I'm all for creator freedom. As a newbie writer myself, I don't want to put chains on anyone's creativity by saying “You're only allowed to write about this race or that gender!” We write the stories we want to write regardless of whether people like it or not. Sure criticism is allowed, but at the end of the day, the creator gets to call the shots. In this case, it's Bethesda.


I guess what I was trying to say was that for a gaming company that says you can play whatever you want, would it really take that much time and energy to post screenshots of our character as two genders and skin tones all the shades of white and dark? Hell, I could do it myself right now with Skyrim. Would only take five minutes. A few hours tops. With liberal usages of TLC, TFC, and TMM console commands and repeated visits to the hidden room with all the items from the game. Then again, I know nothing about coding and advertisemant. Someone more informed will have to clue me in.


Now again, I'm all for creator freedom and yes, people do get all wound up over things like race and gender. All I'm saying is that it wouldn't hurt to release a few screenshots of our character as a female and/or colored to diversify things a bit.

First off, it was already mentioned that each province is represented from that race. I really wish you would comment on this. It is a good point which you are not acknowledging it.

Second if Bethesda ha put a female Nord in it's commercial, then people would be selling six in the game because of having a female in that armour would make it look skimpy and sixualizing women instead. That would really turn off a lot of potential female customers I believe. You just can't win what you do in a commercial.

Yeah I think what Bethesda did in the commercial was good. They didn't have to do anything else to it to be politically correct.

Doesn't have to be a black woman, just a woman in generally. Still too many male heroes out there lol.

Just about every form of media could do with some increased diversity in order to meet with our globalized world. Though I do think that its odd that the article never mentioned Alyx Vance from Half Life 2. She was not only an excellent character and companion in her own right and was a great example and a model for which other developers should use to create other characters. She was a bad ass, but she wasn't unstoppable, you had to help her out just like she helped you out.

I'd like to see more characters like her in gaming.

That's the thing, though - representing whatever race is in a particular province isn't the point. It's how they represent the player that is important. They never highlighted the race or six of the PC character until the Skyrim media blitz. If I'm wrong, let me know.

There are plenty of female armors in Skyrim that they could have used for a female representation. See https://youtu.be/0YAPmKJ1PxE for great fully vanilla examples.

Not all Skyrim's armors were boobplates

How do you quote someone in multiple parts here? I have no idea how you did it. When I try I just get the one box. Oh well.

Not sure what you mean friend. How the "represent the player is important". I am sure they did that. They did it with a male Nord since Nords are the main race in Skyrim. If in Morrowind it would have been Dunmer, in Hammerfell it would have been represented with a Redguard. So again don't see what you mean that a Dunmer should have been represented in the commercial or what ever. If a Breton or Redguard was represented non TES gamers would know who they were. Once they got interested they would have thought they were just a Nord when buying the game and playing TES for the first time. They wouldn't know what a Khajit or Argonian were also, but at least they would have went "OH COOL a cat and lizard race".

The commercial wasn't made for TES fans (that I am aware of) it was made for people who didn't know and Bethesda wanted to get exposure to those crowds interested in their game. So you pick a race that the Province represents (which Bethesda has done all the time to my knowledge please correct me if I am wrong). .

About the female armour, no matter what armour you would have put on a female, even if all covered up, there would be people who were saying Bethesda was sixing up Skyrim by putting in a female character in the commercial. The commercial was to give you a taste of what Skyrim is. It is not to tell you what it can be. No way could Bethesda have done that in such a short commercial.

I am curious how you would make a 30 second or 60 second commercial and get it to non TES knowing people and get them interested in a game they know nothing about.

If you also want it to not be offensive to someone, just forget about it

I do it by copying and pasting the BBcode together.

So, again, we come back to the same issue - Oblivion commercial = white male Imperial. Skyrim commercial = white male Nord. There were no Morrowind commercials, as far as I could find.


I did not say "represent the player is important". I said "how they represent the player that is important". How they represent who the player is, or, rather, who the player could be. If all they show are white male Nords or Imperials gallivanting around fighting dragons that pretty much just perpetuates the stereotypes about fantasy RPG games.

Bethesda took a different tack with the Elder Scrolls Online, as can be evidenced in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbrf--8c2VQ. So, yes, it is entirely possible to A. get people who don't know TES interested, B. focus on more than one race / gender, and C. do it in 30 seconds. Also notice how the commercial features female characters.

Even then the 'boobplates' weren't skimpy, unlike 90% of the modded armors, but that's for another discussion.

Chicken and egg situation? As in the which came first? Obviously the egg. If only more people knew about the evolutionary process. Not sure what you are trying to say? That it is a self fulfilling prophecy. The thing is the developers as well as the fans. They make what they are interested in. China has a huge video game market that American companies are largely ignoring. Why make a game that an American audience will enjoy more than a Chinese audience? Because the developers are American. If people want more options they should get into gaming themselves. I don't think anyone would mind more diversity in gaming. It's when game series lose their roots. IE the abomination of Mafia 3 after Vavra left.

As to it not being a minority. It still is. The internet gives everyone a voice and allows them to congregate more easily. It's like if I go on a tall people forum I'll think 'wow so many tall people out there'. There are a lot in that forum but not that many in real life. The fact is the majority of gamers are young males. Unless you use the stupid data that says candy crush is gaming. Of the 1000 facebook friends I don't know a single girl who is a console or pc gamer. Not saying they don't exist. Just like how I know only a few members of older generations who game 40+.

Well Nordic roots and Empire/Rome had a large influence on Britain. I don't feel that close to the ancient Britons/Celts. Probably because of all the noxious abuse anglos get from a small yet vocal minority of Scots, Irish, and Welsh often on Youtube. Despite the fact that most Britons have some Celtic ancestry.

^^You can't compare a singleplayer to an MMO. Obviously they were trying to get non TES fans interested. Whilst at the same time alienating a lot of TES fans. Interestingly you don't get fans of elves/orcs/argonians complaining that they aren't given screentime.

Why is the main character never shown as ginger? Why are the player characters not able to be left handed?

This is nonsense. The more quotas you need to fill in order to satiate your outrage, the more outraged you'll get when you realize how many other groups haven't been covered. Just stop with this absolute nonsense.

How many women should there be? 40%? An even 50%? At what point is it not sixist? Who decides what is "too many"?

Don't be ridiculous. There should be equal numbers as per world averages. So 1 in 7 playable characters needs to be Chinese or Indian. 1 in 21 need to be American. 1 in 14 need to be over 65. And 1 in 1000 should be in a wheelchair. etc etc Anything less would be discrimination.

Also saying that there are too many male characters is discriminatory in itself. It's only a bad thing when there are more men? But it's a good thing that there are more women in university?

There were Morrowind marketing images that were used in magazines and promotional stuff.

http://1.darkroom.shortlist.com/980/f87818efddb10f091eb47b2e895f5674:8f8e421863cb5e9e9f641985933dc067/615x330-morrowind.jpgHe's on the back cover too, like the horned Dovahkiin and the Imperial in watch armour.

Shoehorning in a non Italian protagonist. Bowing down to pressure to be like GTA. Goes from story orientated Mafia game to a grotesque saints row/gta clone where you fight the Mafia. Part of the fun of the Mafia games was working your way up to being a made man. Same way Ubisoft bowed to pressure to include a forced female protag in Syndicate. As to whether this played a significant role in it's failings is yet to be seen but was certainly a factor that put off me and my friends from buying.

Is it annoying for me that the new game from the Killzone team is a women only protag? Yes, but that's life. I show my displeasure by not buying it.

You cannot appease everyone so they make do and please the majority. Maybe you should buy that Killzone game to show support for female protags if that is what you want. Just like how I will buy any WW2 fps that comes out to show support for the genre in the hope they make some more.

Why can't you compare a singleplayer RPG game to a multiplayer MMORPG?

Hint as to why you can compare them: They both have the words "role playing game" in them.

I don't disagree that Bethesda has used provincial-majority characters for their promotional materials. But, also, that random Dunmer is not meant to represent the player character, like with what we see in the Skyrim or Fallout 4 commercials.

Oh this is just rich.

Not until I get to play a game where the player character is a lisbian Mongolian dwarf with albinism and synthetic left leg and arm! And she's pals with a Kenyan boy, and they go on an epic journey.


But seriously, with the video game industry growing stronger and stronger as the years go by, we should have more main characters that aren't just white dudes who are either American or British and have no physical or mental disabilities whatsoever. I mean, c'mon, I think my skin and gender are represented enough. How 'bout some lovin' for the others?

Crusader Kings 2.

An extremely good and practical suggestion, pretty much the same idea that Geena Davies has for increasing the numbers of roles for women on film and tv.

Quote from http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/27/geena-davis-institute-sixism-in-film-industry

Davis is not a fan of quotas for the creative industries but she says one of the easiest ways to make an impact is to smash the psychological barrier of 17% on screen and to start doing that now.

“The one area where we could reach parity overnight is on screen, absolutely overnight… My two-pronged solution to the entire problem is just before you cast a film or a TV show, go through the characters and change a bunch of first names to female – hooray! Now you’ve got a gender-balanced cast, you’ve got female characters who are un-stereotyped because they were written actually for a man and then, wherever it says, ‘a crowd gathers’, put ‘which is half female’. And that’ll happen.”

Her suggestion is a valid one: the more representations there are of women doing interesting or unexpected or powerful things, the more we become culturally acclimatised.

“I really think if we change what kids see from the beginning, it will change how they grow up,” Davis says. “You know, we’re creating problems that we have to solve later… If we show them that women take up half the space and boys and girls share the sandbox equally from the beginning, it will change everything.”

It's worth remembering here that the character of Ripley in Alien was originally written as a male, all it took was making the character female and having an excellent, albeit unknown at the time, actor play her to create the enduring icon that is Ellen Ripley. Ground breaking and immensely influential.

Dammit, wish I had a good PC to run that game...

I think game screenshots that looked like pictures taken out of a companies 'career' section would be hilarious.

Black women need to represent themselves. They don't need a hand from vidya games.

I dunno, I feel appreciated when the ability to play disabled people are present (being disabled myself -- half blind and hearing impaired). I think there's a marked difference between you yourself acknowledging that you exist versus someone else, someone entirely unrelated to you, acknowledging that you exist in video games. Yeah, I can write disabled characters until the Brahmins come home, but I had an appreciation for Skyrim because it enabled me to play as someone blind in one (or both) eyes. It was like someone else was telling me, "Yes, we know people like you exist."


So yeah, if I were a black woman and a video game had a strong black female protagonist, I would probably appreciate it a lot.