Iunno, just imagine growing up with games and never ever seeing anyone who looks or acts like you. How the hero in every game kills people who look like you. imagine how you would feel if you had no one to look up to who could relate to you, who could assure you that even though you're the way you are, you can still be radical as hell and not the punching bag.
Imagine you're an adult and those kids who were like the hero, the hero who beat up people like you, are adults too.
Normally I'm one to just stick my fingers in my ears and pretend everything is fine when discussions about diversity get brought up, but with all these articles about how the 'evil dudebro gamers' are dying off and how gaming will become more diverse and move forward as a medium (and how that's a good thing) have made me wonder:
Is this a good thing, for me? From where I'm standing, all diversity in gaming has brought us is shit like Gone Home. How can I get on board with 'diversity moving gaming forward', if it just means more crappy games I won't play on Steam? How is this a good thing exactly?
No one needs to convince you of anything. What you like is what you like. Assuming you're an adult and have tried a wide variety of games, you're smart enough to know what you like and what you don't.
If playing as a black feminist jewish lesbian gets you incredibly excited, then 'more diversity' probably works in your favor. If you couldn't give two shits about that, then it probably doesn't affect you one way or the other.
In other words, you need not be convinced of anything. You know what you like and what you want to play, so play what you want to play and don't play what you don't want to play, it's really not too complex beyond that.
Hell, I've just been enjoying the hell out of gaming diversity come to think of it: walking a fine path between conquest and extinction as a outnumbered and surrounded ninja clan in Shogun 2, destroying families and shattering dreams as a cog in the brutally uncaring totalitarian state in Papers, Please, stubbornly clawing my way to a bloody victory over the Communist hordes in Company of Heroes 2 and crying my eyes out in The Walking Dead: Season Two.
I don't think you realize how "diversity" works in gaming. It isn't games about different people with different cultures, it's about how many minorites in women you can have in your game when your game takes place in predominantly white countries. So Shogun II, Paper's Please, and CoH2 don't count since they either take place in mostly white parts of the world with little to no minorities and women, or take place in countries completey comprised of another race.
I really, REALLY wish I was kidding with this but since mostly people react to "diversity" with the idea that it's removing white men from media and not the actual definition of diversity where you have that aformentioned different people from different cultures (even if those cultures are from in Europe).
i have the sinking feeling I'm going to get banned with this comment
I fully understand how "diversity" works in gaming, that's why I specifically said "diversity in gaming genres and the such". In light of the current context, I felt it was more helpful to post a positive comment about the hobby we enjoy instead of being drawn into the screaming match on one side or another. Plus it was a deliberate choice to avoid walking into the trap set by the OP of assuming diversity can only mean increased non-white character participation.
And while you make an excellent closing point, those three games you highlighted *do* contain a multitude of ethnic minorities and women: ethnic Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, French, British, American in Shogun, a variety of Eastern European/Asian analogues of multiple gender identities for P,P and Germans, Russians, Ukrainians and women of various USSR identity in COH.
Again, you make the critical error of realizing diversity includes white people. I'll give you Paper's, Please because of the Asian countries, but Shogun II doesn't count due to all of the "diversity" being white men, and CoH2... ok, I've never played CoH2 but seeing as it's a WW2 militarty shooter I doubt there are enough women to satisfy most people who clamor for "diversity" in gaming, and I highly doubt there are any non-white minorities.
[small]Don't ask me why I'm still talking about this; I honestly don't know why.[/small]
Don't you, as a straight male gamer, find those pixels with massive barely covered waps patronizing? I've never found scantily clad electronic eye candy offensive but I have often wondered why men don't.
I tried playing a few "Mum" games recently, those ones where you find a list of objects to solve the mystery. It's the first time I have played games where I was smack bang in the target audience. For some reason these games tend to have cute* little animals in them and you can earn points in the game to dress them up and buy cute little accessories like feeding bowls and stuff (all uses of the word "cute" are sarcastic). I found that faaaaaaar more offensive than any AAA game I have played, "oh our target is older women, must make cute shiny thing to keep her interested".
Diversity is good because it means developers can't rely so much on niche tricks like bigs boobs or cute accessories to sell their products.
To put this in the most base way possible, diversity in games will bring out a greater variety of games. In addition to the variety there is also the potential for a greater variety of themes.
Diversity means variety and variety is good. That is all that needs to be said.
The user score probably comes from plebs zero bombing it, without having played it. It's not progressive to be okay with diversity, it's the fucking norm now. Get used to it.
As for your original question: You are not the only gamer. Men aren't the only gamers. Diversity doesn't have to be justified to you, because you are not important. Who cares what you do or do not want to play? If other people do, the games will be made.
The amount of smug sarcasm in this thread is enough to put someone off diversity.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Anyone who advocates for more black characters, or more female characters, isn't actually interested in diversity, they are only interested in their own selfish representation.
If you want to genuinely support diversity in video games then you have to want more character creation systems in video games.
I don't give a toss about character creation and I am not sure why anybody else would either.
It's not about advocating for black or female characters it's about asking why they aren't there in the first place. The answer is that games are targeted at young (15 - 35) white straight males. Targeting like that is bad for the consumer it means less diversity in game play and mechanics, it means fear of trying anything new. They come up with a list of things they think young straight white men like - boobs, blood etc and stick to that.
Well, diversity in gaming could help eliminate such opinions like this. I don't see how accepting that women are gamers too leads to dumbed down games.
Jesus Christ, how many times do I need to explain this?
I personally do not believe that games need to be dumbed down to cater to women. But if you read the article I linked in my comment you quoted, you will see that Anita Sarkeesian does.
She's an idiot, yes... But the thing is, game developers (in that case, Dice) are actually listening to her. She holds more clout in the industry than the female gamers who don't need their games to be dumbed down. So games might end up being dumbed down so they can attract female gamers, regardless of whether or not they actually needed to be dumbed down.
When it comes to diversity in games sometimes its better to look back then forward, don´t ask what diversity can get you in the future but what it has already gotten us.
I know they get dragged out a bit too often but games like metroid and tomb raider have pushed for female characters and were great games and have likely helped push concepts like choice of gender or more games with female protagonists.
Diversity in themes, games pushing for new ideas or even whole new game concepts. Take games like mirrors edge, that game was something new and diverse.
Or even just diversity in business model, without people considering new ideas on how to sell a game beside print cd, sell cd we wouldn´t have things like steam or gog.
Diversity is part of cultural evolution since it ensures a wider pool of ideas and points of view. Basically the gene pool of a culture.
What a lot of people don´t seem to see is not everything has to be good just because its different. Sometimes new ideas suck.
In evolution not every mutation turns out to be useful, some are evolutionary dead ends. But some work better then what was before or are able to do something that previously couldn´t be done.
Games as a medium evolve and diversity is necessary for us to be able to continuously enjoy them.
Without it you will be playing the same exact games with not a single new original thought 10 years from now.
Jesus Christ, how many times do I need to explain this?
I personally do not believe that games need to be dumbed down to cater to women. But if you read the article I linked in my comment you quoted, you will see that Anita Sarkeesian does.
She's an idiot, yes... But the thing is, game developers (in that case, Dice) are actually listening to her. She holds more clout in the industry than the female gamers who don't need their games to be dumbed down. So games might end up being dumbed down so they can attract female gamers, regardless of whether or not they actually needed to be dumbed down.
Diversity didn't create bad games. Game games existed before and will exist after. So will good games.
If you're happy with gaming, diversity won't affect you. Your games will still exist, although maybe devs will experiment with the aesthetics of a game. If devs embrace diversity, there is the potential for a far greater scope in story telling, greater character design etc. More is better, even if you don't like playing it.
Honestly, even from a staunchly right wing perspective it makes sense. Currently the industry isn't appealing to a potentially huge audience. It's simply bad business. If there are 2 games out that are very similar - white male military sim for instance - they'll compete to be bought by the existing fan base. If you have two games out that are different - one of the above sims, and a survival game where you're a mother trying to smuggle her children out of a war torn 1940's Europe, you have the opportunity to sell both games to the existing user base, sell a game to the existing consumers that don't like military sims, and even introduce new people to gaming.
Remember how Red Dead Redemption was a breath of fresh air? Imagine if there was a Native American version, and you got to fuck with the settlers? Or an African one, and you were at war with other tribes? Or a Russian revolution sim? The opportunities are endless. Mainstream games today won't stop being made, and there might be something else you never knew you'd love. If not, there will be something that someone else loves, could be their introduction to the hobby etc.
So she is saying that female gamers need their games to be easier, AKA dumbed down.
CymbaIine said:
Why should I bother with it? It based all this wall of text off rumors. It works with the assumption that someone talking to developers implies that they are forced to comply. They even work with the assumption that EA forced Dice to participate.
Edit: Is this just another bloody Anita thread? How threatening is she to all of you (general you)? She is bloody irrelevant. She won't make your toys go away, she won't change game development on any scale. Stop being so bloody afraid of her and poison forums with daily threads about this woman, it gets tiring, especially when they are not advertised as such.
Alright then, it's a rumor. Lets assume it's real though, for two minutes.
Why would Dice or EA have her give a talk, if they didn't agree with her views? Did they have her over so that they could laugh at her or something?
So yeah, she is a threat. She's not trying to take the games away, she's trying to dilute them into bland pieces of shit that anyone can play without getting offended or finding it too difficult. That wouldn't be a problem, except developers are actually listening to her. They're entertaining her ideas. They're legitimizing her.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Anyone who advocates for more black characters, or more female characters, isn't actually interested in diversity, they are only interested in their own selfish representation.
This assumes the only culture i find interesting is my own.
This is untrue.
I want to play an assassins creed set in ancient egypt. I think the next assassins creed protagonist should be an egyptian man or woman to accommodate for this. I want this because egyptian culture, architecture and history is fascinating to me and i want to play a game where i can explore something i find interesting. This isnt about representing myself at all, its about exploring perspectives and places that I admire and want to understand better.
I find women and their stories interesting, i myself am a man. It is my problem when the media has PLENTY for me to do as a straight dude, which i sometimes enjoy and appreciate having access to, but theres limited options for me to explore other avenues i find interesting. I want some more games like the walking dead with varied and interesting characters. Would the walking dead be less interesting if everyone was the same? Damn straight.
So yeah, i advocate for games where i get to EXPLORE other peoples perspectives but that doesnt have to specifically be a woman or a black person, its nice to be surprised by new and interesting ideas that i myself didnt think of and ask for. I dont just want to LOOK like a women or a black person so character creation is frankly a stupid solution. I want to have stories that incorporate a perspective i cant experience in real life into them. If you just have the same story and cookie cutter your own personally made character into it them the ability to tailor the narrative is limited.
My interest in other people is more than skin deep, adding a skin slider to every game isnt what i want nor would it sate my curiosity for other viewpoints.
Targeting like that is one of the ways these companies stay in business.
It's called marketing, and a well known phrase in marketing is "if you're marketing to everyone you're marketing to no one."
The more time and money you spend marketing tampons to men and children the less time and money you spend marketing to the people who will actually buy your product, adult and teenage females.
Yes because aiming most triple A games at white straight men exclusively is EXACTLY the same as advertising tamopns to men. I've never thought of it like that!
There is a difference between staying in business and gouging as much money as possible. I get they want to make money and they will exploit the consumer to do it, but are you really saying as a consumer I should just accept that?
Not to mention the fact that these tactics aren't infallible and indeed are very short sighted. The idea of "well it worked last week so it will continue to work well into the next decade" has brought down thousands of businesses and industries.
BinDipper said:
If you want to say something along the lines of "There's too much of an emphasis in the AAA industry on typically male-centric action games," I could get on board with that.
Of course I wouldn't put that down to some supposed institutionalised form of sexism or misogyny. I would put it down the medium still being very new and (for lack of a better word) immature. And I would cite games like "The Walking Dead" as proof that this "AAA let's copy Hollywood action movies" trend is fading.
Honestly I think there is probably less misogyny in games than other mediums. Let me clarify - The misogyny in games is overt. It's the lack of female characters and the overly sexualised costumes and all that jazz. I would rather have that than shoe horned in caricatures of "strong women" you see in TV shows. FFX-2 with it's all female PCs was terrible, it's the closest a game has ever come to offending me.
BinDipper said:
I stand by what I said before. If you truly care about diversity in games, if you truly care for better representation. Then you will advocate for more character creation systems, not just more female characters or non-white characters.
Well I don't. It's stupid, the idea that a dev can say "well there is a black skin option" to tick a diversity box sucks. As does the idea that a dev is limited from creating a fully developed lead character because they need to be the every man (yep I used man). You really think there is a simple "fix" to the diversity issue? There isn't, but this -debating it- this is good. The gamergate and all the ensuing crazyness is good if only because it gets people talking about it.
Diversity is only as good as the art it creates. Shoehorning diversity into any creative medium just makes it feel forced and tacky. Creators should make the choices as to what characters best suit their story and go from there. If it's a man it's a man, a woman a woman. Doesn't mean they think the other gender is "inferior" or anything.
N.B. I actually really enjoyed Gone Home, for what it's worth.
Ok, maybe having her there was just to pay lipservice. But now we have people like Tim Schafer supporting her, saying that every game developer should watch her videos. She obviously holds clout in the industry now, and to say otherwise is just insane.
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