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nuckles87 on 14 May 2015
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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.