Are women over-represented in video games?

[AngryLittleAlchemist]

As far as I can tell, DICE never "pandered" to SJWs with the inclusion of women. They simply wanted there to be more options for people to play as the gender they prefer. It didn't turn inherently political *until* the backlash, and even then I don't recall any specific statement from DICE regarding feminism. People made it political and then went from there, reverse engineering the discussion. It reminds me of how when Star Wars Episode 7 was releasing, I automatically assumed that Rey and Finn were just ways to pander to an audience, not realizing the irony behind judging people based on their race or sex.

Of course the counter-argument to this is that, some pandering is just so blatantly obvious that it is easy to criticize. News to me, considering I have not seen a single tweet that was inherently "SJW". The closest thing is a tweet about inviting Anita Sarkeesian to DICE ... 6 years ago, and one where they congratulate her 4.5 years ago. Wow, shocking damnation of DICE.

People want "diverse" characters to be given a reason to exist, when many stereotypical characters are not given the same requirements. I think it says a lot that we have gotten to a point where we are so concerned about companies possibly having different ideologies than are own, that we start to say that diverse characters should either have an extremely detailed reason for existing, or should just fit into the background as if they were any character in any other game. So either you're one of the best written characters in games, championing the very purpose of having different perspectives in gaming, or you're a gay guy that is just a regular guy because obviously gay people are just like everyone else right? No happy medium.

The sad thing is that very little comes from genuine bigotry. It's just paranoia. This is what happens when you have to worry constantly about being force fed a message you don't agree with. And I don't agree with the message either. But frankly, there is so little correlation between art with a diverse cast and far-left ideas, either because A ) the creators are not far-left and the want for diversity (which is not mutually exclusive to such ideologies) is misinterpreted or because B ) the company's inspiration for having a diverse cast is from political discourse, but the product itself doesn't really reflect as such (I would say this is the case for Star Wars, because although Rey is a very overpowered protagonist, the age of modern blockbusters are kind of built on overpowered protagonists ... then again, I haven't seen any film after 7, who knows).

And goddamn am I tired of seeing people say that there is "no one that are mad at Battlefield 5 for having women", or that it's a "misunderstanding" or "wrongful accusation". It's so overplayed and wrong. People only jumped to this defense after the fact that these kind of statements were common. If you have to lie about what group of people agree with your ideas, then you yourself are letting it pass. It is better to just call it out when you see it instead of being insecure.

What "Anti-SJWs" fail to recognize is that they politicize just as much as SJWs do. I don't even think politics should be out of games (they are a core component of any art form), but if they just needlessly cause controversy and don't affect the medium in any positive way than I would say both sides need to just stop the silliness already. It sucks because most of the time I'm fighting for ideas that I don't even necessarily agree with, but it's because the counter-argument for those ideas are so sloppy and I think actively hurt discussion worse. I don't like DICE, I don't like Naughty Dog for the most part, and I do think that the idea of representation for representation's sake has some possible fault lines. At the same time, if you realize that representing under-represented people does not make the game automatically better, you can not go around championing that because you think a developer is pandering that it makes the product automatically worse.