Whether if it's a movie or a new video game, many people seem to criticize media that lacks gender or racial diversity.

What are your thoughts on it? Is it considered valid criticism to you? Or do you view it as crying over spilled milk?

I think its up to the developer. Whatever their vision is, we should accept.

Not but apparently the BAFTAs think it is:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/12/19/the_bafta_awards_will_exclude_films_that_are_not_diverse_starting_in_2019.html

No. It's a result of people aren't actually journalists getting into journalism.

ETA: I do think that it can be a criticism for adaptations. If you have a movie set in Ancient China, you can fill it with people from LA suburbs.

I mean we live in a diverse society, it's different than past decades. Movies/games should reflect that.

Star Wars Rogue One had a female lead and it was fine, it's one of my fave SW film.

No, it is not a valid criticism. Its just the division speech of the left and those who fall for it are just stupid..

The problem with movies is that when they add a coloured person in most cases it feels out of place because they try to change something that was already written (for example in a comic book).

Just be original put coloured people in as normal characters and not bluntly obvious tokens.

There is plenty of movies out there that do this well even going back to the 70s-80s. Watching some of those i didn't FEEL like FMD a token coloured person was thrown in. They had a role that fit.

Same goes i reverse. If the movie's main objective is to focus on a certain race or whatever as part of the story. i honestly couldn't care less if there was 0 white people in them. Just give us a good movie lol.

That's always funny because there is always some sort of backlash when non white male is lead in a movie or in a game but we shouldn't care when other than straight white male are mostly the ones portrayed in every medias...

It really depends on the film/game. Most of the time these days in seems pretty unfounded, though. Like, who gives a shit that there were no "people of color" in the Witcher 3? And as for women, until it becomes socially acceptable to see women abused, denigrated, and otherwise challenged both emotionally and physically on the level of men in media, expect to see a lot of things default to male characters. The alternative is a bunch of super invincible, annoying, untouchable and unrelatable "strong" women written by hacks trying to fill a quota rather than write compelling characters.

That said, mainstream AAA gaming is suffering from a generic main character epidemic. Mainly because the characters are written by hacks trying to pander to a perceived audience rather than write a compelling character...

Get better writers! Who a character is matters a lot more than "what" a character is!

Of course. Video games and film are art, and as art they ought to be critiqued for how they portray a variety of concepts, including race and gender, and by extension racial and gender diversity. If a person wants to write about how Princess Peach represents an outdated portrayal of women as damsels in distress and items that need to be won, than that's there right. It's a valid artistic critique. No one else beyond the critic really has to agree with it,and the creator of the art is free to ignore it. It may be poorly supported by evidence in the creation, and may extrapolate way too much out of little bits and pieces of the protect. But so long as the critic doesn't outright things up that aren't in the product to begin with, then the criticism is still valid.

I think the main problem with all this is that people tend to confuse "critique" with "censorship," with the belief that these criticisms are somehow aimed at "censoring" developers and forcing them to alter their "true vision" to please critics. And while this is certainly a thing that happens, this is also something you can expect from art. It's fairly common for creators to change their visions in response to criticism. In fact, outside criticism is typically quite important to the creative process, since people from the outside can often spot problems that the creator can't. Sometimes a creator won't even want to, but their bosses, whether due to their own personal criticisms, focus groups, or whatever, will force the change. But this sort of thing isn't exclusive to gender/racial criticism, and has existed for decades.