Is Catering To Women, Homosexuality and Minorities Restricting Game Developers' Creative Freedom?

[Qwark]

Psychotic said:

Shackkobe said:

It's easy to disagree, but it's ten times harder to say why :)

"One must not assume that his/her point of view is superior."

Sometimes it is entirely rational to believe your point of view is superior, namely: if you are reasonably confident the other person doesn't know what they're talking about (i. e. if you're a lawyer and some random goofus tries to lecture you about law); if you have a good reason to think the other person is extremely biased or has ulterior motives ; if the reasons stated by the other persons for their point of view are obviously illogical etc. I think the last two situations apply frequently when discussing "catering to women, homosexiality and minorities" in gaming.

"An artist has the right to do whatever he/she wants to do without fear of being viewed as narrowminded, old fashioned, limited etc."

Wrong. An artist has the right to do whatever he/she wants within the boundaries of law without fear of being punished by the state. That is it. Anybody can think whatever they want about the artist based on his or her work´, including criticizing him! The artist doesn't have to change his work based on the criticsm or even acknowledge it in the first place, but I wonder what makes you think that it is immoral to form opinions about artists or sharing those opinions with others.

Enough of an explanation?

One individual or group might believe his view/point is superrior to that of the artist (which makes the game,) but that doesn't say it actually is. The artist must produce within the boundaries in the law, but not including a race in a game isn't by defenition racism or discrimination, unless that person says I didn't put a female gay black etc. in my game because I hate them. In this case the artist remains superior since he has the power to do whatever he thinks is best for the game. I f a certain individual is not going to play it, that would be his loss as sometimes forcing a certain character in a game negatively affects the story and reviews resulting in more then one thousand less copies sold.

If the artist simply says this type of character didn't fit in my vision of this product, he shouldn't be (profesionally) critisized for that, that some action groups do, that is there right but an artist shouldn't be in any right obligated to bow for them and addapthis work to their vision. Imagine a God of war with censored boobs or a partly black cast in lord of the rings or partly white Africans in Resident Evil 5 (oh wait they did do that). By adding things that seemingly don't belong there, you get kicked out a game which sucked you in at first. Sure later on you get sucked in again, but why should we get kicked out in the first place, an atmosphere must seem natural at all times. Having some races which don't belong somewhere is almost  as bad as putting a rainbow and colourful flowers in a Bloodborne area.

if we take lord of the rings for example a black elf, or even Aragon, Boromir, Frodo being black would be disturbing at fist, we might grow to love or hate them but at first everyone would be a bit dazzled for the first 10 minutes, which is something an artist shouldn't want to. Games are eventually an art form and at no point art should be restricted to political corectness which would limit the hard fought freedom of western countries in which most devs are making games anyway. So even if a group might think they have to by law and otherwise they are discriminating, we can still say they are luckily not.