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 Melissia wrote:
You're mistaking developers for producers.

Many developers WOULD love to make that game.

As you're clearly far more experienced on the topic of game development than I, I'm curious as to your thoughts on why it hasn't happened yet if that's the case. Indie games, after all, are more popular than ever, so there's nothing stopping them from making that game.

 Valion wrote:
I'm unaware of any games that started life as feminist or anti-racist manifestos and were obliged to alter their content by a publisher

That says more to your ignorance than the state of the gaming industry today, considering we've had discussions on it on this very forum quite recently.

 Melissia wrote:

 Valion wrote:
I'm unaware of any games that started life as feminist or anti-racist manifestos and were obliged to alter their content by a publisher

That says more to your ignorance than the state of the gaming industry today, considering we've had discussions on it on this very forum quite recently.

Well, I'm willing to be educated. Could you name some games that started life as feminist or anti-racist manifestos and were obliged to change?

Didn't 'Remember Me' almost lose its female protagonist?
I wouldn't say it's a game with a feminist manifesto but a publisher actively tried to remove a female protagonist from the game.

 purplefood wrote:
Didn't 'Remember Me' almost lose its female protagonist?
I wouldn't say it's a game with a feminist manifesto but a publisher actively tried to remove a female protagonist from the game.

It's one of many examples. I imagine we might see even more if we started seeing games before the publishers get there changes in. Most of the time we don't hear about a game till after it's found a publisher and by then they would have made any publisher prescribed changes.

 purplefood wrote:
Didn't 'Remember Me' almost lose its female protagonist?
I wouldn't say it's a game with a feminist manifesto but a publisher actively tried to remove a female protagonist from the game.

I don't know, actually. What little I can find on it suggests that it was built from the ground up to try and combat tried-and-true gaming conventions, with no mention of publisher interference. Either way, it certainly falls into the category of "not most developers" that I mentioned above I think. It'll be interesting to see if it finds an audience.

 Valion wrote:
Well, I'm willing to be educated. Could you name some games that started life as feminist or anti-racist manifestos and were obliged to change?

We had a discussion about this not too long ago on this very forum, as I said.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/188775/You_cant_have_a_female_character_in_games.php

"We had some [publishers] that said, 'Well, we don't want to publish it because that's not going to succeed. You can't have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that."

Which also helps answer your other question.

There are numerous reasons why it hasn't been done yet. For one, publishers are afraid of producing a game where the lead is minority character, thinking that these characters will not sell. This fear isthey based off of flawed market research, where they exclude minorities by default. If you don't believe these links, try this one, in which David Gaider, the lead writer for Dragon Age, discusses it.

I call it “accepted industry wisdom.” The thing about accepted industry wisdom is that you can’t question it. Everyone just agrees. It’s weird. The things that the industry decides are treated as incontrovertibly true[...]

Furthermore, your terminology shows your inherent bias. This isn't asking for some kind of "minority manifesto", any more than Heavy Rain is a "white anglo saxon protestant male manifesto". Which it isn't.

 Valion wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
Didn't 'Remember Me' almost lose its female protagonist?
I wouldn't say it's a game with a feminist manifesto but a publisher actively tried to remove a female protagonist from the game.

I don't know, actually. What little I can find on it suggests that it was built from the ground up to try and combat tried-and-true gaming conventions, with no mention of publisher interference. Either way, it certainly falls into the category of "not most developers" that I mentioned above I think. It'll be interesting to see if it finds an audience.

Long story short; a lot of developers they took it to said "You can't have a female lead since it doesn't resonate with male gamers." and when it was brought up that there was a kiss scene "It is incredibly awkward to have a male gamer play a female lead who kisses a dude."

Personally, Remember Me looks awesome, and it might just be one of the smartest moves Capcom has made in recent years. But I'm not going to jinx it.

I think at this point most publishers are more of a blight on the games industry than anything positive...

 purplefood wrote:
I think at this point most publishers are more of a blight on the games industry than anything positive...

Pretty much.

They're just pathetic old white men who wish they were big film industry executives.

 Melissia wrote:
Furthermore, your terminology shows your inherent bias. This isn't asking for some kind of "minority manifesto", any more than Heavy Rain is a "white anglo saxon protestant male manifesto". Which it isn't.

It's asking to take a known formula that is known to work and alter it to please a small selection of the targeted demographic. Perceived bias is pretty irrelevant.

I fully buy into the notion that big-name publishers are less willing to stray from that formula, but your contention was that developers would love to make that game, and my resulting question was why haven't we seen it, then, on the indie scene, which has to deal with that problem far-less-to-not-at-all.


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 Slarg232 wrote:
Long story short; a lot of developers they took it to said "You can't have a female lead since it doesn't resonate with male gamers." and when it was brought up that there was a kiss scene "It is incredibly awkward to have a male gamer play a female lead who kisses a dude."

I'd suspect it would probably be more the latter than the former, truth be told. Female leads, while not as common as their male counterparts, are something the industry's had since the '80s. Samus Aran, Lara Croft, Joanna Dark, the chick from Velvet Assassin, the one from Wet, Faith Connors, so on.

 Valion wrote:
Perceived bias is pretty irrelevant.

What's irrelevant is your ignorant opinion.


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 Valion wrote:
I'd suspect it would probably be more the latter than the former

That'se because you didn't actually bother reading the articles I linked to.

Not that your desire to remain ignorant is a surprise.

 Valion wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Furthermore, your terminology shows your inherent bias. This isn't asking for some kind of "minority manifesto", any more than Heavy Rain is a "white anglo saxon protestant male manifesto". Which it isn't.

It's asking to take a known formula that is known to work and alter it to please a small selection of the targeted demographic. Perceived bias is pretty irrelevant.

Not necessarily, look at the two top American actors, both of whom are household names; Morgan Freeman, and Will Smith. You could say that using Will Smith in Independence Day (One of his first movies after Fresh Prince) was a risky move, since his part could have been done by a white guy, and he was the main character in that film.....

Now, yes, there are other good actors, but if people hear that Morgan Freeman or Will Smith have leading roles in a movie, it's pretty much going to sell out.....



My point is, VG's are mostly just being obstenant with refusing to branch out and offer us so many rich characters, JUST because of Race and Gender. I don't think anyone could have brought us Detective Spooner from I,Robot, or Will's character in I Am Legend (Except maybe Gerard Butler.... I could see him doing that role almost as well if not equally).

And no one other than Morgan Freeman could ever play God properly.

valion wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:
Long story short; a lot of developers they took it to said "You can't have a female lead since it doesn't resonate with male gamers." and when it was brought up that there was a kiss scene "It is incredibly awkward to have a male gamer play a female lead who kisses a dude."

I'd suspect it would probably be more the latter than the former, truth be told. Female leads, while not as common as their male counterparts, are something the industry's had since the '80s. Samus Aran, Lara Croft, Joanna Dark, the chick from Velvet Assassin, the one from Wet, Faith Connors, so on.

Samus Aran: not really seen as a chick, except by her hardcore fans due to armor.

Lara Croft: Gamings #1 sex symbol.

Joanna Dark: She had one good game and then fell of the radar, and her good game was pretty much Goldeneye: Female's Edition

Velvet Assassin: Who?

Wet: Who?

Faith Connors: Who? You mean John Connors mother? Movie characters don't count here.....


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 Melissia wrote:
And no one other than Morgan Freeman could ever play God properly.

That's only because Morgan Freeman truly is God

Wet was nothing more than a mediocre game about a sexualized assassin that focused way too much on the assassin's ass. Even its name was intentionally chosen to sexualize her, and its box art was basically just her wet tee-shirt covered tits shoved in your face with her standing in a noncommittal pose holding guns like she was confused about how to use them. No planned sequel.

Velvet Assassin was a WWII game about a Bbritish female spy, about her drug- and sickness-induced hallucinations of being a badass, where she lies to herself and makes up gak about how she was a total badass in all of her missions. No, I'm not joking. She was also placed in skin-tight leather pants, because feth period clothing. No planned sequel.

Faith Connors was the star of Mirror's Edge, which was basically Parkour: The Game. It was probably the only good example aside from Aran and Croft out of that, since they announced plans on a sequel. I rahter liked it, but its planned sequel has apparently fallen through and almost nothing has been heard about it since. I saw something on the Kotaku blog last november, but it was just an unconfirmed rumor.

 Slarg232 wrote:
Not necessarily, look at the two top American actors, both of whom are household names; Morgan Freeman, and Will Smith. You could say that using Will Smith in Independence Day (One of his first movies after Fresh Prince) was a risky move, since his part could have been done by a white guy, and he was the main character in that film.....

Now, yes, there are other good actors, but if people hear that Morgan Freeman or Will Smith have leading roles in a movie, it's pretty much going to sell out.....



My point is, VG's are mostly just being obstenant with refusing to branch out and offer us so many rich characters, JUST because of Race and Gender. I don't think anyone could have brought us Detective Spooner from I,Robot, or Will's character in I Am Legend (Except maybe Gerard Butler.... I could see him doing that role almost as well if not equally).

That reluctance is rather understandable when one bad turnout can sink a studio, no?

The point isn't that non-white, non-male characters, secondary or otherwise, need to play to stereotypes (I'd argue that most don't, anyway), the point is that moving in that direction solely for the sake of pleasing what is essentially a lobbying segment pushing an agenda isn't the way to go. I'm in favor of letting the developers make the games they want to make, and having them stand or fall on their own merits, rather than trying to determine if they hit enough items on a social agenda checklist.

I heard it was put on hold pending funding from someone...

 purplefood wrote:
I heard it was put on hold pending funding from someone...

The latest I heard was rumors from Kotaku that "they're making it right now, believe us this time, seriously!", which happened last november.


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I should also note, to try to drag this somewhat back on topic, all of these ladies are WHITE ladies.

Aside from Left 4 Dead 2 and games where you customize your character, I can't think of a single game that allows you to play a woman who isn't white.

Maybe Chell might count, but they whitewashed her for portal 2 if that was the case.

Dead island. You have Purana and xian mei as non white female characters. When their are only 4 characters that's actually a rather heavy percent.

 Melissia wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
I heard it was put on hold pending funding from someone...

The latest I heard was rumors from Kotaku that "they're making it right now, believe us this time, seriously!", which happened last november.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I should also note, to try to drag this somewhat back on topic, all of these ladies are WHITE ladies.

Aside from Left 4 Dead 2 and games where you customize your character, I can't think of a single game that allows you to play a woman who isn't white.

Maybe Chell might count, but they whitewashed her for portal 2 if that was the case.

Does Onechanbara count, (Aya doesn't, but Saki looks fairly Japanese)? There's C. Viper from SF4. That's about all I can think of, really. There may be a few more, but they're gonna be obscure.

nomotog wrote:
Dead island.

Ah, that's a good example I think.


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 deathholydeath wrote:
Does Onechanbara count, (Aya doesn't, but Saki looks fairly Japanese)? There's C. Viper from SF4. That's about all I can think of, really. There may be a few more, but they're gonna be obscure.

I dunno if I would count Japanese games having Japanese characters as examples of diversity in games?

Race is just another character tool in games. For example, the Redguard in The Elder Scrolls series were always stronger but had a compromise on 'wise' activities such as magic. Guess what? They're black.
In the original Fable, Thunder was a massive hulking brute. Guess what? He's black.
It's a long shot by some stretch (although pretty much all fantasy races are based off of real races), but in Fantasy RPGs the races have different characters as well. Dwarves? Drunken, violent, strong, stupid and short people with beards? Sounds like the stereotypical Scotsman.

It seems wrong, but in a game universe it helps immensely when skills are guided towards a particular race.

You know if you where looking for a game to tackle are different race related issues. A zombie game might be the place.

 Melissia wrote:

nomotog wrote:
Dead island.

Ah, that's a good example I think.


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 deathholydeath wrote:
Does Onechanbara count, (Aya doesn't, but Saki looks fairly Japanese)? There's C. Viper from SF4. That's about all I can think of, really. There may be a few more, but they're gonna be obscure.

I dunno if I would count Japanese games having Japanese characters as examples of diversity in games?

I guess I was thinking more in terms of marketing diversity than creative diversity. In the Japanese market? No. In the U.S.? Maybe. But, I'm willing to say that's very iffy.

nomotog wrote:
You know if you where looking for a game to tackle are different race related issues. A zombie game might be the place.

That or post-apocalyptic. Anywhere that society is already stressed out.

Melissia wrote:Wet was nothing more than a mediocre game about a sexualized assassin that focused way too much on the assassin's ass. Even its name was intentionally chosen to sexualize her, and its box art was basically just her wet tee-shirt covered tits shoved in your face with her standing in a noncommittal pose holding guns like she was confused about how to use them. No planned sequel.

Velvet Assassin was a WWII game about a Bbritish female spy, about her drug- and sickness-induced hallucinations of being a badass, where she lies to herself and makes up gak about how she was a total badass in all of her missions. No, I'm not joking. She was also placed in skin-tight leather pants, because feth period clothing. No planned sequel.

Faith Connors was the star of Mirror's Edge, which was basically Parkour: The Game. It was probably the only good example aside from Aran and Croft out of that, since they announced plans on a sequel. I rahter liked it, but its planned sequel has apparently fallen through and almost nothing has been heard about it since. I saw something on the Kotaku blog last november, but it was just an unconfirmed rumor.

I know who they are (Except Faith Connors, though I shoulda known that one by just Faith), I was illustrating that they didn't have any lasting impact. Save Samus (Who is easily confused as a man) and Lara Croft (New Lara might make something of herself, old one was just an unintended sex symbol), no female character has ever had as much recognition as Master Chief, Mario, Link, Ezio, Gordon Freeman, Kratos, Fox McCloud, Ness, etc. etc. etc.

Even less so for Black characters, I've already listed the two most popular ones. Now, an easy way to make a black character? Silent protagonist; don't have to write any lines/stereotypes that could potentially blow up in your face, and you can just have the world react to him/her, a la Gordon Freeman. Not an ideal diverse lead, but hey, it's a start.

BlapBlapBlap wrote:Race is just another character tool in games. For example, the Redguard in The Elder Scrolls series were always stronger but had a compromise on 'wise' activities such as magic. Guess what? They're black.
In the original Fable, Thunder was a massive hulking brute. Guess what? He's black.
It's a long shot by some stretch (although pretty much all fantasy races are based off of real races), but in Fantasy RPGs the races have different characters as well. Dwarves? Drunken, violent, strong, stupid and short people with beards? Sounds like the stereotypical Scotsman.

It seems wrong, but in a game universe it helps immensely when skills are guided towards a particular race.

Redguards aren't any stronger than Nords (Who are brutish and terrible with magic), and if you want, you can still make a Redguard "Scholar". Also, due to their attire (Skyrim), I think Redguards are supposed to be more middle eastern.

In the Original Fable, while Thunder was pretty big, Biggest Character In The Game still goes to Twinblade, who was White. Also, Whisper wasn't (to my rather limited knowledge at the time; haven't played it in a long time, so I might have just been to young) any sort of stereotype.


And you know what both Dwarves and Scotsman share? THEY'RE FEKKIN AWESOME!

Left 4 Dead does have some of the most memorable black protagonists in gaming history. Hell, one of the reasons Valve is such an amazing game company is their development of strong female and minority characters.

A lot of the problem comes from 'play it safe' corporatism. (Where white 30-somethings are seen as the Toyota Corolla of protagonists.) Some of it oddly comes from the diversity of game design companies. For example RE5 was racially tone-deaf because it was the product of an ethnically hegemonic society. (Japan)

How do you keep equality without the overall story of the game turning into a checklist for representing every gender, orientation and race equally?

Moreover, how do you keep the story feeling organic and not constructed?


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 purplefood wrote:
I think at this point most publishers are more of a blight on the games industry than anything positive...

Yet are a necessity in order to produce interesting games with assets, something indie games lack, barring a couple.

Valve games tend to be a lot less racist than a lot of other games.

Chell from Portal and Portal 2 looks slightly Hispanic, and she's definitely a strong, positive character (even if she doesn't say anything).

Team Fortress 2 has a wide variety of races in it, and is alarmingly non-discriminatory in that everybody in TF2 is an idiot, be it the Soldier, an American with his ridiculous hammy speeches and obsession with victory, the Heavy, hailing from Russia, with serious anger problems and an addiction to SANDVICHES, the Demoman, a black Scottish cyclops who drinks to much and likes to blow stuff up, and so on and so forth...

Left 4 Dead has a wide variety of races in it, and all of the characters are more or less equal in helpfulness (excluding the meme of Louis and his PEELZ!).

On the topic of other games, The Legend of Zelda carefully avoids the issue by not having any humans at all (the closest things to humans in LOZ are the Hylians, who are closer to elves). Whilst it could be argued that Ganondorf, being sort-of black, and somewhat evil, is racist, it is worth bearing in mind that all Gerudos have brown skin, and the Gerudos aren't inherently evil (in fact, one of the sages from OOT is a Gerudo, and is a valuable ally in the game)-aside from Ganondorf himself, the only Gerudos who are truly evil are the pair of witches who raised him, known as the Twinrova.