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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is Catering To Women, Homosexuality and Minorities Restricting Game Developers' Creative Freedom?

sundin13 on 14 May 2015
outlawauron said:
sundin13 said:


Not really...the problem is how they drive the market. They are largely a casual userbase who is deeply ingrained in certain franchises (Call of Duty, Madden), however, the market clamors for their attention. This can be seen in the FPS war that took place over the last generation, which featured a lot of games that were extremely similar, had very high budgets (and high marketing budgets) and often were considered disappointing for players and for the companies.

I wouldn't say that they are really doing harm, just that the AAA market is harming itself by trying to chase this market.

Perhaps you could say that they are doing harm by allowing certain franchises (mostly sports related) to be annualized by continually purchasing them regardless of quality. They allow these games to be profitable without much work, which discourages the companies from actually taking the time to make a good game (why put in effort to make a good game when you can just slap a new number on a box and make money off of it).

Overall, I'd say the effect that the "Representation Pressure Groups" and the "Dude Bros" have are both fairly minimal, and while they are good things to be generally aware of (for when you see an example of pandering that is over the top), they don't actually matter that much at the end of the day (imo).

See, where they're not having the same impact is that this group doesn't demand certain ratios or have things removed from games. They just buy what interests them, which is how the market should work. If they aren't interested in something, they don't go campaigning to have it removed, censored, etc.

You can claim that developers are shoehorned into making games for this audience because it's profitable, but that's a very different argument than changing a game's content as to not offend or meet some arbitrary quota.


Thats true enough...however, while some campaigning does exist, I doubt that it has much of an effect. If you weigh the positives against the negatives, it would probably come close to evening out. The positives being that companies feel less like they have to only have white male protagonists and are better able to express their creative freedoms (we have heard numerous times that female protagonists are a hard sell to publishers) and the negatives being that some companies may feel forced to shoehorn in diversity against their own best judgements.

That isn't to say that these "Representation Pressure Groups" should be ignored or applauded - I think we should call bullshit whenever they pick an undeserving target (like FFXV) - but I think the harm they do is fairly minimal.



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Machiavellian on 14 May 2015

What limits a developer has always been money. Depending on the size of the market, the concept and structure of the game and the demographic which the developer is trying to hit determine more about what is included in the game then then anything else. Next come the team that is making the game. Hard to include other races, sexual orientation, or gender if the team that makes the decision is composed of just white, hetro males.

If the majority of your buying demographic includes white hetro males, then you get white hetro males characters as the focus. Once teams become more diverse with leads that are not white hetro males then you see more diverse characters. When all is said and done, games are made for people who buy them so unless more minorities can effect game sales, not will change.



McGilliguts on 14 May 2015
Machiavellian said:
What limits a developer has always been money.

If the majority of your buying demographic includes white hetro males, then you get white hetro males characters as the focus. Once teams become more diverse with leads that are not white hetro males then you see more diverse characters. When all is said and done, games are made for people who buy them so unless more minorities can effect game sales, not will change.


True. The new generation in America is majority minority, so this will inevitably come to pass over the next few decades. Say goodbye to white heroes and hello to Latino, black, Indian, muslim, and Asian gunslingers. Lol



arcane_chaos on 14 May 2015
spemanig said:
No one is being forced to include anything.


one and done



Danman27 on 14 May 2015

If you make a game where the character you play as is supposed to be you, if you so desire (sims, miis, mass effect, etc), there should be gay and straight romantic options. I don't understand what weird about that. No, if people complained about a linear game's love interest being of the opposite sex, I would agree with what you're saying here, but it's not. You're just being another straight white male playing the victim (a very common sentiment these days), when you are, in fact, a member of the most privileged group of people on earth.



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Smear-Gel on 14 May 2015

The reason that games were all white males was because it was the only thing people would ever do at the time, based on it being less diverse at the time.

There is no reason to continue, besides tradition. The fact that people complain when a developer thinks about being diverse is sad

 

It just HAS to be pandering, not thier choice. Its only tge developers choice when they do what i wantvthem to.



arcaneguyver on 14 May 2015

Token characters and obvious pandering are a huge turn-off. Still, nobody is forcing developers or publishers; at worst either big stupid websites with agendas will do judgey articles about how you're part of the problem if you buy game X, or backers will suddenly start demanding all sorts of ridiculous consessions from an indie dev team.



Egann on 14 May 2015

The whole issue boils down to one question: does having a white male protagonist in a game actively harm how society views minorities?

My opinion is NO. There is basically no way anyone can prevent stereotyping--it's a reaction of the brain to too much information, which will only get worse-- but people often imply media has special powers of suggestion. Fiction in media doesn't have the power to hypnotize the masses like that. It does, however, have the power to raise important questions and leave it up to the viewer what the answers are or should be.

Let developers do what they want and let the dice fall where they may. Trying to control their output will probably hurt the games they develop without actually improving any racial relations. We only stand to loose by acting, therefore we should do nothing.



Azerth on 14 May 2015

i think one problem is that no matter what the choice the dev makes they will get hated on by the press/news and internet warriors.



nuckles87 on 14 May 2015
Shackkobe said:
nuckles87 said:
"I said "no" in the last post to make a point. This whole notion that criticism "limits" creativity is nonsense. Criticism is CRITICAL to the creative process. A creator or team of creators only have their own experiences and biases to draw from, and this can often result in a poorer product. The best creations are the ones that have been tempered by harsh outside criticism and forged into something better and stronger than one man or team could have made on their own.



Criticism aint censorship, it's a natural part of the creative process, brings in an outside perspective, and when utilized well can make a creation much better than it could have been without it. And that is EXACTLY what these calls of bias and discrimination are. It's criticism. I think the articles I posted earlier demonstrate that the criticism not only has a point, but it clearly is not having the effect you think it's having in forcing inclusiveness on a massive scale. We only just got a Call of Duty game with an optional female protagonist in a gender neutral game. We MAY get our first playable female character in an Assassins' Creed game that is not a spin off this year, in response to Unity. If you feel strongly about developers being able to make games with white, male protagonists, I don't think you have much to worry about. That's still what most big budget developers do. With luck, though, this criticism may be causing them to start thinking twice, and having internal conversations about the race, sex, and gender of their character. That would not be a bad thing. It'd only add another facet to a game's creative process."

"Yes, I agree, we all want to weed out discrimination. But we should be very careful when we accuse others of being biased. If the issue is simply us not getting what we want, then we should not accuse. What we should do is judge the person’s actions/motives and see if the individual is discriminating. If the individual is found guilty, we should act immediately because no one has the creative right to discriminate.

On the other hand, if the developer is not discriminating, one can simply make a request or a suggestion to the said developer to include your group in their game. The game developer still retains their creative freedom and as such, could choose to accept or respectfully decline your suggestion. There should be no coercion.

Using threats and false accusations is the tactic of a bully. This is why developers are beginning to feel pressured to include females, homosexuals and minorities in their games, even though creatively, they may never have intended to do so. That I believe, is infringing on the creative freedom of game developers and it should be exposed for what it is."

I hilighlighted a few words and phrases to make things a little clearer for you.

I realize my post is kind of long, but I did address all of that. I talked about unintentional discrimination. I included links and quotes supporting it. I do address discrimination in the industry at length. Just because it isn't malicious, doesn't mean it's not happening.

There is no "coercion" going on. No one is taking a developer's baby hostage unless they include a homosexual black guy in the next Assassin's Creed. As I said in my post, they are just levying criticism. Maybe I didn't make this clear in my post, but you are confusing criticism with coercion and bullying.

I don't want to repeat myself, but my response hasn't really changed after re-reading your highlights.