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

MrWayne said:
areason said:

That doesn't mean that a free market can't exist.

A full free market does not exist right now, has never existed in the past, and I do not see any government seriously trying to get one in the future. That's proof enough for me.

A free market does exist. Goods are priced the way they are because of supply and demand economics. Just because their is a given amount of government intervention doesn't mean that the free market isn't apparent in our economy. 

Even in heavily regulated markets such as the alcohol distribution, the free market still decides what gets produced and so on. 



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I don't even know why I still read those kind of threads every time. I guess it's because it's always very funny.

Obviously I don't agree. There's a reason they do that and it's because it makes money. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Not every thing is made with you in mind. And I'm pretty sure there will always be that one movie or game made entirely by men (I mean, talented women? Ha, what a joke) and with all the characters being white straight dudes with some white lady here and there being support characters, there's nothing with that either.



jardesonbarbosa said:
I don't even know why I still read those kind of threads every time. I guess it's because it's always very funny.

Obviously I don't agree. There's a reason they do that and it's because it makes money. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Not every thing is made with you in mind. And I'm pretty sure there will always be that one movie or game made entirely by men (I mean, talented women? Ha, what a joke) and with all the characters being white straight dudes with some white lady here and there being support characters, there's nothing with that either.

I'm pretty much the same, it is interesting to read people responses. Diversity or lack of has nothing to do with talent. Talent is simple in Hollywood, these days the pool for them massive. What it comes down to is money. Can this movie sell or create synergy to sell. 



 

OTBWY said:

The third one is so true.

LMAO Why I never noticed this? 



areason said:
MrWayne said:

A full free market does not exist right now, has never existed in the past, and I do not see any government seriously trying to get one in the future. That's proof enough for me.

A free market does exist. Goods are priced the way they are because of supply and demand economics. Just because their is a given amount of government intervention doesn't mean that the free market isn't apparent in our economy. 

Even in heavily regulated markets such as the alcohol distribution, the free market still decides what gets produced and so on. 

I'm talking about a complete free market. Every market is to some degree free, even in the old Soviet Union. In Germany we have the Social market economy which is somewhere between Anglo-Saxon economy and Market socialism, none of these are  completely free market economies.



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I don't know if I should laugh or cry at this whole idea that creators needs special justifications for making characters that are female, gay or black, or else it's "pandering to the evil SJW demons".



Qwark said:

1 Lets see on my PS4 Horizon, Uncharted LL, 2 Tom Raider Games, Fallout 4, Dishonered 2, Bloodborne,  Dragon Age (female dwarf) Nier Automata, Until Dawn (alright not only but still), Dark Souls 3, Infamous first light. So around 40% of my games I played as a woman.

 

2. I am pretty sure White Males also buy the most games by far, so it's only logical for companies to cater to 75% of their audience. That doesn't make them sexist or racist, just capitalist. Besides there are plenty of games with a female lead or quite a few meaningful important  woman characters to begin with. Given the choice I usually play as a female. Athough I don't give the slightest crap that the the new GOW doesn't include memorable non white characters. 

How many people who enjoy enjoy AAA games  are gay probably 3% at best. It's very simple companies make games for their audiences not the world, but people who buy and play their games. If games with other races and sexualities sell much better than games only featuring white males they would have made them a long time ago.

3 From the ones I played, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The last of Us, Borderlands, Fable, Fallout,Skyrim/ or Dragons dogma you can Mary the same sex. Here is a list with LBQT VG Characters. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_with_LGBT_characters

 

4 Because most of the games I play usually involve me murdering a shit ton of people. And for some reason I find it more believable that I have a bunch of  steroid, testosterone males kill everything they see than a squad of female characters.

 

As for ghost busters the movie sucked when it was made and sequel ducks too. Also why are you trying to find equality in a comedy. That's like trying to did a good black and Asian representation in Rush Hour.

Alright, let me try and go through this:

1. Most of the games you listed here do not have female-only leads, i.e. allow you the option to use a male avatar, if I can point that out. If my point about wildly disproportionate representation needs to be made any more clear, all one needs do is click on the VG Chartz button at the top of this page and check out this week's top 10 best-sellers list. Fully half the games on it use only male leads and none use female-only leads. That's typical. It's not simply a reflection of what sells and what doesn't, but of what gets made in the first place and what doesn't.

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.

(I'm also not a big fan of capitalism. )

3. That's a very small list. And it's also a list consisting mostly of games that ALSO allow for straight romance arcs as well. The point is that the vast majority of video games compel me to pretend that I am not only male, but also a straight male, and you know it. Your list also doesn't include a lot of games that precede the current decade either, it's worth noting.

4. Whatever.

Why am I "looking for equality in a comedy"? What I'm looking for is humor I can relate to better than the kind you might, not political correctness as such. Ghostbusters is hardly the funniest film franchise that comes to my mind in that connection, but it's one that was brought up in the OP, so that's why I responded about it.



Mandalore76 said:
VGPolyglot said:

New characters are constantly introduced in shows/series, and new revelations of established characters are also commonplace. If nothing is different at all then there is not even a point of having a sequel as it'd be the exact same thing.

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.  

 

forest-spirit said:
I don't know if I should laugh or cry at this whole idea that creators needs special justifications for making characters that are female, gay or black, or else it's "pandering to the evil SJW demons".

It's a filmmaker's job to tell a cohesive story.  See the above example where a character's sexual orientation of half a century was randomly changed.  Yes, that does need to be explained within the story.  Since it wasn't, and since it wasn't even the character's orientation in the first rebooted film, but instead tacked on in the 3rd film of the rebooted series, that's paying no regard to the characters or storytelling.  They could have introduced a new character and it would have been fine, but no, it was shoe-horned onto an existing character against the wishes of the actor who portrayed and defined that character for decades and knew the creator.  That's poor storytelling.  They didn't create the character of Hikaru Sulu.  Gene Roddenberry did.  So yes, they do need justification for that kind of change, because otherwise, how could it be construed as anything but pandering?



Mnementh said:
 

First of all to point one: he never said all women are talentless. He said that women are hired because they are women and not because of talent. And that statement I must challenge: I can think of no example of women in entertainement biz that are talentless (and successful). So I would say you both are wrong.

But there is a deeper point to it, something that bothers me. I recently noticed, that I can say if a movie is american or european just by looking at the female cast. Pretty much all american actresses are attractive. While many european actresses are also attractive, they also cast women who look ... well, like normal women. American movies give a total wrong impression on women. Even in supporting roles or side roles all women are good looking. And don't understand me wrong, I think these actresses are good at their job. But Hollywood casting agencies must send all actresses back, that can play a role, but look standard and not like fashion models. A note here: movies by Jodie Foster are an exception.

Point two about bending storylines is also more complicated. Hollywood pretty much always bends storylines - because they basically have no original ideas. Everything on a movie screen was a comic, a book, a foreign movie or an older movie before. So if you remake this, you change stuff. I did not watch the new Ghostbusters. Not because the main cast are all women now. But because I already watched Ghostbusters many years ago and nothing indicated the new movie made anything better than the original. I don't waste my lifetime watching bad movies. On the flipside I watched and liked Jessica Jones. Because I was never into comic books and therefore it didn't matter for me that it was an old story. They remade one figure from male to female (Jerry Hogarth became Jeri Hogarth) and I'm cool with that, because Carrie-Anne Moss played great. Most of the male figures there basically idiots (with the exception of the main villain). But I'm cool with that, because it doesn't matter so much, I watched so much movies with all or mainly male cast, I have no problem with mainly female cast. So, for me you can bend storylines - if you do it well and not shitty. But I prefer original stories, about which nobody can say they storyline is bended. Heck, we are on a videogame forum and here new IPs get praised and companies get slammed for making sequels. We should do that more for movies.

Well, and the stereotype-point: it is everywhere and it is annoying too. OTBWY showed an example. The stereotypical women in Hollywood movies moved on from the damsel in distress to the allmighty powerwomen who can do everything but has a soft heart too. A reason I watch movies and series from all over the world is, that at least each region has different stereotypes, so I have more variety.

So, sorry I answered you, most of my points were more or less general, I just stumbled over your post as my opinions articulated in my head and I noticed that you misinterpreted point one of the original post and felt the need to answer.

I was gonna say that the above includes little in the way of a direct reply to my comments, but it looks like you saw that too at the end. :-p

Anyway, I think some of the points you make here are valid, like with regard to cultural differences between the portrayals of women that prevail in Europe versus the United States. I agree with you there. I don't really have a lot to add to that actually. However, I do maintain my initial point about the presumption that female hires are "diversity hires" by default and anything else by exception. I found that contention insulting.



Jaicee said:

Alright, let me try and go through this:

1. Most of the games you listed here do not have female-only leads, i.e. allow you the option to use a male avatar, if I can point that out. If my point about wildly disproportionate representation needs to be made any more clear, all one needs do is click on the VG Chartz button at the top of this page and check out this week's top 10 best-sellers list. Fully half the games on it use only male leads and none use female-only leads. That's typical. It's not simply a reflection of what sells and what doesn't, but of what gets made in the first place and what doesn't.

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.

(I'm also not a big fan of capitalism. )

3. That's a very small list. And it's also a list consisting mostly of games that ALSO allow for straight romance arcs as well. The point is that the vast majority of video games compel me to pretend that I am not only male, but also a straight male, and you know it. Your list also doesn't include a lot of games that precede the current decade either, it's worth noting.

4. Whatever.

Why am I "looking for equality in a comedy"? What I'm looking for is humor I can relate to better than the kind you might, not political correctness as such. Ghostbusters is hardly the funniest film franchise that comes to my mind in that connection, but it's one that was brought up in the OP, so that's why I responded about it.

1/3) Well it's true quite a few of these game do allow a female lead. The point remains if you want to play the game as a female you can play the entire game as a female (except for until Dawn). You do it to relate better with a character, I usually like female voice actresses better than their male counterparts especially in Mass Effect.

Same with the games I listed and romances it's your story if you want to play it as a black female lesbian nobody is stopping you. So I really can't see the problem that you can also play as a straight white male. I really don't see it as a discount of diversity that you can also choose to play as a  straight white person but let's agree to disagree on that standpoint. 

As for succes Horizon Zero Dawn sold 7.8 million units in a year so that's pretty good. Uncharted Lost Legacy probably moved more than a few units. And in May Detroit will release which also has one lead character that identifies as a woman (Kara). Or at least I guess. Androids are things and things are genderless whether they self aware or not.

I would say take success where you can. There are plenty of good games which you can at least play as a female and which where succesful.

I think the male vs female representation is actually pretty much equal to the amount male and female AAA gamers. I don't see a need for that too change and apparently neither do the companies. That said I don't mind seeing more female leads, I simply don't give a damn about the lack of them in generic shooters or footies. But I don't think the gaming audience will change let alone grow if 50% of the games would have a female lead.

2) Well gamers in generally where seen as Nerds back in the day. So since men are more socially retarded than women they where more willing to associate themselves with gaming. The second reason is tech, woman where and are less present in the tech sector and usually men are more likely to be tech enthousiasts. So games where primary targeted at men. 

As for LBQT people that's simply a market to small to cater so I doubt LBQT people in games will get represented often. But at least one will star in the biggest Sony exclusive on PS4 so that's something. Unless a white tomboy lesbian is enough of a stereotype for it not to count. Also I rely doubt if more LBQT leads will cater more LBQT gamers.


Last edited by Qwark - on 21 May 2018

Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar