Of course you can. Adding another character to your game, while keeping the 6 others is inherently inclusionary. 

It's only exclusionary if you think there's an inherent limit to how much space there is. 

I think a big issue with "merit" here, is that merit isn't a singular thing. 

There's not this giant object list of best artist to worst artist, and someone is being wrong for picking someone lower on the list. 

People are good at different kinds of things. 

You could have a really fantastic artist, but he doesn't work well with your team. He doesn't want to work on the kind of project that you guys are working on. That doesn't help your project.

Maybe someone is the best artist, but maybe someone else is actually better at the kind of art that you want.

I also think it's problematic to think that there's an inherent "right" person for anything. Lots of times there are plenty of good candidates that are basically as good as each other. Then it might come down to "this person works better with our team", or "this person would bring a new experience to the team"

I think you're missing my point.

If you have two applicants, one straight white male and one black lesbian, and the black lesbian is less qualified for the job, but you hire her over the straight white male simply because you want a more diverse work environment, you are committing two sins.

One, you are intentionally hiring lesser talent, thus lowering the level of output for your company and guaranteeing a subpar product.  

And two, you are hiring based on someone's identity... which is exactly the same as hiring someone simply because they are white. You can not hire based on identity and not have it be exclusionary. If you hire a black person because they are black, you are not hiring a white person because they are white. If you hire a white person because they are white, you are not hiring a black person because they are black. One comes with the other. There is no way around it.

Do you understand, now?

The only fair way to hire people is to do it based on qualifications and merit.

If a game is not clearly made by men for men then it's woke. By men I mean sport loving, gun loving, straight men that are threatened by anything different in their lives.

Follow this and you too will know what to be angered by. Hope I helped!

It isn't Ironic, when was the last time you played a game that felt like conservative game or right winged? The last game I can remember that was called Racist was Resident Evil V because the zombies in the African country were black..

Meanwhile you have games like hogwarts Legacy getting attacked because the author of the books said something they don't like....
Stellar blade getting attacked because they dare to have a sexy actractive female as MC and men should not like those kind of women
Black Myth Wukong devs getting attacked because of a leaked email that showed some misbehaving of the devs but anyone who translate the email
could clearly see their was nothing wrong it was extremely vile what she did (think she got fired today Kat bailey?).

DA is like the Saints Row situation, it are existing franchises that got some 'inclusivity' elements added to the game that made the games different , worse, hard to get attached to etc.     Why did they not just made a new IP with those elements? 

I get it obviously both sides have clearly a portion that have extreme views and I can't stand them but with the political issues today their is no center....

People tend to say I am center to please both groups but in reality if the center was huge we would have seen now a third big Center political group and just Democrats and Republicans....

I mean what is the center view about abortion?  What is the center view about the Second Amendment? What is the center view about Blue lives + investment? Climate? Drugs? etc...

I did not like Trump bailing out the debate but that one also seemed to be a political move considering people spend more time in the cats and dogs story and looked what was going in those cities...

Twitter is weird because it seems literally to be the case that plenty of people got unbanned and their were a lot of discussions/debates going on but some did not like it so they created their own Twitter version 'like bluesky' that basically is an echo chamber build on the foundation of twitter...
It is like having a general discussion thread on this forum about all 3 platforms and their games but because one platform is not doing well the group of fans of that platform create their own echo chamber thread so they don't have to debate and see facts.

Let say I agree with this.  The issue is still how do you determine the most qualified person without bias.  I know of plenty of instances where my boss was choosing between 2 white males and one had better education and better work history but we went with the other guy because he interviewed better for example.  Is that not inherently bias in that it base on personality more than what on the resume?  If all the people doing the hiring is from one culture does that not give a disadvantage to someone trying to get a job from another culture?

A good example is orchestras use to be almost all men and the reason they gave was men just played the music better when they did auditions.  In the 1970's they started doing blind auditions so the people doing the hiring could only hear them not see them.  Almost immediately many many woman started getting jobs in orchestras.  Was the men lying before?  Probably some but other probably really believe what they saying but they had a bias toward men they did not even know they had.

Unfortunately many jobs not so easy to implement a truly unbias hiring process as it not as simple as a musician where being judge by how well you play music is good enough therefore a blind audition works perfectly.

For most jobs looking at education and job history not enough and I know plenty of times where other factors over took resume when choosing between two white males but when a minority is chosen over a white male because of something other than what on the resume suddenly it is raciest toward whites and must be stop.  I never seen that compliant when it happens when one white person chosen over another.  Instead it giving someone a chance base on liking them, or some other factor other then what on the resume.  Seem that a double standard.

I hate how people over simplify this as choosing the most qualify when in the history of this country that never how hiring worked.  There always been bias weather it you know the father of the person applying, you went to the same school of them, came from the same town, they had a story about there up bringing that make you want to give them a chance over someone etc.  

Maybe a game studio think have the views of someone that black give a unique perspective to vision of the game they making.  Why is that not a reason the black candidate is more qualify then the white candidate even if the white candidate more qualify on paper.  Choices like that are made all the time between 2 white candidates and it dont get this kind of outrage.

Can you even name one game with that kind of protagonist?

Just a few words it is getting late here:

In don't know many of those bud light moments have to look it up but I know that in bud light' case Trump stated that he didn't support the boycott, the marketing team made a huge mistake and the person they used had some light left winged background.  If Trump would advertise company A B or C in a commercial their will also be a ton of people who will not buy from that company anymore it also makes sense....   Bud light basically weaponized inclusivity and they failed and then supported the republicans.

Moon girl Devil, I honestly don't know anything about except that it seems to be the case that Disney(or the production studio) deleted the episode themself before their were was any possibility of criticism from outside...

I am an active booktok member and I hear the stories but can't say much about it because I always have been against the burning, cancelling of books. Bans on school is a bit different depends obviously on the content. Bans in library is wrong obviously, but more I can't say about it, each book that got banned in history has a big backstory that I need to read.

I must be getting old. I completely forgot Stellar Blade existed because I was never interested in what to me looks like Sony's answer to Bayonetta myself. At a million copies sold as of June (which is quite a while ago now), maybe that game does have the potential to wind up as more than just a cult hit and become enjoyed by more than just male fetishists and the "sex-positivity" crowd. Probably not though because I really doubt that's the kind of representation that most women of color are just pining for more of, seriously. We'll see.

You're right about one thing though: there is something sad and kind of annoying about the seeming universality of cancel culture.

On your final note, I've been branded both "woke" and a "Nazi" and much more lots of times by those respective crowds. Not sure how that works. If I propose that athletic teams should be defined in a sex-based way, I get instantly compared to Mike Pence and accused of "genocide" by some. If I propose that the survival of actual women is more important than that of fertilized eggs, I get accused of murder, treason, and "genocide" by others. In fact, everything is genocide. All my opinions are genocide. I've killed everybody on Earth, it turns out. You're all dead. I'm a "groomer" because I'm gay and therefore a child molester, get it?; a "TERF" because I occasionally disagree with the gender identity movement; a "feminazi" because I don't hate my sex or gender; a "race traitor" because I call the murder of George Floyd was murder; a "white supremacist" because I don't feel personally responsible for slavery and Jim Crow or the murder or George Floyd; "Islamophobic" because I'm a liberal Zionist, "anti-Semitic" because I'm a liberal Zionist, "anti-Christ" because I'm not a Christian, and so on and so on and so on. ...What I'm trying to say is that yes, people should just generally scale it back a little and figure out that not everybody is actually out to get them and be slower to judge and quicker to listen.

But I also deploy all of those terms ("woke", "chud", "fascist/Nazi") against those I consider appropriate targets because there are appropriate targets. There are genuinely, dangerous naive idiots and tyrants and cultists and bigots in this world who cannot be reasoned with and they deserve these labels. I just define those far less generously than most people do, it seems. I'm getting boring in my old age, no?

Dylan Mulvaney is a transwoman. That was the entire Bud Light controversy. When people threaten "Bud Light moments" they mean death threats, boycotts, and occasionally physical violence as means to express their disdain for companies or groups supporting things like Pride Month or being a little too diverse for them.

The Moon Girl episode was leaked online and people have seen the whole thing now. I can't say that I agree with its message myself or with its characterization of everyone who finds there to be pertinent biological differences between trans and cisgender women that obviously matter in athletics as hate-driven prejudiced bigots, but I'm also against the company's decision to ban the episode. I don't have to agree with the content to support its right to exist.

I'm not much of a book banning kind of person either.

Hogwarts Legacy could be construed as having conservative undertones considering you are unquestioningly supporting an oppressive status quo and the presence of thinly veiled antisemitism.
And it's not because of the Author being anti-trans either.

Bioshock has conservative thematics with it's totalitarian Regime and cultist rhetoric portrayed in the games.

Postal, Call of Duty with it's nationalism, Tom Clancy also with it's nationalism.

Call of Juarez: The Cartel misrepresented human trafficking and had a level where you win an achievement for killing black people.

Red Faction: Guerrilla revolves around starting a grassroots revolution to overthrow an exploitative tyrannical government that was in league with industrialists and big business.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is set in a world where unrestrained Capitalism has control.

Mass Effect is also a game set in a world governed by runaway capitalist abuse.

I think you will find you have actually analyzed the video game market appropriately to determine whether a game has progressive or conservative underpinnings and just jumped on a false narrative.

It's stupid to moan that a Bioware game has inclusivity.
It's a Bioware game. Their games have always been diverse and inclusive.

You know what you are getting with that developer. - Mass Effect, Dragon Age... I would even argue Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights and more all had progressive and inclusive elements. (I.E. Different races working together to achieve a common goal.)

People think there is no center... Because they can't see the center.

I don't care if a game has progressive or conservative elements or story; I will play the game and judge it on it's individual merits. - That's what a centrist is about.
They don't care about the little political bullshit of left vs right. They are both as bad as each other... And often their arguments are silly and/or redundant anyway.

Trans character in a game? Who gives a crap. It's a character.
Likewise... I couldn't care if I was playing a character that is initiating genocide.

It's a game. Care less and enjoy it for what it is... A game.

Being in the center is the largest political group, that's where your swing voters exist.

And many countries do have "central" political parties which are the main political party.

I.E. Australia has their Center-left Aka. Labor party and the Center-Right aka. The Liberal party... With far-right political parties like One-Nation or far-right like the Greens filling in the extremists political affiliations. (And yes, both are extreme.)

I am not American, so I don't care about the American "amendments".

As for Abortion... Again, I don't care about it. I am not going to tell what someone can/cannot do as that has no direct impact to me as an individual.

However, centrists tend to have views plucked from the left -OR- right depending on the individual issue.
For example... I have very conservative border/immigration and fiscal policy views, but very progressive social views... Because they are what benefits the most people in my great nation.

You are missing the point I am making... It's got nothing to do with Trump or Kamala as individuals... It's that BOTH sides do the EXACT same thing.

Freedom of speech is the argument often put forth by the conservative Musk... But also tends to ban/remove individuals who express that freedom when it conflicts with his own biases.
The point I am making is that there is irony in those actions. Conservatives are no more or less innocent than progressives... Because of the HUMAN ELEMENT.

And you are right... The "echo-chamber" of console discussions does exist.

But to put it in another context... A Centrist would be someone who owns and games on all consoles and is able to criticize or promote their respective strengths/weaknesses constructively, rather than negatively.