uanime5 said:
Abnaxis said:
Diversity is unilaterally beneficial in any voluntary association (like, say, gaming advocacy). The more diverse the gamer landscape is, the more power we as consumers can wield any time a publisher decides to take a shit on us or a conservative pundit decides that legislating control on video games is the best way to stop mass shootings. Different sub-groups have access to networks and resources that white male 20-somethings don't, and if they have a vested interest in gaming, they can help us defend and improve upon it.
So no, we don't "need" diversity, but it helps. It helps us shape our society to our benefit, and it helps us exert our power for better quality, more free (as in "Free Speech," not "Free Beer") games.
That's based on the assumption that more diversity will result in more groups of people gaming. However there's no evidence to support this belief. Unless we make shooters that appeal to pretty much every demographic these games are still going to be an easy target every time there's a mass shooting.
Which belief are you referring to? If you are questioning whether making video-game characters will result in a more diverse player-base, well...of course there's no evidence for that. If you can show me any conclusive evidence that taking any action will guarantee that more total people will buy a game, why the hell are you on these forums, instead of making millions for marketing somewhere? Manipulating consumer behavior is not a cut-and-dry, solved problem.
If you are questioning whether having a more diverse player base will help when the next jackass wants to attack the hobby, I have a library of books that delve into societal constructs and social capital for you to read (okay...more like five or six, but that's, like, a shelf, right?) The short version is this: the next time there's a school shooting and a politician somewhere decides to attack games because the gun lobby is paying for his Fritos, gamers having a wider base of support will completely take the wind out of his sales. Because that politician also relies on support (or apathy) from a diverse group of people, that includes women, latinos, blacks, men, elderly, young, etc., etc.
The more of those subgroups we have that understand gaming, the better off we are. For example, every 60-year-old grandma who likes playing Skyrim is one more voice, who will tell all the other grandmas she knows just how full of shit the politician--all on our behalf. And the grandmas will listen to her as part of their group, where they wouldn't listen to me even though I am saying the same thing, because I'm an outsider.
When you talk about self-selected groups, there are two primary paths to relevance: exclusion or inclusion. Exclusive groups derive strength through unity, by excluding those who do not fit their narrow criteria for membership. That can include dissident groups like white supremacy groups, but it also includes less controversial groups like MADD or the NAACP.
Inclusive groups, on the other hand, gain strength by accepting ANYBODY. They tear apart at the seams from a lack of unity that exclusive groups enjoy, but they can build far-reaching networks in every corner of the world, and leverage a diverse set of social resources to accomplish their aims, assuming they don't completely fracture into irrelevance. Think like the Occupy movement, which has pretty much crumbled now since everyone wanted to take it in a different direction, or Anonymous, which has been very successful at recruiting people with specialized knowledge to break online systems because there's no barrier to entry.
Gaming Enthusiasts (i.e., not just the people playing games, but the ones who show up, try to advocate for the gaming community, and try to advance gaming as an art) as a group, have been slowly, painfully evolving from the exclusive category to the inclusive category. It used to be, if you were passionate about games, you were probably a computer geek. As an adult, you couldn't share your passion with outsiders to the gaming community without being shunned. This naturally created an exclusive system, where we could build community cohesion and common ground through unity.
Now, thanks to technological advances and a society that's more accepting of technology enthusiasts, gaming has been opening up. Everyone has a computer, and the gaming community no longer needs to be exclusive...but the primary drivers of the community were built around exclusion, and momentum is driving the exclusivity as the status quo.
This is bad. Middle ground between exclusivity and inclusivity is not a good place to be. It is the worst of both worlds--there's no unity, no voice for gamers any more, but at the same time we are shunned by outsiders and we are political whipping boys. We aren't going back to being an exclusive white boys club--it's not good for business and it's just plain impossible--so our best bet is to embrace diversity so we can get those grandmas lobbying for us already.
Maybe having more diverse protagonists is one way to do that, or maybe it isn't. A common criticism that comes from outsiders is that gaming is not a welcoming community, and from my perspective, having more representative characters would help with that. That's why I'm all for having more diverse characters in my video games,
especially in my AAA video games.