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[Arx]

Not even bothering to read the wall of replies here, all I have to say is that I am a proponent of the freedom of expression. Does there need to be more diversity in the medium? Sure. But do I advocate shunting it into every piece of work? No. Let the artist work produce his work on his own terms and let it be judged on its own merits.

This actually describes my feelings better than my own post, although this is probably less true of the AAA market (where games are money makers) than the indie market (where games are made because the maker wanted to make them).

[Flarp]

I have to wonder how representative this is. Of anything, really. Sounds to me like you might be confusing a handful of raging internet assholes with... well, a larger, more coherent group, at least.

I never claimed those opinions were based on a fair sample of any sort, or indeed were anything other than utterly spurious speculation on why people say dumb things on comment feeds.

I find this an incredibly dubious claim, for three reasons.

One, everyone has shades of it. By your reasoning even straight white cissexual Christian men can have some glimpse of what it's like to not be in the majority, provided they're of the wrong sect or lineage or preferences or history. Straight white cissexual men should have a bit more, and so on, so trying to say "look, these groups aren't positioned to understand this" is a sloppy generalization at best.

Two, even this minority majority of perfectly culturally representatives is going to experience works outside of that viewpoint, even if not terribly frequently.

Three, "you can't understand! How could you understand!" tends to be a complete bullshit argument.

So... if the argument goes that somebody in this master category is constantly surrounded by food they consider delicious, and thus can't fathom what it's like to not be surrounded by delicious food... I'd still say they can puzzle it out from their pretty much guaranteed knowledge of what not-tasty food is and is like. Maybe not to the exact extent as some less fortunate diners, but trying to claim it's simply beyond their comprehension strikes me as pretentious and, to be blunt, a cop-out.

To horrifically overextend this metaphor, consider the "majority" in this scenario to be people who were raised on American cuisine. Their favourite foods are a nice, thick steak, a bacon cheeseburger, a piping hot apple pie. Stuff that you can get pretty much anywhere in this country if you're not in a desert. They enjoy Chinese and Mexican food, too, but only the Americanized kind that caters to their tastes - because, naturally, they're the majority, and they don't even perceive Texmex and American Chinese food from being different from their original counterparts, because they've been raised to see the culinary arts bending over backwards to serve their desires as the natural and intuitive.

Meanwhile, people with more diverse tastes - fans of foreign cuisines, people with dietary restrictions or allergies, even vegans - have to look harder to find the stuff they like. And that's okay! There's less of us, the free market dictates that businesses should proportionally serve the demands of the market.

Where things become more troublesome is when people aren't even okay with the local diner serving a vegetarian entrée, or a curry shop opening up next to the burger place. Or when nobody listens when some people point out that a ten-second panning shot of a naked burger patty filled with toxic preservatives during the evening news' commercial breaks might not sending a good message to the country's young chefs. Or how universities turn the other way when- okay, that's a little dark for this simile.

Look, I'm going to level with you: explaining the notion of privilege - a word I've tried very hard not to use - is basically impossible to do without sounding either smug or self-righteous. How couldn't it be- it's basically a formalization of the concept that some people are better off and happier not because they are more deserving or skilled, but because of the lucky circumstances of their birth. Nobody likes to discover this. It's why I've gone to the trouble of reiterating it through the form of a very tortured joke - but it is very real, and never did I claim that "you can't understand" it. The difficulty I discussed above has more to do with the act of consciously discarding your preconceived notions about why you are where you are in your society.

And yes, you are completely right - the model I presented in my earlier post is a greatly simplified model of privilege and majority, because I'm no sociologist and have no idea how one might conceptualize it rigorously. But each of the "terms" in the majority descriptions I've presented - "white", "straight", "male", etc - all represent the most advantageous positions on a variety of different "axes" - race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. These axes are not all equal - in today's America, your race and sexual orientation influence your life a great deal more than your denomination of Christianity (if you even are Christian).

To bring this beast of an argument back on topic, the "gamer majority" I'm clumsily attempting to construct consists of people who are "in the majority" on several of these axes - axes which play a large role in dictating aspects of their gaming preferences which have been discussed at length in other posts. My position with respect to this majority is that while, obviously, you can't make the majority stop being the majority, you can encourage them to adopt a more tolerant mindset that allows the inclusion of more diverse story and gameplay aspects that don't minimize the things they currently enjoy.

[Vattic]

Whatever your definition of "the majority" is - in ascending order of granularity, men, white men, straight white men, straight white cissexual men, straight white cissexual Christian men, etc - it is a logical conclusion of the framework our society is based on that members of that majority enjoy mastery over popular culture and historiography. This means that the "default" perspective of your average cultural work - be it a novel, a film, or a video game - is that of a member of the majority.

Without in any way calling into question your intelligence or argumentative acumen, let me state that it is extraordinarily difficult for members of the majority to conceptualize what it is like to not enjoy this cultural mastery - whether this is inherent human nature or a by-product of our current society is for someone better versed in the humanities to decide. I'm not knowledgeable enough to define it beyond that, but it is an excellent chance to segue into...

I find this an incredibly dubious claim, for three reasons.

One, everyone has shades of it. By your reasoning even straight white cissexual Christian men can have some glimpse of what it's like to not be in the majority, provided they're of the wrong sect or lineage or preferences or history. Straight white cissexual men should have a bit more, and so on, so trying to say "look, these groups aren't positioned to understand this" is a sloppy generalization at best.

Two, even this minority majority of perfectly culturally representatives is going to experience works outside of that viewpoint, even if not terribly frequently.

Three, "you can't understand! How could you understand!" tends to be a complete bullshit argument.

So... if the argument goes that somebody in this master category is constantly surrounded by food they consider delicious, and thus can't fathom what it's like to not be surrounded by delicious food... I'd still say they can puzzle it out from their pretty much guaranteed knowledge of what not-tasty food is and is like. Maybe not to the exact extent as some less fortunate diners, but trying to claim it's simply beyond their comprehension strikes me as pretentious and, to be blunt, a cop-out.

While it's true everyone has likely experienced being in a minority it doesn't seem to lead to understanding for other people in minorities. There are plenty of minority folk who are against the rights of other minorities.

[GlyphGryph]

Vattic hit it right on the nose there. Most people are (often willfully) blind about issues that haven't effected them personally. Glowcat didn't say they were always worthless, or even that it would be difficult for them not to be worthless, but do they tend to be worthless. Most people are a lot more interested in talking than they are in looking past their own blinders.

I'm also going to break rank on all three points, apparently, because the arguments for "freedom of speech" are the worst kind of bullshit, and it's essentially the same argument that the bankers made about the financial collapse, saying that even though it was totes their fault they did nothing wrong because everything they did was legal. Yeah, right.

1. Of course companies have moral and social obligations to consider the ramifications of their actions - just like we all do. Any company promoting "objectification of women and erasure of under-represented groups" is acting immorally, and it is disappointing but not unexpected that most people don't seem to agree. The Wesboro Baptist Church certainly has a right to free speech, but I would be surprised if people here were to argue that what they were doing isn't wrong. Everyone has a moral duty to act morally, even those working in the video game industry, and if they are contributing to a toxic environment, helping to make the world a worst place, or even just fighting against attempts to improve, they have a moral obligation to stop.

2. Again, of course we do. I don't know why subscription fee payers would be any different, here, but since companies are unlikely to fulfill their moral obligations if left to their own devices, customers have an obligation to incentivize that behaviour. Fuck You Got Mine is not a defense against moral obligations, and the fact that many gamers are lazy, selfish, and entitled does not really influence whether the moral obligations of living in society exist, only whether they are fulfilled. Social progress is made by convincing those who oppose it that they will be ostracized if they remain committed to making things worse.

3. I think the games that are harmed by being more inclusive and diverse tend to be games that weren't going to be very good to begin with. Many other games would benefit from being more inclusive and diverse, but are dialed back by executives or developers anyway.

[DJ]

Why should a character's sexuality be at all relevant in a game that's not Leisure Suit Larry? I feel that games that go out of the way to be diverse in this regard are just as tacky as games with chainmail bikinis. And let's face it, virtually every game ever that had a romantic subplot would've been better without it.

[GlyphGryph]

Do you think that companies "avoid[ing] the objectification of women and erasure of under-represented groups in their products" makes a game tacky? Because that doesn't require shoehorning in irrelevancies, and that's a direct quote from the OP.

I think we can all agree that shit games that make shit decisions end up being shit, and paying lip service to some asinine form of stereotyped "diversity" is definitely a shit decision.

[DJ]

Well you can't exactly avoid erasure of under-represented groups without swinging too much in the other direction. A typical game has what, 3-4 fleshed out characters? If you want to represent all the minorities in such a low number of characters they're going to wind up as ridiculous caricatures, and you're never going to have a single representative of the majority.

[Mindmaker]

Why should a character's sexuality be at all relevant in a game that's not Leisure Suit Larry? I feel that games that go out of the way to be diverse in this regard are just as tacky as games with chainmail bikinis. And let's face it, virtually every game ever that had a romantic subplot would've been better without it.

Well I remember liking the romance in Baldurs Gate 2. Then again I was quite young and may have been unable to judge it properly.
Another one was Planescape: Torment which I played much later. It didn't play much of a role, but I found that witty flirting quite interesting.

But otherwise you're correct. It tends to be especially bad in the "pick your romance option" type of game.

[Itnetlolor]

Way I see it:
Very much like the music I listen to, the shows and movies I watch, and so forth; I play games because I want to have fun. I'm not making any kind of statement (political and/or otherwise), nor am I backing anything up. Not supporting nor denying or whatever the crap. I do these things because they entertain me, and I'm having fun, and these adhere to my standards of what is fun. I want to escape reality for a few moments, and this is my preferred means of doing so. Keep reality out of my games, unless it's a simulation game.

For example, because I listen to punk music and hip-hop and such, doesn't mean I'm a punk or thug or whatever; I just like good music, and according to my personal standards, this is good music to me, and I listen to it to enjoy my time. Because a game I play happens to have  a character of alternate orientations (species, gender interests, etc.), doesn't mean I support, nor am curious. If anything, it's just background info about my character, in case the game has plenty of dialog, that can help immerse me into the story I'm playing through.

I can give less a crap about political correctness nowadays. In the past, during my more foolish, naive, and idealistic days, I was plenty supportive of it (kinda like how I felt about feminism and such too), mostly out of fairness. Then again, I was a primary target to all kinds of bullying, so you can see where my psychological bias originates from. Having grown past most of it, I'm noticing that the PC-culture has been overstepping all kinds of boundaries, and looking less like a game of fairness and balance/equality, and more like a game of boundaries and domination, like watching a game of Risk at a political level (Or Civilization, where developments and tactics occur). It's become less about balancing the odds and such where things are unjustly distributed, and becoming more of a soapbox for people to justify their douchebag behaviors, and imposing their ideals on everyone else. (Insert religion and other BS relevant to topic here; while sufficiently vague to remain as neutral as possible).

In summary, before I wall'o'text:
Just let us have fun. Once you start going all political and such, that's where everyone suffers, including those the source is fighting for (whether they actually need, or want it, or not). It's like a grudge-match of egos here when this crap turns up. My best response as a gamer to all this crap, in general, is "Shut up, and let me enjoy my gorram game.". As you can already tell, having been an observer of PC-culture and such for as long as I have; this has worn into me so much, I just completely stopped caring by this point (with the best of intentions in mind; plus, I don't need this stress).

EDIT:
Also, no matter what, there's always a 50-50 chance that someone will feel insulted or under-represented, or dis-enfranchised about something, somewhere down the line (like the Rule 34 of taking offence. It'll happen, no exceptions.); regardless content or context (that applies to all things). Knowing that, it helps ease that weight off my mind, and make not caring, in it's own way, a form of caring. Basically, it's inevitably bound to occur somehow and some way; if and when it occurs, don't worry too much about it. Or as I see it myself, if I can't affect the tides of anything, then don't let it, or a rogue wave (e.g.- TERRORISM), wash me away into the chaos of the Ocean of Bickering on the Great Ego Barrier Reef.

EDIT EDIT:
Meh, figured my statement would be double-edged. But I kinda figured I might as well say what plenty others with a similar thought process would be thinking, but not want to post. Ironic, yet surprising at times, how neutral parties tend to get a surprising amount of heat in all kinds of topics.

However, my statement is more like "I've done my part for long enough, and see no major tangible effect. I'm staying out of this until I'm in the mood to care again.". I have nothing really against others caring, just don't overdo it, is all I'm really saying; and the overdoing from most groups has burned me out. I'll return to caring someday, just not now. It's good to argue. It helps make progress, and better-understand the other party, but once it turns into a war, then it does the opposite.

[GlyphGryph]

Well you can't exactly avoid erasure of under-represented groups without swinging too much in the other direction. A typical game has what, 3-4 fleshed out characters? If you want to represent all the minorities in such a low number of characters they're going to wind up as ridiculous caricatures, and you're never going to have a single representative of the majority.

Considering that time after time game developers (including the one in the opening post) have explicitly removed female and minority characters late in the development process to intentionally be less diverse, I think there's an awful lot of progress that could be made without "swinging too far in the other direction". Seriously. Your argument is the equivalent of me saying "You shouldn't randomly punch strangers in the face", and you arguing against it going to far because next thing we know you'll be forced to be hypervigilant about bumping into people on the train accidentally.

Edit:
And Itnetlor does a stand-up job of encapsulating the argument of "caring about things is hard so I don't want to", which is okay, because its true, it really can be exhausting, but then he brings it a bit further and explicitly argues against anyone else trying to make it better either.

"Shut up, and let me enjoy my gorram game."

Yep. That pretty much summarizes it, doesn't it?

"Shut up, and let me enjoy my gorram money." says the rich man to all the dirty poors that dare to complain about their state in life...

[Bauglir]

I think it's a bit more complicated than presented. Specifically, I think that producers have an obligation to avoid objectification and stereotyping in relevant games. In games that do not have the scope to deal with it (say, Tetris), and games where it would necessarily force a break in genre (say, objectification in titty games), there's no such obligation to try and shoehorn it in. There are basically two major cases that I think need attention - character-driven narratives, and games with a cast of intentionally 2D characters. The former tend to have the problem of being exclusionary; since some characters are treated as people, it makes the objectified characters stand out. The latter just tend to perpetuate stereotypes by picking one to be the beginning and end of a character's description; treating "the girl" like an archetype akin to "the archer" is the problem, here.

Players have an obligation to favor games that display diverse casts, but again only in relevant games, and often this takes a backseat to the quality of the game as a game. All else being equal, absolutely pick the games that do a better job at this, but unfortunately there are a lot of things about games that rank as a higher priority. Then again, I am a white, straight, cis-gendered American male, so my priorities are far from the most important ones here. Definitely, though, this is the best way of effecting change, since if the message ever gets through that, all else being equal, a diverse game sells better than not, it'll be something soulless money-seeking corporations latch onto like a leech.

I feel like the effort to be more inclusive or diverse does hurt a game when it's part of a checklist of things, or is crowbarred in later. I don't think it's inherently going to affect things, otherwise, though, and I don't know how often that actually happens. It also hurts the cause by perpetuating the idea that people only portray diversity because of political correctness, which is bullshit of the highest order.

[GlyphGryph]

I think it's a bit more complicated than presented. Specifically, I think that producers have an obligation to avoid objectification and stereotyping in relevant games.

I would argue that this isn't true for games like tetris, it's just that it's so easy to accidentally avoid in irrelevant games that it doesn't usually require any thought to do so (the requirement isn't that they do anything positive here, after all, simply that they avoid doing something negative).

There's a number of games that shoehorn objectification that actually makes the game worse even when its not relevant to the game, after all, and they should definitely stop doing that too.

I feel like the effort to be more inclusive or diverse does hurt a game when it's part of a checklist of things, or is crowbarred in later. I don't think it's inherently going to affect things, otherwise, though, and I don't know how often that actually happens. It also hurts the cause by perpetuating the idea that people only portray diversity because of political correctness, which is bullshit of the highest order.

I can definitely agree with this. But the whole checklist of things approach hurts games in lots of ways, not just in this area.

[nenjin]

Just going to wade in.

1. No. We don't require any corporations to be moral, I don't see why games would be any different.

2. No. This is overtly politicizing the issue in my mind. Are people free to support the games and companies that reflect their values and tastes? Sure. An obligation? That's trying to bring the war over social values into the entertainment space, by saying we're all good soldiers of either side. Personally, I tend to write off people that feel the need to create crusades. Be they hetero white males who hate anything different, or transgenders who refuse to let a moment go by without reminding everyone who and what they are.

3. I think when your overriding goal is to be inclusive, it shows, and usually not in a positive way. I'm the kind of gamer that generally doesn't care for romance in my games. It's simply not something I'm interested in, doesn't elevate my play, fill out the world or engage my imagination. So I find it awkward at best, when someone shoe horns in a love story, a love interest, sex, gender or sexuality into their game. So I think you often end up with 1-dimensional characters, in 2-dimensional games, when you set out saying "Every sexual identity will get representation in my game." Note, I find this a separate issue from, for example, having a female protagonist. What it means to be female is something I think you can explore in a novel way in a variety of settings.....whereas asking "What does it mean to be gay" in a fantasy realm full of monsters and demons.......maybe not so much. Unless your game is about intolerance....which is a game I wouldn't play.

I dunno. To put it plainly, I'm sick of everyone's fucking agenda when it comes to gender and sexuality. Everyone's. Just make your gorram game already, who cares what the dev next to you is or isn't doing, and who cares what internet crusaders tell you that you should be doing. Just fucking do it and shut up about it already, instead of going to every media site on earth to make the case that what you're doing is for some underrepresented demographic.

Honestly, this whole social justice gaming movement, and the reaction to it, is probably one of my least enjoyed parts of the last 10 years of gaming. Instead of having fun, we're becoming absorbed in the same "us. vs. them" bullshit that exists in almost every other sphere of life.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I like video games based on the merit of the gameplay and story therein [if there is one] and the enjoyability I've gotten from it despite the other factors [I love Dynasty Warriors despite it being a shallow, poorly-voiced brainless button masher, because it's fun].

I'm not really worried about stepping on either side of this so I'll just say the depiction of elf-fella and my bearded dwarven warrior making a manly love connection was rather tasteful [y'know, without the cinematics] and relevant to this topic.

I, for one, am all about allowing such freedom in games like DA:O and the Sims, because they're in a genre of games that allow you to make decisions about your character and their actions.

Now, what I do disagree with is the idea that a developer with a story at hand, like a linear RPG or other such games with a narrative that is relatively set-in-stone, must tailor their diversity/etc to a certain spectrum of society or at worst temper their own game to not insult people.

If we did that as a society we wouldn't have games like Postal, Doom, Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto, because they insulted the sensibilities of a lot more people than things I see nowadays.

[Glowcat]

Vattic hit it right on the nose there. Most people are (often willfully) blind about issues that haven't effected them personally. Glowcat didn't say they were always worthless, or even that it would be difficult for them not to be worthless, but do they tend to be worthless. Most people are a lot more interested in talking than they are in looking past their own blinders.

Point for reading comprehension goes to GlyphGryph!

When I say that people repeatedly show they don't understand I'm talking about these boards in the past and the way some opinionated white cishet people often do hoops to justify the status quo with a smugness that can only come from somebody completely ignorant on social-level struggles, which is pretty much evident in the way they often frame issues in terms of the individual, or think any kind of socially conscious perspective is a parody because, like, Tumblr. And yet they can't even seem to grasp what makes Tumblr.txt a parody...