jFr[e said:
ak93]It seems that everyday people make a big deal out of gender equality in games.
Is it bad that I don't really care?
I didn't finish Mass Effect and think "Man, that game would have been better had there been more females".
Or play a chapter of The Walking Dead thinking "This would be better if Lee was Lea."
My point being, do people actually find a lack of female characters (playable and non) in games off putting?
Should I?
I'm not a girl, maybe that's part of the problem. Perhaps I would notice it more if I was.
I play a game for the game. The characters that come up in the game are part of that experience. Male and female. Do we really need a quota for either?
Not really, it's a pretty typical attitude. The problem is that like other forms of media extreme left wingers have largely taken over the gaming media, whether they see themselves that way or not, they cannot resist the temptation to turn what platform they have into a political one and try and sharpen their swords as "social justice warriors" while talking about games. As a result critics, reviews, and commentary, tend to largely involve a bunch of sheltered first world white boys, who spend most of their time immersed in geek culture as a justification for their job, telling us all about how the world worked, and oh how much better things would be if there were less people like them in games. Typically reinforced by some pie in the sky political ideal of the plight of minorities and the belief that if they were given more involvement in the media it would contribute towards making the world a better place.
Even The Escapist is not immune, and really the problem is almost everywhere. Exceptions exist, but you'll notice for example that Yahtzee goes off in his latest review about "more burly white men beating on black people", a big piece of gaming media right now has to do with the lack of playable females in Mass Effect. It was huge gaming news and a "social crusade" for the gaming media when Bioware decided they weren't going to have gay romance options in one of their games for a change, with "Watch Dogs" the review even here needed to include a pointless snarky one liner about the hero being "another generic white guy".
To be honest, I don't much care if we have female protagonists, if there are discretely presented gay romance options that I don't have to get involved in if I don't want to, or about the ethnicity of the heroes when it comes to games. I do however get annoyed by the political statements, and directing them at games, especially when it's one of the areas that actually reeks of "entitlement" as much as I hate using that word. For example, for all of it's myriad faults, Ubisoft has been one of the more diverse companies out there when it comes to making games if that matters to you, they have released Assassin's Creed games with both female and non-white protagonists, and it hasn't even been a long time, and yet they make one with white protagonists and it's considered some kind of huge affront, for which they need to defend themselves. Likewise the writers at Bioware who have no problem doing gay stuff when they think it fits, didn't really wind up writing any gays for "The Old Republic Online" and that was considered some kind of social attack, which is ironic when it's directed at the company that probably did more for bringing that stuff into gaming than anyone.
Of course understand that I'm also what passes for an "Arch Conservative" on these forums because I am not totally accepting of everything and anything. This is coming from a guy who has spent a lot of time being called a "hippy liberal" because of his sentiments on the rights of workers and other things. Of course then again it's ironic because I seem to be one of the few people that has any kind of experience on forums like these outside of a truly sheltered environment, or at least is vocal about it. Half the problem is when people think visiting other countries, or dealing with a "diverse group of people" socially makes you worldly, when really the context of those dealings matters a lot. Things like the Peace Corps. (not that many claim experience even with that) are pretty much a factory for naivity. To really see the world takes a degree of training and of course opportunity to look behind the scenes, not to mention occasionally walking into a potentially dangerous situation a few times. I find it occasionally odd to hear people talking about how the world works, when I doubt many people here have ever been in a really rowdy bar or club, never mind having to approach some dude and his friends to shut him off from a bar, or get him to leave to cool down, or dealt with shop lifters and pick pockets or whatever else.
To put things into perspective let's look at Yahtzee's comments about the shift of a game franchise to "urban domestic response" and how it involved burly white dudes going after black criminals. In selling that, how do you expect it's going to be if your trying to make it realistic? That's pretty much how things break down in real life, as unfair as it might seem. A lot of the problems come from tight, poor, ethnic communities who embrace crime. It's less ethnic than cultural, coming down to what guys like Bill Cosby have addressed with the "git rich or die trying" attitude where it's considered more noble to die face down in a ghetto with a gun in your hand and drugs in your pocket having tried to get ahead in the world outside the system, than to become a normal person. Basically being part of the top 1% or a criminal at the bottom are the only "noble" options, everything else is unworthy. It's a case where he (PHD in Children's Education, which is why I take him seriously) also talked about how even donating millions upon millions of dollars to these areas providing computers, textbooks, and every opportunity, the people will literally destroy the schools and materials because becoming education and learning to be a normal person is considered tantamount to selling out. It's not so much purely racial as it is a problem with a racial culture. The people don't have to be like that (Bill Cosby himself is something of an example) but choose to be because of how they are brought up. Now in a game about the military presumably intervening in civil matters in the US, doing the basic job intended for the the old NYPD "Street Crimes Unit" or LAPD's "CRASH teams" who do you think they are going to wind up fighting? It's like complaining that most of the bad guys in "Justified" are poor white trash and thus the show is racist when it has to do with location and context.
The irony of the above, and the real "point" is that when you see this situation reversed, you'll notice there aren't many criticisms from the gaming media. When someone has made a game like say "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" which is exactly the opposite side of the equasion the game gets critical praise which continues on to this day, where it is considered one of the best (if not THE best) installment in the franchise by many people. Furthermore the gaming industry has gone on to talk about how it was awesome for showing "what that whole lifestyle is about" and so on. While aspects of the mainstream media have been less accepting, it shows a general trend that when the equasion is reversed this is something you'll see an entirely different general trend of response in the gaming media. Likewise you'll see comments about how evil and wrong it is to say have cities and parts of other countries being invaded or leveled (OMG, how insensitive that your running around this island shooting third worlders), yet it gets cheers when you say see the same thing going on in a major American metropolis or something that's supposed to be one. As a result say "Far Cry" becomes controversial to the media, but a US based mayhem sandbox is just fine, the only thing "missing" is if we had less white people going on those chaos rampages...
This is longer than I intended it to be, but the bottom line is that despite how this sounds I generally don't care either. I find the social politics more annoying than anything. It would be nice if we could have a female or minority hero without people making a big deal about it in the gaming media, or people not making snarky comments every time you see a white dude as a game protagonist. That annoys me in both directions. As I've said many times before, I think the gaming media needs to understand it's *gaming* media, not a social justice platform for a bunch of geekdom immersed man-children to espouse ivory tower politics and act like it's some kind of huge affront that there isn't a playable female model in Assassin's Creed and that Ubisoft had to justify this decision since they were entitled to an answer, followed by "righteous" attacks for the answer, which would have happened no matter what they said. The very fact that this has become a "major" issue in gaming when nobody in their right mind should care is ridiculous.
On a final note, I'll say again, those who are crusading for "social justice" through the gaming media, should probably be on their knees, worshipping Ubisoft as their patron deity. I personally dislike them because of their business practices (which are far more important) but Ubisoft has basically been right there on the edge, pushing this kind of social agenda before it was a big thing. They are one of the companies that has had the non-white and female protaganists in their game series, and through things like the "Frag Dolls" they were promoting gaming girls and
running an all girl pro-gaming team before that was even a thing. I find this whole situation painful for that reason, I mean seriously, when they are accusing Ubisoft of being sexist and bigoted to make a point it's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. But then again I've never had a lot of respect for this movement, since all it seems to know how to do is mindlessly attack. You saw the same thing happen with Bioware over gay romances, when that was the company that arguably put them on the map for it to even be an issue to begin with... another "WTF are you thinking" movement from gaming media social justice crusaders attacking one of their best allies.
