If you keep "feeding the trolls" for lack of a better term, you're doing nothing but legitimatizing them. I wasn't dismissing them as crazy, I was dismissing them as non-important. We know that people who don't want an equal industry are toxic, none of this is news to me. I'm saying you shouldn't give a fuck about a vocal minority if you claim to want change. Everyone doesn't have to 100% agree with each other for things to improve, it takes the percentage who is willing to enact the change.
With everything you linked, I can guarantee that that isn't a significant number of people who participate in playing games and they arent even equivalent to 10% of the people who want a better industry. It's really easy to point in on the bad when they make themselves easy to find.
Sure. But the problem is the silent majority. The people who say they don't give a shit or who cares when these issues come up, or ignore them, or stay quiet as people sling slurs on voice chat. If all people can hear is the small violent minority because no one else is speaking up, don't be surprised if people come away with a poor impression.
Simply because the game and series is already established. Coming into an established series attempting to mold it to your liking, when the people who made it are simply enacting a vision, isn't going to to help anything except for personal reasons. If they changed it to whatever suited a sect of player, there is no guarantee it would sell more, which is all they give a fuck about up top(not as in heaven or whatever you believe in, like the corporate top).
Unless there's an established good reason not to, this falls apart quickly. Assassin's Creed managed to include a woman, a black man, and a Native American man as main characters despite the series being established. Dragon Age Inquisition includes defined LGB characters despite it being established.
What we need(and I'm sure you have heard this before, but it's true) is new brands that are FOUNDED in values of equality and the promotion of a better industry. That doesn't happen overnight, it takes time. But there is a generation of girls, PoC, w/e out there that love games and want to make them with this values instilled in them, and hopefully they will be great, but that is the way its going to change: with time.
Sure, a diverse work force is slowly seeping in and will hopefully be capable of convincing publishers to let them do cool shit, and the ride of indies gives more avenues too. But given the coordinated, effective harassment campaign that drives women away from this industry, and the vitriol and abuse that gets hurled for making anything with diversity on it (want to know how many times I've seen people say they refuse to play a gay character? It's a lot more than you'd think), why would anyone want to?
There's that infamous imgur of companies to avoid who put out or support "SJW" games. Including that shit gets called an agenda, and it's forced down people's throats, and it's political, and can't they just make games? Given the abuse people suffer as creators in this industry, I sure as fuck have felt like it's not worth it to try and express my voice by making games, despite dreams otherwise.
Shoving things down peoples throats isn't the way, I promise you. Forcing it is just going to make people feel, well, forced. Make it a natural process. Gaming journalism started to do this but, again, tried forcing it down throats through the "are you with us or are you a mysoginist?".
OK, I'm going to respond to this as calmly and bluntly as I possibly can, and preface this by saying I am not attacking you personally.
This is a load of bullshit. I am so god damned tired of people telling me and other minorities that they should, in essence, shut the hell up. Because that's what you're doing, whether you realize it or not. You're equating criticism of and reaction to the under representation of minorities in media as shoving it down people's throats. That instead we should stop talking about it, stop getting upset, and let it run its course. That is the implication, intentional or not, to saying that bringing these issues up is not OK and that we have to let it act naturally.
I need you to stop and reflect for a moment on how equality has ever happened. It was not by people sitting back and making it a natural process. It was by arguing, yelling, marching, taking to the streets so that not only were they acknowledged they made people listen. By not giving a shit that it made people feel uncomfortable. That was true for women's suffrage, it was true for the civil rights movement, it was true for the gay rights movement.
Telling minorities the equivalent of "stop being so uppity, you're making everyone unhappy" is just not cool, and I'm so fucking sick of being told what I can say and how I'm allowed to say it when I want to talk about issues that matter and affect me. Why should I, after years and years of feeling isolated in my hobby and made to feel unwelcome through harassment or invisible because no one talked about these issues, let people's unease at me being included or talking about same (and yeah, that happens all too often, even here) stop me from talking about it because they feel forced to acknowledge there is an issue? I've been told "who cares?" too many god damned times to suddenly think that sitting down and shutting up and twiddling my thumbs waiting for things to happen naturally will do anything.
Maybe you're going to say of course you didn't mean to say don't talk about it, just don't force it. But given I've seen any request or discussion for diversity met with ire, dismissal, revulsion, I don't think that whatever arbitrary line that is crossed from request to demand, discussion to yelling, matters to those opposed because they're opposed regardless. And being quiet lets them ignore us, ignore the problem, and maintain the status quo. And honestly, after seeing so much apathy and push back and rejection to the very fucking notion of including characters like me in a game, I don't really give a shit if talking about it and voicing my frustration and upset at being ignored makes people feel uncomfortable or that I'm forcing it down their throats, because it's my god damn hobby too, and I deserve to have a voice in it and about it.
I'm sorry if that upsets you to read, because again, my intention isn't to attack you but the argument you made. And it's one I've seen one too many times. And frankly, I'm tired of dancing around it.
No one is ignoring you. A character's race or gender not being the focal point of a game doesn't make you or your race unfavorable. Shit, people cried about AC4 having no female representation until they introduced that one female Templar that was there all along rendering that whole debacle silly.
Who I play as is nothing more than who I play as. Race, gender, orientation, it's what the developer's chose to do, and I can respect that. If there was a chance for me to make or play as a black guy in a game it would be cool, but it wouldn't feed some hole inside me of having played games full of white guys and plumbers for years.
I'm glad you don't care. But others do. And this isn't about having games where a character's race or gender is the focal point, no one I've seen is asking for that. In fact, that really misses the point quite badly because the whole point is that games can and should include minorities without needing to make a statement or be about it unless the developers intend it. Even though you care about representation getting better, it's really dismissive to write what comes across as "well I'm not bothered by it" because the implication is "so neither should you."
It NEVER comes as a request, by the way. That is an incredibly polite way to put it. It becomes vitriol, petitions, slander, and boycotts of products. The industry has seen it time and time again.
Two points: one, the irony of generalizing all reaction to a lack of representation to the most extreme of it in this thread of all threads should not be lost on you. Two, if you're going to suggest that people upset let things happen naturally while, by your own admission, companies have no financial interest in representation or diversity, you can't be upset when consumers express their desires in a way that companies will understand: social media campaigns, boycotts, whatever. Because think about it: you've already said that companies have no guarantee that changing games to be inclusive will benefit them financially, and games are such a big risk that they'll continue to not be inclusive for fear of any lost sales by any potential narrowing of appeal. Who would, in a shrinking market with bigger budgets, suddenly decide to start new franchises that are inclusive? Especially in light of a community that has had a very vocal group frothing at the mouth to boycott any "SJW" publishers and journalists? So you're basically saying don't get upset, don't change anything that exists even if it is eminently changeable because it existing is enough to prevent any change (but not changes in mechanics, story, or anything else!), and instead wait for something that may not happen and don't you do anything that will let companies know it is in their financial interests to include you.
How in the hell does change happen with those restrictions?
I'm also going to point out that frowning on boycotts implies an obligation to buy something you don't necessarily agree with, when consumers have every right to not buy something for any reason. And given that consumers often only have their voices heard through their choice on what to buy (look at Microsoft reacting to the low sales of the Xbox One), and given the community's penchant for trying to enact change against things like DRM or DLC or season passes through vitriol, petitions and boycotting, it seems super strange to deny it as a vehicle for expression.
