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[Neonivek]

I think that the difference here is...

Nenjin is against the idea of putting in so much focus on these minorities to the extent that you are weakening the overall product.

Like turning every cartoon into Captain Planet.

[scrdest]

I think that the difference here is...

Nenjin is against the idea of putting in so much focus on these minorities to the extent that you are weakening the overall product.

Like turning every cartoon into Captain Planet.

The following is my response to that mental image:

Spoiler: Spoiler'd for space-saving (click to show/hide)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

[palsch]

Nenjin is against the idea of putting in so much focus on these minorities to the extent that you are weakening the overall product.

1) Didn't really get that from the post.

2) To that argument, this is a good post.

I'm still shaking my head at the implicit polarizing of "fun" and "social commentary." The whole thing rings like a PR salvage operation, trying to squeeze goodwill out of those of us who felt excluded while continuing to wave the party line banner of "fun über alles." Both Nintendo and Pardo rhetorically position "fun" and "entertainment" and "gameplay" as inherently opposed to "socially responsible/progressive."

"It's very much disheartening to hear a company say they ‘value fun’ as an excuse for excluding gay relationships," Gaymer X president Toni Rocca said. For Rocca, using the primacy of fun as a logic for cutting diverse content is basically a cop out.

"That's just valuing straight relationships, or at best saying that fun is exclusive to them," she explained.

Meanwhile, the mere presence of prominent and respectfully portrayed women characters, characters of color, and queer characters is viewed as inherently political and thus anti-fun. It’s another subtle, vicious knife in the side of us marginalized people who play games that says: you’re second class. You’re less valuable. If you show up, somehow you’re removing the fun for everyone else.

Has supporting Bioware's inclusive efforts destroyed them, or EA? Have Riot’s efforts to curb hate speech in League of Legends sent players fleeing from it in droves? Has either of these somehow made their games less fun? Has being socially responsible somehow "destroyed" the many indie games that engage it? The answer, obviously, is "no."

Lack of representation is just a side effect; the real problem is that marginalized players are just not seen as worthwhile or valuable, and until we start holding industry feet to the fire for these sorts of nonsense statements — as happened to Nintendo — that erasure is going to continue.

It’s wrong to claim that your game can’t be fun, or epic, or enjoyable if you also think about inclusive design or representation of your full audience. It’s time to stop accepting that false dichotomy as a get out of jail free card.

I'd also note (once again) I wasn't talking about universal representation so much as letting minorities have a seat at the table and not treating them as a niche market to be hidden away from the mainstream.

[Willfor]

...cishet? Is this some new word?

* Shit lets turn bay12 into tumblr

... I think you're right, LW.

When I left for work this morning your post looked like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

AND NOW IT LOOKS LIKE THIS:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

D:

[nenjin]

Nenjin is against the idea of putting in so much focus on these minorities to the extent that you are weakening the overall product.

1) Didn't really get that from the post.

It's tangentially related.

What I'm sort of hearing though is "I hope one day LGBT things are as popular as what else is out there."

Because that's what the media industry focuses on, what's popular. Sometimes they do it to death, sometimes they're leading people's tastes instead of following them, but generally they make money off what sells.

And that's why I'm saying.....you'd require a huge shift in cultural ideas about what's cool in gaming for that happen. (Along with a big demographic shift as well.) Because honestly? I don't think LGBT stuff is "cool." It's filling a social need, it's a personal statement of identity and morality for those involved......but it's not cool with a capital C (such as: Magic! Guns! Manshooting! Dungeon Crawling! Godlike powers! Exploration!) And I'm not sure it will ever be. Social issues are important, interesting, but at the end of the day gaming is about fun for most people, on some level. And it's think it's quite a stretch to expect teenagers and the demo that makes the money to get excited about a game that is trying to make an (important) social point. As gamers get older they start looking for more varied experiences in gaming. But unless the entire next generation of kids finds gender identity so interesting they're willing to play a lot of games just based on that theme.......chances are it's never going to be front and center like your garden variety manshooter.

Lots of times, I feel like people play indie games that explore complex issues not because the game itself is compelling.....but because they want to broaden their horizons. Like a guy who decides to read Voltaire not because he heard Voltaire is a great essayist, or because Voltaire has an answer to a question important to their lives.....but because they know from school that Voltaire is an important figure in literature, and they want to say they have read Voltaire. I'm not saying that describes everyone who plays indie games that thematically are off the beaten path. But a lot of those thought/gender/identity experiments in gaming strike me as exactly that: experiments. I can't imagine a world where that is what makes up a lot of popular gaming. Nor do I really want to.*

*Because, like I said way above, for me sex doesn't have a lot of place in gaming, period. Sex is real life. Gaming is not. I don't really need or want questions of sex, straight, bi, transgender or whatever, in my gaming. Because it's not a topic I find interesting, entertaining or of great redeeming value in games. It is and always has been a hot button for players and the public. But little else (unless you're trying to make a point by including sex in your game.)

And for the record, I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love for a game that either focuses on LGBT or is wholly inclusive to smash ratings, turn heads and make believers out of haters, that AAA publishers are willing to gamble their money on that people would buy. But I just don't see it happening. Because I stop and ask myself what exactly can you make cool that you can also make about sexual identity.....and I just don't see it. Generally people don't even find the hyper-masculine figures what bangs 10 women a day cool anymore either. (It's currently all about the skinny dude with dark hair and a permanent look of intensity on their face. The blond uberhero with the dame on his arm has had their day, now the anti-hero is getting theirs.)

*Fake edit #48*

Ok, maybe a game where you fluidily shift gender in order to manipulate NPCs and the story to your desired ends would be kinda cool. Not sure that's exactly the message the LGBT community would want to send though?

[palsch]

And that's why I'm saying.....you'd require a huge shift in cultural ideas about what's cool in gaming for that happen. Because honestly? I don't think LGBT stuff is "cool." It's filling a social need, it's a personal statement of identity and morality for those involved......but it's not cool with a capital C. And I'm not sure it will ever be. Social issues are important, interesting, but at the end of the day gaming is about fun for most people, on some level. And it's think it's quite a stretch to expect teenagers and the demo that makes the money to get excited about a game that is trying to make an (important) social point. As gamers get older they start looking for more varied experiences in gaming.

That reads a lot like saying these groups of people aren't cool enough to be included in cool games, which is something I very much don't agree with.

And I do think that one of the biggest issues is that the inclusion of any minority characters is viewed as social commentary or a statement. That's what I mean by such games being restricted to a niche and left to be ignored by the mainstream. I do think it's possible to move past that and have such things included in games in the same way that heterosexual relationships or white male protagonists are seen; as just part of the landscape and not a comment on anything. Just part of the real world that is reflected in the media.

I understand your views on sex in gaming, but you don't see this sort of 'anti-fun' narrative around heterosexual relationships because they are seen as normal and default. And that's exactly the problem; that homosexual ones aren't and by marginalising them in the media (pushing them only into explicitly message games) we are making it so they never will be.

You can argue about the relationships in Mass Effect being well done or needed or 'cool', but I personally didn't feel that the homosexual relationships made it into a 'message' game. They were an attempt (flawed though it may have been) of representation on the same level as heterosexual relationships. And that's basically what I mean. Making that sort of thing happening in mainstream games (or at least those that already include relationships) normal rather than exceptional.

[nenjin]

Put it this way. I groaned during every hetero-relationship scene in every FF game that had it and that bothered you about it. I don't discriminate. I don't play games to see people fall in love, I just don't give a shit. As a tangent to what's going on, for some context and meaning, fine. But that's why I'll never play ME (Or any other Bioware game after DA.) A game that put that much emphasis on who you're doinking, whatever gender of whatever species, as part of the game isn't the kind of game I care to play.

That reads a lot like saying these groups of people aren't cool enough to be included in cool games, which is something I very much don't agree with.

I'm actually in agreement with your "Part of the landscape, needs no comment" stance, but let me rephrase it: What does their sexual preference have anything to do with their coolness? Answer: It doesn't.....until, I feel, they're pointing it out specifically, repeatedly. Then, you know, the player has to ask "Is this person, who looks Y and does X, but who won't shut up about how they're not hetero, actually cool?" Sort of how if a big, burly, hetero fighter in the party constantly says "That NPC is attractive, because I like women, because I'm a man. You know. A man's man", I'd think they were a huge tool and regret their presence in the game.

[Neonivek]

One reason IMO for the inclusion of diversity in mainstream media EVEN IF they are unlikely to be main characters IS

Because that is kind of the world we live in.

That is always how I felt about it. It doesn't mean a game should have every color of the rainbow, because that would be garish and even "I" don't meet that many kinds of people in a day and I live in the world's Disney land, but I think games should better reflect the world we live in.

"I groaned during every hetero-relationship scene in every FF game that had it"

To be fair... I don't think Final Fantasy had a good relationship plot... ever.

They can handle power of friendship well though.

[nenjin]

Oh I dunno. Locke's story in FF3/6 was decent, but that's partly because it was explaining a character whose backstory (like everyone's) was sort of an easter egg. If I'd had to sit through that as a kid, with it being directly in the main plotline, I'd have been like "WTF Locke, you're impeding my Esper casting over here with all your feels."

[alexandertnt]

I think one of the problems being raised is minorities being segregated from "normal gaming". You have "gamers", and then you have "girl gamers" or "queer gamers".

I don't think anyone has argued for perfectly even number of minorities in video games per se, but instead for more and better quality representation of minorities so that a minority character (and minorities in general that play video games) aren't considered abnormal or distinct from "normal" gaming, which they pretty much are now.

[nenjin]

I think one of the problems being raised is minorities being segregated from "normal gaming". You have "gamers", and then you have "girl gamers" or "queer gamers".

I don't think anyone has argued for perfectly even number of minorities in video games per se, but instead for more and better quality representation of minorities so that a minority character (and minorities in general that play video games) aren't considered abnormal or distinct from "normal" gaming, which they pretty much are now.

I can safely say I've never seen anything pitched as "For the African American gamer." Not saying it hasn't happened but...I have seen it pitched to women, but generally only in the trashy AAA sense.

But honestly, is that any different than the rest of mass media? We have family movies, Tyler Perry movies, "chick flicks", sci-fi, horror, action and even some movies with gay and lesbian themes. More than we've had in the past. I'm not saying it isn't something that could be better but....the energy required is higher than just reforming gaming to some extent, I think. Gaming certainly has an easier time of it than movies due to the costs involved and the level at which people can make an impact. But the underpinnings of acceptance, real acceptance, and the consequential representation in the market, isn't something I think you can get just with more balanced games or games with more varied protagonists or better representation of those roles and identities. To put it another way, I don't believe gaming is a gateway to acceptance. It's generally the echo chamber and laboratory for people who already accept it. In this regard, I think gaming takes it cue from the culture at large, not the other way around.

And I guess I'm also curious, what level of representation do people want? Proportion representation, or equal representation? Because there's a difference between getting the representation that sort of matches your demographic, and getting more representation because your issue is at the fore? Woman certainly still do not get their proportional representation in gaming, but as opposed to 10 years ago, I'd like to think it's a lot higher than it was. Higher in the indie scene than in AAA, but still.

[alexandertnt]

Oh its improved, but only because people have been working to improve it. Thats why we should continue to push these issues and not fall victim to complacency.

The thing about representation is interesting, and I think related less to raw numbers or ratios than you think. There are plenty of women in video games, but most of them are shallow, disposable sex objects which women can't generally relate to.

I think what minorities want is better representation in video games, not necessary more representation in video games. They want the minority character to be something they can relate to, a fleshed-out and interesting character, and not a stereotype there just for the amusement/novelty of the majority.

[XXSockXX]

To put it another way, I don't believe gaming is a gateway to acceptance. It's generally the echo chamber and laboratory for people who already accept it. In this regard, I think gaming takes it cue from the culture at large, not the other way around.

No, cultural output and the society that produces and consumes that culture always influence each other. What people consider as normal or what they reflect about is influenced (not exclusively, but to an extent) by cultural products they consume. I guess if it wasn't for stuff like the Cosby Show or Eddie Murphy movies, I might have grown up to think of black people foremost as savages from anthropological documentaries, because I didn't meet any until later in life.
Also it's pretty natural that people that are part of a minority and love games will choose games as their focus when it comes to fighting for acceptance.
Whether that is actually working is a different matter, probably not that well, but the attempt is perfectly valid.

Then I think games are actually overall not that terrible at diversity compared to other parts of culture. Music might be doing better, movies and TV maybe, literature certainly, but some parts of culture are doing much worse. Professional sports for example is still a bastion of homophobia, racism and misogyny, it's rather far behind the rest of society. Now I couldn't care less about a bunch of millionaires fighting about a ball, but to a huge part of society it's quite important. Games are getting a similar spread, it's safe to assume that most people under 40 play games in one way or the other, a lot of it is casual or Farmville or whatever, but the average kid today plays games quite a lot, so whatever they are exposed to in games shapes their thinking as well.

Commercially produced art has a tendency to repeat successful patterns over and over, until the audience gets demonstrably tired of it. If there is a new pattern, inspired by a success in the underground culture or independent industry, that gets incorporated, dumbed down and also repeated endlessly. That is a way to get minorities into the mainstream, but likely as token characters, which is less than fortunate. I guess the problem of the quality of representation boils down to good and bad writing, and commercially produced culture will go with whatever works with the least effort and most marketable perspective, so I wouldn't expect big leaps of progress there anytime soon.

[Vector]

.

[nenjin]

Ya know, I do get that. I know how much of an impact customizing stuff goes toward making an experience your own. Always hate it when I can't set names myself.

I want female heroic narratives that aren't inevitably rooted in Some Sort Of Horrible Trauma, because I'm tired of trauma being an expected part of the package. Yeah, it's a common narrative device at this point, but I literally cannot think of a SINGLE normal silent protagonist platformer girl who doesn't have to run off and be adequately traumatized (thus disqualifying Samus and Lara Croft). You know? It should not be this difficult to find a "normal narrative" where the heroine goes through her dungeons and just generally has an ok day.

I might perhaps not be reading deeply enough into the meaning of horrible things, so if this misses the point my apologies. But men do go through trauma in most stories too. There's two differences. One, male characters are never generally violated. And two, they have a limited range of emotional reactions to trauma that fits most guys expectations (RAGE, Vengeance.) Not fear or sadness or lack of affect.

I get where you're coming from though. One of my scarring memories growing up was going to an anime convention and being introduced to Japanese Anime of the 80s. In which the hero's girlfriend is usually raped and/or killed as the motivation for the story. Made me associate most anime with horrible trauma to women growing up as a teen. And it's one of the tropes I hate the worst now. When you set aside that it is a valid plot device and reason for being in a story, it's tawdry play for male emotional investment a lot of the time, used for its sheer shock value and ability to repulse.

So yeah, I get it and agree there need to be more female characters who have at least the same pluckiness and refusal to submit that defines virtually all male leads. And a boy/girl dichotomy in games where it makes sense (I have sorta vague memories that Nintendo used to roll that way.) Instead of constantly focusing on the fact that because woman can be abused, they must be at some point in the story. Men get abused all the time in the real world, but making games with vulnerable and traumatized male leads where they don't get to shoot anyone don't sell.