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hardcore_gamer

Why do females/gays/non-whites have to be in video games?

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I just don't get it. What do game developers owe these people? Don't get me wrong, I don't feel that females/colored people/gays being in games is a bad thing, but I really don't get this believe that some people have that if a game dev doesn't give the player the option to play as a female or a gay or a black guy that this means the devs hates these people.

Now I will admit that I live in Iceland which doesn't have many ethnic minorities in the first place, but we do have gays and women, and I have heard literally NOBODY here that I know complain that some game was homophobic or that it hated women if you did not include them as playable characters.

You could make the argument that it doesn't make much effort to do it. "Just add an extra character model or some shit!". But here is the thing: How much or little effort is needed isn't the point, the game devs OWE YOU NOTHING. They DON'T HAVE TO put females, minorities, or gays into their games anymore so then they fucking please.

I also want to add, that merely not putting these people into a game is not in and of itself a form of racism/homaphoba/hate towards women. I mean Doom doesn't have any women, does this mean Id Software hates females then? And what about Wolfenstien? There is no playable black character! Racism!

The reason I feel the need to say this is because lately some of the fav sites I like to vist about video games like AngryJoeShow and the Escapistmagazine have become almost insufferably preachy and whiney, with the latest ZeroPuncuation being great example where Yahtzee spends something like half of the entire review doing almost nothing but complaining about the fact that the game he was reviewing doesn't allow for homosexual relationships. Most of the time during his review all I could ask myself was if he even cared about the actual game. Cracked.com also suffers from a similar problem now, though that site isn't only about video games.

So yea, those are my thoughts on this. Do you feel that a game developer is racist/homophobic/hates women if he doesn't put those people into their games as playable characters?

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Is there a game that allows you to actually play as either of those categories? And even if it did, is it really such a problem? Would it change anything if I told you that e.g. Zangief from Street Fighter is gay, and a bottom at that?

The only one I can think of is Cho Aniki. Lots of gay, ambiguous non-white race, but I'm not sure if there actualy are female characters (non-robotic, at least).

Then there's Final Fight, where you beat up blacks, arabs and drag queens, among others, or Violent Storm, where you also beat up fat turks, hunchbacks, narcissistic bodybuilders, wannabe ninjas, wannabe metalheads etc.

Seriously, what was your point again...?

hardcore_gamer said:

The reason I feel the need to say this is because lately some of the fav sites I like to vist about video games like AngryJoeShow and the Escapistmagazine have become almost insufferably preachy and whiney, with the latest ZeroPuncuation being great example where Yahtzee spends something like half of the entire review doing almost nothing but complaining about the fact that the game he was reviewing doesn't allow for homosexual relationships.


Yeah...because those shows are otherwise meant to be totally objective, cool-headed, absolutely serious game reviews, and so their sticking on an element (or perceived lack of it) must be a cause of real concern. They certainly managed to pull your leg...

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Maybe when Doom was released, and the concept that anyone but a white heterosexual male would be playing a game was absurd, it wasn't bigoted to have the Doom marine be a white (presumably) heterosexual male. That isn't the world anymore. The world of gaming has expanded, and frankly, yes it is bigoted if you're going to not reflect the diversity of reality in your games, and instead fuel the power fantasies of white heterosexual males.

It's harder to let that kind of thing slide anymore, because it's much more apparent that it's a deliberate choice in this day and age. I mean, to counter, why do all game protagonists have to be white, heterosexual males? Are you afraid to acknowledge anyone else plays games? Do you feel threatened? What's the big flippin' deal? You expect everyone else to deal and conform to your personal worldviews, why can't anyone else demand that you conform to theirs?

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Diversity, but you're correct no one owes them anything other than games that let people do whatever the fuck they want tend to be regarded higher. Somehow Disney doesn't have any gays and rarely has anything other than whites unless its literally the star and it does just fine.

I've always liked how movies and TV shows with a 99% white cast always make the blacks a judge or a lawyer. See the Simpsons too.

It has been proven that muscle men on game covers sell games. Unless you're Lara Croft.

Gayme Gournalism suffers from what mainstream media does. If one person covers it, they all have to. Or maybe 90% of gamers are closets or just want to play lesbian characters. In one way its just more work to make female and male protagonists, but people always say how tough could it be? Super Mario Bros 2 had four diverse characters with 0 story.

I'm shocked UBIsoft says it needs female animations and so they didn't do it. Couldn't they just have male animations instead and make the female protagonist the same height? Oh well.

Game devs are just gamers forced to do what someone wants them to do. Such as more micro transactions! I'm sure CoD devs feel their game is shit and grew up playing Doom and or Quake, but hey a paycheck is a paycheck.

After all of that being said AssCreed will still sell as much as its going to sell. I'm sure no one is playing the game to be a girl, they're doing it to kill people. I'm sure no one is buying that Nintendo Tamigochi life to live out some big gay fantasy when games like the Sims exist.

There was that whole thing about Final Fight having female characters, Capcom thought they might get sued by femminist groups so Poison and Roxie are men dressed as women. Well Double Dragon had Linda you could beat up, but no one cared. Women can be just as bad as men, even see the antagonist queen of the Battle Toads.

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esselfortium said:

Conversely, why do females/gays/non-whites have to not be in video games? Why is this apparently such an issue?


Why does Doom even need to be a man? Why show his face? The character doesn't say anything, it could be a man, woman, boy, girl, space dog, robot, alien.

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geo said:

Why does Doom even need to be a man? Why show his face? The character doesn't say anything, it could be a man, woman, boy, girl, space dog, robot, alien.


Nope, the face on the bottom of the screen says otherwise ;)

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Why did hardcore_gamer feel the need to express his shitty opinion?

ok ok great idea, let's make up a fucking fake argument about minorities in video games so i can be racist/sexist/homophobic without consequences!! i'm such a great fucking person

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Watch WB or CW, they're full of female protagonists. Those networks are geared toward teen females. Vampire Diaries, Beauty & the Beast, the 100, Birds of Prey. ABC too has recently steered its way to women with Revenge, Scandal, Once Upon a Time and others.

I know that the Shield, detective Wimms was actually a male character, but someone thought hey lets cast a woman. That has happened with a few strong female roles. Even Tomb Raider was supposed to be an Indiana Jones game. But I don't know any women that play the game. I know women that play TF2, CS GO and CoD, none of them complain about lack of female characters.

My female cousins play Mario Bros they all want to play as Toad or Mario, not the princess.

My gf wanted to see what the Walking Dead game was all about, until I loaded it up for her and seeing a black protagonist. She lost all interest.

An ex gf of mine played Oblivion always as a male character. I asked her why a male. She said it doesn't matter what the gender is, she's just playing a game and didn't want to get lost in customizing the character.

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Plenty of people with various agendas have a vested interest in making this a thing.

College students (or slower adults playing catch up thanks to their Facebook feed...) who feel the need to express to the world how enlightened they are will jump on any social issue they can latch on and blow it out of proportion.

Game journalists know covering anything controversial will bring traffic their way. Also, many game journalists are failed writers and are into the video game business because they want to write rather than because they like video games. Discussing "serious" issues is much more appealing to them than delving into game mechanics or evaluating technical aspects; they don't understand either of these things, but it's much easier to fake knowledge about something much more subjective (like social issues), especially when your audience is as ignorant about it as you are.

Game developers, especially indies, need to stand out in an increasingly overcrowded market. Some of those who can't make genuinely good games will choose to pretend their game has a message. Merely mentioning your game is related to bullying, sexism, racism will get you featured on numerous press websites, no matter the actual content.

In short, there is no reason to lend the slightest credibility to the argument every game has to offer diversity in player character representation. It's driven by crass commercialism, in an echo chamber for egomaniacs.

The "diversity" they ask for only goes so far as the people they're close to; i.e. you won't ever see the Anglosaxon media clamoring for more representation of foreigner heroes, even when applicable. Far Cry 4 is set in Tibet but the hero is American? Not a problem. Far Cry 4 doesn't allow you to play as a woman? BRING THE PITCHFORKS!

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esselfortium said:

Conversely, why do females/gays/non-whites have to not be in video games? [/url]


It's not that them being in games is bad, it's when SJW's think they are entitled to seeing them there, and that they have been deprived of some kind of right when they don't get it. If some game doesn't have a playable female and it upsets a person, then that person can simply choose not to play the game. The logical fallacy that these people use is the same logical fallacy that a lot of left-leaning people use in general whenever they want something. "We want this, so if we don't get it then it is being stolen from us!".

jmickle66666666 said:

Why did hardcore_gamer feel the need to express his shitty opinion?


Oh my, how could I ever give a resposne to such a well thought out counter-argument.

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Nope, the face on the bottom of the screen says otherwise ;)


Maybe she's just a burly woman. She doesn't have to conform to your gender stereotypes. She's beautiful no matter what. #Doomgirl2014

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Phml said:

The "diversity" they ask for only goes so far as the people they're close to; i.e. you won't ever see the Anglosaxon media clamoring for more representation of foreigner heroes, even when applicable. Far Cry 4 is set in Tibet but the hero is American? Not a problem. Far Cry 4 doesn't allow you to play as a woman? BRING THE PITCHFORKS!


Yeah maybe its my white man-ness that makes me say I don't see a problem with the character being a man. Heck it can even be a black man, and I wouldn't care. You never see your character anyway. Why is it an issue? I can see it being an issue if a white guy goes to Africa to see a bunch of black people. That might feel odd. But again if its a FPS does it even matter when you don't see the character.

People are still angry at the Uplay always on DRM. Why didn't they throw a fit that you can't be a woman with Watch Dogs? What? That's an open world game. Perfect for being a female.

I'm surprised UBIsoft is so anti gay considering they're in France which has legalized gay marriage.

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hardcore_gamer said:

Oh my, how could I ever give a resposne to such a well thought out counter-argument.

i don't need to give a "well thought out counter-argument" when your opinion is literally worthless on this matter

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Yeah maybe its my white man-ness that makes me say I don't see a problem with the character being a man. Heck it can even be a black man, and I wouldn't care.


I hear you. Heck, the other day after reading yet another argument amongst the lines of what hardcore_gamer is talking about, I was idly wondering whether the character's hands are different in L4D (seeing as you can play as white guy, white girl, black man and black woman). I have a *thousand* hours logged on the two games, and I honestly couldn't tell. I eventually deduced they must be, otherwise it'd be too weird and people would be making a fuss, but I couldn't actually recall the hands were different.

You'd think the first step against racism and sexism would be to look past gender and skin color in a person. Yet I bet somewhere, somehow, someone could spin my lack of attention to such things as me being a bigot (because I "don't care" about these "important issues").

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"It shouldn't matter what you play as, therefor you will play as a straight white male; i.e. the default setting of humanity".

Phml said:

The "diversity" they ask for only goes so far as the people they're close to; i.e. you won't ever see the Anglosaxon media clamoring for more representation of foreigner heroes, even when applicable. Far Cry 4 is set in Tibet but the hero is American? Not a problem. Far Cry 4 doesn't allow you to play as a woman? BRING THE PITCHFORKS!

I'm actually going to give Far Cry 4 credit here as the PC is at least *from* the region but grew up in the US.

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I remember in the Morrowind days someone had an issue with the Khajit and Argonians seen as lesser races and having prejudice against them. Now playing Skyrim I see that Khajit aren't even allowed in towns unless they're your follower, your slave. Hilarious.

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That's my point, Captain Red. Why did he have to grow in the US? Why couldn't he be a Tibet guy born and raised? Isn't this once again the usual theme of big bad American hero coming to save the defenseless world?

Those are concerns I don't particularly share (mostly because I don't give a fuck, but besides I feel having a specific nationality can be important to the story in a plot-driven game, much like being of a specific gender) but that I've seen expressed in French and Spanish media. English-speaking journalists? Not a peep. If there's anything, it's drown in the "OMG why no woman" noise.

Edit: ahh, fair enough.

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jmickle66666666 said:

i don't need to give a "well thought out counter-argument" when your opinion is literally worthless on this matter


The typical liberal response.

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Captain Red said:

"It shouldn't matter what you play as, therefor you will play as a straight white male; i.e. the default setting of humanity".


Some would call that vanilla.

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Phml said:

You'd think the first step against racism and sexism would be to look past gender and skin color in a person.

i disagree, just replacing your straight white male character with one who isn't is not gonna fix the problem. if anything, it's trivializing it (also v bad).

The straight white male american's story has been told so many times that it's perceived as a "default" story for any protagonist, when in fact usually a lot of the stuff that happens is incredibly improbable for literally any other kind of person.

These are often incredibly good situations to explore in terms of narrative, gameplay and plenty of other areas of making games. Games have inherent incredibly good abilities to tell these stories in ways that haven't been done before, since the immersive possibilities are far greater than any media/artform that's come before.

Games like Lim and Depression Quest and dys4ia use game mechanics to convey experiences that a lot of people wouldn't easily be able to understand normally. It is very difficult to find any writing or film that manages to do this in such a powerful way.

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Agree 100% with hardcore_gamer, it's completely retarded to accuse people of being racist for not putting black characters in their games. Why does this even need to be said lol?

btw is it still racist if there are blacks in the developer team?

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Phml said:

That's my point, Captain Red. Why did he have to grow in the US? Why couldn't he be a Tibet guy born and raised? Isn't this once again the usual theme of big bad American hero coming to save the defenseless world?

I'm applauding the baby steps it's taken from Far Cry 3 which lacked the 'born there' part.

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