Except that's it's not asking for a perfect portrayal of every character, it's saying that if a company like Bioware or Beamdog or Naughty Dog's intention is represent characters of different ethnicities and genders then they should strive to represent them fully. The gesture loses power if all you're doing is applying a dark skin tone shader to a character conceived, written, and voiced by a white person. It says that you'll go as far as to include people of colour or non-binary genders in your game so long as they're imaginary. They can be a part of our story, just not our process.That is hollow. Why would anyone be satisfied with that?
Is that their goal, though? If it is, then sure, lay into them for using different types of people to sell games but not to make them. My guess is, though that their goal (or the goal of a publicly-traded parent company) is to make a profit, at which point everything else is just product and marketing. It's perfectly fine to say "not having a diverse crew of creators to match your characters is bad marketing" but I don't think there's any moral outstanding moral obligation. As much as I hate to lazily default to "vote with your wallet," it seems to me to be an appropriate response to this situation.
How would you propose that artists be forced to create art you deem acceptable? At knifepoint or would you prefer a gun?
Why stop at race and gender. Hinduism is basically nonexistent in games. Would you like to force games to adhere to creeds and ideas on a universal level as well?
Your stance is anathema to creative expression.
Unless I really misread something, Heather's essay isn't about what kind of art gets created, but rather about how it gets created and who creates it. So, to borrow your Hinduism case, it's more "why was this Hindu character, whose religion is central to their character, created solely by Roman Catholics?"
I'm not sure I'm on board with the "don't cast Jen Hale" side of this essay. How many people responsible for the creation of a trans character need to be trans for it to be acceptable? Writer? Voice director? Concept artist? Animator? I'm a hundred percent on board with the fact that I'm probably not the best person to write a story that is a deep dive on uniquely trans issues, at least not without doing a TON of research, but I don't see anything wrong with lending my voice to a character, provided the writing and direction are good (and assuming I were a voice actor).
@evohero: GOTY discussions tend to take in the most recently observed state of the game. Phantom Pain came out of those discussions much worse for the wear due to its post-release online tomfoolery, so if XCOM 2 is fixed up (and somebody actually plays it at that point) then it shouldn't be an issue (not that "ranking and scoring of entertainment products" is an "issue" in the first place).
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