Should Diversity be an Obligation in Game Design?

[hermes]

Obligation? No. Nothing should be "an obligation".
If games like "Johann Sebastian Joust" and "In the Pit" exist, then graphics are not an obligation either. So, a particular political stand is far less obligated.
The case of AC was mostly poor PR. The argument they made was entirely reasonable, but the way it was expressed make it sound like they were trolling the community.

 

[deathbydeath]

Creators are obligated to create what they deem the best product they make. Consumers and the media are obligated to offer the best criticism they can in order to help the creators better carry out that task. Any specific trends or directions this process takes are irrelevant.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

"Obliged" is kind of a big word.

Developers and publishers are not obliged to do anything of the sort. They are free to make the straightest, whitest, dudest games they can. And they do. Frequently.

Thing is, the audience, or a portion of the audience, isn't obliged to stop making criticisms, complaints or requests to the contrary. Even demands, although I personally think that's a bit rude.

(For the record, I also think the AC:U playable female thing was a bit silly and certainly misdirected.)

Perhaps this is just wishful thinking and biased observation on my part, but it feels like the message is getting through, however slowly.

Another thing to keep in mind is how much of a minefield "diversity" is. Even if you include women and minorities, the people who demanded them in the first place invariably find something wrong with them. Don't include them, and we're back to square one.

As for why so many main character's are white guys, well, no one cares about them. A white guy is allowed to be a lecherous alcoholic (a women can't cuz teh sexist), a disturbed soldier (a woman can't, or else you're portraying women as crazy), or any number of things. A white guy who has negative traits is just a white guy with negative traits. A woman or a minority with negative traits suddenly becomes representative of ALL women or ALL minorities. What kills me is that sheer irony. The people who demand diversity are the one thing standing in it's way.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I personally am not of the opinion that diversity should be an obligation. It should be an artistic choice. A good example to bring up is a game set in a historical period, where gender equality was not the norm. Say for instance, the middle ages, in for example, France. As we know, males were the dominant gender then, dominating warfare, politics, religion (save for a little woman named Joan of Arc), and the racial make up of this France would be overwhelmingly white. Sexual preference would be mainly heterosexual. Therefore, if you decide to set your game about Knights and Kings there, you shouldn't have the obligation to include a playable black character, or a female character, or a gay character. As an artistic decision this is justified, but also it's fair enough that your audience may be limited because of this decision of game design you've chosen to make.

You don't always have to play the dominate group.

 

[Danny Dowling]

"Should diversity be an obligation in game design?"
no.

It takes away from creative freedom, and the freedom the team has to make what they want.

Currently i'm writing a novel, if someone read it and was like "but it's not very diverse" I'd be like "yeah, but this is the idea for a story/world that I had, sorry but I'm not shoe horning it in to please everyone."

And I think that's the bottom line; if you expect the diversity then it becomes shoe horned in. Which is worse.

 

[happyninja42]

No I don't think they are obligated to make a game diverse. Ubisoft, and companies like them, are perfectly within their rights to keep making games with nothing but a grizzled, 30+, white male cast of protagonists. But I, as the consumer, also have the right to not bother buying their stuff anymore if I so choose (which I have, but not simply because of their all white cast issue).

I personally think it's a financially smart idea to try and be as diverse as you can, not to help with social justice issues or anything, but simply from the standpoint of a business. If you make a product that is designed to appeal to a larger market of potential customers, you're likely going to sell more of it, instead of making it exclusive. I've said this in another similar thread, but businesses operate in percentages, and those numbers can have significant impact on the large scale. So having a demographic of potential customers that isn't being targeted is just missed revenue in my opinion. I don't know what the actual percentage of female gamers is, as the numbers seem to bounce all over the place depending on the study, but whatever that number is, it's a significant source of revenue that could be marketed, as well as the LGBT market. With a population of roughly 7 billion, even 1% is several million people, and at $60 a pop for your game, that's a ton of possible income that's not being targeted.

So, yeah, they're not under any obligation to make diverse business decisions when they are making their games, but I think it would be smart of them to do so.

 

[endtherapture]

I personally am not of the opinion that diversity should be an obligation. It should be an artistic choice. A good example to bring up is a game set in a historical period, where gender equality was not the norm. Say for instance, the middle ages, in for example, France. As we know, males were the dominant gender then, dominating warfare, politics, religion (save for a little woman named Joan of Arc), and the racial make up of this France would be overwhelmingly white. Sexual preference would be mainly heterosexual. Therefore, if you decide to set your game about Knights and Kings there, you shouldn't have the obligation to include a playable black character, or a female character, or a gay character. As an artistic decision this is justified, but also it's fair enough that your audience may be limited because of this decision of game design you've chosen to make.

You don't always have to play the dominate group.

Well no, but if they wanted to make a game about playing a knight getting involved in the politics of medieval France, it's stupid to be able to chose to play as a woman.

Basically people should make what games they want to make.

 

[Dizchu]

I'd just like to address your pop music point. I'm personally more a fan of punk and indie music, however I do listen to a lot of pop music (Taylor Swift mainly). Her last album was something that is made to appeal to the mass market but also has a lot of really deep and artistic content showcasing some emotional vulnerability. A lot of pop music is definitely constructed for the mass market but doesn't mean it's automatically worthless.

Certainly! While pop music isn't my "preferred" genre, there have been albums by people like Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake and songs by a whole bunch of recent pop artists that I have loved. As you said, making something that appeals to a mass market doesn't necessarily make it bad or insincere. Just like having a video game with all the "stereotypical" elements like straight white mandudes blowing stuff up doesn't necessarily make it a bad game.

Fortunately, the way to fix it is simple, if not easy. We need to convince those committees that diversity is desirable. That games aren't going to fail just because the protagonist isn't a straight white dude. If we can just get that idea into their heads, no external compulsion will be necessary; they'll ensure diversity(or at least stop actively avoiding it).

You raise some excellent points. However, I think the issue is that many people purchase games for their gameplay rather than the settings, characters or plots that the games revolve around.[footnote]I've argued (in a lengthy dissertation) that there's a narrative element to every single game (even something like Space Invaders), however I'm talking about traditional written plots here[/footnote] That's why games with absolutely appalling stories manage not only to sell well but get critical acclaim, because if the game is enjoyable to play and has great design, you can't really rag on it too much because it pretty much achieves what it sets out to do. It's something quite unique to video games. If a film has great special effects and cinematography but a completely terrible script, it's considered a bad film. If a game has good gameplay, graphics, audio, design but also has the cheesiest voice acting and storytelling imagineable, the former elements will usually overshadow the latter (the latter might even end up being endearing).

I think this is what causes the problem. "Why fix what isn't broken?" is what publishers think. And in a way, they're right. Because we still buy these games despite their homogeneous characters and settings. If someone had the choice between a game with great writing but poor execution or a game with terrible writing and amazing gameplay, chances are they'd go for the latter.

It's a very unique situation, to say the least.

 

[The Lunatic]

Nope!

People should make the games and tell the stories they desire.

If that story dares to be one of a "Cis white male" then, that's absolutely fine with me.

If they desire to tell stories of other characters, then that's absolutely fine with me.

I think if you look at the game industry as a cross section, and consider all the games that are out there, made by all the different people in the world, there's plenty of diversity for everyone.

Demanding that things be forced into popular games just because they're popular games is just ridiculous though.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I personally am not of the opinion that diversity should be an obligation. It should be an artistic choice. A good example to bring up is a game set in a historical period, where gender equality was not the norm. Say for instance, the middle ages, in for example, France. As we know, males were the dominant gender then, dominating warfare, politics, religion (save for a little woman named Joan of Arc), and the racial make up of this France would be overwhelmingly white. Sexual preference would be mainly heterosexual. Therefore, if you decide to set your game about Knights and Kings there, you shouldn't have the obligation to include a playable black character, or a female character, or a gay character. As an artistic decision this is justified, but also it's fair enough that your audience may be limited because of this decision of game design you've chosen to make.

You don't always have to play the dominate group.

Well no, but if they wanted to make a game about playing a knight getting involved in the politics of medieval France, it's stupid to be able to chose to play as a woman.

Basically people should make what games they want to make.

What if they wanted to make a game about being a knight getting involved in politics well being a woman in medieval France. (You could drop the knight part if you really wanted. I think the politics would be the interesting part.) That isn't even a uncommon trope when you think about it.

 

[endtherapture]

I'd just like to address your pop music point. I'm personally more a fan of punk and indie music, however I do listen to a lot of pop music (Taylor Swift mainly). Her last album was something that is made to appeal to the mass market but also has a lot of really deep and artistic content showcasing some emotional vulnerability. A lot of pop music is definitely constructed for the mass market but doesn't mean it's automatically worthless.

Certainly! While pop music isn't my "preferred" genre, there have been albums by people like Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake and songs by a whole bunch of recent pop artists that I have loved. As you said, making something that appeals to a mass market doesn't necessarily make it bad or insincere. Just like having a video game with all the "stereotypical" elements like straight white mandudes blowing stuff up doesn't necessarily make it a bad game.

I definitely think we could do with less straight white mandudes in games, but for CoD that sells. I see no reason for Activision to change the CoD formula, because most people in the military on the front lines are straight white mandudes and they sell the game to straight white teenage boys.

For games like Far Cry, then that could easily be changed to playing a different type of character, with a more ethnic origin, or even a woman. I remember Far Cry 2 you could play as a range of characters from different backgrounds.

It really all depends on the type of story they want to tell. The Last Of Us works very well with the surrogate father-daughter relationship it explores, and it's protagonist is a straight white mandude.

I personally am not of the opinion that diversity should be an obligation. It should be an artistic choice. A good example to bring up is a game set in a historical period, where gender equality was not the norm. Say for instance, the middle ages, in for example, France. As we know, males were the dominant gender then, dominating warfare, politics, religion (save for a little woman named Joan of Arc), and the racial make up of this France would be overwhelmingly white. Sexual preference would be mainly heterosexual. Therefore, if you decide to set your game about Knights and Kings there, you shouldn't have the obligation to include a playable black character, or a female character, or a gay character. As an artistic decision this is justified, but also it's fair enough that your audience may be limited because of this decision of game design you've chosen to make.

You don't always have to play the dominate group.

Well no, but if they wanted to make a game about playing a knight getting involved in the politics of medieval France, it's stupid to be able to chose to play as a woman.

Basically people should make what games they want to make.

What if they wanted to make a game about being a knight getting involved in politics well being a woman in medieval France. (You could drop the knight part if you really wanted. I think the politics would be the interesting part.) That isn't even a uncommon trope when you think about it.

Well that's also cool. Are we just pitching game ideas now? Basically diversity doesn't have to be in every game and you shouldn't judge a game as inferior because it isn't diverse.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Another thing to keep in mind is how much of a minefield "diversity" is. Even if you include women and minorities, the people who demanded them in the first place invariably find something wrong with them. Don't include them, and we're back to square one.

As for why so many main character's are white guys, well, no one cares about them. A white guy is allowed to be a lecherous alcoholic (a women can't cuz teh sexist), a disturbed soldier (a woman can't, or else you're portraying women as crazy), or any number of things. A white guy who has negative traits is just a white guy with negative traits. A woman or a minority with negative traits suddenly becomes representative of ALL women or ALL minorities. What kills me is that sheer irony. The people who demand diversity are the one thing standing in it's way.

I think you bring up a good point.

I think a big reason why game developers actually avoid utilizing more minority groups is fear that they're going to "do it wrong". Have a pissed off, rage-filled black guy? It's the "angry black man" stereotype. Asian guy who knows martial arts? Stereotype. Dumb blonde woman? Stereotype.

Think of it this way: you know how the main character is named "Monkey" in "Enslaved: Odyssey to the West"? It's obviously because he's a stand-in for The Monkey King from the original tale, but just imagine how much people would have freaked out if they had made him black. When you have white guy characters, you basically never have to worry about anyone getting angry because they conform to stereotypes or have "racially insensitive" characteristics.

 

[CaitSeith]

For my part I think games have the same obligation of having diversity as in having online multiplayer (in other words, none. It's the developer's choice).

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I personally am not of the opinion that diversity should be an obligation. It should be an artistic choice. A good example to bring up is a game set in a historical period, where gender equality was not the norm. Say for instance, the middle ages, in for example, France. As we know, males were the dominant gender then, dominating warfare, politics, religion (save for a little woman named Joan of Arc), and the racial make up of this France would be overwhelmingly white. Sexual preference would be mainly heterosexual. Therefore, if you decide to set your game about Knights and Kings there, you shouldn't have the obligation to include a playable black character, or a female character, or a gay character. As an artistic decision this is justified, but also it's fair enough that your audience may be limited because of this decision of game design you've chosen to make.

You don't always have to play the dominate group.

Well no, but if they wanted to make a game about playing a knight getting involved in the politics of medieval France, it's stupid to be able to chose to play as a woman.

Basically people should make what games they want to make.

What if they wanted to make a game about being a knight getting involved in politics well being a woman in medieval France. (You could drop the knight part if you really wanted. I think the politics would be the interesting part.) That isn't even a uncommon trope when you think about it.

Well that's also cool. Are we just pitching game ideas now? Basically diversity doesn't have to be in every game and you shouldn't judge a game as inferior because it isn't diverse.

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

NOTHING!!!!!! should be an "obligation" in game design. Nothing. Seriously use some common sense people idgaf what your opinion on social justice or ethics in journalism is there is no such thing as a good requirement for ALL game design. seriously name ONE thing that all games need to have and I can name at least one great game that doesn't include it. it's ok to want it in all game design. but seriously how do you define diversity in a game with fantasy races, or no humans at all, portal has 1 human character and it's a white person, that's hardly diversity but it aint exactly racist is it? Borderlands, great game, very diverse, outside of roland and motorcycle momma in the dlc how many black people? I mean i'm just looking down my list of steam games but do it yourself and see if there is one thing that all of them have in common outside of being a video game.

 

[Erttheking]

No one should ever be forced to do anything.

At the same time no one should be prevented from voicing their frustration in a lack of variety.

We can't black and white this.

 

[Phasmal]

"Obliged" is kind of a big word.

Developers and publishers are not obliged to do anything of the sort. They are free to make the straightest, whitest, dudest games they can. And they do. Frequently.

Thing is, the audience, or a portion of the audience, isn't obliged to stop making criticisms, complaints or requests to the contrary. Even demands, although I personally think that's a bit rude.

(For the record, I also think the AC:U playable female thing was a bit silly and certainly misdirected.)

Perhaps this is just wishful thinking and biased observation on my part, but it feels like the message is getting through, however slowly.

Yes, this.

They're not obliged to do anything, we're not obliged to stop asking for it.

The AC:U thing was dumb, and I think there was someone at Ubi who had their foot seriously in their mouth, but at the same time, I was called racist on this very forum for not being able to tell apart four white dudes who turned out to be the same person. Yeah, that's a thing that happened.
So I think it might be telling that we're so used to the same thing in games you can honestly present a bunch of clones and we'll argue that they're totes diverse can't u see bro?

I wish everyone would stop freaking out about it.
There's no sense throwing hissy fits just because something comes out that's `pandering` to a group other than the one that gets pandered to all the time.

 

[endtherapture]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

We could just pitch different game ideas. I do kind of think you can judge a game when it doesn't take a risk or do anything new. Begin diverse or taking a rarely see perspective helps improve a game in my eyes. You know because it's something new and not often seen.

I think it depends what it does with the diversity. If there's a black warrior in medieval France, it better have something interesting to say about his presence there - such as him being a soldier of fortune or a mercenary. If it's just him being a normal knight with nothing interesting to say about his race then it sucks.

There is a little bit of value in just the visual diversity, but ya you don't want it to be just skin deep. You want to explore what it means a little.

 

[JennAnge]

But devs and game designers (and TV series and movie directors and comic book creators) often don't have as much artistic license as they'd like, outside of the one-man-show indie scene. They've always had to cater to financial backers, their marketing department or, at the very least, their public. I remember reading an interview by the creator of Remember Me at the extra difficulties he helped himself to when he decided to make his character female (*). I imagine a few other devs would have liked to go that route, but found themselves persuaded to make their game a sausage fest to appeal to the broadest demographic for their product, and didn't have the strengh to fight it. So no, I don't think we should 'oblige' game designers or companies to do anything, assuming anyone even has the power to do so in a free market economy. I just wish we could remove the obligations some of them currently work under and let them take the risks they want to - while hoping the consumer market that ultimately pays them has matured enough to appreciate what they're doing. Some designers will crank out yet more Marcus Phoenix clones, others will go Spec Ops: The Line with their characters, or Far Cry 3; some will come out with LGBTQ characters because that's what reflects them, some will build female characters because - whether the designer is female or not - they want to tell a story that they think needs to be seen through a female optic, etc.

I'm hopeful that this is already starting. Remember Me DID get made, after all. Bioware's always been on the forefront; DA:I is a smorgasborg of diversity. And I saw a few whines of 'whaaaa, they're giving in to the SJWs, ticking off checkboxes, end of gaming as we know it, wahhhhh!' on some forums, which was irritating, particularly since most of those seemed to be knee-jerk responses with very little attempt to explain WHY they thought the characters were artificial or out of place. As far as I can tell playing the game, nobody forced anybody to do anything. These characters are FUN! They don't feel like they were churned out by committee with their fingers on the pulse of the latest trends. Most are well rounded and characterized and don't feel like a checkmark on a list. If that's what happens when you take off the blinders, if that's what's created when you let your creators go nuts, then I am all for it, and I will happily let AssCreed's assassins be four burly white dudes in exchange, assuming that's what the game designers actually wanted in the first place.

* (I couldn't find the original article I'd read about the subject, but a two-second google turned up this article, and others.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-19-why-publishers-refuse-games-such-as-remember-me-because-of-their-female-protagonists)