Diversity in stories as opposed to protagonists

[white_wolf]

I'll explain. If you make a war shooter set in the US military, it makes sense to make a male, often white, lead. Changing the character to female makes little sense, and doesn't fit. It's possible, but it creates a certain dissonance in the audience (It should be noted that it can be used for dramatic effect, as in the case of the original Metroid.) While the player might not reason out the why they feel that disconnection, it's that deliberate change that sticks out. I think it's this hang up that people often times mistake for misogyny, homophobia, or racism.

This again?

If I am to understand you correctly, I can play as an Orc, a Wizard, a Space Marine, an Anthropomorphic Fox, a Dinosaur, a Cyborg, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, and I'll be perfectly fine, but the moment I see, say, a female in the fucking US military the cognitive dissonance is supposed to be so overwhelming that I just won't be able to handle it? What the fuck is that woman doing? How is this even possible? I need to go lie down!

I agree with you no one should flip their lid once you see or play as a fem solider especially in the latest COD with jet packs and mech suits somehow a woman can't do that? The problem is when women play the game they're already women in the game using a male avatar so the game doesn't explode due to their presence yet since they're already a woman signing up for your game world they may not be thrilled about using the male hero as silent Mcscruff5000 so they'd like to play as silent Jane first on the field instead it auto helps their immersion in the plot in the same way guys get auto immersed by seeing male hands, being called sir, and hearing male sound effects its not tons in a FPS but its proven to help both sexes have proven in tests to prefer hearing their own gender and seeing bits of their FP avatar with gender hands like medium for women large for men it all goes into aiding the player immersion right now that immersion is only fully felt some. A select option isn't going to break the game and for those wanting Mcscruff hit the male option doesn't stop your immersion.

At this point players, publishers, and developers are conditioned to think women don't fit nearly every role imaginable because they've seen it so much in media, movies, other games they don't Google things and therefor think its normal just like everyone thinks its normal to have 30% of women in a crowd anymore then that and the movie will burn up! For instance in L.A Noire you should've been able to be a fem cop! Shocker the LAPD by 1937 had 39 of them! As officers that could arrest and investigate, and 5 women were also hired to previous all male expert aerial officer units in the same year. He doesn't even work with any women cops as a consolation. What I'm saying is most audiences need to be shown something is possible before they will believe it and sometimes thats doing it repeatedly , see the whole starbuck controversy now everyone can't imagine starbuck as a man!

 

[Rolaoi]

I'll explain. If you make a war shooter set in the US military, it makes sense to make a male, often white, lead. Changing the character to female makes little sense, and doesn't fit. It's possible, but it creates a certain dissonance in the audience (It should be noted that it can be used for dramatic effect, as in the case of the original Metroid.) While the player might not reason out the why they feel that disconnection, it's that deliberate change that sticks out. I think it's this hang up that people often times mistake for misogyny, homophobia, or racism.

This again?

If I am to understand you correctly, I can play as an Orc, a Wizard, a Space Marine, an Anthropomorphic Fox, a Dinosaur, a Cyborg, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, and I'll be perfectly fine, but the moment I see, say, a female in the fucking US military the cognitive dissonance is supposed to be so overwhelming that I just won't be able to handle it? What the fuck is that woman doing? How is this even possible? I need to go lie down!

I already explained that further down with setting and story. Yes, you can be all sorts of fantastical things in video games, but, even when you choose to be fantastical, you need to address your audience's expectations. Without internal consistency, the game's narrative falls apart. Inserting any element, no matter how minute, that drags on the player's mind is enough to break immersion. It's bad story telling.

There's room for female soldiers when you establish that it's not the real world or a distant world that's like our own, but, until it becomes normal for women to be front-line soldiers, you're compromising the game's integrity to make a statement. Putting your own believes and opinions above the game you're making for someone else is the worst thing you can do professionally.

If we're doing the standard Call of Duty "realistic" shooter where you're sending troops to various hot-spots to do X, Y, or Z in a modern or historical setting where no such women existed in said role, then yes.

But it's amazingly easy to go off-script, even in the real world. Such as there were no black soldiers integrated in with the white soldiers during WWII, but that didn't stop a black naval cook from manning a gun at Pearl Harbor and shooting down Japanese planes. It would be dead-simple to come up with a scenario where a female soldier finds herself being an active participant following an enemy attack because she just simply happened to be there when it went down and was trained to deal with it. If a rag-tag team of defenders is put together to go up against a much bigger force, it's highly unlikely that someone will demand the girl sit this one out because she doesn't fit the military narrative.

Now if your purpose is to just pin your eyes back and have some fun, then the rules can go out the window. Doctor Who has been abusing this kind of thing for decades, as no one wants the past to be as depressingly racist or sexist as it probably was (although history is surprisingly cosmopolitan if you poke around with female pirates, black law men in the Old West, the Soviets had female fighter pilots in biplanes, maybe even a black English Queen... played by Helen Mirran in the movie, natch). If you wanted to do some over-the-top WWII shooter based on the heist movie Kelly's Heroes with a black general voiced by Sam Jackson and a hot-shot female sniper, you could probably get away with it because a wacky heist game set in the middle of WWII operates under a very different set of rules than a realistic one... the movie featured a hippy tank commander played by Donald Sutherland.

At most, I'd say I wouldn't expect to see various elements in a realistic war shooter and no one (apart from the Spike Lees of the world) will be upset if you stick pretty close to that. But there are plenty of ways for someone to go beyond that if they so choose.

Those examples are what I mean about including more diverse stories and settings, so I can agree with them. When I said modern military shooter, I was alluding specifically to those type in the vein of Call of Duty and Battlefield. They're meant to be farces, but ones with pretenses of realism. It's that pretense which is so binding. I guess I used a poor example because everyone seems to jump on the example and ignore the point.

 

[Netrigan]

I'll explain. If you make a war shooter set in the US military, it makes sense to make a male, often white, lead. Changing the character to female makes little sense, and doesn't fit. It's possible, but it creates a certain dissonance in the audience (It should be noted that it can be used for dramatic effect, as in the case of the original Metroid.) While the player might not reason out the why they feel that disconnection, it's that deliberate change that sticks out. I think it's this hang up that people often times mistake for misogyny, homophobia, or racism.

This again?

If I am to understand you correctly, I can play as an Orc, a Wizard, a Space Marine, an Anthropomorphic Fox, a Dinosaur, a Cyborg, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, and I'll be perfectly fine, but the moment I see, say, a female in the fucking US military the cognitive dissonance is supposed to be so overwhelming that I just won't be able to handle it? What the fuck is that woman doing? How is this even possible? I need to go lie down!

I already explained that further down with setting and story. Yes, you can be all sorts of fantastical things in video games, but, even when you choose to be fantastical, you need to address your audience's expectations. Without internal consistency, the game's narrative falls apart. Inserting any element, no matter how minute, that drags on the player's mind is enough to break immersion. It's bad story telling.

There's room for female soldiers when you establish that it's not the real world or a distant world that's like our own, but, until it becomes normal for women to be front-line soldiers, you're compromising the game's integrity to make a statement. Putting your own believes and opinions above the game you're making for someone else is the worst thing you can do professionally.

If we're doing the standard Call of Duty "realistic" shooter where you're sending troops to various hot-spots to do X, Y, or Z in a modern or historical setting where no such women existed in said role, then yes.

But it's amazingly easy to go off-script, even in the real world. Such as there were no black soldiers integrated in with the white soldiers during WWII, but that didn't stop a black naval cook from manning a gun at Pearl Harbor and shooting down Japanese planes. It would be dead-simple to come up with a scenario where a female soldier finds herself being an active participant following an enemy attack because she just simply happened to be there when it went down and was trained to deal with it. If a rag-tag team of defenders is put together to go up against a much bigger force, it's highly unlikely that someone will demand the girl sit this one out because she doesn't fit the military narrative.

Now if your purpose is to just pin your eyes back and have some fun, then the rules can go out the window. Doctor Who has been abusing this kind of thing for decades, as no one wants the past to be as depressingly racist or sexist as it probably was (although history is surprisingly cosmopolitan if you poke around with female pirates, black law men in the Old West, the Soviets had female fighter pilots in biplanes, maybe even a black English Queen... played by Helen Mirran in the movie, natch). If you wanted to do some over-the-top WWII shooter based on the heist movie Kelly's Heroes with a black general voiced by Sam Jackson and a hot-shot female sniper, you could probably get away with it because a wacky heist game set in the middle of WWII operates under a very different set of rules than a realistic one... the movie featured a hippy tank commander played by Donald Sutherland.

At most, I'd say I wouldn't expect to see various elements in a realistic war shooter and no one (apart from the Spike Lees of the world) will be upset if you stick pretty close to that. But there are plenty of ways for someone to go beyond that if they so choose.

Those examples are what I mean about including more diverse stories and settings, so I can agree with them. When I said modern military shooter, I was alluding specifically to those type in the vein of Call of Duty and Battlefield. They're meant to be farces, but ones with pretenses of realism. It's that pretense which is so binding. I guess I used a poor example because everyone seems to jump on the example and ignore the point.

Perhaps.

I try to ignore what people say and pontificate, so I'm not the person to ask

Really, going back to the earliest Sarkeesian conversations I jumped into, the problem I see with video game writing isn't the sexism, it's the laziness. They'll keep going for the same low-hanging fruit over and over again, regardless of what sex, gender, or sexuality the lead is. They're getting better, so it's not a dismal situation; but there's so many wonderful facets to history that are ignored in favor of the most obvious story.

Back in the day, that's why Call of Duty was so awesome. The Russian levels were just so hardcore and for most of us was unlike anything we had ever experienced in the media. The idea of doing a game featuring crazy female pilots in bi-planes turning off their engines (and hoping they started back up) to bomb German troops seems like the sort of things I'd want to experience in a game instead of the umpteenth storming of the beaches at Normandy.

 

[Westaway]

They added women into COD Ghosts and the world didn't end, what's the big deal? Furthermore, couldn't you make the argument that the US Military is trying to get more recruits from all walks of life, to the point of opening the United States Marine Corps to women, so therefore to get the usual "expert knowledge" from the US military they would want to paint the current or future US Soldiers/Marines as being able to be women as well as men? Just a thought, as things have changed considerably even in the last decade or so.

Because women serve in the military and are often in combat situations but very, very rarely are they ever sent to the front lines or purposefully sent into combat zones.

 

[Rolaoi]

Perhaps.

I try to ignore what people say and pontificate, so I'm not the person to ask

Really, going back to the earliest Sarkeesian conversations I jumped into, the problem I see with video game writing isn't the sexism, it's the laziness. They'll keep going for the same low-hanging fruit over and over again, regardless of what sex, gender, or sexuality the lead is. They're getting better, so it's not a dismal situation; but there's so many wonderful facets to history that are ignored in favor of the most obvious story.

Back in the day, that's why Call of Duty was so awesome. The Russian levels were just so hardcore and for most of us was unlike anything we had ever experienced in the media. The idea of doing a game featuring crazy female pilots in bi-planes turning off their engines (and hoping they started back up) to bomb German troops seems like the sort of things I'd want to experience in a game instead of the umpteenth storming of the beaches at Normandy.

The low hanging fruit argument is something I can agree with. It's too easy to make the same games over and over again to the point we don't even considering other options. Like what Trollhoffer said earlier about the mechanics themselves working against women. He brought up points I had never thought of, and it's likely neither have many developers.

I would be one of the first in line to buy that pilot game. I agree with the Russian levels of CoD1, the first Russian level is one of my favorite in any game, and you didn't even fire a single bullet. Just the feeling of being a disposable peasant thrown at German machine gun nests until they overheated was intense and a huge disconnection from the heroics we were used to in Normandy landings.

Personally, I would like to see a shooter set during the Chinese Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists. Lots of morally grey areas to mess around in, and plenty of room for a female protagonist as well.

 

[Burgers2013]

Like many others, I don't think that it's preposterous to see a female in active combat. The ban is lifted now, and even before that, due to guerrilla warfare, they were often in firefights anyway. I think it's silly to say that it would be too off-putting for immersion reasons. I think it's off-putting for completely different reasons. I have some guy friends that would complain loudly while playing Left 4 Dead if they ended up playing as "the *****." She was somehow worse than the others even though all of them had exactly the same traits. I traded controllers with them. So, while I think the notion that playing as a female is unrealistic is totally incorrect, I also realize that there are many casual/CoD types that just don't like playing as women. They just don't.

Other than that sticking point, the OP is right. A video game is a really interesting medium in that there are many tools the creator(s) can use to tell a story. Yet somehow, much of the time, these stories are just awful and uninspired. I think many large developers haven't figured out how to combine the many tools like mechanics, level/environment design, visual/audio design, dialogue, degree of narrative control, the written word, and more to tell a great story.

One of the benefits of being a smaller/indie developer is that you can take one or two of these things and really focus on those to tell your story (e.g. Thomas Was Alone). Larger developers are expected to leverage all of it, and in sometimes in restrictive ways (e.g. visual design: many times the game has to look realistic with great textures, high resolution, and high fps). This difficulty combined with the huge cost of AAA development and investors' aversion to risk really contributes to our less-than-stellar releases. I think the movie industry has similar struggles, but from a layman's perspective, the problem seems more exacerbated in the video games industry.

I will say that working on the above issues doesn't mean we shouldn't also be inclusive with our protagonists. It's simply another tool, albeit a very important one. How can we expect to tell good stories about diverse characters without putting diverse characters in the game to begin with? I think it's an important step to be inclusive, but not the only step to be taken.

 

[Rolaoi]

You believe that more diverse stories will lead to more diverse characters, but really, wouldn't it be easier to start the other way around? It's cheaper and quicker to stick boobs or a darker skintone on a character just to give everyone their own avatar (for now as a temporary bandaid) than rebuild the gaming industries hesitation and general disinterest in writers. Developers (ESPECIALLY AAA ones) are still essentially learning how to integrate story into the medium (still), it's something that they're going to have to learn at their own pace

why o why do we have to stop and oppose diverse protagonists to fix unrelated story issues? we can't tackle two things at once?

It's one way to go, but I don't feel it's the best way to go. You're still left with Not-England Fantasy RPG's, military shooters in the Middle East, and all the other stories carrying the same tropes. I would like to see that changed, personally. There are a lot of stories to be told which can't be if we just stick with the same tools.

and you're going to need diverse protagonists to tell those stories

That's exactly what I said in my post.