I'm tired of this overemphasis on diversity spilling into our entertainment.

[DonFerrari]

Kaneman! said:

Jaicee said: 

2. Games for other players have to be made in the first place before they can sell or fail. The point here isn't that most gamers are male (that's obvious), but WHY that is so. If developers and publishers make more effort to appeal to different audiences, perhaps gamer demographics will change over time.

Are you saying that if developers made exclusively female leads, that the trend would change and video gaming would be a female-centric activity? That seems like a huge leap of logic.

Let's take the most outlandish of examples. Sports games - replace male teams with female teams and watch the sales plummet from millions into thousands.

It's a difference in interests, not in lead characters. If your train of thought would be appropriate, then strategy games would need to be split 50/50 in popularity as there is no male or female lead, but as this graph shows, it's one of the least popular genres at 11% and 7%. 

Seems to me that the woman average have much more to do with the genre of the game or objective than with who is the protagonist, who would think.

areason said:

DonFerrari said: 

On the privilege of not being rapped I would like to point that in Brazil you are 10x more likely to be killed as a man than a woman, but apparently our society is misogynist.

And women and children are prioritised in evacuation and hostage situations, and that's something that men don't even complain about. 

Real men are raised to take the burden and accept it without being cry babies.

Azuren said:

areason said:

And women and children are prioritised in evacuation and hostage situations, and that's something that men don't even complain about. 

Men don't complain about it because men generally accept their roles as providers and protectors.

Exactly, and also learn that if you want to change something that bothers you, you change you don't complain, because complaining doesn't get you anywhere.

the-pi-guy said:

Aeolus451 said:

Diversity is not talent in any sense. If anything it's more likely to be racist or sexist because you're picking people mainly on sex, race or sexuality over other people who are likely more talented or experienced. It's hypocritical of progressives.

Just because you say it is happening, doesn't mean it is.  

DonFerrari said:

Nope, being white or black isn't a talent.

Having different visions certainly is helpful (although not a talent) and hiring someone less qualified because he is of a different background (or quota) isn't the right way to do anything.

But sure, let me just throw away all the studies that show how diversity is beneficial.  

Facts have a well known liberal bias.  

DonFerrari said:

On the privilege of not being rapped I would like to point that in Brazil you are 10x more likely to be killed as a man than a woman, but apparently our society is misogynist.

Yes, this was a point I made in my post.  Glad you agree.  

 

These things are complicated issues.  Pretending they don't exist is incorrect.  Deciding not to do anything about it, is not a solution.  I'd rather try out a solution, and trash it if it doesn't work or even goes the other way ("reverse racism", whatever that is), but not trying isn't a solution. 

Personally, I'm concerned about all kinds of issues.  Men's rights just as well as Women's rights.  People need to stop acting like those two things are incompatible.  

I haven't said it isn't benefitial. But show me a single study that say being different than be it white, male, christian or any other "diversity" question is a talent instead of just a characteristic.

I'm all for solution. If anyone wants to open their company and just hire woman I don't care, I care if government dictates how company have to do something.

d21lewis said:
I'll just say that I'm black and I hate being pandered to. If it's natural, by all means. Don't throw a random black friend in there just to make me feel like a part of the story. I can connect to people who don't look like me just fine.

We play as animals, robots, aliens and a lot of other things that doesn't look similar to us and don't even care.

VGPolyglot said:

Azuren said:
The entire thing is stupid. Diversity for diversity's sale isn't diversity at all, it's pandering. It doesn't help that most arguments for this forced "diversity" don't hold up even under their own rules (ex. "If it doesn't matter what gender the character is, then why can't they be a woman?" Because that would imply is does matter for the simple reason that it was suggested and that ignoring the suggestion could result in a shitstorm)

And what is and isn't diversity for diversity's sake? As I said before, the issue seems to be that people are so used to the default of male-dominated media that when it starts to change and diversify people take issue to that. People that are saying that it should just be determined by merit are ignoring the disadvantage that already exists in the industry, and in order to be resolved it cannot just be brushed aside, it has to be combated.

 

Nymeria said:
I think when you experience actual sexism you see the gradations in society better. I was told as a girl that I was limited in what I could achieve because of my sex by elders. That attitude within the religion/cult is the type of deeply misogynistic culture some call out.

I am a tomboy, always have been, I love being physical, I love video games, I even love women being bisexual. In my experience there are realms men and women gravitate toward. I played Halo with my guy friends, I went shopping with my girl friends. Most of my guy friends are like guys on here, nerds. I say that with affection because I'm a nerd of sorts too. Nerds are often very passionate and protective of their game/show/movie/etc. These are people who obsess over details and semantics, they challenge each others fandom on how esoteric they can appreciate a given work.

We live in an era where the nerd IPs won, in essence. The big movies are Star Wars and Marvel (sci-fi/fantasy and super hero) so this means the dynamics of those fandoms have changed. I do think more women are gravitating to these spheres, but they are often still male centric. You can't force equality when it comes to interests of a fictional world. When you try to address the shifting demographics have to remember how important these worlds and characters are to us nerdy fans.

Let's take Star Wars for example. I am a fan of the original movies and loved the characters. When I saw they were making a new one (Force Awakens) with the old characters coming back and new ones I was really excited. I saw the casting and the main character roughly equivalent to Luke was a woman. I confess, I was a bit excited by the possibility of seeing a female Jedi. I loved Luke and thought Rey could be a great successor. After I watched the Last Jedi I felt doubly disappointed. Not only did they make Luke lesser, they did nothing to make me like Rey. It was clear that rather than seeing a character, Rey is a marketing tool to be carefully protected from negative elements. She has to be stronger and better with everything coming easy because they are afraid if she was like Luke they'd get blowback about her weaknesses and frailties being sexist.

The issue is nerds rarely make these movies. Average people do, and more these days average people consume it. They don't care about lore, it's about selling as much as possible to as many people as possible. Have a niche you need to fill? Cast someone of that in a role and promote them. It's not wrong to have diverse casts, I actually like it, but to do so cynically (cast some Chinese actors to get Chinese people to watch it) it is off putting.

Nerds or hardcore fans are not hateful, but they are protective of these imagined realities. They need an explanation as to why a character is changed (see Sulu Star Trek discussion in this thread). If you don't care and think "Wouldn't it be fun if we rebooted this beloved IP with the genders swapped" you don't love it the way the fans see fully formed characters, not census labels.

We want the world to be fair and equal when it is not. There are more of some people than others, fandoms are made up more of one group. Economics dictate over representation of majorities in media. It is hard to make new IP as opposed to latching on to old ones. There are many factors that can keep traditionally minority groups in media fighting an uphill battle. It stinks if most of media is not made for you, but that's life. Find what you do love and support it all you can.

I agree with what you posted and why it is so bad when they decide to make out of character changes to promote an IP. And that is why I love Manga, new IPs all the time, and they have coherence.

bugrimmar said:

VGPolyglot said:

And what is and isn't diversity for diversity's sake? As I said before, the issue seems to be that people are so used to the default of male-dominated media that when it starts to change and diversify people take issue to that. People that are saying that it should just be determined by merit are ignoring the disadvantage that already exists in the industry, and in order to be resolved it cannot just be brushed aside, it has to be combated.

So your solution is to just tack on random diverse characters for the sake of diversity? How wonderfully superficial. Does it truly further the cause when all you're doing is forcing characters into roles they weren't meant to have?

How about creating new stories and new characters that are meant to be female, gay, black, Hispanic, or whatever? Instead of changing gender to suit your agenda, why not make your own goddamn character wherein the gender makes sense? Why ruin an entire storyline just for a minority when the vast majority hates breaking continuity?

That's the problem. Diversity backers don't have the courage to fix the problem with talent and creativity and hard work. They just want to do it the easy way. Popular franchise, let's change the gender and it's done! No need to work on something new!

Like the ridiculous twins on Fantastic Four where they decided to put a black father to have a black boy and white girl...

That is what I love about Japanese Manga, there is a lot of diversity of stories and chars, while also protecting the story integrity. So if anyone want to have a strong black lesbian he can make a very good story with it either being irrelevant (like if it was a asian dude, no one ask why he is asian dude in a Manga) or that the fact she is a black lesbian is relevant to the story told.

VGPolyglot said:

Mandalore76 said:

This is diversity for diversity's sake (as I've said before):

"The makers of the rebooted Star Trek movies decided to make an established character (Sulu) gay, completely out of the blue, in the 3rd movie of their franchise.  They asked the actor, George Takei, who played Sulu in the original series and movies for his blessing, thinking they would get it easily since he is openly gay in real life.  He told them very clearly, that he portrayed the character as a heterosexual male throughout his entire career, because that was the character that Gene Roddenberry created.  Takei said that he was all for an openly gay character in Star Trek, but that they should create their own character rather than paste the sexuality onto an existing one.  The new Star Trek filmmakers, who claimed they wanted Takei's blessing in the first place, turned around and made their version of Sulu gay anyway.  That was a complete slap in the face to George Takei, basically telling him, "You're gay, so Sulu must also be gay too."  It's also a complete insult to Takei's acting abilities, saying that he couldn't possibly have been portraying a character all those years that wasn't a complete match of his actual sexuality.  The rebooted Star Trek doesn't even take place in an alternate universe where this sudden change would make sense.  It's only supposed to be an alternate timeline.  Sulu was an adult male already when Spock and Nero went back in time and altered the timeline.  How did Nero going back in time suddenly make Sulu gay?  If they really were doing it as an homage to George Takei as they claimed they were, they would have respected his wishes when he said he was against it.  They could have easily created a new character as Takei suggested, but instead they forced a sexuality change on a character who was portrayed as a heterosexual on both TV and film for three decades.  That's not being respectful to the source material, the actor who defined and brought life to the character, or even to good storytelling, since the sudden change is completely unexplainable.  This example is the very definition of forced diversity."

  

Was he ever explicitly heterosexual? Or did we just assume that he was since that's  what is considered the default?

The actor said he interpreted it as heterosexual, didn't want to change the char to homosexual even though he was one... And why do he would need to be explicitly homosexual?