Too much diversity.

[Elfgore]

1. They are call Minorities for a reason. Even if there needs to be more use of them, white dudes/gals, will continue to outnumber minorities as stars of games simply because they are MINORITIES meaning there are fucking less of them. Technically you can use the Final Fantasy series as minorities I guess because the characters are usually based off Japanese influence or outright Japanese to begin with. (except the black guys, because minorities!) Your logic here says that basically every game should have a non-white/american dude as the games protag, this is a pipe dream.

2. Why would they or any player want to play a witcher game, but not get to be the most famous witcher in that universe? Not to mention you've been Geralt for the previous two games and how much sense would it make for him to not be in the third. And since I'm on it. Need I point out that you play as a female witcher/source/mage in Ciri?

3. A good writer will have a collection of good diverse characters, this much is true. But that doesn't mean writers should feel like they need to make the main character a minority, or gay or transgender (See not using a slur this time because reasons) for the sake of diversity? I'm not saying that they shouldn't consider it, but only if the rest of the story they are building around that character would fit to make the character have a trait like that.

In the case of games with diversity for the sake of it let me through out a question to you guys?

You know that game Hatred? Everyone is freaking the fuck out about it right? A game in which a gothic white guy mass murders the world.

Do you realize the kind of heat that game is getting right now is NOTHING compared to the shitstorm that would befall upon that studio if that character was Black?

The point being is sometimes you need to make your character a white dude. Think about it. Diversity only works if it fits in the game world you are building.

1. Please, show me where I exactly said "every game should have a non-white male as the protagonists" Or better yet, where I even hinted at that. I said we could use more non-white male protagonist, the word all never showed up.

2. Jesus Christ. In the event the entire Witcher series had you play as a female character, I would be perfectly fine with that and still find the series enjoyable. That was the point I was trying to make! I'm not asking for a sudden switch in character at the finale for the series.

3. You're right. I still agree that if writers truly don't want to that they shouldn't have to. My first post said "if it doesn't effect the writer's final vision". Onto the whole other bit, I agree for the most part as well. If a developer is creating an authentic as possible game in medieval times and marketed it as such. I'd expect them to make the protagonist a white male. But most games nowadays, having a woman/trans/gay/whatev, would not be too outlandish for their setting.

 

[CritialGaming]

3. You're right. I still agree that if writers truly don't want to that they shouldn't have to. My first post said "if it doesn't effect the writer's final vision". Onto the whole other bit, I agree for the most part as well. If a developer is creating an authentic as possible game in medieval times and marketed it as such. I'd expect them to make the protagonist a white male. But most games nowadays, having a woman/trans/gay/whatev, would not be too outlandish for their setting.

Your are correct here, having gay/trans/whatev characters would not be outlandish. But is it necessary? Look in a different diversity thread I put out the question that if you took a main character and simply made him gay, would it even fucking matter? Sexuality as a means for diversity is dumb because in most games it would change absolutely nothing. You could even assume in many characters cases that they are gay or trans or whatever.

For instance...Mario might be Gay. Think about it. Sure he goes and saves the Princess, but he never shags her. He typically gets a kiss on the nose and a big fucking cake (possibly with a naked dude in it). In Mario 64 the princess kisses him and he turns beat red. It is implied that he enjoyed the kiss, but perhap it might have simply embarrassed him because he doesn't like her like that. The question then becomes, why would Mario save her if not for love or some reason? The answer of course is simple because she's the princess and it is the right thing to do....plus Bowser is a fucking asshole.

A character's sexually has no purpose in the overall narrative of a game unless than game contains outright sex scenes. Which really cuts the game pool into little more than a handful of games, most notably Bioware games which with the recent Dragon Age game you can shag whoever and whatever you want. Hot girl? Sure shag away? Hot guy? Butt of course! Hunky dude demon? If that's your thing have fun!


So, sexual preference is becoming a moot point where Diversity in gaming is concerned. As stated above, unless the game contains sex, or romance, as far the the story is concerned, then sexual orientation does NOT fucking matter.

So let's go with gender....well you are either a dude or a chick. More and more games are either creating strong female characters, or giving the player the option to be either genders. Sometimes also an animal.

Frankly there are loads and loads of strong female characters in gaming so what this whole debate really becomes about is trying to increase the number of MAIN protagonists that are not white.

But is this really that big of a problem anymore? Think about this because really you have three skin color options realistically. White, brown, and black. That's it. Most ethic backgrounds are pretty much white, hate to be the barer of bad news.

I mean:

Scottish - White
Chinese - White
Japanese - White
Redneck - White
Canadian - White
Italian - White
German - White
Russian - White
British - White
Aussie - White

And on and on we go. So I can make my main character a burly dudette from any one of those countries and it will still be a burly white chick with a random accent.




What people need to do is really take a look at gaming and come up with a true definition of diversity. Frankly gaming contains one of, if not THE MOST diverse collection of characters in entertainment as a whole.

One last question for you all then.

What is it you fucking want? Because you already have diversity.

Here is my call for diversity. More body types. Give me more heroes with beer guts and man tits! I mean more than a single Duck Dynasty game, or Redneck Revenge. Give me a Tomb Raider game where Lara croft is in her forties and has had six kids and raids ancient sofas with different flavors of ice cream. Now that would be a game!

 

[CritialGaming]

double sorry

 

[asdfen]

The information you state here is just plain wrong.
1. Who says games lack "female/minority/LGBT"? Ever hear of Tomb Raider, The Longest Journey, Blood on Sand, Beyond: Two Souls, Final Fantasy 13-2, FF13-3, Mirrors Edge, Oni, GTA san adreas, Bayonetta, Giana Sister, Lolipop Chainsaw, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle Tactics and many others that just dont come to my mind atm. That is while the majority of developers and players are white dudes which imo shows well enough that bigotry if exist at all is minimal in the industry.

1. A lot of people... cause it does. The amount of white protagonist outnumber any other type. You just listed a couple dozen games out of thousands.

1.The fact that certain type of human protagonist may represnt the majority does not mean that in game protagonists as a a whole arent diverse. Games today already include protagonists from human male/human female/humans from all existing human racial backgrounds/representatives of many (not all, thank god) different sexual orientations/representatives of different faith real and imaginary/imaginary humanoid races/abstract aliens/inanimate objects/animals of many kinds/ fish/ reptiles/ insectoids/ robots/ cyborgs/ vampires, warewolves, skeltons, living dead, witches and other fairytale figures based on real humanoids and even GOD
I call that diversity.
I am not here to research on your behlaf protagonist from all games ever created I just named a few games out of games I have played and I doubt I have played more than thousand something games and most of them I cannot remember anymore. However just because you may be unaware of existance of non white male protagonist in games does not mean they do not exist.
The fact that white male protagonist outnumber all others does not mean that games as whole do not have diverse protagonists by the defenition.

diversity
: the quality or state of having many different forms, types, ideas, etc.
: the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

There's a vast difference between a game having a set player character and a game having a wide selection that you're not allowed to choose from.

People don't get angry when you can't play Tomb Raider as a male character, but I bet they'd get angry if there was a variety of potential characters and the game still didn't let you pick which one you wanted to play as.

Yep.

Personally, character creation is one of my favourite parts of games. If I know the tools are there to do it in a game... I'd really like to do it. Being assigned something like that feels like a missed opportunity, regardless of what the developers intentions are.

 

[Passive Aggression]

I'm black. And you know what I've never heard.

"Man, San Andres was a really good game, but, I just couldn't identify with CJ as a character. If only he were white".

I get it, there's the whole correctness thing where we want characters to be certain genders and races to build some weird spectrum or something.

But, the whole "Represent" thing is just a stupid concept to me.

Carl Johnson is black, I'm black, he doesn't represent me, I mean, for one, I'm not living in the ghetto, secondly, I haven't just flew in from Liberity City after my moms died. And thirdly, I've never been pulled over by a corrupted police officer voiced by Samuel L Jackson.

Likewise, I don't have a gun for an arm, nor a gun at all.

I'm not even an adventurer.

So, the idea that any character in a video game could "Represent" me is just dumb.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I never really understood the people who had trouble enjoying a game (usually it's an RPG) because they couldn't play as someone of their own race or gender. Escapism, to me, includes the privilege of seeing things from a different perspective than my own.

If I wanted to see what it'd feel like to be a financially precarious thirtysomething white cis and hetero male with mild cerebral palsy, I wouldn't have to go far - I'm exactly that. If, on the other hand, I want to play as a homosexual lizard archer with superhuman vision and aiming skills, I can. Nothing is forcing me to stay within my own boundaries. If I want to play as the Black female escapee of Vault 101, I can.

Diversity isn't an obligation, it's an option that I tend to consider as one of the basic features of modern RPGs. Folks who would rather live out a self-insert fantasy can, those who would rather steer as far away from themselves can do exactly that.

Outside of RPGs, diversity should be considered as a narrative opportunity instead of being one developer keeping you from your self-identifying White Cis Male power fantasy. If not being able to play as a close approximate to yourself hurts your immersion or your appreciation of the game, I'd say you have excessively high standards the industry is in no way obligated to cater to. These standards limit the narrative possibilities of the medium.

That's not to say that not being able to connect with a Black protagonist is necessarily a problem. If you can explain the source of your unease and can pin it on your disliking the character's attitude, that's fine. Nobody's forcing you to like everyone, or to feel connected to any and all fictional characters. If, on the other hand, your response verges on your personal identity being encroached on by SJWs or your Dudebro fantasies being violated, you've got a problem.

 

[Strazdas]

The game in the video is Rust. Rust allowed character creation, however after seeing that 95% of player made chracters were white they threw a hissy fit and randomized everyones races because outcome parity is more important than having a choice. For this reason i refuse to support anything these people make.

As far as playing other races, tough shit. Most gamers dont care, as studies show. It doesnt matter how your chracter looks, most people only see it as their eyes and ears in the game and still consider themselves playing it. Games dont need diversity, gamers do.

My only issue with it would be if it promised some sort of character customization but then took away your options.

Thats exactly what rust did. It had a character creator for probably a year when they decided to randomize everyone because "too many people CHOSE white characters".

The argument is very simple. Some people like to get immersed in their games. Some people find it more enjoyable and/or easier to get immersed when they have a character that, at least on some level, resembles who they are. More diverse options amongst more games increases the odds that any one of these people will find a game that fulfills their desirs. Overall, more people will be able to find games that appeal to them.

The argument is also false [http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/11313.28005.pdf]

let me quote you one sentence from the conclusion:

Games in which players might identify with their characters are the ones in which there has been less diversity.

Now, with Rust, it's kinda dumb as there's clearly the potential for character customisation, the developers is just too lazy to do it and instead has some dumb idea to distribute slight skin color changes in an unconvincing fashion.

Not lazy. They had character costumization. they removed it because people were choosing skin colours developers didnt like.

The thing is that idea doesn't really work, if it did then we would have a lot more female and black leads. Keep in mind the population of the US is roughly 50% female and 15% black. Yet we see an overwhelming amount of game characters just being some variation of white dude.

Well considering that amount of games with exclusive male characters are bellow 50%, i dont see a problem. in fact in most games you can choose your gender nowadays, which covers both bases. most games with character creator also lets you choose black characters, which is more than 15% of games. the reason you see white dudes is because you look for them. its called confirmation bias.

Third thought: If you have all kinds of options in your game why not let players choose what they want? That way everyone wins.

They used to, but they didnt like the player choices.

If it doesn't matter, why is it such a big deal to not have the choice?

The big deal is not "not having a choice". the big deal is choice being taken away because the developer didnt like our choice.

You say that like you want every game to be like that. If that were the case, the other people pushing for diversity couldn't get just some of the games to be less straight white guy lead.
I mean most non-extremists just want a slice of the pie, not the whole thing.

They already got the slice of the pie. but most seem to want to have the pie and eat it too.

I don't see why they couldn't hire a female VA and just let you choose which gender to play as. It's a first person game, so the model wouldn't matter too much. I doubt a VA would cost tons of money. So why not just give the option if you have the funds, time, and it doesn't interfere with your image of the final product?

Thats because VA is only a small part of making a character. You need models, animations, cutscenes, rendering collision. you are basically making an entire new character from scratch. Unless you just want a male character reskin, but at that point does it even matter?

 

[Rebel_Raven]

the big deal is choice being taken away because the developer didnt like our choice.

You say that like you want every game to be like that. If that were the case, the other people pushing for diversity couldn't get just some of the games to be less straight white guy lead.
I mean most non-extremists just want a slice of the pie, not the whole thing.

They already got the slice of the pie. but most seem to want to have the pie and eat it too.

Lets be real, here. That "slice" is so small that it'd tick off a lot of people that get stuck with it. It's not even really a slice, it's a crumble of the crust.
When that cruddy little piece is given, it's met with a lot of hostility from people who hate that they're getting that much. Look at the comments section of most any Fifa 16 announcements of giving female teams for some examples of this. That's a lot of what minorities see when they get catered to at all.

There's very little to eat from that not even a real slice of the pie, and the people being served, and seeing hostility over it are starved for more.

 

[Strazdas]

the big deal is choice being taken away because the developer didnt like our choice.

You say that like you want every game to be like that. If that were the case, the other people pushing for diversity couldn't get just some of the games to be less straight white guy lead.
I mean most non-extremists just want a slice of the pie, not the whole thing.

They already got the slice of the pie. but most seem to want to have the pie and eat it too.

Lets be real, here. That "slice" is so small that it'd tick off a lot of people that get stuck with it. It's not even really a slice, it's a crumble of the crust.
When that cruddy little piece is given, it's met with a lot of hostility from people who hate that they're getting that much. Look at the comments section of most any Fifa 16 announcements of giving female teams for some examples of this. That's a lot of what minorities see when they get catered to at all.

There's very little to eat from that not even a real slice of the pie, and the people being served, and seeing hostility over it are starved for more.

The slice is big enough to get fat from. Females are 50% of the population (less if we consider that china has managed to push worldwide trends into males bieng the majority, but the difference is quite irrelevant in size). More than 50% of games that have humans as main protagonists are either female protagonist or allows you to choose protagonists sex. In fact, only 34% of such games are exclusively male protagonists. while that is bigger than exclusive female protagonist, certainly you cant claim that 66% representation for 50% of population is too small.

I dont play sports games so i dont know what happened to Fifa 16, care to elaborate?

 

[Mutant1988]

More than 50% of games that have humans as main protagonists are either female protagonist or allows you to choose protagonists sex.

Source please.

I helped do a tally of the gender distribution of the major releases (ie, listed on wikipedia) during 2013 and these were the results.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lOOrG2T02urEYePxYIeuj74z3DW0rRfPYZB8gckTNN4/edit#gid=0

A spreadsheet of 2014 is in the works too, but as of yet unfinished due to the creator being busy with more important stuff.

Putting mixed/unspecified in the same category might be a bit mis-representative (Lack of forethought rather than something done deliberately), I admit. But so is bundling female protagonists together with the protagonist gender choice ones.

During 2013, 43% video games offered you a choice or have no specified gender, 5% were exclusively female and 51% were exclusively male.

I'm curious to know where you got your numbers from.

The game in the video is Rust. Rust allowed character creation, however after seeing that 95% of player made chracters were white they threw a hissy fit and randomized everyones races because outcome parity is more important than having a choice. For this reason i refuse to support anything these people make.

Or they wanted to see how their majority audience would react to not having the choice they prefer. You know, walk a mile in someone else's shoes and all that.

 

[Silence]

Meh, there is a lot wrong with that list. Some of the games listed as "male" have non-human protagonists, sometimes it's not even clear what gender (but is probably specified somewhere, so I let this slide. Still, there are a lot of games which don't even have a single protagonist, or some other stuff, like strategy games, all listed as "male".

Then: These are PC/console games, while the ESA study counts mobile/browser games in its study. It, for example, completely ignores the hidden object games. You can't compare the two statistics.

 

[Mutant1988]

Meh, there is a lot wrong with that list. Some of the games listed as "male" have non-human protagonists, sometimes it's not even clear what gender (but is probably specified somewhere, so I let this slide. Still, there are a lot of games which don't even have a single protagonist, or some other stuff, like strategy games, all listed as "male".

Then: These are PC/console games, while the ESA study counts mobile/browser games in its study. It, for example, completely ignores the hidden object games. You can't compare the two statistics.

Actually, the strategy games are listed as unspecified - At least they're supposed to be, since the assumption is that the player is the character. But there are some strategy games where you are in fact cast as an established character.

Most ensemble casts also fall under the mixed category, what with them almost always having both female and male characters. Every entry I made, I went and looked at any game specific wikis and official sources for character info. Most of it "should" be accurate. I say should, because it's entirely possible that a mistake was made somewhere.

Even so, do you think there is really a 40% drop in female gamers going from mobile to console/PC? That seems unlikely. But it would be interesting to see a metric on the specific gender distribution for only console/PC.

It's not really meant as an absolute guideline of any sort - It's just a metric meant to spark a discussion.

If I recall correctly, from the contributions I made to the 2014 list - The ratio had improved.

 

[Silence]

Meh, there is a lot wrong with that list. Some of the games listed as "male" have non-human protagonists, sometimes it's not even clear what gender (but is probably specified somewhere, so I let this slide. Still, there are a lot of games which don't even have a single protagonist, or some other stuff, like strategy games, all listed as "male".

Then: These are PC/console games, while the ESA study counts mobile/browser games in its study. It, for example, completely ignores the hidden object games. You can't compare the two statistics.

Actually, the strategy games are listed as unspecified - At least they're supposed to be, since the assumption is that the player is the character. But there are some strategy games where you are in fact cast as an established character.

Most ensemble casts also fall under the mixed category, what with them almost always having both female and male characters. Every entry I made, I went and looked at any game specific wikis and official sources for character info. Most of it "should" be accurate. I say should, because it's entirely possible that a mistake was made somewhere.

Even so, do you think there is really a 40% drop in female gamers going from mobile to console/PC? That seems unlikely. But it would be interesting to see a metric on the specific gender distribution for only console/PC.

It's not really meant as an absolute guideline of any sort - It's just a metric meant to spark a discussion.

If I recall correctly, from the contributions I made to the 2014 list - The ratio had improved.

I don't know how big the drop is, probably not 40%, but still a significant portion.

Anyways, I think a pure list made (probably) out of games reviewed by sites mainly directed at a male audience is still not enough to really discuss the issue.
Where do we set the bar? There are probably tons and tons of bad games with male protagonists. I wouldn't demand more female characters there. Should we only count AAA games? What about a game like FIFA Manager 2013, which is listed as "male"? Can we discuss representation with that? What about games like Toki Tori (I didn't even know the bird was supposed to be male) or Rayman (clearly male, but aside from that ...). Or what about genres? I've seen numbers which said that like only 1% of strategy gamers are female. Is that exclusive? Representation doesn't seem to be the issue in this case.
Horror games have probably a far higher number of female leads, because of other reasons. What's with representation in this case? Maybe there is a (non-problematic) discrepancy in this case, where the percentage of female leads is higher than the percentage of females playing the games?

I would say for a correct assertion if and how big there is a problem about representation we first needed studies questioning women (and minorities) how they feel about the issue. Maybe the ESA study would even be a good place for that.
Listing games should be in my opinion the absolute last step. And it should include vital information like genre, percentage of female players in that genre.

I can't really take anything out of that list. I still don't know if representation is an issue or not. I can just speak from my own experience as someone who always chooses females if playable.

 

[Strazdas]

Source please.

I helped do a tally of the gender distribution of the major releases (ie, listed on wikipedia) during 2013 and these were the results.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lOOrG2T02urEYePxYIeuj74z3DW0rRfPYZB8gckTNN4/edit#gid=0

A spreadsheet of 2014 is in the works too, but as of yet unfinished due to the creator being busy with more important stuff.

Putting mixed/unspecified in the same category might be a bit mis-representative (Lack of forethought rather than something done deliberately), I admit. But so is bundling female protagonists together with the protagonist gender choice ones.

During 2013, 43% video games offered you a choice or have no specified gender, 5% were exclusively female and 51% were exclusively male.

I'm curious to know where you got your numbers from.

Sorry, it appears that the analysis i read is no longer there (broken link), so i cannot provide that anymore.

As far as your list goes, thats quite a lot of work done. One thing though, you should count nonhuman/unknown as 0s and make a seperate category for "both available". Because many games that feature male protagonist first also has a female option (for example Mass Effect). For example as The Silence mentioned, strategy games have no protagonists as you are a cloud hovering above controlling things. in some games there is just no way for it to be human at all.

Secondly, please dont use ESA numbers, their data is unsubstantiated, unmethodological and overall worst that statistics can offer. Surely there must be better measures of gamer demographic than those shills (their only reason for being is to shill for gaming industry)

Still, congratulations on putting so much effort into this.

Or they wanted to see how their majority audience would react to not having the choice they prefer. You know, walk a mile in someone else's shoes and all that.

well, reaction was quite simply, a lot of people simply left. Personally i know i dont want to support developers that will try to force me into something if they dont like my choices. So i simply wont be playing any of their games. I dont really remmeber there being a big contraversy about it though. some people moaned about it the day it happened, but thats kinda it.

 

[Grampy_bone]

So Extra Credit just came out with a new video about diversity.
If you don't feel like watching it, I'll just mention one thing it says. In a certain game your race is randomly selected, some players had complaints about not being able to get into the game because they couldn't make a character who looked like them. The extra credits people then make the point that, what about all those gamers who aren't white and male, they might be having the same issues with games.

Anyway, thoughts?

Rust making people play as a black guy is kinda funny, and the people griping about it are making their point for them. But people need to call this what it is: Racism. No, not Rust; Extra Credits spreading white shaming and white guilt. Seriously, I am sick of this crap.

Rust is saying that complaining about the race of your character is racism. Fair point. But how is it any different if you complain about being white? If you're constantly bitching about being a white guy than maybe you're an anti-white racist.

The whole "How would YOU feel if you were forced to play a white guy?" attitude is fucking disgusting. I know, certain groups are busily redefining racism to exempt white people and say they are fair game, but that's bullshit. I'm not going to feel bad about my race, so people need to just STFU about it already. I live in a white country so yeah, I'd expect white people to be the default, why is that so bad? If you're response is, "Because white people are bad and do bad things," Congratulations! You're a racist. Try hard to give an answer that isn't straight up anti-white racism.

 

[Worgen]

So Extra Credit just came out with a new video about diversity.
If you don't feel like watching it, I'll just mention one thing it says. In a certain game your race is randomly selected, some players had complaints about not being able to get into the game because they couldn't make a character who looked like them. The extra credits people then make the point that, what about all those gamers who aren't white and male, they might be having the same issues with games.

Anyway, thoughts?

Rust making people play as a black guy is kinda funny, and the people griping about it are making their point for them. But people need to call this what it is: Racism. No, not Rust; Extra Credits spreading white shaming and white guilt. Seriously, I am sick of this crap.

Rust is saying that complaining about the race of your character is racism. Fair point. But how is it any different if you complain about being white? If you're constantly bitching about being a white guy than maybe you're an anti-white racist.

The whole "How would YOU feel if you were forced to play a white guy?" attitude is fucking disgusting. I know, certain groups are busily redefining racism to exempt white people and say they are fair game, but that's bullshit. I'm not going to feel bad about my race, so people need to just STFU about it already. I live in a white country so yeah, I'd expect white people to be the default, why is that so bad? If you're response is, "Because white people are bad and do bad things," Congratulations! You're a racist. Try hard to give an answer that isn't straight up anti-white racism.

You do realize that you and I are benefiting from white male racism. White privilege is a thing and pushing down those that aren't white is still a thing too. Just look at all the stories about cops being too trigger happy.

 

[Mutant1988]

As far as your list goes, thats quite a lot of work done. One thing though, you should count nonhuman/unknown as 0s and make a seperate category for "both available". Because many games that feature male protagonist first also has a female option (for example Mass Effect). For example as The Silence mentioned, strategy games have no protagonists as you are a cloud hovering above controlling things. in some games there is just no way for it to be human at all.

Secondly, please dont use ESA numbers, their data is unsubstantiated, unmethodological and overall worst that statistics can offer. Surely there must be better measures of gamer demographic than those shills (their only reason for being is to shill for gaming industry)

Still, congratulations on putting so much effort into this.

Well, it's not my list. I only contributed (A fair bit) to it. The issue with the mixed category has been pointed out before and is valid. But as I said, the creator of it is busy with other things at the moment (His PhD specifically). I think the last time we spoke about this (Specifically, the 2014 list) was in, oh I don't know, February maybe?

I did point out that the list in itself should be complemented by a list of games that were commercially successful in spite of the seemingly prevailing notion that games with female leads don't sell. Thinking especially of Tomb Raider and Alien Isolation.

But yeah, categories I would want added is "None" (Neither specified nor relevant), "Both" (Multiple protagonists or ensemble casts) and "Created" (Character creator) and that's something I'll bring up to the creator when he feels like picking this up again.

I think the idea isn't to force a change by pointing to the numbers (Which may or may not be accurate or comprehensive enough), as much as it's about showing how things are and get people to question why that is.

Do games with female leads actually sell that bad and if so, why? Is that the reason why there's so few of them or not? Is there any demand? Is the audience for games with female protagonists more or less than 5%? What do women think of the games with female protagonists etc.

It's a jump off point for further discussion, the way I see it.

Me, I don't even care about representation in this case. I just want developers to deviate from the trite default formulas we keep seeing. Mixing up the gender is as good a place to start as any.

Numbers only tell us so much though. It's always quality before quantity. I want good games, first and foremost and the greater variety of and in them, the better.

 

[Vigormortis]

Well I suppose the first thought is this: are the people that are complaining solely white and male? And in either case, so fucking what? The lack of diversity in other games has absolutely nothing to do with being forced into a certain race, sex or whatever in a game that has other options. Those are two different issues entirely. Hell, I would argue that the latter is worse, because at least the former can be explained by laziness.

Precisely. And, more over, the former can be explained by a character-specific narrative.[footnote]Not that that at all excuses a lack of diversity. On the contrary.[/footnote]

In a game built around the concept of an open-ended world, player-created narrative, and (nearly) fully custom character creation, the idea of taking away one of the more defining character design choices is idiotic.

What really fascinates me about this whole thing isn't so much that so many are complaining about it, nor that Facepunch made such a poor design choice (they do that a lot), but rather that so many keep assuming the complaints are coming almost solely from white, male players who are upset that they may have to play as a woman or a non-white character.

Yes, clearly the complaints are motivated by racist and sexist ideals, and not from the dev taking away certain player options for no other reason than to make a socio-politcal statement.