Hogwarts Legacy Will Allow For Transgender Characters

[Casual Shinji]

This gets thrown around all the time and I think it is fairly debunked at this point. Since the dawn of gaming you've had more than enough chances to play as "not-white men" so it is a bullshit statement. People use "straight white man" as a general label at this point and it's been false for a long time. Hell even movies have proved that false since the fucking Wizard of OZ in the late 30's. (though film didn't have any gay's till the 70's but still things progressed).

What exactly are you basing that on? There was a hays code in place that made it so that gay characters had to die, "sexual perversion" and all that, a thing that has lingered on long after the hays code was abandonned. And yeah, there were white women in movies too, as either the love interest or the femme fatale... who then also usually got killed off by the end.

When was there only ever white men heroes in gaming. Some of the earliest fucking protagonists in games were woman or not even human. So where does this dominance come from? Just because there wasn't a perfect 50/50 split between men and women as a main characters doesn't make the ratio some grave injustice and it's a stupid argument to make that it ever was.

And nowhere did I state that it's 100% white men, just that it's the majority, the default. To the point where not even too long ago there apparently needed to be a reason for a protagonist not to be white, male, and straight. The 'so they're female/gay/black, but why' rebuttal fans liked to throw out there. The phrase 'I don't mind straight people, I just don't want them in my games' has likely never been uttered by anyone.

 

[CriticalGaming]

This. I got it time stamped.

​

Okay I mean even my question comes up as the most reasonable argument in the video (#4), and the first three points are kind of dumbass statements. Frankly i didn't know Poison was Trans, but I'm not very familiar with SF as a series because I don't much care about fighting games. Funnily enough, I think things like that "It's a trap!" hairspray would probably cause some problems if the outrage squad got a look at it because they don't take well to being called "traps" if I recall correctly. And some of the other racial stereotypes in the video also give me pause as to how and why they aren't railed on by the same mob.

Then again SF 5 came out 5 years ago and if they pull that same stuff in SF 6 it will probably get noticed now.

Since you probably know more about the SF characters than i possibly could. How many gay characters are there?

 

[Asita]

Sure, but let's not pretend Rowling doesn't have a weird chip on her shoulder regarding people calling her out on things. This started even before her full blown anti-trans bullshit, claiming Dumbledor was gay and Hermione was black long after the fact, as some sort of attempt to retroactively score points.

Eh...no, that's working backwards from presumptions about Rowling and even twisting what was said. In the case of Hermione, she never said anything remotely resembling "Hermione is black". What was twisted as such was a statement made in response to the casting of Noma Dumezweni to play Hermione in the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, with Rowling saying 1) that Dumezweni was a great actress who was deemed the best for the job, 2) that there's no reason for people to get in a tizzy about it as Hermione's skin color is never mentioned in the books, therefore there's no reason that she can't be portrayed as black, and 3) - the actual quote - "I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm". It was very much a statement to the effect of "Strictly speaking, I never defined her ethnicity, so it's ridiculous to hate this casting choice on the grounds of race".

The Dumbledore thing, conversely, was initially stage notes during the production of the sixth film, in which Rowling torpedoed a suggested line in the script wherein Dumbledore would wax poetic about a lady love, because he wouldn't have had a lady love in the first place. When she went public with his sexuality, it was done in the context of explaining his relationship with Grindlewald, specifically why his morals seemed so flexible at that part in his life, why he was so hesitant to face him, and the personal impact of that fight lasted for the rest of his life; Grindlewald was the love of his life and love had at first blinded him to the guy's evil actions and later stayed his hand until Grindlewald had truly become irredeemable. And consequentially he abstained from romantic entanglements after the fact basically because "once bitten, twice shy".

That she'd originally not mentioned it textually is neither surprising nor uncommon. Virtually anyone who's written fiction will tell you that not everything the author knows about a character (including defining moments in their lives) will be seen by the audience. Heck, my own "character bibles" specifically have 'secrets' sections, subdivided into what I need to directly reveal, what I want to hint at and leave breadcrumbs for, and stuff that's important for me to keep in mind but nobody would ever talk about. Eg, one of my characters still has regrets about an engagement that fell through, and it has given him some minor insecurities about interpersonal relationships. However, this will likely go forever unsaid both because he's not the type to talk about it and because me getting into it only distracts from the story I want to tell with the character. It's important for me (and anyone else who needs to capture the character's voice) to know, but it's fluff for the audience.

 

[CriticalGaming]

What exactly are you basing that on? There was a hays code in place that made it so that gay characters had to die, "sexual perversion" and all that, a thing that has lingered on long after the hays code was abandonned. And yeah, there were white women in movies too, as either the love interest or the femme fatale... who then also usually got killed off by the end.

Yeah and married couple's could not be shown sleeping in the same bed. A code that according to the wiki was abandoned in the early 1960's. Which means it hasn't been a thing in 60 years.

And ever before that, that doesn't discount my point that there were plenty of women staring as leads in films.

The phrase 'I don't mind straight people, I just don't want them in my games' has likely never been uttered by anyone.

Yeah just because some people online are shitty, doesn't mean that medium itself has or had a problem. It means that people on the internet suck, that's nothing new and will likely never change.

And nowhere did I state that it's 100% white men, just that it's the majority, the default.

Is it the default though? Do you have statistics? What counts as white? Everything that isn't some shade of brown? Because the countless Japanese protagonists probably overshine any "default white dude".

Again saying it's a standard default metric doesn't mean anything and likely isn't true when you factor out all the games that let you create a custom character, or never show your character like most of the Call of Duty games. Is Master Chief white? I mean where do you get that the "white dude" is the default in anything except it's just the default option in a character creator in which the player is free to change however the want.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Eh...no, that's working backwards from presumptions about Rowling and even twisting what was said. In the case of Hermione, she never said anything remotely resembling "Hermione is black". What was twisted as such was a statement made in response to the casting of Noma Dumezweni to play Hermione in the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, with Rowling saying 1) that Dumezweni was a great actress who was deemed the best for the job, 2) that there's no reason for people to get in a tizzy about it as Hermione's skin color is never mentioned in the books, therefore there's no reason that she can't be portrayed as black, and 3) - the actual quote - "I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm". It was very much a statement to the effect of "Strictly speaking, I never defined her ethnicity, so it's ridiculous to hate this casting choice on the grounds of race".

Oh yep, I remember that. I stand corrected. That one got meshed in with the other weird reveals Rowing made about wizards apparently pooping their pants and magicing the poop away.

The Dumbledore thing, conversely, was initially stage notes during the production of the sixth film, in which Rowling torpedoed a suggested line in the script wherein Dumbledore would wax poetic about a lady love, because he wouldn't have had a lady love in the first place. When she went public with his sexuality, it was done in the context of explaining his relationship with Grindlewald, specifically why his morals seemed so flexible at that part in his life, why he was so hesitant to face him, and the personal impact of that fight lasted for the rest of his life; Grindlewald was the love of his life and love had at first blinded him to the guy's evil actions and later stayed his hand until Grindlewald had truly become irredeemable. And consequentially he abstained from romantic entanglements after the fact basically because "once bitten, twice shy".

That she'd originally not mentioned it textually is neither surprising nor uncommon. Virtually anyone who's written fiction will tell you that not everything the author knows about a character (including defining moments in their lives) will be seen by the audience. Heck, my own "character bibles" specifically have 'secrets' sections, subdivided into what I need to directly reveal, what I want to hint at and leave breadcrumbs for, and stuff that's important for me to keep in mind but nobody would ever talk about. Eg, one of my characters still has regrets about an engagement that fell through, and it has given him some minor insecurities about interpersonal relationships. However, this will likely go forever unsaid both because he's not the type to talk about it and because me getting into it only distracts from the story I want to tell with the character. It's important for me (and anyone else who needs to capture the character's voice) to know, but it's fluff for the audience.

This one though, I don't know. Heck, maybe she did always have that idea for the character, but considering some of her statements I don't know I would extend her that trust.

 

[SilentPony]

Something tells me that quote wouldn't hold much water if 90% of all game protagonists were gay. There'd probably be some people clamoring for game characters who catered to their straight sensibilities. Or just for the simple sake of variety.

And saying 'why can't you relate to characters whom you don't share physical characteristics with; are you a psycho' is a nice way of deflecting legitimate issues with diversity within media. Women, non-whites, and gays have pretty much had little choice but to identify with straight, white men in movies, series, and games. And very few of them ever made claims they can't relate to them, just that it would be nice for them to get some more options. That along with how stigmatized some of these groups are, so that the gay or trans character isn't depicted as the usual victim or creepy weirdo.

And the 'Dumbledore is gay and Hermione is black' issue wasn't that they needed to be, but that throughout the entire series there's zero implication of this only for Rowling to suddenly present them as such when the story was pretty much over. It comes across as her trying to be inclussive while conveniently having dodged outcry from conservatives or racists had they been so from the start. Can you imagine Dumbledore being depicted as gay starting from the first book back in 1997? A headmaster in charge of little children is gay?! This was before even the shitstorm over Spongebob and Patrick being a bit too gay for being friends and not having girlfriends.

Something tells me if 90% of game protagonists were gay, and straights were out there demanding gay characters be turned straight there would be a lot of uproar.

And its not deflecting diversity if media, its saying that audience control of the story isn't as important as the story being told the way the authors want. That quote is from the Dishonored 2 review, and Yahtzee goes out of his way to say the woman's story is the stronger, better story, and there was no need to give the choice to play as the man. That one is a natural progression of the story from the first game, and the other is for people who no sense of narrative build. Some stories are meant to be told from a single person's perspective, and changing some fundamental detail like their gender can make the story worse.

And as far as this idea that women, gays, racial minorities have been forced to identify as straight white males is, well frankly its bullshit. We've had none white male characters since like we've had writing. Books going back to when books first started weren't all white males, they didn't tell the story of John Smith public accountant from Cheshire in Ancient Egypt. The Greeks weren't well known for only having straight male heroes/Gods. Movies have had diverse leads and stories since movies first started. Same with video games. Its only popular video games from the last 2000s/2010s that sell well with straight males that do well with straight males, and some companies want to pander to that audience. Before that most game popular game characters were cartoon animals, weird monsters, genderless sprites/objects, or robots. Doesn't mean alternative don't exist, didn't exist, or aren't readily available.

As far as JK Rowling is concerned, I fully agree she's being transparently cynical with calling Dumbledore gay years after the fact to score points. Its meaningless, in no small part that Dumbledore's sexuality, to my knowledge, is never brought up once. I don't recall talk of an ex-wife, children, spouse, being a widower, nothing. What's the phrase, Chekov's Gun? Only have a detail if its going to pay off later, and seeings how Dumbledore was functionally an exposition dump and God character in the Harry Potter stories, their sexuality or lack there of wasn't important. Same with Hermionie being black and in a wheelchair. Personally I think that's a really cool change to the character I would have loved to be in there since the beginning. I think showing handicapped kids they can still be heroes, and unfortunately magic can't fix everything would have been a very powerful story element. But she didn't do that, and going back to retroactively claim so was bullshit on her part, and in no way does she deserve props or acclaim.
If she wants to be inclusive write another story with new characters, don't change already existing ones.

 

[BrawlMan]

Okay I mean even my question comes up as the most reasonable argument in the video (#4), and the first three points are kind of dumbass statements. Frankly i didn't know Poison was Trans, but I'm not very familiar with SF as a series because I don't much care about fighting games. Funnily enough, I think things like that "It's a trap!" hairspray would probably cause some problems if the outrage squad got a look at it because they don't take well to being called "traps" if I recall correctly. And some of the other racial stereotypes in the video also give me pause as to how and why they aren't railed on by the same mob.

Then again SF 5 came out 5 years ago and if they pull that same stuff in SF 6 it will probably get noticed now.

Since you probably know more about the SF characters than i possibly could. How many gay characters are there?

First of all, now you know. Second, Poison has been transgender since 1989. Pre-op in japan, and post-op everywhere else in the West. Most people, and even casual Street Fighter fans, knew by the mid 2000s. the first time I found out about poison true gender, I was 12 years old. It was around the middle of 2001, late summer/early fall. I found out through a final fight fan site on geocities.

I don't know of all the gay characters, though there's some ambiguity with Cammy, if I remember correctly. Though that was mostly just fan wank. Juri is bisexual though she's a sociopath and a villain. Some of her victory quotes in IV, she uses rape threats to both male or female defeated opponents.

 

[CriticalGaming]

First of all, now you know. Second, Poison has been transgender since 1989. Pre-op in japan, and post-op everywhere else in the West. Most people, and even casual Street Fighter fans, knew by the mid 2000s. the first time I found out about poison true gender, I was 12 years old. It was around the middle of 2001, early spring. I found out through a final fight fan site on geocities.

I don't know of all the gay characters, though there's some ambiguity with Cammy,v if I remember correctly. Though that was mostly just fan wank. Juri is bisexual though she's a sociopath in a villain. Some of her victory quotes in IV, she uses rape threats to both male or female defeated opponents.

I mean I haven't played a SF game since SF2 on the SNES and it only like like 10 characters in it total so I don't know anything really about all these new kids.
But I find it interesting that your example for characters in non-story esque games also has a that 1 character while everyone else is a muggle (that's the potter word I think). It's like 1 interesting character with side products that play that transgenderness in a rather iffy-way.

But the exception PROVES the rule really. And it continues to not matter. Fighting games can have all the side story they want, it's not what makes people play the games and the story only serves as fluff and not the purpose of the character's existence. And the key to that is how much nobody in the LBGTQ-mob makes demands of fighting game characters to be more gay and or trans. I mean hell they care more about vegan and fem-doomslayer and that characer literally has no dialog or personality.

I guess it just means fighting games aren't in that group's wheelhouse so they don't care.

On a side note, isn't one of the best fighting game players a gay dude? Sonicfox right? He won some award of being a fighting game badass which is dope and shows you how representation in game is incredibly subjective.

@SilentPony makes a great point. The art should be created under a vision of the author, not the audience. Because letting an audience or committee have control over the creation just leads to a mess. And the greatest art is created with a very specific vision in mind. Things that are created to try and please everyone almost always fail.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Something tells me that quote wouldn't hold much water if 90% of all game protagonists were gay. There'd probably be some people clamoring for game characters who catered to their straight sensibilities. Or just for the simple sake of variety.

And saying 'why can't you relate to characters whom you don't share physical characteristics with; are you a psycho' is a nice way of deflecting legitimate issues with diversity within media. Women, non-whites, and gays have pretty much had little choice but to identify with straight, white men in movies, series, and games. And very few of them ever made claims they can't relate to them, just that it would be nice for them to get some more options. That along with how stigmatized some of these groups are, so that the gay or trans character isn't depicted as the usual victim or creepy weirdo.

And the 'Dumbledore is gay and Hermione is black' issue wasn't that they needed to be, but that throughout the entire series there's zero implication of this only for Rowling to suddenly present them as such when the story was pretty much over. It comes across as her trying to be inclussive while conveniently having dodged outcry from conservatives or racists had they been so from the start. Can you imagine Dumbledore being depicted as gay starting from the first book back in 1997? A headmaster in charge of little children is gay?! This was before even the shitstorm over Spongebob and Patrick being a bit too gay for being friends and not having girlfriends.

Well there are Gay video game protagonists.

Fear Effect having one of the first ones. on PS1 I think.

There's not that many mainstream games that do it but there are ones out there. My Ex Boyfriend the Space Tyrant plenty of visual novel type games and basically everything Robert Yang has ever made. There's also a number of characters whose sexuality isn't ever defined as such or plays no part in the story so unless you explicitly need it mentioned or don't think it count then there's plenty of characters who people should have no real problem playing as.

As for women

Well


Also it's People of colour as a term. "Non-white" is actually a racist phrase you might want to remove from your vocabulary just saying.

Part of the whole claim for representation is and has been the argument of people needing to see some-one to relate to...........

Options are well and good however when it just becomes about making a bland paste of a game everyone can eat then it becomes more of an issue. There's a reason Queer as Folk is seen as a landmark series and hat was because it was specifically made to appeal to a certain demographic.

Also side note this is a Ps1 game showing one of the protagonists.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

This gets thrown around all the time and I think it is fairly debunked at this point. Since the dawn of gaming you've had more than enough chances to play as "not-white men" so it is a bullshit statement. People use "straight white man" as a general label at this point and it's been false for a long time. Hell even movies have proved that false since the fucking Wizard of OZ in the late 30's. (though film didn't have any gay's till the 70's but still things progressed).

When was there only ever white men heroes in gaming. Some of the earliest fucking protagonists in games were woman or not even human. So where does this dominance come from? Just because there wasn't a perfect 50/50 split between men and women as a main characters doesn't make the ratio some grave injustice and it's a stupid argument to make that it ever was.


Holy Shit! is Harry Potter that old!? Fuck I'm an old piece of shit. I thought that crap was like 10 years ago at most.

Fun fact.

The first Lesbian kiss in film was in 1930s in the film Morocco


The first Gay kiss on screen was 1926 in the film Bed and Sofa

Or if people want to argue that doesn't count then the 1928 film Wings.

Most of this kind of content didn't keep on because the Hays Code came in.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Sounds like anything other than a third option as trans, with the game acknowledging your character status, won't be seen as enough (at least for some)

Trans Inclusion Means More Than Just Adding Potential Gender Options To Hogwarts Legacy

Upcoming Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy will feature some customization options related to gender, according to a report by Bloomberg. It’s a step toward trans inclusion in a game mired in controversy, even if it still shows the limitations of video games’ handling of trans people.

kotaku.com

This is just a fool errand, everyone circumstance is different, you obviously can't make game perfectly customizable for everyone. You need a cut off point, considering 99.5% of people perfectly fall in either male or female category it's kinda foolish to spend precious dev time on something that will reflect a tiny minority (and even there there's plenty of sub division within that .5%). In this case they probably had to due to JK reputation, but it sounds like every other game is better off just staying as far away from the topic as possible.

ROFL. Yeh I figured it wouldn't be deemed good enough.

Also I'd like to add even of that 0.5% a good 75% or more of them only want to be seen as the opposite sex they don't want to be some weird intermediate step or "Close enough but with an asterisk". Literally the option to pick a male female character would suffice for them in terms of representation.

Wonder how long until Ubisoft is being pushed to include "Trans" characters in Assassins Creed?

 

[CriticalGaming]

ROFL. Yeh I figured it wouldn't be deemed good enough.

Also I'd like to add even of that 0.5% a good 75% or more of them only want to be seen as the opposite sex they don't want to be some weird intermediate step or "Close enough but with an asterisk". Literally the option to pick a male female character would suffice for them in terms of representation.

Wonder how long until Ubisoft is being pushed to include "Trans" characters in Assassins Creed?

I mean it's the same thing I said in the old Anita Sark related threads. Any concession you make is met with nothing more than goalpost shifting, and people then wonder why there isn't equality. These people don't want equality they want special treatment under the guise of equality. They gain status by claiming injustice and when you prove them wrong you get labeled a bigot because if they actually admitted that things are getting better then they would lose their platform and soapbox which are the only things that are giving them attention.

 

[BrawlMan]

I mean I haven't played a SF game since SF2 on the SNES and it only like like 10 characters in it total so I don't know anything really about all these new kids.

That's the problem. You locked yourself out of the loop for over 25 years. Poison has been around since Final Fight. Had a couple of cameos in the SF games. Her most noteworthy appearance was in III: 2nd Impact & Third Strike. She is Hugo's wrestling manager. Her first playable appearance was in Street Fighter X Tekken. They later brought her in to IV and then V. Cammy defintely ain't part of the new kids as she's been around since 1994 in Super SFII.

But the exception PROVES the rule really. And it continues to not matter. Fighting games can have all the side story they want, it's not what makes people play the games and the story only serves as fluff and not the purpose of the character's existence.

That is where you're wrong. People play the games because they do care about the lore, story, or characters. I play them because I do, and I there to have fun. Which is what fighting games are all about. There are many fans that care about the stories in Guilty Gear, Samurai Showdown, Tekken, DOA (Yes!), Mortal Kombat, and Soul Calibur. Everyone may not care, but plenty and most do.

On a side note, isn't one of the best fighting game players a gay dude? Sonicfox right?

Yes.

He won some award of being a fighting game badass which is dope and shows you how representation in game is incredibly subjective.

Not necessarily. I am always welcome towards any representation or people of different backgrounds not like my own. There are people that do care how they or others like or different them are represented. It does matter to an extent or fully, depending on the situation. Lots of case are similar or different. I recommend you watch that video from the very beginning or at the time stamp again where a little afterward how he talks about how SF has many characters from different races, religions, cultures, and walks of life. It does matter, regardless if you see it or not.

 

[CriticalGaming]

SF has many characters from different races, religions, cultures, and walks of life.

Not all straight white men then? Cool. I guess that's another point against the diversity crowd because what they want already is in SF and according to you has been there for 20+ years. Hmmm....That's cool then.

I think I should make something clear. I'm not anti-diversity. I'm just against the people saying that there isn't diversity, because as far as I'm concerned gaming has always offered amazing diverse options. And this "not enough" crowd is what gets my goat.

There is nothing stopping the diversity community from creating their own movies, games, books, TV shows to appeal to that specific crowd. And i would hope that they do. But no art should be created with the purpose of marking check boxes for the audience. Media should be made because the creators have a vision and a passion for what they want to make, and if that vision includes or does not include a specific type of person....then oh well. That work doesn't deserve to be lamblasted for the lack of a specific stereotype. All that should matter is that the work is well made, full stop.

 

[BrawlMan]

I'm just against the people saying that there isn't diversity, because as far as I'm concerned gaming has always offered amazing diverse options. And this "not enough" crowd is what gets my goat.

You always have to look from their perspective on the why. While you can't please some people, there are many people and cultures that don't get represented enough, wrongly or improperly, or the super rare occasion. Indivisible for example has representation of ancient Southeast Asia that is rarely depicted. The game has a dark-skinned Asian female as the protagoinst too, and the game did not get picked up by many publishers because of it. So the "not enough" crowd ain't exactly in the wrong.

But no art should be created with the purpose of marking check boxes for the audience.

True, but even if it happens, it not always doom and gloom, nor a tragic event. Even something good can come out of it, even if unintentional.

 

[Dreiko]

I'm sure they can explain away any discrepancy in appearance and voice and what have you with magic in a Harry Potter setting. I mean, people turn to rats and cats and all sorts of things already in there. Maybe little Mary was cursed by the evil Willful Willie and she grew something she wasn't supposed to have lol.

 

[CriticalGaming]

True, but even if it happens, it not always doom and gloom, nor a tragic event.

Doom and Gloom no. But like many recent failed movies, the failure gets blamed because men are toxic or some shit.

 

[SilentPony]

You always have to look from their perspective on the why. While you can't please some people, there are many people and cultures that don't get represented enough, wrongly or improperly, or the super rare occasion. Indivisible for example has representation of ancient Southeast Asia that is rarely depicted. The game has a dark-skinned Asian female as the protagoinst too, and the game did not get picked up by many publishers because of it. Sot the "not enough" crowd ain't in the wrong.

To be fair yes and no. Games with protagonists of Southeast Asian decent may not get a mainstream release here in the states, but in Southeast Asia those kind of games are released all the time.
Part of the problem is people assume the games we see in the states are ALL the games being released, and its just not the case. Localized games get released all the time overseas and in the states we never hear about them. Should every game get a US release? Off the top of my head sure, I see no reason not to. There are entire gaming franchises that have never seen a US release that are huge in...I dunno, Japan or South Korea or Brazil that we've never heard about.

 

[BrawlMan]

Doom and Gloom no. But like many recent failed movies, the failure gets blamed because men are toxic or some shit.

Ignore them. I don't give a fuck about asshole who push blame on something, just like those who want to see no representation of color/gender or want to see them fail.

To be fair yes and no. Games with protagonists of Southeast Asian decent may not get a mainstream release here in the states, but in Southeast Asia those kind of games are released all the time.
Part of the problem is people assume the games we see in the states are ALL the games being released, and its just not the case. Localized games get released all the time overseas and in the states we never hear about them. Should every game get a US release? Off the top of my head sure, I see no reason not to. There are entire gaming franchises that have never seen a US release that are huge in...I dunno, Japan or South Korea or Brazil that we've never heard about.

While true, it does not make it right nor absolve the entire issue. I would be more than happy for those countries to get the games that came from USA or from somewhere from Europe. Plenty do nowadays compared to the 90s and early 2000s. A definite improvement.

Both of you, take a look at this.

​

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

You always have to look from their perspective on the why. While you can't please some people, there are many people and cultures that don't get represented enough, wrongly or improperly, or the super rare occasion. Indivisible for example has representation of ancient Southeast Asia that is rarely depicted. The game has a dark-skinned Asian female as the protagoinst too, and the game did not get picked up by many publishers because of it. So the "not enough" crowd ain't exactly in the wrong.

It's more a case of (from what I've seen) what people know exists and actually gets covered rather than the games not existing.

On Steam there's a genre of games with 75% -90% female leads only, it doesn't get mentioned because it's not seen as a AAA genre with massive hype and marketing.

Also with games only being made in some regions it will result in the cultures from said regions being shown off

True, but even if it happens, it not always doom and gloom, nor a tragic event. Even something good can come out of it, even if unintentional.

It can but also running round checking boxes can take a lot of focus and time away from other things. Then the more boxes you add the more work gets made.

There's a reason other mediums don't come with selectable protagonists