I agree with you. Generally I dont care about the race/gender of the protagonist unless they do it to appease people and it comes off shallow. The new Tomb Raider games are awesome and I'll play them over and over and I 99% of the time play as male. The story of this incarnation of Lara Croft is interesting to me so her gender doesn't matter because she feels like a real character in an interesting world that is facing a real struggle.

I don't think there's much more I can add at this point. Yikes, lol.

Amazing argument. You really think just because it is an rpg they will have trailers that have exactly the same theme. Hint as to why it makes no sense. One is singleplayer.

And how on earth is it rich lol?

The reason I guess they do it with known series is that they have a fan base they can abuse. Just like how games like Hardline had the Battlefield name just tagged on. I don't think anyone minds more diversity so long as it doesn't impair their enjoyment of a series.

Uhm, by maybe not doing anything?

Seriously, everybody is equal, nobody deserves to be excluded and nobody deserves special treatment.

So what does the single player versus multiplayer have to do with anything? A commercial can highlight multiple races / characters for both.


And it's rich because you won't buy a videogame just because it has a female protagonist. How do you think many women or many minority people might feel about pretty much every videogame exclusively featuring a white male protagonist, then?

Even I'm getting kind of sick of it, and I'm a white guy. C'mon, a little diversity here please! One of the reasons I liked Tell-Tale's The Walking Dead was because it featured a black male protagonist. Call me racist/SJW or whatever, but I thought that was a refreshing break. It would've been so easy to make Kenny the player character instead.

Look, guys, the worst case scenario is that we'll see an equal number of non-white protagonists in video games. I'd love to kick ass as an Asian man, or a Hispanic woman. We white guys can't save the world all the time, now can we?

Such is our burden.

That does not fit the marketing narrative of every TES or Fallout game. It is easy to show the different playable races in a multiplayer game. How do you not get this?

And not it's not rich at all. What is rich is that you want to impair others experience to get your way. It's simple mathematics. If there was more demand there would be more female characters. And I'd say many minority's don't care. They don't like people like you getting offended on their behalf. The so called minorities that I know don't just moan all the time. I don't moan when I play Franklin or CJ or any other different race character. It fits in the narrative. Or when I played a Chinese guy in the Jon Woo game or a Japanese guy in Yakuza, or a Russian in GTA. It's when games are changed for the sake of 'equality' by totalitarians to fit their narrative that it is an issue. There aren't many Chinese people in games. How about we make the next lead in Red Dead a Chinese Women?

Of the few decent games out there that I play gender choice is rarely an issue. GTA you can choose an online female character. Not that I enjoy the online. Fallout 4 you can choose. Fifa you now have women's teams. This has stopped the much more popular National League being added. Syndicate although a terrible game has a choice. Lara croft there is a choice. Many of them don't have a choice, but it is pointless wasting time and money on features for a tiny minority. This is one of the pet peeves of a developer friend of mine. People thinking you click your fingers and have a new protagonist. Others simply don't make sense contextually. How many women were frontline in WW2 or Afghanistan? How many minorities fought in the war of the roses? Metro Last light focuses on Artyom from a Russian writer's books. It doesn't make sense to have anyone else. But you still get to play as a woman for a level. It makes sense for Witcher 3 to be about Geralt. But you also get to control ciri too. Max Payne makes sense playing as Max. Maybe they should make a Lara croft game where you play as a white guy who kills Lara. That's how they're playing Mafia anyhow.

Yeah, well, I'm tired of having this burden. Here. Go save the world. I'm just gonna sit here for a bit.

Ah, you've touched on an interesting point: what makes sense for the narrative. As you said, Metro Last Light was based off of a Russian author's book and his protagonist was a white Russian male named Artyom. It wouldn't have made much sense (and would offend the author himself) if Artyom were anything else. If the story demands the protagonist be a white hetero, then so be it. It doesn't mean the author harbors some secret bigotry against women, colored people, and homosixuals. It just...means that's what the story demanded, that's what the story is about. Tell Tales had their Walking Dead game feature a black male protagonist. Does that mean they hate women and non-black people because they didn't make their main character an Asian woman and Clementine a Hispanic or an Arab boy? Of course not. They were telling a story that just so happened to revolve around a black guy named Lee Everett. If they had wanted him to be an Asian woman, I'm sure they would've done so. It's just that their story revolved around a dude who was black..

Just like with the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens. Our trio is a white woman, a black dude and a Hispanic dude. That was the vision Disney and Abrams was going for. Could the trio have been all the genders and races possible? Sure. Could they all have been Wookies instead? Sure. But their vision called for the trio to be all humans, two men and one woman. See what I'm saying?

Diversity is good. No one should be excluded from being the badass hero. Creators, however, must find a middle ground between that and what their vision demands. Last thing I want for myself and other creators is to write feeling like society is holding the metaphorical gun to the back of our heads. It's about what the narrative calls for, and not including people from Group XYZ doesn't mean the creator harbors some bigotry for that group.

By this logic, Bethesda clearly hates disabled people as we hardly see them ever in their games. And the one time we actually get to play as a disabled character (Skyrim > Eye Color Options > Two Blind Eyes), it's just for show as nothing is impeded even though in-universe, your character is supposed to be completely blind. As a half-blind, mostly deaf guy, I honestly don't care. I honestly don't care that Bethesda continues to pretend people like me don't exist. I'd much rather them make the game they want rather than force everyone to play a character with visual + hearing issues.

TL;DR VERSION

-> Diversity is good.

-> Not including people of different religions/races/ethnicities/gender/sixual orientations, or people with mental/physical disabilities doesn't mean the author/developer in question holds a bigoted agenda against these groups.

-> The most important thing the creator must consider is what will best serve the story he/she wants to tell.

I agree. Pairing this mentality with the conscious mentality of simply asking "why not?" like Shoestring mentioned earlier on this page seems like a solid formula to see more diversity in at least my future media pieces.

Thanks for that, guys!

No, it kind of is. Also a bit hypocritical.

Marketing narrative? Bethesda has changed their commercials in big ways two times recently. The biggest was with Skyrim, where they prominently featured the male Nord character. Previously they had never done that - point out a particular race / TES species (?) of people and designate that race as the player character in their commercials. With Fallout 4 they changed their tactics (yes, pun intended) again by including both male and female protagonists.



I'm not really sure what you're trying to say by telling us that showing multiple species / races as potential player characters in a commercial somehow violates an established "marketing narrative". Marketing narrative / commercials are designed to get people - as many people as possible - to buy your product. To that end, Bethesda specifically made the decision to feature the female Sole Survivor in their commercials. The main goal was likely just to show off their voiced protagonist setup, but it also highlights Bethesda trying to specifically market to female gamers.

I want to what? First of all, I have absolutely no idea how what I'm generally advocating for - more choice in protagonists in videogames and some better minority representation in videogame protagonists - impairs anyone in any way. It doesn't "impair" anyone to see more black characters as protagonists in videogames. It doesn't "impair" anyone when a studio uses a female protagonist instead of a male protagonist.



And it's funny that you say you don't moan when you play Franklin or CJ or whatever, but just a few posts back you said that you won't be buying a game (Horizon Zero Dawn, for anyone interested) simply because it features a female protagonist.

It's funny that you mention women on the frontline in World War II. Because (surprise!) women served in frontline combat in World War II, particularly on the Soviet side. They employed female snipers, female combat pilots, female medics, etc.

I agree pretty much with what you're writing - my only caveat, however, is that except for certain specific writing situations, there is little narrative reason to pick a male or female character, or a particular race. There is little to no narrative reason, for example, that Lee Everett (from The Walking Dead videogame) is black. Mirror's Edge could have easily been about a male runner instead of Faith.

True, unless the narrative demands it there is little reason to pick the gender and race for the character. Lee could've easily been Arabic, or an Asian woman, or even a white guy and the story still would've played out the same (with the exception of Kenny's "You looked urban" remark and Vernon's quasi-racist act of calling him, 'Boy'.*) In that case, I think Tell-Tales just did it because they wanted to which is also cool.

* It was a common insult for advlt black males a long time ago, and probably still is now here in the Deep South within deeply racist areas. Calling a black guy 'boy' when you're not black carries racial implications.

I'm a minority race myself and to be frank, I think it's stupid to hold game developers/writers responsible for furthering societal equity. What needs to change is society's viewpoint. And as Personablaze stated, if the entire reason to make a character is just to represent a race, then that, to me, is patronizing. I'd rather a character be created, well written, well thought out, have motivations etc. without being just a stereotype or plot device, and just happen to be non-white, simply because.

In other words, I'd have it be a design choice instead of a design parameter.

From what I know of all the comic/concept art/game artists I see the work of (from looking at their websites, Twitters, dA etc.) is that almost all of them make OCs of varying skin tones on a regular basis. That's just in the nature of most artists it seems, to experiment with character design. I speculate it's the higher ups who call for more "traditional" looking characters, just so they're more marketable in the West.

This! 100% agreed.

Black women are super heroes? Is it only black women? not anybody else? Why arent my people being represented? INEQUILITY!!!!

This. So much this.


In short, use people of minorities without using them as stereotypes (ie, the geeky Asian kid, or the snappy, rapping black chick that talks sass) or as plot devices (ie, their entire existence and point is just to show som societal ill.) That's the message I'm getting. Show them as well-rounded people who just HAPPEN to be ladies, or HAPPEN to have a darker skin color, or HAPPEN to be homosixual.


People are people, not caricatures and stereotypes. To illustrate this, protagonists who happen to be not white guys should be...just like anyone else. With their own desires, motivations, fears, etc. Without the use of stereotypes or plot devices to carry them along the plot.

*edit*

Yeah I don't understand the title either.

I don't understand the title either and I am surprised the thread hasn't been locked. I guess we are all well behaving so the mods are letting it still be open. Would still like to know what the Original Poster was trying to convey.

The OP included a link to an article called "Black women are already superheroes" which was about under-representation of black women in videogames in his 1st post.

so is that it? More black women in games? Sure why not I always thought different types of cultures and races would eventually hit the scene in gaming since video games are becoming more and more popular and more people want to create games. No matter if we start petitions or not (the or whatever we are suppose to do?) it will happen eventually.

Not necessarily. If you read http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/27/geena-davis-institute-sixism-in-film-industry that I linked to earlier in this thread you'll find research that shows that the percentage of characters in US film and tv who are female is only 17%. Just an extraordinarily low figure, something I'd expect of Saudi Arabia or somewhere similar - not America "land of the free" etc etc. The figures are better for Europe, but not by much. What's more that ratio of male to female characters has been pretty much the same since 1946. 1946!

Honestly, at this rate, I don't think anything is going to change much unless people start kicking up a much bigger fuss over these issues.

Touchy subject, and I am hesitant as european to enter such a conversation because my view on these things, doesn't align with the general opinions in the US or its history, I believe, for the most part. I could be wrong tho, wouldn't be a first

Let me first state, as a general idea / rule, that if you want influence, you gotta earn it! Not so long ago, the EU tried to pass a law that dictated, that in order to get more women into politics, there should be a minimum quota of 40% women. However, it was opposed, as you can't just assign someone, be it man or woman, without them having the qualifications for said job. So, in the article, they want more black women into game producing. To that I say, then earn it. Qualify for it. If you can't, you have no say in matters, end of. If someone have better qualifications than you, tough luck, no matter the colour of skin or cultural belonging. Sure, there are always the occasional in-tolerant person who wouldn't hire this or that person because of this or that. But I would believe, that doesn't count for all. So if there is equal opportunity, it is just a matter of going for it.

Also, as an outsider, e.g. an outsider of the US. It is only from coloured US citizens you mostly hear such claims. You don't hear, say, women from Israel or russian women bantering over that they are not represented, or that they think they are represented in a bad way. There might be cases, none I have heard of tho. So I think, it is mostly an US thing, and their history regarding white / coloured people in the US. So placing the guilt on the game industry is not what first comes to mind for me. It is the general ideas of how, we have determined what is beautiful or not, in a general sense. hence why, coloured women in games / movies tend to have fair skin, asian games features caucasian style eyes because they think they are gorgeus, and so on. It is stereotypes, and should be treated like that. I don't go raving about how I, as a man from the Northern Europe, is depicted the way Nords are or Vikings in general with their silly horns on the helmets (which was never a thing btw) The women in the article turning it into a racist thing, is uncalled for in my view. It seems to me, that the race card gets pulled in many of these situations. Some would surely have merit, but blaming a whole industry for racisme, is, I don't know a proper word for that. Folly? stupid?

Political correctness is not helpful towards a more tolerant soceity, on the contrary, as we keep reminding ourselves, that via that political correctness, that we should indeed be different, when we are not!

Anyways, hope I didn't break any forum rules here. Otherwise, let me know, and I'll delete it

Women and blacks have been kicking up a fuss for a while now (50 odd years) with limited impact. Its true that you can't legislate for attitudes but government can play a part in changing attitudes. Laws on seatbelts, anti-smoking, and drink driving were all contraversial when introduced but widely accepted now.