I'd have to agree there. I mean usually when you talk about putting a character in just to have a black/female/etc. character, people call that a token, and say it's honestly just as bad as deliberately not putting them in because you're prejudiced against them. There are a lot of people that seem to get upset even when it does fit though, like with Ellie in TLOU2. The first game has you taking care of her and sacrificing to make sure she gets a chance to grow up, so why wouldn't the second game have her grown up, and let you play as her? Yet people were mad that she was the main character. Then people were mad that she had a lesbian kiss, but like, that's so rarely done that if they play that right it'll be interesting in and of itself. It could serve to emphasize her coming of age and growing into her sexuality in a really striking way. I say why not. Other people just get mad. I don't get it. It's not some blatant example of "token such and such demographic character because we gotta meet the diversity quota", it's an interesting and well done character.

Didn't see complains about having Ellie, but saw about no sight of Joel. Also on the kiss the majority of the negative I saw was they focusing that on E3 instead of just being part of the game (that goes on those complains about doing it just for brownie points), it didn't upset me to have it and I understood it was to give contrast between she fighting for life and actually having a life.

That's a good example.  The continuity in Game of Thrones is very well established.  Magic wasn't something that permeated everyday life. A meaningful part of the beginning of the story was that no one believed in the old legends.  In fact, part of what makes Game of Thrones so popular is that it has a kind of gritty realism as a backbone.  That's an odd response.  I'd rather he say that they just didn't think of it or it wasn't something they could address in a practical manner.

'Tis the author of this thread again. Just wanted to thank everyone for their contributions to this thread and for making it a thoughtful and productive conversation. To add a few of my thoughts at this point...

Based on how this thread has gone, I no longer believe that the views that concerned me are held by the majority (though I do believe that some people are being dishonest about their motives for holding certain views) and that's encouraging. Honestly, maybe my perspective has been warped a little bit by just kind of feeling like Smurfette around here for long enough. To me anyway, it's weird and uncomfortable to be the only female person that I typically see around here on any given day. Those dynamics just make it feel like I really don't belong here and like people are just tolerating me, and I don't want to be that disruptive force that ruins everything. I often feel like I'm walking on eggshells to avoid disrupting the pre-established culture here while also aspiring to contribute to it in a way that is my own. It feels like threading a needle sometimes, and I'm not good at sowing. I usually try to avoid discussions of like women in video games and stuff like that for that reason. But there are a lot of them.

I also think that things ARE getting better over time. Like I've seen a study finding that, in the seventh console generation, games using male lead characters outnumbered those that used female leads by a margin of 14 to 1, and others that suggest that 8th (current) generation, by contrast, has seen that ratio narrow down to 5 to 1. So yeah, I do think things are getting better over time, and that things like Gamergate and whatnot that have been discussed here are really just backlashes resisting those changes. I guess I was just starting to worry that that type of thinking represented the dominant perspective here.

Anyway, there's been a lot of discussion about specific games here, and I can't speak to the particular franchise that is Battlefield because it just isn't something that I follow. However, I will say that, in my experience and observation, people mostly play video games to escape the drudgery of real life and that, to that end, video games aren't often very realistic. Even "history pieces" typically contain at least as much fantasy as they do reality. Women have fantasy lives too. That's all I really feel qualified to say on that subject without knowing more than I do about that particular franchise. I like the Wolfenstein games.

I also kind of wish that there were more video games that really are pretty realistic. I think that games like Gone Home highlight that the revisitation of historical types of settings, even portrayed with striking accuracy, doesn't always have to be male-centric. The history books may not think that the stories of girls and women matter very much, but I do.

Anyway, thank you again everyone for your thoughtful replies, which have been clarifying.

You really need to look more around, there are many female users with much more posts than yourself. Though a lot of people here won't say they are male or female because that is irrelevant for almost any discussion.

Gamergate have been a backlash on bad practices on game journalism not on the presence of female in games or development.

Gaming not being real and suspension of disbelief are different than decisions that break your immersion and that is the root of most complains on the "diversity". For BFV the problem was even more highlighted because instead of responding something like "the team understand that some customers didn't like the inclusion of black people and woman and that it doesn't portray how the WW2 went, but we took the liberty of making the game more diverse to be more inclusive to more people on our userbase" instead of "this was a likely scenario on WW2 and you just don't know it because you are ignorant".

If you behave like that bad on you.

If you are a man that behave badly around woman.

And assume people that doesn't say they are man are man, or that is straight is another form of prejudice.

You can just not assume either way, it is people anyway.

And groups when they want to bother someone they will anyway. Just supposing they do worse on woman is patronizing and tiring. Everyone who plays online know how much cursing and bashing goes there and sorry it isn't worse against woman is just different because in general male and woman are hurt by different things.