| Marucha said: Sorry, I do not always reply immediately. I do not think there is a HUGE amount of diversity, but I think there has been milestones in gaming like in many media. That's why I said there is no real shortage. I agree with you about needing more ethnic perspectives in gaming. There is a huge growing Hispanic population in this country for example and yet we don't see strides to cater to that demographic for example just like women are a huge chunk of it. I'm going to assume it's taboo because of the whole immigration controversy... I mean, we don't want to cater to them, they should act more "American" (read: white) and blend in with the culture amiright? But I'm like rutea7, I'm a female gamer... this doesn't stop me completely from enjoying games. I can still enjoy them. My biggest beef is that we get to the point where characters and mantras in gaming become almost too much the same-y or "cookie cutter". Much more diversity would help that, but again, a different story, different context and other things could be done to that as well... that's why when I said 'diversity', it was much broader than just ethnicity and the womenz, because a lot of influences and ideas are considered when making or designing a video game. A good example would be Guild Wars... the concept artists used different ethnics/cultures to design characters there and the game does not read "white people" to me as a result. |
I can tell you why most western games do not cater to other ethic groups is because publishers do not want to take risk on alienating their core base which is the white male gamer. Its really not political but business. Developers will need to take the risk and make it successful in order to change publishers mindset.
What I am actually proposing is something that get gamers, publishers and developers out of their confort zone and embrace a society that is made of more than one very limited sex and race. This does not mean you or any woman or any different ethic group does not like the current games we play today. I happen to love the current games we play today but I also recognize how limited they are. RPGs have always been the area of diversity because developers what to create a character you can create and role play but even those can be character swap unles the developer wants to go beyound the template.
As to the OP, you have to remember that he is a narrative writer and he probably has come up against the very things he is talking about. The way I see it, he is voicing his fustration with the industry that will not budge on presenting more diverse characters in games thus limiting the type of stories he would like to create. It sounds more to me that it's these limits to what he do as a writer than making some statement about women in genral and he only use women to make his point. The point I believe is that just catering to a small limited player base hampers the expansion of games in general and thus misses a huge untap market.
I do not see this type of change made with big publishers because making AAA games are very risky but the indie scene is probably where you see the playground for such diversity and then once it shone that the market is there, the big money hats will go there as well.
