[mrcharles]

I downvoted you because you misunderstood the point of that section of the article. It's not about 'offending' people, it's about consistently and invisibly leaving people out.

It's easy for us white dudes (as I assume you are, based on your post) to say "games should just be whatever!" because we implicitly have the privilege of identifying with the inevitable white dude main character. The few times the character isn't a white dude washes right off of us because we are absolutely used to a character that conforms to us.

Others don't have that. This isn't 'politics' it's about being inclusive and realizing that it's actually trivially easy to do so in most cases.

I've been making games professionally for over 15 years now. The progress we are making is fantastic because the main problem with games is that game designers are lazy. When we go with grimdark white dude, it is lazy. When game developers are forced to not be lazy, everybody wins. Because at the very least, you cannot argue with the fact that lazy design is always going to be inferior to non-lazy design.

[monksy]

> It's easy for us white dudes (as I assume you are, based on your post)

That's a racist stereotype.

> the privilege of identifying with the inevitable white dude main character

You're telling me that people relate to some ex-military dude that goes around shooting people who shoot at them? (COD) You're also telling me that we relate to some girl jumping on top of buildings and running around? (Mirrors edge) The same with a ripped Spartan with chains embedded in his arms? (God of War) [To make things worse... his skin has been dyed many times over]

You've got to be loony if you believe that the race of the character prevents someone from relating. From my perspective its a fantasy world you're entering. Just because I'm playing Sonic the Hedgehog doesn't mean that I can't relate just due to it's Hedgehoggian race.

[mrcharles]

> That's a racist stereotype

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M

[jschwartzi]

Yo, if you're going to reply with a youtube link, would you mind explaining what it's about so we know what we're clicking on?

[mrcharles]

It's a debunking of 'reverse racism'.

[Dylan16807]

Nobody said 'reverse racism'.

The person you replied to was clearly talking about racial stereotyping. The objection was to the stereotyping.

A video that debunks reverse racism is not an appropriate reply to what is (at worst) effectively a typo. s/ist/ial/ and done.

[mrcharles]

Guessing that someone arguing from an obvious position of privilege is a white guy is only a racist stereotype if you believe reverse racism exists.

[ivanca]

I downvoted you because you make very bad points:

Being inclusive: Yeah, it's extremely inclusive, The most famous videogame in the world is about a Italian plumber, the most sold videogame in history is about a redneck, a black man and a Russian man. The most famous puzzle game is about a women in a experiment. They want the prime time on more AAA games? So you think giving them the main role in GTA would make them happy? I don't think so, they would scream "Women are not violent, this is sexism!"

I'm "brown" by all US definitions of it and I couldn't care less for "more brown people in videogames".

> The progress we are making is fantastic

There have been no progress, getting closed to your biased ideal of games is not progress until you can proof otherwise.

[makomk]

> It's not about 'offending' people, it's about consistently and invisibly leaving people out.

The trouble is, this isn't something you can solve on an individual level as someone developing a single game - you have to leave some people out, there's simply not space - and yet, as the article alludes to, there's this pressure to meet everyone's expectations around inclusion.

(Even when the people being included don't actually exist. There was this big, screwed up gaming media hoo-hah a while ago about how a game and its developers were racist because they hadn't include any black people. It was set in a time and a region when they didn't exist - and from what I recall, the developers actually did the research on this, they didn't just assume everyone was white in their setting.)

[metafex]

Okay, I understood this part of the article 'you can't do everyone justice'. As for the 'white dude' part: lucky guess ;-) But I personally can't identify with the flat stereotypes in games, it just doesn't work for me. I also will never say "games should be just whatever", they are just so much more to me. I love the stories, seeing worlds that never have been and never will be. That's what games are for me about.

To the politics: My part was about workplace politics, but you are right about the game politics, it is good to take the extra mile and reach out.

[mrcharles]

Well this statement: "Just make your game fun, challenging or whatever your goal is and have fun making it." Sounds very much like "don't worry about inclusiveness, games should be whatever you want them to be!"

Which is true but if you want your games to be exclusionary then don't be surprised when people call you on it.

[girvo]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I do think it's interesting that we don't hold many other forms of media and art to this standard. Movies are about the only ones I can see where people do bring it up, but even that is a "fringe" concern, for the most part you'll never see a review of a movie bring up diversity and inclusion, and yet it's quickly become a fixture in modern games reviewing (see: Polygon).

I wonder if it's because gaming is a world you can escape to, immerse yourself in more than movies? But then, I find books to be far more engrossing, and you'll never see this brought up for them. It's interesting, that's for sure.

[judk]

It is same in every medium of art, but video games are what the Interneterati talk about the most, since they are computer lovers.

[metafex]

It is really hard to say what you mean when you only have words to describe what you feel.

I hope you can take this as an apology, I don't wan't to hurt any feelings with what I do or say, it is just too easy to loose the passion for what you do when all you do is trying to meet expectations. I learned that the hard way.

[mrcharles]

Well, I'd like you to know that most professional game developers feel very strongly on these topics, and they feel that inclusiveness and diversity are good things.

In fact, what leads most of us to losing the passion is making yet another grimdark white dude game. So this push towards inclusiveness and diversity is actually revitalizing for most of us.

[oldmanjay]

Yeah nothing will make games fun again like making yet another brown shooter with women of color (TM) as avatars. Revitalized indeed.

[mrcharles]

You are right, the only fun games have grimdark bald white guys with stubble.

[imanaccount247]

>It's easy for us white dudes (as I assume you are, based on your post) to say "games should just be whatever!" because we implicitly have the privilege of identifying with the inevitable white dude main character.

I am neither white nor dude and it is easy for me to say it too. Stop trying to hide behind me to justify your politics.