Should Diversity be an Obligation in Game Design?

[endtherapture]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

That is not what I mean. I mean ideally you want to explore every aspect of your character, but that is not a requirement to include the character. You can just drop a female knight into medieval France and not explore what that means to any degree. You don't want to lock diversity behind extra requirements because then some people will use that as an excuse to not even try.

 

[Inglorious891]

Another thing to keep in mind is how much of a minefield "diversity" is. Even if you include women and minorities, the people who demanded them in the first place invariably find something wrong with them. Don't include them, and we're back to square one.

As for why so many main character's are white guys, well, no one cares about them. A white guy is allowed to be a lecherous alcoholic (a women can't cuz teh sexist), a disturbed soldier (a woman can't, or else you're portraying women as crazy), or any number of things. A white guy who has negative traits is just a white guy with negative traits. A woman or a minority with negative traits suddenly becomes representative of ALL women or ALL minorities. What kills me is that sheer irony. The people who demand diversity are the one thing standing in it's way.

You stole the words from my mouth. Or keyboard, as it would be in this case.

And the issue wouldn't be so much of an issue if people said a poorly written female character is just a bad character and left it at that, but in most cases the critizism for that character isn't just, "she's a bad character", it's usually, "she's a bad character AND she's harmful to women in society and gaming due to portraying harmful sterotypes; also, the developers should be ashamed for writting this character". If a particular game has the possibility of facing a major backlash due to the writers not doing the best job of writing a female character or if there's a threat that a vocal group of people will make it clear that they think a certain character is poorly written, why would they even try? If the game isn't even focused on characterization but is purely gameplay (i.e. Serious Sam), then they have even fewer reasons to make their main character a woman.

It's kind of a catch-22 once you think about it: if X developer doesn't include female characters, then they get called bad people, but if they include female characters and those characters are seen as poorly written, then they get called bad people moreso than if that character was just a white dude.

If people really want well-written and diverse characters, the only way that's going to happen is if developers are allowed to do it of their own free will versus forcing it upon them.

 

[endtherapture]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

That is not what I mean. I mean ideally you want to explore every aspect of your character, but that is not a requirement to include the character. You can just drop a female knight into medieval France and not explore what that means to any degree. You don't want to lock diversity behind extra requirements because then some people will use that as an excuse to not even try.

Ni, I disagree. If you drop an atypical character into a scenario where they don't "belong" per say, I think the game should explore that and come up with a justification for it, it only serves to add to the story.

For example, in the latest Dragon Age game, you can play various different races, however they aren't just model swaps to appease the masses. If you pick an elf, you'll approach the story in a different way, with different beliefs and prejudices leveled against you than a human character. That's really important and makes the whole game so much more special.

So it shouldn't be diversity for diversity's sake, it should have diversity for a reason and with suitable explanation and storyline behind it.

 

[Azriel Nightshade]

I'm sure I have a biased to the answer because I'm black and pansexual, but yea, I sometimes think a good majority of game deves NEED someone to give them quotas and consultations with regards to the characters they build there games around.

I almost feel like certain game developers, particularly ones located in countries that participated in the atlantic slave trade, should have quotas for diverse staffing. Using comics as an example: You'd think being one of the two biggest comics publishers in the world would let them take "risks" with the people they hire, but Marvel's only has the one black person writing a comic for them (Felipe Smith's Ghost Rider) and DC has none to speak of. There needs to be a bigger commitment to pulling in more diverse talent.

Call me crazy, but I think that the more women and black, latino, asian, LGBTQ ect. people you have working on a game, especially if those people are in charge of things like writing and art direction, the more likely it is we'll get game that are about something other than straight white dudes.

Kinda makes me wish I had 100 million on hand so I could go start a games industry in like west Africa or something.

TL;DR: Most of gamings "diversity" issues will resolve themselves when the developers in important, decision making positions are diverse.

 

[mecegirl]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

I think that's an unfair bit of criteria and a huge double standard. If you wouldn't expect that of a White protagonist why of a Black one? Why does the story needs some "80/90's sitcom very special episode" ring to it for a non White protagonist to be acceptable? That is just an unnecessary limitation, especially, just to use your example, when it is an historical fact that there were Black people in medieval Europe. You do know that black peoples lives don't always revolve around their "blackness" right?

 

[endtherapture]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

I think that's an unfair bit of criteria and a huge double standard. If you wouldn't expect that of a White protagonist why of a Black one? Why does the story needs some "80/90's sitcom very special episode" ring to it for a non White protagonist to be acceptable? That is just an unnecessary limitation, especially, just to use your example, when it is an historical fact that there were Black people in medieval Europe. You do know that black peoples lives don't always revolve around their "blackness" right?

I'd appreciate it if you didn't take isolated posts of mine out of context and imply I am a racist, thanks.

 

[TallanKhan]

I think it is disappointing that there is so little diversity in gaming but quotas or the like are not the answer. Any decision to include or not include characters in a game (playable or otherwise) should always be one that is honest to the creative vision for the finished game. A character that is put in just to tick the right boxes will be boring, two-dimensional, and will feel out of place. Equally developers should be given the freedom to make games the way they want to, with the characters they want, interacting how they want.

The creative process is one which, in an ideal world, would be kept entirely free from the meddling hands of marketing departments, and out of the reach of focus testing etc. However, while it is easy to put the corporate machinery in the crosshairs and blame it for the ills of current era gaming, truth be told they are a symptom not the disease. The real problem with the industry is us. You can hardly blame companies like Activision for churning out 1001 iterations of Call of Duty, sticking to the same formula with near fanatical zeal when we keep buying them. All the time we keep purchasing, and turning the cookie-cutter output of the major studios into mountains of cash, why on earth would they give any thought to innovating or changing the winning formula?

The truth is, if we want more diversity in gaming we need to take responsibility for the output we support. Vote with your feet and your wallets.

 

[mecegirl]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

I think that's an unfair bit of criteria and a huge double standard. If you wouldn't expect that of a White protagonist why of a Black one? Why does the story needs some "80/90's sitcom very special episode" ring to it for a non White protagonist to be acceptable? That is just an unnecessary limitation, especially, just to use your example, when it is an historical fact that there were Black people in medieval Europe. You do know that black peoples lives don't always revolve around their "blackness" right?

I'd appreciate it if you didn't take isolated posts of mine out of context and imply I am a racist, thanks.

How about if I think you are a racist I will actually call you one. Lets start there. But my point still stands. Maybe the Black chracter is just a normal knight. Maybe the writer didn't want to delve so deeply into racial politics in their story, and that is a perfectly acceptable route to take.

 

[Something Amyss]

It never ceases to amaze me how often these things are phrased in the extreme.

 

[endtherapture]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

I think that's an unfair bit of criteria and a huge double standard. If you wouldn't expect that of a White protagonist why of a Black one? Why does the story needs some "80/90's sitcom very special episode" ring to it for a non White protagonist to be acceptable? That is just an unnecessary limitation, especially, just to use your example, when it is an historical fact that there were Black people in medieval Europe. You do know that black peoples lives don't always revolve around their "blackness" right?

I'd appreciate it if you didn't take isolated posts of mine out of context and imply I am a racist, thanks.

As does mine. If we're playing a game set in for example, Imperial China, and there's a random English character in the game, I would like some kind of explanation for his presence. I don't think asking for better writing being integrated into our games is "a huge double standard".

How about if I think you are a racist I will actually call you one. Lets start there. But my point still stands.

 

[veloper]

Everything is allowed in fiction. Nothing needs to be done.

There is a lot of diversity in gaming already, but it is usually found outside the triple-A market and that receives too much attention already.

Still, if the pinkos can convince the game industry, that they are both numerous and stupid enough to drop $60 at the usual triple-A mediocrity, only now with cool, independent female characters instead, then the industry leaders will start catering to them too.

Maybe some dev could test the waters with a Metroid/Samus Aran clone (based on the stuff from before Team ninja ruining it) on a medium budget. When that becomes a wild commercial success, bigger things may follow. It's that simple.

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

No.

If the game is set in a certain region or time in the world and the story might have something to do with a particular gender & nationality then maybe some difference to the character is fine.

I actually like the "not gendered/non-ethnicity" style of writing in the Fallout LastGen & Elder Scrolls games. I feel it gives the writers in those games the ability to limit but at the same time put all their energy into the rest of the world and its inhabitants.

Im curious if the same people who question the diversity of games like Elder Scrolls, Fallout LastGen, World Of Warcraft, Most WRPGs, Fighting Games, FIFA, Madden, & NBA even though those are very popular among very diverse groups.
"Nope, they dont count because against my Narrative!"

 

[mecegirl]

As does mine. If we're playing a game set in for example, Imperial China, and there's a random English character in the game, I would like some kind of explanation for his presence. I don't think asking for better writing being integrated into our games is "a huge double standard".

It's not better because it will depend on the story that the writer wants to tell. You think its better, that's about it. But if the writer wants to focus more on say a war, than racial politics, then they should focus more on the war. All writers choose to set certain priorities in the story they want to tell. Those racial politics will still be there but possibly way in the background, and the story will be written better by not having a writer force themselves to write a story that they are not interested in.

Random example. Heimdall in the Thor movies. Movies that aren't the best story wise, but I digress. What would we as an audience have gained if time was taken out of the movie to explain why movie Heimdall is Black? Based on what little plot there was for those movie's how would delving into that aspect of Heimdall's chracter make the plot go forward? They were just fine focusing on Heimdall's role as the guardian of the Rainbow bridge.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Not really, the idea that you have to have a certain amount of diversity would be just as boring as having next to no diversity for me. The only obligation I put on developers is to release a working product (mentioning no names) and to provide post release support in the form of patches for a reasonable amount of time. Everything else relating to the content of the game should be left to the discretion of the developers, they're the ones spending 3-4 years of their lives making the thing they should feel happy that the game they are making is the game they want made. If it's good game that I would enjoy playing I'll support it regardless of whether it is a shining beacon of diversity or the adventures of Captain McWhitey Brown Hair.

Of course people still have the right to enquire about your decisions if they feel that maybe you could have added a bit more diversity into your game as it probably wouldn't have had a massive impact on what you wanted to make or if they felt it might have added to the game. If you do disagree with that or feel it that adding that diversity wasn't necessary for the project then please please please have a better explanation ready than people of diverse backgrounds are harder to animate (again mentioning no names).

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

That is not what I mean. I mean ideally you want to explore every aspect of your character, but that is not a requirement to include the character. You can just drop a female knight into medieval France and not explore what that means to any degree. You don't want to lock diversity behind extra requirements because then some people will use that as an excuse to not even try.

Ni, I disagree. If you drop an atypical character into a scenario where they don't "belong" per say, I think the game should explore that and come up with a justification for it, it only serves to add to the story.

For example, in the latest Dragon Age game, you can play various different races, however they aren't just model swaps to appease the masses. If you pick an elf, you'll approach the story in a different way, with different beliefs and prejudices leveled against you than a human character. That's really important and makes the whole game so much more special.

So it shouldn't be diversity for diversity's sake, it should have diversity for a reason and with suitable explanation and storyline behind it.

They should explore it, but you can't let that be used as a wall to keep you from deviating from the norm. It puts a burden on some kinds of characters and I don't think they need more burdens. Some times you just want to be a gay guy who fights monsters without getting too mired in to gender politics. It's about diversity in more ways then one.

 

[endtherapture]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

That is not what I mean. I mean ideally you want to explore every aspect of your character, but that is not a requirement to include the character. You can just drop a female knight into medieval France and not explore what that means to any degree. You don't want to lock diversity behind extra requirements because then some people will use that as an excuse to not even try.

Ni, I disagree. If you drop an atypical character into a scenario where they don't "belong" per say, I think the game should explore that and come up with a justification for it, it only serves to add to the story.

For example, in the latest Dragon Age game, you can play various different races, however they aren't just model swaps to appease the masses. If you pick an elf, you'll approach the story in a different way, with different beliefs and prejudices leveled against you than a human character. That's really important and makes the whole game so much more special.

So it shouldn't be diversity for diversity's sake, it should have diversity for a reason and with suitable explanation and storyline behind it.

They should explore it, but you can't let that be used as a wall to keep you from deviating from the norm. It puts a burden on some kinds of characters and I don't think they need more burdens. Some times you just want to be a gay guy who fights monsters without getting too mired in to gender politics. It's about diversity in more ways then one.

It all depends on the context. In a historical context, there would obviously be some issues involved in having a gay character. However if you want to write a game about a gay monster slayer, that's cool as long as you set up your world with there being no prejudice about homosexuality like there is in the real world.

 

[Lieju]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

Yeah and if they can't make it mean anything, better to not do it at all.

That is not what I mean. I mean ideally you want to explore every aspect of your character, but that is not a requirement to include the character. You can just drop a female knight into medieval France and not explore what that means to any degree. You don't want to lock diversity behind extra requirements because then some people will use that as an excuse to not even try.

Ni, I disagree. If you drop an atypical character into a scenario where they don't "belong" per say, I think the game should explore that and come up with a justification for it, it only serves to add to the story.

For example, in the latest Dragon Age game, you can play various different races, however they aren't just model swaps to appease the masses. If you pick an elf, you'll approach the story in a different way, with different beliefs and prejudices leveled against you than a human character. That's really important and makes the whole game so much more special.

So it shouldn't be diversity for diversity's sake, it should have diversity for a reason and with suitable explanation and storyline behind it.

They should explore it, but you can't let that be used as a wall to keep you from deviating from the norm. It puts a burden on some kinds of characters and I don't think they need more burdens. Some times you just want to be a gay guy who fights monsters without getting too mired in to gender politics. It's about diversity in more ways then one.

It all depends on the context. In a historical context, there would obviously be some issues involved in having a gay character. However if you want to write a game about a gay monster slayer, that's cool as long as you set up your world with there being no prejudice about homosexuality like there is in the real world.

It's not like a lot of historical games and movies etc are that historically accurate. Especially when it comes to something like sexuality. But it's also very common to do stuff like make your female characters more attractive to modern audiences (clothing-vise, shaving, and body-type vise)

People just have these usually very limited or outright false images of what 'medieval Europe' for example should look like, based a lot on what kinda stuff was made to appeal to modern white dudes.

(Also if your gay character can kill dragons and wanders the land they're pretty likely to get away with behaviour a homosexual forced to live in a single village their whole life would not for example)

 

[theNater]

That's why games with absolutely appalling stories manage not only to sell well but get critical acclaim, because if the game is enjoyable to play and has great design, you can't really rag on it too much because it pretty much achieves what it sets out to do. It's something quite unique to video games. If a film has great special effects and cinematography but a completely terrible script, it's considered a bad film. If a game has good gameplay, graphics, audio, design but also has the cheesiest voice acting and storytelling imagineable, the former elements will usually overshadow the latter (the latter might even end up being endearing).

Mostly the trick here is lies with criticism, so that it is looking at the totality of the game experience and not just gameplay. And we've got a start on that, although there's an alarming amount of backlash when critics do that, largely among people who believe that such reviews are going to take away the games they like to play. It's ridiculous, of course; the Bay Transformers films are proof of that. They're the king of great special effects and cinematography with terrible script and acting, and they keep making money, despite being widely recognized as bad films.

...portal has 1 human character and it's a white person, that's hardly diversity but it aint exactly racist is it?

She's pretty tan for a white lady.

Fun fact: the woman after whom Chell was modeled has Brazilian and Japanese heritage.

 

[mecegirl]

They should explore it, but you can't let that be used as a wall to keep you from deviating from the norm. It puts a burden on some kinds of characters and I don't think they need more burdens. Some times you just want to be a gay guy who fights monsters without getting too mired in to gender politics. It's about diversity in more ways then one.

It all depends on the context. In a historical context, there would obviously be some issues involved in having a gay character. However if you want to write a game about a gay monster slayer, that's cool as long as you set up your world with there being no prejudice about homosexuality like there is in the real world.

I'm like thinking of all the at lest bisexual Greek monster slayers(like almost all of them) . So it really wouldn't be that hard to do in an historical context.