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[GavJ]

(The previous post has a good succinct version in it, I agree)

In an attempt to slightly re-rail the topic, let's apply to video games.  In the case of video game diversity, The relevant group of people are the players and the game designers, and I guess any various investors and such. Amongst all of the aforementioned groups are some minorities and more non-minorities.

So what system of rules or incentives or whatever, if any, would we want to set up regarding video game diversity? Assuming we had full power to set up whatever system we wanted, and if we didn't know ahead of time which of those relevant people we would be (with all of their OWN biases and preferences you must consider, which are likely not the same as yours-as-you)?

[scrdest]

Honestly, the best summation of Rawls I've seen is also the briefest;

A desirable society is one where you would be willing to enter it even not knowing your place in it.

The local extension of this is that Rawlian thinking encourages a focus on the bottom of society. If there are roles that you would never be willing to take then it basically demands that you improve them till they are above that threshold, regardless of the odds of actually ending up that way. A perfect Rawlian society might not maximise overall utility or even be set up optimally to improve future happiness or any other measure, but it is one where every position in society passes some minimum in such measures.

I actually think it is extremely future focused myself. People don't generally have much control over what position their descendants will have in society (unless they are already way up on top) and so an approach of trying to improve all positions as far as possible (with the already stated focus on removing absolutely undesirable positions) is the most sensible.

I think you are overlooking an option, then. The 'alien' could choose a society where you have assured security even if you are of low social position... or it could create one where it's easy to increase it.

If the alien was perfectly rational but without any secondary morals, it could just as well create a completely anarchic society, a'la Eastern Europe in the Nineties - if you are strong enough to survive, you can easily lift yourself up by climbing on the corpses of others.

Is this the society you would desire?

[palsch]

Societies where low life quality is justified by potential mobility fail the test hard. They are desirable only if you assume you are one of the few able to take advantage of that mobility to get out of the undesirable positions in society. Such an assumption is not possible in any interpretation of Rawls I've seen. If you were able to assume you are in such a privileged position you may as well assume yourself to the top of the pile in the first place.

A theoretical society where absolutely anyone can always improve their situation without compromising on other aspects of life and where it is not at the expense of others might pass. But that doesn't reflect reality in the slightest, not least from a limited resources point of view. A guaranteed minimum quality of life is considerably more possible than unlimited social mobility.

So what system of rules or incentives or whatever, if any, would we want to set up regarding video game diversity? Assuming we had full power to set up whatever system we wanted, and if we didn't know ahead of time which of those relevant people we would be (with all of their OWN biases and preferences you must consider, which are likely not the same as yours-as-you)?

I don't think talking about rules is helpful, but rather outlining what would be desirable as a member of society (in this case, the gaming community) might be more interesting. Just speaking for myself here, and I'm probably missing a lot;

Community: To have a sufficient range of communities in which I feel welcome. Sufficient here meaning wide enough to encompass any genre/subset of games I might be interested in, regardless of any historical trends in those genres.

Representation: To have a wide range of archetypes and stories told about people like myself. To see representations of myself limited to stereotypes or only a few acceptable archetypes. To have redemption arcs and tragedies and romances and heroics and whatever other stories you can imagine told about someone who represents me, so that these stories can be seen as genuinely universal stories about humanity, not just the subset of humanity currently seen as the default main characters.

Industry: To have no biases (personal or institutional) as to which positions in the industry might be available to me outside of talent, ability and experience, with this assured by seeing people like myself throughout all roles and levels.


As to ways to address these, that's harder.

The first requires continued fighting against bigotry among gamers and efforts to clean up the bigger communities. There has been a fair amount of effort dedicated to establishing new communities with those values baked in from the start, which goes a long way but not far enough. A lot of the time if you want to play a certain type of game you are forced to take part in the built in community. There is also the risk of ending up with effective ghetto communities of minority gamers which are used as an excuse for the mainstream to remain exclusionary.

The second requires stories about non-default characters to be told as often as stories about the default. This just means having more and more games made where diversity is just an accepted part of how things are. No easy way to get there, just something that needs to keep happening over an extended period of time.

The final is a matter of cultural shifts in the industry, and probably some element of affirmative action (at the least active campaigns to promote the industry as a career path within minority groups). PR is an aspect here, but without the changes being real and not just wallpaper then it will likely not work.

[GavJ]

If the alien was perfectly rational but without any secondary morals, it could just as well create a completely anarchic society, a'la Eastern Europe in the Nineties - if you are strong enough to survive, you can easily lift yourself up by climbing on the corpses of others.

It is assumed that you don't know ahead of time which person you will be, which INCLUDES intelligence and other mental abilities (as well as non-ability mental things like biases and preferences). You aren't supposed to carry over anything at all from your veil of ignorance state.

So that particular "strategy" wouldn't work, because you'd be just as likely to be an un-savvy person who ends up a corpse that is climbed on as you would be doing the climbing.

@Palsch, I think it should be necessary for this type of thought experiment to not divide up the players and the industry people separately, yes? You don't know which one you will be ahead of time, which is presumed (if the system works) to lead to a better overall solution than anything where the two groups fend for themselves. Maybe you are doing that, and I misread.

My take:
1) Your sufficient communities thing is good. Yes, you want a smattering of games at least to act as a "haven" no matter who you are, to at least not feel totally abandoned. This is a very efficient use of game plots, because just one might be enough for a very rare minority to feel reasonably represented.
2) Beyond that though, I might consider DIS-proportionately still publishing majority games, because as long as I've covered my bases for not feeling completely abandoned as a minority, I may want to maximize my utility in the most likely event of me being a majority member, by having a lot of games oriented at me. Indeed maybe even more than my majority % is in the population.
3) The industry folks should be more or less happy with that same plan. The only issue is you might not want to end up being a worker at a small company making one of the rare minority games, if it might be the case they make less profit or are more risky.  A possible standard solution to risk is some sort of contract between groups of game companies, or essentially an insurance policy of a sort, where they agree to all take on the burden of making X% of minority games for the benefit of the whole (getting more people as gamers in general and keeping them non-disgruntled), and to pay each other some amount of loss recouping if a given minority game tanks unexpectedly compared to that company's non-minority games?  And players shouldn't have any problem with that, I wouldn't imagine.