play) is a creation not of pure vision, but rather the necessary compromises of business, markets, social constructs, and the intelligence/sophistication of the audience at which the game is targeted. Considerations of diversity do not detract from that process, and in fact, may be the key to the same game reaching new audiences that even its creators never thought it would reach.

If you have a real-world example of where considering diversity resulted in a game creator becoming so frustrated as to abandon his or her pursuits, then please elaborate. Otherwise, I fail to see how being considerate and deliberative in choices made in the creative process as to diversity result in compromised development.

As long as the character is well acted (performance capture and voice acting) and/or well written, that character could be a female bisexual bartender for all I care.

Really? Because I recall that No Man's Sky's many issues were documented repeatedly on mainstreamnewssources. Conversely, a Google News search for "Witcher 3 racism" brings up the typical gaming blogs, Forbes (which has a video game beat), and right wing news sites riding the post-Gamergate wave. Not sure what you mean about the press not caring about No Man's Sky and making a big deal of The Witcher 3.

@imsh_pl: Just to be clear, I only used CoD as an example because the post I quoted used it. But otherwise, did I somehow misunderstand that we're in a forum thread about diversity in video games hosted on a website about video games?

Haven't games gotten a lot better at this? And rightly so. It seems like no credit is given when developers actually make an effort.

@imhungry: My gripe with your comment is that you seemed to imply that there's nothing more to representation than a character sharing your skin color and sex, and that the presence of merely those factors in the protagonists of most major games makes the desires for more representation by people who happen to be white males unwarranted.

@ocelotfox: There are no examples but i think its pretty obvious of companies like UBI soft creates molds for gamecreators to act within and it doesnt benefit the endproduct. It doesnt matter if the mould is for the correct level of diversity or openworldstructure. The greatest games are the games which shows signs they wherent created within such molds.

@darth_navster:That was examples. No man sky spawned a beast of its own. I think you got my point.

@rethla: I actually didn't get your point. Can you provide an actual example as to when a game was criticized on the basis of diversity in order to commence a mainstream media "lynching"?

Look at it this way, diverse games can be seen as undiverse if you play it as someone who for instance shares the same ethnicities as the character themselves.

It is not up to anyone to decide what the player has to feel.

However, the people who usually demand diversity and representation are usually the same that want more colorful and interesting stories and a certain level of humanitarian realism and emotional attachment, games about hardships in life are usually cherrished.

Gone Home for instance is seen as a game that doesn't rub that in your face all the time. The game reveals itself time-after-time during the playthrough and is pretty inoffensive about it also. People who are for diversity understand that the devs deliberately designed this game to be something else entirely but slowly unrevealing itself, thats why people felt so impacted by it.

On the other hand, people who criticised Gone Home criticised it for the almost exact oposite things. This creates the atmosphere that every game that goes against the norm is an attack against "undiversity" so to speak. When does something become undiverse anyway? I think the person you're responding to wanted to argue a similar thing. That the representation in Video Games of white men aren't exactly equal of that to Black Woman.

From the perspective of lets say, a straight white person a game like Gone Home is probably not representative to them, for a queer white person it may be more relateable. To argue against diversity is to argue against art and some art is for you but some isn't. However, you should ask yourself this. How many games like Gone Home exist in comparison to games with follow the same formula all the time?

I think that there is room for both sorts of games and anything in between.

@jadegl: Thats a great nuanced approach to the discussion. I may have to add that people wanting diversity is merely pleading to create a system in which all human (and many human experiences) are considered with equal respect.

I think real diversity cannot happen yet because the systems in which we live on don't provide much room for this sort of thinking. Look at the internet for example, its all but a shouting match in which the most authoritarian voice wins.

I really hope more people read your post.

That actually makes a lot of sense and have not realized this myself entirely until I've read your comment.

These sort of phrases are on the same step as "Free to be Free", so to speak. Nonsense stuff that give the illusion of a major point, but if we look at the facts, they really seem to not say anything.

"Diversity for the sake of Diversity" is one of those meaningless phrases like "Brexit means Brexit" and "Make America Great Again."

More diversity is always a good thing.

The malice against white people has been happening across all forms of media in recent years so there's not really much need to limit this to just games. OscarsSoWhite was dumb and so was the Witcher 3 stuff. There's also people criticising Ghost in the Shell for whitewashing.

Those outlets who often bring up race are to me, far more likely to be racist than the people they're criticising.

I'm glad I don't care about the race or gender of my characters and just play what I want to play. Seems exhausting being a writer that wants to hop on a soap box and complain about Nier's main character or that The Last of Us has a white protagonist.

@bojackhorseman: Career politicians are different from business men. In 2005 that's all trump was, and to be quite clear I don't condone people for what they've said in private. It's not as if he ran on the platform of you'll be able to attack people with no consequences, despite some people pretending he did.

@planetfunksquad: I'm not saying there is NO diversity, I'm saying it'd be dishonest to have it be even closer to america in terms of proportions. Through my wifes work I've met, and lived with, some of the companies japanese interns. They love the yakuza games when I show them, and say they seem so accurate. Someone in the yakuza might have a different point of view as they're incentivized to have more people, some you don't expect to be working with them. I'll give the article a read later though. Don't have time right this second.

"We are taking a hard line stance on diversity. Going forward this administration aims to be more open and transparent on the issues facing our industry. Gamers need games and we aim to deliver."

Oh, I wasn't saying you were saying there should be no diversity. Just an example of how some diversity in a game where most wouldn't expect it could actually be a good, cool thing.

@darth_navster: I cant give you any examples because the only mainstream media i consume is swedish radio and tv.

If you have an more informed and relevant game reporting in the massmedia you consume then all the better.

I hear news about a new EA game on the radio and pretty much all they say is "its an female protagonist". Well great. It also makes me think if thats what they are reporting about games that im very well informed about how is their reporting on stuff i dont know anything about beforehand? But thats another story.

I'm sorry, "malice against white people"? "Those outlets who often bring up race are to me, far more likely to be racist than the people they're criticizing"? Are you just getting your talking points from Breitbart at this point? Please explain, in detail, how OscarsSoWhite supporters were the real racists when they were complaining that the 2016 Oscars had next to no non-white actors nominated for an acting award? Or how people like Austin Walker can say critical things about The Witcher III and still to this day gives updates on how far he's gotten in it on Waypoint Radio? How is that malice?

@rethla: That sounds more like a problem with Swedish radio and TV specifically. Diversify your sources duder.

Diversity in games is good because it feels nice to be represented or perhaps handed a role that you don't normally play. More diverse playable characters in games can lead to more open-mindedness and perhaps even understanding.

Now, is it wrong to put pineapple on pizza in videogames?

No, but it can't hurt you nor me. And perhaps, maybe, you might try it again some time and find that it's not terrible.

I do but not by seeking more mainstrem media. For games as an example i go to giant bomb.

I always find it really strange that when people talk about diversity and representation they only talk about really top level stuff like skin color and gender. It just feels like people are saying "this character is a white women. That means all white women across the world can identify with her". This is not me saying that diversity is bad. The opposite actually. I always really enjoy it for example when we get a protagonist that is not American and wish we could get more games with protagonists from around the globe. It`s one of the reasons I like the Yakuza games so much.

I will say that there is diversity that feels "forced". While developers have become better recently not that long ago when developers wanted to make their games more diverse they had a tendency to just add in token characters that were completely two dimensional and stereotypical. It has become a lot better though.

That's a good start, but if you'd like to diversify your games media diet further, Critical Distance is a fantastic aggregator of quality games writing from a variety of outlets as well as original content. Can't say I know enough about Swedish language games writing, but I have to think it's out there.

I didn't say they were the real racists. I said a lot of these outlets who have to make a stretch to bring up race and then go on to criticise a game or developer for their apparent exclusive of non-whites, to me, have the real hang up with race.

Did you consider that maybe in the 2016 Oscars, it was considered the best actors in a given film just happened to be white, you know, not because they wanted to exclude others...

Don't twist my words and start bringing up Breitbart, thanks. In regards to Austin, I don't know why you are bringing him up. I said that in recent years there's more malice and snark towards a protagonist being white, or an actor getting an award being white. It's true, there totally is.

@wynnduffy said:

I just had to draw attention to this. I cannot be sure you realize quite how inculpating this statement is regarding your own prejudices, but you seem to be laboring under the notion that criticism and skepticism towards default whiteness is actually the problem, not default whiteness. Your statement effectively implies that you prefer that default whiteness remain the standard, and that any efforts to broaden and diversify are illegitimate. Maybe you don't realize it, or may you do, but you clearly are not an unbiased actor in this play.

I think this entire conversation is akin to emotional immaturity.

You should enjoy art for its content, not the content you think it should be representing.

Lets say for instance that I held this position with Anime. Lets say i thought that anime needed to represent more POC, lets say I thought this because i felt that those stories werent being told in that medium. I would first be missing the cultural context of the art, which is important, this context greatly informs the stories being told. Then after bypassing that I would be actively denigrating those stories because I felt that DIFFERENT stories were more important.

In the realm of games this is a bit different. Not all games are character driven, and the ones that are generally utilize these things within the context of a larger game. So its not at the forefront. When it is though thats when this argument gains distinction I suppose.

Let me par this down. Would you critique a German painter for not drawing Ugandans? Would you critique a Tai filmmaker for not including Brazilians?

Its a double standard, there is a perceived overabundance of "whiteness" in the media, when in actuality this just goes to show how insular the realities of the individuals holding these points is.

Should I complain that Satoshi Kon records his dialogue in Japanese? Or that Nietzsche wrote in German? Should I opine that they were excluding english speakers by this omission?

Games are very basic art, lets be honest, they do not have the sort of maturity of film or even television. They've taken important steps over the last ten years but this still has not progressed them at the same rate as film, or writing, or fine art. For games to truly flourish they need an egalitarian environment. They also need to become easier to make and less commercial. Complaining about the skin colors of the characters in games is a very stupid criticism.

I'm going to try to avoid the general thread of conversation here, as things seem to have gotten quite heated. I think that games becoming more diverse both in they represent and who they cater to is definitely a good thing. If only because it will serve gaming in long run. Other mediums have only benefited from more diversity.

I don't think it does and no I don't care if my characters are white.

In fact I find it a little offensive to even have that claim made about me. I'm not about to go down the 'I have black friends' route, but a lot of my favourite media is comprised largely of black actors or musicians. The actors, performers or characters in my media and their skin colour matters not.

Never have I sat down to play a game or watch a TV show and thought "sigh why a black lead". The thought hasn't ever crossed my mind.

No, but I would definitely critique an American video games dev for not including black people, or at the very least creating meaningful black characters that don't come across as stereotypes. I would critique a game set in the UK if it it didn't do those things too. Same goes for creating meaningful women.

I think that as video games become a respected form of entertainment they need to embrace mature plot lines and that requires diversity. For years I got very annoyed when people complained about LGBTQ characters, female protagonists and racial diversity. The media cannot be taken seriously if it only portrays white males as heroes to cater to an adolescent audience. The Tracer scandal (not that one, the second one) really got to me. Her lesbian relationship isn't rubbed in our face anymore than Torbjorn's heterosexual relationship. It's called character development. To claim that it's different is just thinly veiled homophobia.

It's funny that you bring this up today because for the first time this week I started to understand the ''other side''. They dropped a trailer for Shadow of War and we can see a black Gondorian. Now generally speaking the franchise shits on the lore on multiple fronts and as an avid Tolkien fan I greatly dislike it for it. However that black dude annoyed me because his existence was visibly breaking the lore for the sake of diversity. There are no black guys in Gondor. Tolkien wrote his saga in an other time, and yes, brown people from the East are evil while white people are mostly good. That's arguably racist and it sucks, but if developers don't want to deal with that they can stick with orcs. To me that black guy is just as disrespectful to the lore as the stupid wraith thing and the new Ring of Power.

I guess my point is that diversity is good as long as it doesn't egregiously break the universe's lore. This is very easy to avoid when the studio creates the lore, which is most of the time.

@dray2k: My response would be that you're making a mistake that many people who expressed their opinion in this thread and outside of it are prone to making as well:

you are conflating diversity of experiences with diversity of character models.

Having character models that visually resemble a wide range of ethnic groups and sexes doesn't mean that the characters will have interesting, original and genuine personalities and story arcs.

Conversely, having character models that are unoriginal in the context of the current state of the medium/market doesn't define how interesting, original and genuine their personalities and stories are.

Representation goes deeper than your skin. That's why you feel more emotionally attached to the characters in this clip

than to the characters in this clip

even though there are no actual human beings present in the first clip, while the second one has a wide variety of people representing multiple ethnic groups and sexes.

I pray to God you would never consider saying that the emotions and interactions present in the first clip are less genuine and touching than those in the second one because they involve robots. All I ask is that you extend that same principle to video games.

@wynnduffy: Then, if you don't care, why does the criticism about default whiteness bother you so much? Do you acknowledge that default whiteness exists? Do you seek out entertainment outside your comfort zone (i.e. traditionally black or Asian cinema or games ranging from visual novels to 4X games)? Do you take other people's suggestions seriously, or ever question your own beliefs when presented with information that challenges those beliefs?

While some criticism regarding race and gender may overstate or simplify the problems presented in a specific contexts, I find it hard to believe that any of those critics are acting with "malice" towards white people. What you may perceive as "malice" may be what many of us would call an acknowledgement of deep-rooted privilege, and I suggest you explore some additional pieces written on this site and others about why your perception may or may not be reflective of reality.

@imsh_pl: I wish flagging people for posting Grown Ups is a valid reason to use that button

I think this is partially true, but also social media is much better at spread vitriol, anger and negativity than praise. There are certainly many times when articles/reviews give credit to games that diversify.

Mafia III was especially talked about due to racism being an important facet of the story. Watch Dogs 2 was praised for both featuring a black protagonist but also featuring a more nuanced cast of young characters who actually represented the youth of San Francisco - but this was helped by many outlets writing about it are situated in or near San Francisco anyway (it also in contrasted well with Watch Dogs 1 having dropped the ball with the diversity of Chicago). Most recently I've seen praise given to Horizon Zero Dawn featuring a female lead, and how the setting plays with patriarchal societal expectations (not sure how, because of spoilers, but I have seen reviewers comment on it). Even the latest Tales game, Tales of Berseria, is getting good feedback for finally featuring a female lead (without a male crutch) and use that as a way of writing an interesting atypical more nuanced story.

Praise is definitely given, but most coverage ignores it altogether* or is centred around being critical to failed attempts of lack thereof which gains more traction.

*TANGENT: The lack of consistent debate is partly why, when it is discussed, people feel like it's being force-fed to them: they are simply not accustomed to the discussion being treated as an important part of game coverage. The lack of reverence many sites have for the topic, only leads to increased backlash when they do acknowledge it (regardless of the way in which they do discuss it when it comes up). Giant Bomb is a very good example of this. In general, the current team does not bring this stuff up until it is directly related to a news story, so when they do bring it up (sometimes even in a single sentence such as "I like how they handle the __Character in this game") the comments are filled with people saying: "stick to the games" or "I didn't come here for politics". Without Patrick or Austin here to bring these ideas to light more frequently, I think the community has regressed slightly in their tolerance to it. This is true for the wider medium as well: because articles about it are relatively small, any reference to it receives an unjustified level of backlash (and gamers have no incentive to spread the positive takes).

@socialone: I'm very happy to read this because I am someone who only enjoyed Shadows of Mordor because it didn't follow Tolkien lore, which I find absolutely boring and dreadful. I'm glad to see people are already upset the next one is continuing to piss on his bad storytelling, makes me believe it'll be a worthy sequel to 2014's Game of the Year.

@wynnduffy: Your argument is flawed in a sense that Actors, who're real living people acting as fictional character are compareable to video game characters who're not real.

The article linked by @darth_navster provides plently of reasoning why the actors abilities themselves may have nothing to do the oscar nomination themselves. You should actually read it before being too defensive about your own sentiments, which you are right now.

In my personal opinion, for me it never has been about individual criticism but rather criticism of the systems that may have caused this situation in which some people began to think that there might be a establishment happening primarily mostly because of white people, while there are a lot of people who are just similarly qualified and not white. I know this because we both know that there are good actors who happen to be people of colour, therefore we know that a percentage of any minority can exist within any given establishment.

It does so with actors, why not anyone else in any system?

@imsh_pl: Thats the exact thing I also argued, glad that we at least understand each other. You elaborated on my sentiments, which I always like because I don't think I can word myself very well when it comes to these things. I'm not english so sometimes I may not get my sentiments across as I intend them to be.

If I caused a misunderstanding here, that wasn't my intention. Let me quote myself here.

Sorry if I caused trouble!

Cool dude, glad you like anime, a medium exclusively made on a tiny island almost completely inhabited by natives of that island, whose work is targeted almost completely at the other inhabitants of that island, who all speak the same language, and whose language is almost completely unspoken off of that island. An anime production house isn't remotely comparable to a video game development studio. And so ends the comparison.

As for painters: they are one person. They are not an industry. They are not a multicultural development house located in the epicenter of the Western world. Complaining about the skin colors of characters in games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, which are focus-tested to near-homogeneity, and which are touched by literally hundreds of people from all over the world in the process of their creation, is not a 'very stupid criticism'. These are very stupid comparisons, though.

A well-reasoned post from a valuable point of view. I did want to say that I think the proselytizing is what turns some people off on diversity in games. They're not against games that are representative, they're against games about representation. The fact that Mafia III has a black protagonist isn't what bothers those people, but the fact the game is all about his blackness and how that affects him the time and place of the 60s setting. Compare Anders from DA II (where his homosexuality is just a part of his larger character) to Cortez from ME3 (whose main purpose is to deliver an equality aesop).

Just a thought I had.

No, I don't think gender diversity is wrong but I would like to make a distinction between the two types of gendered protagonist that I've seen in the past few years. There is the protagonist whose gender is important to the story (Life is Strange, Gone Home, Tomb Raider) and the protagonist whose gender isn't given significance (Mirror's Edge, Beyond Two Souls, Remember Me).

I think it is important to see more of both. I personally enjoy seeing a story through the life of women. I felt empathy for the teenage girls in Gone Home and Life is Strange, specifically the insecure attitude they had about their sexuality. When Lara Croft was being assaulted in the first Tomb Raider reboot I was uncomfortable and repulsed watching it. I don't think these examples would translate to males in the same way and I enjoyed the different feelings those games made me feel.

As for the second one where the character's gender isn't significant, these games' stories aren't related to their gender at all. Halo, Persona, or Zelda would have worked just as well with a female protagonist. I think the same goes the other way around for the examples I gave above going from female lead to male. The stories are relatable through the trials and challenges they face as a human being rather than focus on their gender. Mass Effect, Dark Souls, and Fallout where you can pick your gender all show this to be true. All the "Pick Your Gender" games show this to be true with this specific type of storytelling.

I just want to show some examples where I think the male lead was important. Last of Us (father/daughter analog), Uncharted 4 (brother/brother and Sully/Drake as Father/Son), the first Walking Dead game (father/daughter) and the Yakuza games (stereotypical male bravado). I can't even think of any others where playing as a male is the focus of a story! I'd like to see more of those too.

TL:DR Female diversity is good both for the different experiences you get by playing as a female and a lot of the time the protagonist's gender is inconsequential to the game's narrative. There is nothing wrong with it.