uanime5 said:
That assumption is flawed. Just because a 60 year old grandmother likes Skyrim doesn't mean that she's going to like other games. While she'll oppose politicians who claim that Skyrim and other fantasy games causes mass shootings, she's less likely to oppose politicians who claim that more realistic games such as Grand Theft Auto causes mass shootings. Especially if she doesn't like games where you go around shooting people.
An example of this occurred in the real world is when politicians started blaming rock and roll for society's problems. Even though music was very inclusive people who listened to other genres of music didn't think it was ridiculous to blame one form of music for crimes, despite no evidence that this music was a factor in these crimes. Of course once politicians realised that blaming rock and roll didn't work anymore they switched to blaming rap music and this worked because people even people who liked rock and roll were willing to believe that other's people's music could cause crime and social problems. As long as politicians only target one part of a culture and not the entire culture they don't have to worry about the majority of people belonging to this culture opposing them.
That's why I said that unless there's shooters (FPS) that appeal to a huge group of people they're still going to be an easy target for politicians to blame mass shooting on.
Ah, but you see, that's still an improvement! Here's how the political rally would go:
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Jackass Politician: The video games are ruining our youth and making our schools dangerous. Just look how Johnny McShotterson killed all those schoolchildren. And he played *gasp* Grand Theft Auto! We must do something!
Arrow in the Knee Hexagenarian: Yes! Stop those bad video-games! Skyrim is wholesome, but GTA is the work of Satan!
JP: I will enact legislation! No buying M-rated video games without a photo ID and a psychological profile!
AKH:...wait a minute, Skyrim is an M-rated game. Why would you want to stop me from skipping through fields catching butterflies?
JP: Death to the corruption caused by art I don't understand!
AKH:...okay, how about we not do that? GTA is terrible, but I like Skyrim...
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See, we've seen this before in rap and rock and roll, but have you ever noticed that nobody ever got far trying to legally ban either one? There's a reason for that, and it most certainly isn't because they value the First Amendment. It's because there's no good way to cut out the "bad" stuff without hurting something you actually care about. Everybody has a vested interest in protecting their own music, and while they will work to undermine others they don't agree with they have to be careful not to burn themselves in the process.
Except that isn't the status quo as it stands right now. At this time, video games are seen as children's computer toys, or mildly entertaining distractions that only minors and overgrown man-children take seriously. They are completely ignorant of what games are, and they have no problem stepping all over people they don't understand, because that's just how people are.
Believing that more diversity will make gaming more inclusive is naive. If gaming isn't seen as welcoming because people can't find games that they'll have fun playing then having a more diverse cast of characters on games people don't want to play won't help. For example if a woman wants a puzzle game that's easy to play with short levels she's not going to want a complex triple A game that requires the player to constantly dodge and shoot enemies, manage upgrades with large numbers of stats, and has very few save points. Allowing her to play as a female character won't make this game any more appealing because the she's doesn't enjoy this type of game. By contrast if you gave her something like Candy Crush, which is the sort of game she enjoys, they she'd be happy to play it even if none of the character are female.
Also assuming that more diversity in triple A games is somehow better than more diversity in other games is a flawed way to look at this whole issue. Just because triple A games cost the more money to make than another game doesn't mean that the cheaper game won't be just as much fun or just as influential.
I'm not saying diverse protagonists will make everything better, and we'll all be singing Kumbaya while death-matching in TF2 if only we get more chicks on the front cover. I'm saying that it will be some improvement over the current situation, not that it is the end-all be-all solution.
If I understand your argument correctly, you're making the assumption that the only primary thing that will sell a game is its mechanics, and that (somehow) the mechanics can only appeal to a certain demographic. There are a couple problems with that reasoning. First, just because it's a shooter doesn't mean only men can like it. Yes, right now the market consists primarily of males, but there's no way to know whether that's because only males like shooters, or if it's because shooters are only made to appeal to males. There might be thousands of females that would truly enjoy playing shooters, but when they walk into Gamestop all they see are All-American, straight white men scowling at them from the shelves so they roll their eyes and walk on.
Second, and I alluded to this above, marketing matters more than the actual quality of the game underneath the box. It sucks, and I know it will rub any number of people the wrong way, but that's just how it is. There's a reason why Planescape: Torment sold abysmally despite being one of the most critically acclaimed RPGs, and there's a reason why Firefly only got one season on the air--it's because, in both cases, the people responsible for marketing their product knew nothing about the product or the audience for their product, and as a result nobody bought it. One of the most frustrating things about marketing is that it's expensive, you never know if it actually helps, but the graveyard of forgotten art is filled with good concepts that didn't make it because marketing fucked up.
That's why diverse protagonists matter--they are the first thing anyone sees when they pick up a game box. And that's why AAA matters, because they are the publishers with the presence to put that marketing material in television and on store shelves, where outsiders can see them and maybe buy them and not be outsiders anymore. Don't get me wrong, indy games do matter in their own way, but the only people who know anything about indy games are already devoted gamers (other than Minecraft and mobile games, if you want to count those). The AAA industry is the gaming institution with the most contact with people who are non-gamers or disillusioned gamers, and thus they're our best place to go if the end-goal is to expand the overall user base.
