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sundin13 on 15 December 2024
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JackHandy said:
sundin13 said:

There's nothing wrong about games appealing to their audiences. That is just Creating Things 101. 

There's also nothing wrong about desiring diversity in creative spaces. Bringing in a diverse range of people with a diverse range of experiences can help writing to better express those different viewpoints through their characters, allowing art to better provide a wider breadth of experiences. 

As an artist, my goal is to create my story, my vision. Whether people buy it or not, that is for the suits to figure out. Of course, I am not owned by a publisher etc, but then again, I never would allow myself to be owned by one. If I want to tell a story about a straight white male, I will. If I want to tell a story about a black lesbian, I will. But what I won't do is create worlds with some sort of diversity checklist in mind. Doing that is the antithesis or art, imo. I refuse.

As to your last point, I completely disagree. Why? Because you can not choose one without also inherently excluding the other, and isn't that how we got in this mess to begin with? Excluding groups because of their identity?

Again, merit is the only ethical way to choose the right person. Anything else is wrong and exclusionary.  

I mean, welcome to capitalism. Art with a budget is made for an audience. I am all for people making what they want to make, but we're just fooling ourselves if we want to pretend that a game that a publisher is dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on is being made purely to fit an artistic vision. And again, there is nothing inherently wrong with appealing to an audience. Art can be made to appeal and still be made well. Since the beginning, games have been made for an audience in one way or another and that is fine.

Maybe a game is designed to really focus on the zen of travel as the artistic vision of the creator, like Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, however, the players largely ended up frustrated with how much filler time was spent getting from point A to point B. Because of this, the artists made their game more fit to the audience in the remake by adding a swift sail feature and trimming down some of the more tedious exploration quests like the triforce hunt. From what I recall, there was no outrage here about Nintendo compromising the artistic vision of the creators. People were instead happy that Nintendo listened to the fans and adapted the remake to better fit the desires of the audience....

I also just want to say, if someone makes a game with a black lesbian protagonist just because they truly want to, do you have any doubt that there would be tons of people saying it is woke, DEI trash?  

As for your point about exclusion, I don't think that makes any sense. I am arguing in favor of diversity, which means we aren't excluding straight white men, we are just including more groups in the room. If you think hiring a black person to help reflect the black culture that a game is attempting to portray is comparable to segregation, I don't think I can help you...