Real talk. Remember those American Girl Dolls? The ones that came with their own stories and were styled after historical eras? Best dolls ever. I don't care that it's the biggest doll, it's still better than the Cabbage Patch Kids.
I REALLY HATE POKEMON!, post: 1537687, member: 18119 wrote:Diversity is fine if it occurs naturally. I don't like SJWs forcing it.
It's a vicious cycle isn't it? I'm sure most people wouldn't be opposed to the idea if there weren't poorly constructed arguments attempting to bully people into diversity through shaming. Now every time the idea comes up it doesn't feel sincere, it feels like it's to appease a bully. Ironically, the same groups than berate that diversity in a nitpicky fashion because it's never enough. So you can't win. You should never involve yourself in diversity for diversity's sake and just ignore the circus altogether.
For example? The latest Tomb Raider never tried to act like it was making a positive role model for women, and people loved it for having a good female protagonist regardless.
Okay, I gave examples of good diversity, I should point out a bad one; FIFA 16. EA simply added female teams due to the vocal minority's pressure.
Anyway, that's my view.
We don't know if that's the case yet. If I remember right the ones that started asking why not were a bunch of people signing a petition and being very civil about it. We also haven't seen a finished product yet. Maybe there's only a small pool of female teams that can only face each other or maybe it's a wide variety and you can face off with men's teams? We don't know yet...
...Actually, can I point out how much I hate the WWE games for segregating men and women, limiting the pool of moves and making my life miserable in the process? I want Samus Aran to fight the Undertaker
stop limiting me.
Beard Physics, post: 1537692, member: 25415 wrote:
Beyond that, yeah, the whole saturday morning cartoon Captain Planet thing is bogus, but nobody's talking about that. One of the problems with storytelling in the games industry and why it hasn't matured more is entirely down to decent developers and writers being restricted by marketing logic which says they have to write Gritty McGriterson and so on. There are plenty of white male characters adored by everyone, but for each of them there's another 3 dishonest ones or simply missed opportunities for better dynamics. I know you're not really heavily into the writing scene or anything like that, so I'll definitely give you a pass on not thinking of it first.
I was just using it as an example of forcing a role model onto people and how that doesn't work. There's literally a bunch of "cool" advertising mascots made to push soda and toys but good luck remembering any of them. Unless you're an actual child you'll see right through that crap and it won't last longer than a few years at best.
I also think that all the diversity in the world wouldn't help some stories. Henry Blackburn from Battlefield 3 would be bland no matter the character's race or gender or species. Some characters are just bland.
I think the point of contention isn't just that diversity can be artificial, it's that a lack of it is forced not only on audiences but also on developers. At some point you have to understand that people aren't just communicating a lack of the industry, they're communicating that the industry as a whole is trying to create an identical product in multiple iterations and that just doesn't work. It's not just a thing someone's asking for because they're butthurt, it's an obvious flaw in the writing.
I do think simply pressuring devs is the wrong way to go about this. As the risk and costs inherent to developing games drop over time, we'll see more 'risk taking' and more diverse ideas. These are the growing pains of new technology, that much is obvious. 20 years ago we wouldn't have had this problem because everyone was still making animal-themed platformers with sentient kitchen appliances and stuff. What's bizarre is that companies like Nintendo seem to be the only ones who really remember that still sells just as well and skips the controversy.
Also developers are rarely story writers. For instance, almost every game made in the 80's and 90's involved a princess being kidnapped. It's not because we're all sexist. It's because they're taking the plot of Super Mario Brothers. The reason? It's an easy way to motivate the player without further context. You want to help someone in trouble. Kidnappings are an easy way to go about it. Alternatively (and you probably noticed) early PC games centered on you fighting off an invading horde of monsters because of Doom. When Sonic came out it was all about rescuing your friends from an evil world conquerer. World War 2 Shooters became a thing because you hate Nazis without context. A lot of people took the easy path of motivation because they would rather make this game than write a story around it. To both the advantage and disadvantage of the product itself.
I REALLY HATE POKEMON!, post: 1537695, member: 18119 wrote:
This is a primary argument against the inclusion of females in certain games (especially ones where females aren't even the target audience of their games anyway). Personally it makes sense to me. Why double the work just to include women when resources can go toward actually making the game better? Playing as women doesn't make the game inherently better.
Context, IRHP. Context. The problem wasn't Assassin's Creed having a male protagonist. It was that the co-op multiplayer mode gave you four characters that looked the exact same, so the question came up asking why they can't look a little different. Of course, my problem was that with everyone looking the same, there's a chance that you'll lose track of yourself if the players stay together for any period of time.
Did anyone even try the multiplayer? It feels like no one got that far because the game was so stupidly broken anyway. I don't know.
It depends on what games you're playing. Primarily story based games like Quantic Dreams and Telltale are prime examples of a matured industry. We will always have the lesser stories in games (usually ones based more around gameplay), but that doesn't take away from gaming any more than crappy movies take from film.
I don't know about Quantic Dream.
...*sigh* Ok, I'll give you Heavy Rain.
Revenant User wrote:No one would be forcing you as a game developer to do anything outside of what you'd like. If you think that trying to design characters a bit more diverse goes against your game's message or plot, then that's absolutely fine. Game developers do often look to what people want, though. And if people are calling for more diversity, they'll probably take that into consideration.
And that's all fine and well, they should look at what people want (notably those actually planning on playing the game, not just policing media) and also take it into consideration. If people request, consideration will usually be taken. Pressuring isn't requesting though, and that's more specifically what I am against. It's just plain bullying.
It's a free country.
Some people do just bully creative types out of their own self-importance and need to change the world rather than sticking to informing people of actually good stories with diversity already there. They want bigger companies to force change instead.
There is literally an article on Salon where the title is "It's time to make Magneto black." It's not only a suggestion to change a long time character into something else entirely (changing him from a European who survived the Holocaust to a black guy without warning) but saying it must happen in the most arrogant way possible. There's this strange demand for "American Diversity" in places where I would go so far to say it's unneeded. I'm just glad that it doesn't work most of the time.
