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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is Catering To Women, Homosexuality and Minorities Restricting Game Developers' Creative Freedom?

NoirSon on 17 May 2015

Only if suddenly ALL games had to be create a character, but in general opening up the available playable characters to other genders or minorities doesn't really limit developers creativity... it just makes them work harder.

I mean ESPECIALLY in games like CoD, AC and other annual or long running franchises, where the main character is basically a blank slate or a archetype that is repeated in different settings. Creative folk like to do different things, being given options or told to make some of them work either makes for a richer experience or shows your story was weak to begin with.



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generic-user-1 on 18 May 2015
pepharytheworm said:
generic-user-1 said:
pepharytheworm said:
generic-user-1 said:
Pandering to feminists doesnt work, nobody likes those menhating liars, not even women, and they have absolutly no concept of art or fun, or civil discourse, or math...

the video games are anti women argument is just a lie, like the gender wage gap or other female discrimination in the western world.


What does a person's math skills have to do with feminism? That's like me blaming your above grammatical errors on you being an anti-feminist.

1.math is hard and you dont learn it in gender studies or popculture critic curses at college.

2. im talking in a language i teached myself, i never learned english at school or college.

Anyone can be a feminist, you don't have to take courses to become one and they can even be mathmaticians. You didn't have to take classes to be an anti-feminist.

no, they cant, 4th wave feminism doesnt work that way, you have to study the right things, at the right university, read the right blogs, and if you are from a poor background well gtfo.    ohh, and dont try to go retro and be a 3rd wave feminist, they will bully you everywhere.



the_real_dsister44 on 18 May 2015

When I am going through my day to day life I like to pretend gays and women are people too. Then I treat them like I would a person



fory77 on 18 May 2015

I like how all you people are arguing over race, sexuality and gender when they are all wrong/inpure and thus don't matter. The universal MC of a video game should be:

White

Heterosexual

Blonde

Blue eyes

Stronk body

No mental issues

[insert the Führer's picture]

Kind of, i guess.



danasider on 18 May 2015
Shackkobe said:

I implied the potential of one's mind to expand if forced to take on different subject matter and allow oneself to be vulnerable.  It won't happen with everyone, and personally I feel that if they get burnt out and start hating the process of writing or developing for new subject matters, then they shouldn't continue to be forced to.  It could be enlightening for some however in small amounts.  They don't even have to put them into practice; just being exposed to them a little (books, movies) and they can take or leave what they want within those new ideas.

I wouldn't want them to end up hating their profession.

You are a bit clearer now.

Sometimes we are not aware how we come across.

I think it's only you who aren't aware of how you are coming across.

Your conclusion that the developers being narrowminded is an implication of the premise stating their minds/perspectives are broadened simply is not valid logic. It's a personal assumption yes, but the action where a perspective is broadened does not definitively dictate what the initial state of the mind was.

If the developer was killed, that would imply that he or she was alive in the first place because the state of life is binary. You either are living or you're dead.

However, the broadness of something is relative and it lies on a spectrum. A doorway can be more broad than another doorway and the doorway's broadness is relative to the person walking through the doorway.

So the correct implications would be both that a narrow mind was made less narrow OR an open mind was made more open (the perspective broadened further) -- not one or the other. Because of this, you are wrong to accuse the post of claiming such developers of essentially being narrowminded. It could have meant either or and there'd be know way to prove one implication more valid than the other without further information.

Sorry to nitpick but your last sentence came off a smug despite you arriving at an incorrect conclusion (your biased assumption of what the post meant). This is why internet debates end badly so often. And of course, it's prevalent for the person with the bad sense of logic to try and blame/shame the other poster for not being clear.



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Porcupine_I on 18 May 2015

It's the other way around.

If you include things into your possible elements to choose from it expands your freedom

If you exclude certain elements then it will restrict your freedom.

It's easy really when you think about it.



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

Psychotic on 18 May 2015
Porcupine_I said:
It's the other way around.

If you include things into your possible elements to choose from it expands your freedom

If you exclude certain elements then it will restrict your freedom.

It's easy really when you think about it.


Get rid of the two instances of the word "your" and it might me correct.



Qwark on 18 May 2015
Psychotic said:
Qwark said:


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. 

I can agree with everything in the first paragraph. But only a very small minority of people are accusing developers of racism, homophobia etc. right away. Most simply question why some design decisions were made. For example the Tomodachi Life fiasco - most people were simply asking a very rational question why would the developers not include same-sex relationships in a game that is designed to mimic real-life relationships. They had to specifically decide not to include them and it was actually more work to exclude them than to include them. I think asking why the hell would they do that is justified. If they gave any acceptable anwer to that, I would even give them the benefit of the doubt, but they didn't. And as things stand, it looks like they exluded them, because they didn't consider them "kid-friendly", the implications of which are... bad.

The second paragraph is more questionable. I don't think anyone "forced" Capcom to add white people to RE5's Africa - they simply saw the reaction was negative and they changed it. Maybe they didn't care enough to stand by it? Some people didn't like it, it wasn't important to the designers, so they changed it. If it was a big deal to them, they wouldn't. Are you saying an artist can't change his or her work in a minor way if the reception is negative and the change doesn't impact anything at all? BUT I do agree that there is nothing inherently racist about a white guy killing a bunch of black dudes in Africa and the uproar was out of proportion. But.. what did you say about not assuming my opinion was better than someone else's?

I think that only racists would be dazzled by a black Aragorn - I don't know if his skin color was ever mentioned in the books, maybe we just assumed he was white anyway.

BUT THE MOST INTERESTING THING IN YOUR POST WAS:

It's strange that you think artists shouldn't be limited by people moaning about race (in RE5)... and then you do want artists to be limited by people moaning about race (in LotR). The only difference I see is... the people moaning about race in RE5 aren't... you.


Depends if there was a lord of the rings in Africa or brasil or another fantasy series in the medieval I would have a issue with a white protagonist even in most greek movies I think a white guy doesn´t fit to well he shoudl at least have a light toned skin. Why, because it doesn´t fit in the fantasy not because one is white and the other is  black. I also have issues with the white jesus sonce obviously he would look arabian like considering he lived in Israel and god is Morgan Freeman ±p.

I would have issues with historic inaccuicies which limit the possibility to get sucked up in a fantasy, like those awful english speaking germans in WW movies. So I took them more as an example which sounded fitting but those wheren´t the smartes choises after all. 



Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar

Porcupine_I on 18 May 2015
Psychotic said:
Porcupine_I said:
It's the other way around.

If you include things into your possible elements to choose from it expands your freedom

If you exclude certain elements then it will restrict your freedom.

It's easy really when you think about it.


Get rid of the two instances of the word "your" and it might me correct.

You can't restrict my creative freedom by telling me to exclude words.



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

newsynthetic on 18 May 2015

Is Catering To Women, Homosexuality and Minorities Restricting Game Developers' Creative Freedom? Yes, but it is opening the Gamer's Creative Freedom to the developer. The Game's Creative Freedom should be closed in to just the developer, people should be able to contribute to the game freely (not saying the developer should accept all the ideas). Sometimes it will improve the game, Sometimes Not. (this also excludes for those that are really talented and has plenty of ideas themselves but most developers don't).