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[Duster]

The trouble is it's another damned if you do and damned if you don't situation.

If you include a minor character with such a condition it could be seen as tokenism.

If you have something like a bipolar character that has powers when manic and is vulnerable when in depression or a Rain Man esque character that remembers everything you'd be criticised for portraying mental illness as superpower as most people with the conditions suffer from them without such benefits.

If you have a supporting OCD character that has to kill a certain amount of faceless enemies for comic relief you'd be insensitive.

If there's a twist where it turns out your character was suffering a hallucination and accidentally killed innocents it would be sensationalism.

Having a main character that hears voices in relatively harmless way may largely be perceived as positive portrayal (and it could be an interesting game mechanic) but even that could be criticised for undermining how serious an issue it can be.

(Who knows what people would make of a zombie game where the main character suffers from Cotard delusion?)

So you have to write in a way that isn't insensitive and doesn't sensationalise or glamorise such conditions while still showing the difficulties such a character would face and fit all that into seamlessly into your game without appearing too preachy or like you're ticking items of a check-list .
There already many cases were games with good intentions on diversity issues (for want of a better term) receive heavy criticism so it's easy to see why writers may think it's better to avoid the issue.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

The West Wing ironically uses this in the first season: a political analyst who happens to be deaf. Which is in itself interesting because people love showing that 'prosthetics are making disabled people normal', yet learning sign language is apparently too much effort, even for -yep- polyglots.

Your thought on the GTA 'guy' is interesting, but no such prerequisite exists. It would account for his silence and lack of feedback, but not his skillset. Either way, video game characters are already one-dimensional as it is. Giving them even a little bit than that usually brings more problems than it solves.

though technically Dead Space has a running theme of hallucinations (PTSD) as central to Isaac's (the player character) experiences.


But I would also point out that none of the physicists mentioned were in any way or form on 'the spectrum' and it also the single most over-diagnosed attribute at this point. Other than ADD perhaps.
And aside from just theoretical problems, the influence of the modern world (its repetition and expectations of repetition) and neurotic behavior in general (which is okay) is ignored or even included into the spectrum model.

So I would be cautious to include such a label on a character, if it were up to me. More importantly because most people can't (properly) imagine the alien landscape of a completely different mind anyway.

 

[RMS Gigantic]

Definitely a big problem for writers is that unlike other roles where you can write parts to be "gender blind", "color blind", etc., mental disorders indisputably affect how a character thinks and acts, so the options are either to write a game from the ground up with the disorder(s) in mind or have a happy accident occur where the game mechanics and narrative would fit having a character with a mental disorder, and knowing enough on hand to recognize which disorder would fit and complete the project that way.

 

[FriedConsole]

Well every protagonist of a shooter is pretty much a sociopath/psychopath. Does that count?

 

[MCN]

Are we just purposely trying to over-politicise games nowadays? How about we just let creators create? Instead of demanding they cater to our every quirk of personality, and demanding quotas be met?

I say this as a person who has struggled with depression and PTSD for years, by the way. Putting those in games would result in absolutely awful games, and could only ever be demeaning to those suffering. The absolute last thing people with mental problems need is people putting them into games.

 

[Sai-kun]

Are we just purposely trying to over-politicise games nowadays? How about we just let creators create? Instead of demanding they cater to our every quirk of personality, and demanding quotas be met?

Nobody here is forcing anybody to do anything. It's a discussion about a topic we don't see often in video games that's actually really interesting to think about. Nobody is over-politicizing anything, and if you don't care about the topic, why even go into it and post?

 

[MCN]

Nobody here is forcing anybody to do anything. It's a discussion about a topic we don't see often in video games that's actually really interesting to think about. Nobody is over-politicizing anything, and if you don't care about the topic, why even go into it and post?

Please see my edit. This affects me, and I'd rather not have the things I use to escape bring attention to my problems.

 

[RMS Gigantic]

Well every protagonist of a shooter is pretty much a sociopath/psychopath. Does that count?

Again, I'm trying to focus on cases where the game designer is conciously aware that they made characters with such disorders, and did so successfully.

 

[LProtag]

There's actually a game that employs a certain degenerative brain disorder to a fantastic degree, but to elaborate would lead to tremendous spoilers for said game.

If you're curious, i'll post the title of the game under spoilers.

Spoiler

Super DanganRonpa 2

I'm never clicking on spoilers ever again.

 

[BeesEight]

I'm of two minds about this.

On one hand, psychological issues and conflicts are a veritable treasure trove when it comes to different and interesting stories and characters one can develop. There are lots of movies which examine psychological conditions in interesting ways, albeit not always the most accurate. A Beautiful Mind, Memento and the King's Speech are all ones that immediately come to mind and were critically well received. I don't see why video games can not explore these topics and even something like Depression Quest, while rudimentary, has some interesting value.

On the other hand, I am a little concerned about the execution. For one, a lot of the suggestions in the OP are related to criminal behaviour and I really think the last thing we need is to simply put mental disorders in a continuing negative light. Furthermore, I fear there's a danger in losing focus of the individual to the disease. I wouldn't want an emphasis on the disorder itself. It shouldn't be "Here's a game with autism" but "Here's a game about a character with autism." Tying some aspects of a disorder to gameplay can be interesting but relying on it too much could shift the focus from people living with disorders to just caricatures of disorders while losing the human touch.

So... yeah. I think it's a worthwhile avenue to explore but I don't think it's something I would want in a game like GTA. I feel this is something you'd tackle from a much different angle than, say, gender or racial representation which, for the most part, really just needs more of those characters presented in reasonable ways as opposed to creating a systems or styles of game around them.

 

[Labrys]

Basically, there's a fairly common misconception that mental disorders mean that a person can never function in society at any notable level, but that's simply not true. In fact, "that weird guy" you kinda sorta know might have a mental disorder: statistically, about 1 in every 20 people has ADHD, OCD, an autism spectrum disorder, or some similar neurological abnormality. the next useful thing to note is that "disorder" is not synonymous with "disease". In many (but not all) cases, having pity towards someone with this sort of mental disorder or "trying to help" can annoy or even offend them, because they might be just as smart as you are (if not smarter), they just can't communicate as smoothly or have "rituals" or compulsions that they see a need to satisfy. I feel that if any narrative-capable medium can get this point across the best, it would probably be a medium that allows the person experiencing it to be put in the shoes of another person, which video games effectively specialize in.

Ah, yeah, I agree. I myself do not have any of them (to my knowledge), but my cousin is on the austism spectrum and my boyfriend has ADHD, and to be honest you couldn't tell that either of them do. Both are also brilliant individuals, way smarter than I could ever be.

I'll be looking for some more characters, though. I think this will be a good thread, lots of characters to cover.

 

[RMS Gigantic]

Are we just purposely trying to over-politicise games nowadays? How about we just let creators create? Instead of demanding they cater to our every quirk of personality, and demanding quotas be met?

I say this as a person who has struggled with depression and PTSD for years, by the way. Putting those in games would result in absolutely awful games, and could only ever be demeaning to those suffering. The absolute last thing people with mental problems need is people putting them into games.

I can definitely see that depression and PTSD are disorders that you legitimately struggle with, and as such it is definitely for the better if these things are left out of sight and out of mind; I don't think the public has very many major misconceptions about either of those disorders.


With autism, however, it's a different story: people don't struggle with the disorder as much as they struggle to put up with other people being ignorant or misguided. The single biggest autism "charity" on the planet has a mission statement that involves eventually producing a world without autism, which seems to mean very bad things for those who have the disorder currently and don't want to be cured of it. And that's not even getting into the bad stuff (such as how they align themselves with an institution that, according to the United Nations, tortures, via painful electric shocks, people who have mental disorders including autism, or how no one in their board of directors has autism, yet one of their higher-ups said on a short film put out by the organization that she considered committing a murder-suicide against her autistic child after the child was diagnosed with autism, but didn't because she had a "normal" child at home). I'd name the organization, but this organization also has a history of contacting forum moderators to delete topics and posts that talk about them in a negative light. You probably already know the organization's name, though.

 

[Refreshment.01]

The OP writes takes the time to write a very detailed post with a very interesting proposition. Yet, you skim trough it, search for an image and reply in less than 2 minutes.

Yes, fun it's allowed but some times we need to know when to restrain.

 

[BocoDragon]

The OP writes takes the time to write a very detailed post with a very interesting proposition. Yet, you skim to it, search for an image and reply in less than 2 minutes.

Yes, fun it's allowed but some times we need to know when to restrain.

Boo hoo.

 

[RMS Gigantic]

I'm of two minds about this.

On one hand, psychological issues and conflicts are a veritable treasure trove when it comes to different and interesting stories and characters one can develop. There are lots of movies which examine psychological conditions in interesting ways, albeit not always the most accurate. A Beautiful Mind, Memento and the King's Speech are all ones that immediately come to mind and were critically well received. I don't see why video games can not explore these topics and even something like Depression Quest, while rudimentary, has some interesting value.

On the other hand, I am a little concerned about the execution. For one, a lot of the suggestions in the OP are related to criminal behaviour and I really think the last thing we need is to simply put mental disorders in a continuing negative light. Furthermore, I fear there's a danger in losing focus of the individual to the disease. I wouldn't want an emphasis on the disorder itself. It shouldn't be "Here's a game with autism" but "Here's a game about a character with autism." Tying some aspects of a disorder to gameplay can be interesting but relying on it too much could shift the focus from people living with disorders to just caricatures of disorders while losing the human touch.

So... yeah. I think it's a worthwhile avenue to explore but I don't think it's something I would want in a game like GTA. I feel this is something you'd tackle from a much different angle than, say, gender or racial representation which, for the most part, really just needs more of those characters presented in reasonable ways as opposed to creating a systems or styles of game around them.

I edited this into the OP since this has needed clarification a few times: the autistic criminal GTA character concept is obviously not a good place to start, but it could be a good place to eventually take it. I used it to show that, unlike what some might think, an autistic video game character can be accurate without being boring to people who aren't strictly interested in the neurodiversity ideal.

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

I can only speak for myself here, but as someone with OCD (not OCPD), I can't imagine any fun way of accurately representing someone with OCD in a video game.

Gaming is one of my many personal escapes from compulsions and being presented with a character who endures the asinine annoyances I do on a daily basis to would be neither theraputic, empowering, inspiring, or amusing.

The only accurate way of representing someone with OCD in a game is to have situations where the player happens to accidentally brush against a public garbage can and then loses control for 5 minutes while the characters stands in an alley and has to wipe each finger with their opposite thumb for five minutes, or accidentally looks at a public clock that says 12:15 and the character then can only make left turns until the clock strikes 1:00. Loads of fucking fun to be had there.

 

[Gartooth]

I was classified as autistic as a kid and it affected me a lot back then. Now, I've pretty much "grown out of it" where it is still a part of me, but it doesn't hinder me or how I interact with others. Most people I've known for a long time seemed surprised when I even told them that I'm autistic which is encouraging for myself to know how I've improved over the years or was a fringe case at worst.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, (and obviously I don't speak for everyone here) I never really cared that people with neurological disorders were a rarity in fiction. What honestly bothers me is all the negative stereotypes in which anytime you do see a character like that, they are often a murdering psychopath.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I absolutely see your point, but I think it would be even better if you don't make the inclusion of said character a point in the narrative or gameplay. Because that's true acceptance. Not going "look, this person is different in the following ways", rather just having him there as part of a normal, diverse spectrum of people. You know, like real life.
Of course that doesn't apply if the point of the whole game is to show people a certain type of person.

True acceptance isn't pretending everyone is the same and that neurodiversity doesn't pose challenges in terms of interactions and integration. The basic premise of neurodiversity is that most people are wired in a way that's different than the way some people are wired, and the differences in that wiring aren't a "problem", but they do pose a challenge for interaction. Saying it's all the same is that's like a colour-blind approach to race. "Racism is gone when no one notices skin colour". No, racism is gone when we celebrate difference. An approach to neurodiversity where it is totally unremarkable and unnoticed would involve stamping it out, rendering it into a mere quirk rather than a part of someone's identity on a deeper level.

 

[MCN]

I can only speak for myself here, but as someone with OCD (not OCPD), I can't imagine any fun way of accurately representing someone with OCD in a video game.

Gaming is one of my many personal escapes from compulsions and being presented with a character who endures the asinine annoyances I do on a daily basis to would be neither theraputic, empowering, inspiring, or amusing.

The only accurate way of representing someone with OCD in a game is to have situations where the player happens to accidentally brush against a public garbage can and then loses control for 5 minutes while the characters stands in an alley and has to wipe each finger with their opposite thumb for five minutes, or accidentally looks at a public clock that says 12:15 and the character then can only make left turns until the clock strikes 1:00. Loads of fucking fun to be had there.

I think the short answer here is that such games would be rubbish games. As would games that represent, say, the Muscular Dystrophy community. Where do you stop with these things? Do you campaign until every single possibly community on Earth is represented, and games are demonstrably worse as a result? Or do you just let artists be artists?

 

[RMS Gigantic]

I think the short answer here is that such games would be rubbish games. As would games that represent, say, the Muscular Dystrophy community. Where do you stop with these things? Do you campaign until every single possibly community on Earth is represented, and games are demonstrably worse as a result? Or do you just let artists be artists?

As I said before, cases where the person struggles with the disorder itself, with no visible positive side to it, wouldn't make for very good games and as such are probably best off ignored (unless someone has a counterpoint).

 

[Skinpop]

I dunno, I think most characters in games act like they have some mental disorder.

 

[Laieon]

We don't have many characters in wheelchairs, either...

That's because everyone realized this little dude couldn't be topped:

 

[Bandit1]

For some reason the last few days I've been thinking of how you could make a Need for Speed game with a really great story and what you said about GTA really clicked. A few mentioned how having an autistic character stealing and killing might not set well, but I think it could work very well in Need for Speed. The character has a lot of trouble dealing with social settings and interacting with others, but he's great with cars, driving/building/tuning/etc. The car shields him from the outside world, it's like his superhero costume, he's a hero behind the wheel. Driving allows him to be all he can be. I think it would be amazing if EA did something like this.

 

[RMS Gigantic]

I dunno, I think most characters in games act like they have some mental disorder.

They're definitely not neurotypical, but at the same time I doubt most of them were deliberately designed with the intent of emulating a specific mental disorder.

 

[potam]

Jesus Christ. How about creators include characters in their games because they think it will be good for the story/gameplay, and not because they're going down a social justice checklist.

 

[charlequin]

Are we just purposely trying to over-politicise games nowadays? How about we just let creators create?

Creators create better work when they're pressured to step outside their comfort zones, learn about new things, and avoid falling into ruts or retreading well-worn ground. People who are demographically under-represented have life experiences that are underrepresented too, and there's a lot of story material in that.

What honestly bothers me is all the negative stereotypes in which anytime you do see a character like that, they are often a murdering psychopath.

Yeah, as nice as nuanced and insightful portrayals would be, a good start would be just getting away from the autistic-Rain-Man and murderous-bipolar type of stereotypes.

Jesus Christ. How about creators include characters in their games because they think it will be good for the story/gameplay, and not because they're going down a social justice checklist.

Anyone who would "go down a checklist" is assuredly a bad creator anyway and would produce awful work with or without minority characters. The goal is to have people expand their horizons and think about whether their characters can be more diverse. Someone who has a broad knowledge of cultural factors around race, class, religion, gender, sexuality, mental state, etc. has a much richer palette of human experience to draw on when creating characters.

 

[KHlover]

There's a browser-based Unity "game" that, in my opinion, does an excellent job of encouraging the player to behave the way an autistic child with hypersensitivity to sound would behave within the game world. The game's a pretty unsettling experience (in an ambiant, creepy way, not an in-your-face way) and it gets loud and high-pitched (due to the sound hypersensitivity aspect), but if you're interested, here's a link to it.

It can only emulate the social aspects, though. The personality of someone with autism, including the extremely narrow topics of interest, which I think would be fascinating to see covered in a video game context, are not a part of it.

I jumped off the edge of the map to escape their screams...

But seriously (not that the above part wasn't, I DID jump off the map), the "game" is great and I can confirm that it successfully encouraged what I really would like to do when forced to be in a crowd for too long: Just be alone

 

[Gartooth]

I dunno, I think most characters in games act like they have some mental disorder.

Give me a break...

Anyways, as I said its not so much that there aren't these kinds of characters in games, its that when they are there they get treated as less than human which to me is frankly, a big load of shit and frustrating to put up with.

 

[HolyBaikal]

I'd really love to see a game that focused on a girl or a woman with autism.

Especially since people who identify as girls or women with autism are underrepresented. And there are a lot of bad gender stereotypes and messages preventing girls and women with autism from being diagnosed.

A lot of people think that autism is overdiagnosed today and that might be true. But girls and women in particular are underdiagnosed because of awful gender stereotyped. And you have people like Simon Baron-Cohen making things worse with his neurosexism and saying totally backward things about people's minds and gender.

 

[potam]

Creators create better work when they're pressured to step outside their comfort zones, learn about new things, and avoid falling into ruts or retreading well-worn ground. People who are demographically under-represented have life experiences that are underrepresented too, and there's a lot of story material in that.

Anyone who would "go down a checklist" is assuredly a bad creator anyway and would produce awful work with or without minority characters. The goal is to have people expand their horizons and think about whether their characters can be more diverse. Someone who has a broad knowledge of cultural factors around race, class, religion, gender, sexuality, mental state, etc. has a much richer palette of human experience to draw on when creating characters.

I'm not denying that a broader range of subjects and topics would ultimately provide more varied and perhaps deeper and connecting experiences, but we have to remember that video games are essentially very basic gameplay mechanics masked in pretty graphics and "story" and "character development."

Would 99% of the games out benefit from having an autistic main character? No. Would some niche, visual novel-style games benefit? Sure, probably. But let's not act as if this is some widespread agenda against mental disorders.


edit: do we really want to create a culture in video gaming where developers are going to spend part of their crunch time trying to figure out how to shoehorn in a black autistic transgendered lesbian in a wheelchair, just so they're not accused of being discriminatory? Every time one of these threads pop up, I can't help but agree with the general sentiment behind it. But you know what I'd rather see? I'd rather see the people complaining actually do something about it. Start writing a script for a game including the characters you want to see. Don't go on a fucking witch hunt and wag your accusatory finger around just because some designer didn't think a retarded woman didn't make the most convincing Navy SEAL.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Are we just purposely trying to over-politicise games nowadays? How about we just let creators create? Instead of demanding they cater to our every quirk of personality, and demanding quotas be met?

I say this as a person who has struggled with depression and PTSD for years, by the way. Putting those in games would result in absolutely awful games, and could only ever be demeaning to those suffering. The absolute last thing people with mental problems need is people putting them into games.

I don't agree. This goes to character consistency, which is something all writers have to deal with (or refuse to deal with) at some point. The current trend is refusal, but you obviously can't "great caring story" in the same sentence as "video game that doesn't give a shit".

Depression, hallucinations, and so on, or "delerium" in general is very common (trope even) in video games though. But those mostly serve to legitimize horror and so on.
Alice: Madness Returns is somewhat of an exception to that rule.

I can only speak for myself here, but as someone with OCD (not OCPD), I can't imagine any fun way of accurately representing someone with OCD in a video game.

... gotta catch 'em all?

 

[besada]

Please see my edit. This affects me, and I'd rather not have the things I use to escape bring attention to my problems.

It effects me, too, and I'd rather see people with mental problems treated as people and acknowledged, rather than having a significant chunk of our media either a) pretend they don't exist or b) make them serial killers and villains. I don't think anyone wants to see it done poorly, but that's not the only way to do it.

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

I'm not denying that a broader range of subjects and topics would ultimately provide more varied and perhaps deeper and connecting experiences, but we have to remember that video games are essentially very basic gameplay mechanics masked in pretty graphics and "story" and "character development."

Would 99% of the games out benefit from having an autistic main character? No. Would some niche, visual novel-style games benefit? Sure, probably. But let's not act as if this is some widespread agenda against mental disorders.


edit: do we really want to create a culture in video gaming where developers are going to spend part of their crunch time trying to figure out how to shoehorn in a black autistic transgendered lesbian in a wheelchair, just so they're not accused of being discriminatory? Every time one of these threads pop up, I can't help but agree with the general sentiment behind it. But you know what I'd rather see? I'd rather see the people complaining actually do something about it. Start writing a script for a game including the characters you want to see. Don't go on a fucking witch hunt and wag your accusatory finger around just because some designer didn't think a retarded woman didn't make the most convincing Navy SEAL.

You seem to have a lack of empathy and reading comprehension

The idea is to get people to think about these things at the early stages of conception of games, not to go on "fucking witch hunts" and force them to "shoehorn" things in later.

The same weak as fuck wish-they-were-arguments always come up and people continue to refuse to learn

 

[charlequin]

I'm not denying that a broader range of subjects and topics would ultimately provide more varied and perhaps deeper and connecting experiences, but we have to remember that video games are essentially very basic gameplay mechanics masked in pretty graphics and "story" and "character development."

So what is it about straight, 30-something white guys that makes them particularly well-suited to fronting basic gameplay mechanics masked in pretty graphics?

edit: do we really want to create a culture in video gaming where developers are going to spend part of their crunch time trying to figure out how to shoehorn in a black autistic transgendered lesbian in a wheelchair, just so they're not accused of being discriminatory?

No one ever suggests this except as a straw man in complaints like this one. This shouldn't actually be a concern because no one is actually demanding it, nobody would do it even if it was being demanded, and the current situation is so far to the other side that it'd take a tremendous change to even get close to being problematic.

What people request here is pretty much the opposite: instead of thinking of everyone but straight white guys as some mysterious "other" that can only be included by a conscious effort to be "diverse," creators should start from a diverse view of the world and include a broader array of characters just by having them emerge naturally in crafting their stories.

 

[Crash Station]

A discussion I was having earlier in another thread got me thinking. How would you guys feel about positive or at least "gray" portrayals of characters with "negative" disorders?

 

[TheRealTalker]

We don't have many characters in wheelchairs, either...

even though he got the chair after Sly 2

we still got

but I agree with the OP for Neurodiversity Representation being rarely shown

not sure how they'd do it in a good light

 

[Sai-kun]

Please see my edit. This affects me, and I'd rather not have the things I use to escape bring attention to my problems.

I see, and I apologize because I'm sure my response came off a bit harshly.

However...

It effects me, too, and I'd rather see people with mental problems treated as people and acknowledged, rather than having a significant chunk of our media either a) pretend they don't exist or b) make them serial killers and villains. I don't think anyone wants to see it done poorly, but that's not the only way to do it.

I agree with this. An FPS turning PTSD into a mechanic is tasteless and pretty offensive, and I obviously wouldn't suggest it, but I'm sure that we could come up with ideas for games and toys that deal with the ideas/experiences behind PTSD, and how people handle those experiences. That could be interesting?

 

[RMS Gigantic]

For some reason the last few days I've been thinking of how you could make a Need for Speed game with a really great story and what you said about GTA really clicked. A few mentioned how having an autistic character stealing and killing might not set well, but I think it could work very well in Need for Speed. The character has a lot of trouble dealing with social settings and interacting with others, but he's great with cars, driving/building/tuning/etc. The car shields him from the outside world, it's like his superhero costume, he's a hero behind the wheel. Driving allows him to be all he can be. I think it would be amazing if EA did something like this.

This definitely sounds plausible! The car's relationship to the character would be what the DSM V refers to as a restricted interest: a single subject, notably commonly (but nowhere near always) a machine with moving parts -- locomotives are a stereotypical, and indeed pretty frequent, example, but others might have these restricted interests in cars, airplanes, or, in my personal case, ships (non-mechanical examples include specific math or science topics, animals, and so on, but since the example here is cars, I'll focus on how such an interest might play out). From there, even if the object of interest isn't in front of them (for example, being interested in a very specific, rare automobile), they'll still take the time to memorize enough information to get to a paint where if you sat them in front of the controls for the first time, they would be able to look around and immediately be able to start operating it and have at least a good idea of how it will respond.

For a personal example, to show that this isn't 100% guesswork, if you stuck me in Titanic's bridge, I would immediately know how to issue engine room orders, expect the delays in the execution of those commands, know for a fact how far the wheel turns in each direction, be fully aware that the ship speeds up forward substantially faster than she slows down, how far the rudder moves with each turn (as well as where I can find the instrument that confirms that I'm right), have a good idea of how long it takes the rudder to turn, locate the navigation ligth switches, the signal flag locker, be able to operate the whistles (double checking the controls themselves but knowing where I can find the controls), and so on.

In the case of an in-depth interest with cars, there would probably be a single favorite car that the person has memorized the controls, inner workings, and specifications of to that degree, with their knowledge of other cars essentially stemming from their knowledge of that single favorite one.


On a tangental note, for girls with the disorder, more "ordinary" interests relative to their peers, such as horses, are more common, but they find interest in them to an unusually deep degree or for an unusually long time, which is generally how they get "caught" with the disorder. It ties into how girls with autism are generally better at hiding it, but not perfect.

 

[besada]

A discussion I was having earlier in another thread got me thinking. How would you guys feel about positive or at least "gray" portrayals of characters with "negative" disorders?

I'm not sure what a negative disorder is, but I'd be fine with less than shining portrayals if there were anything to counterbalance it. There are at least 10 million adults in the U.S. with a serious mental illness. That figure is almost certainly very low, due to reporting issues. And it doesn't include people who have shorter bouts of depression, which would really pump the number up. Given that, it shouldn't be too difficult to find roles on both sides of the aisle.

 

[aeglorre]

In all honesty, if this thread points out anything, it's how laughable the "please hear my diversity-cry" trend on GAF is. It's getting completely ridiculous; everyone is offended because X, Y and Z is "underrepresented".

Ces' t la vie. The question shouldnt be whether black/women/disabled people are not represented enough, its whether their representation truly adds to the artists concepts.

Thus far, the market has declared the answer be a big, fat NO. All the cries on GAF are a scream in space; they dont mean a thing on the grander scale.

So to answer your query: neurodiversity doesnt exist because a) clearly no artist incorporates it in their work and b) the market does not want it.

When that changes - which it might - then we'll have another discussion.

 

[Crash Station]

I'm not sure what a negative disorder is, but I'd be fine with less than shining portrayals if there were anything to counterbalance it. There are at least 10 million adults in the U.S. with a serious mental illness. That figure is almost certainly very low, due to reporting issues. And it doesn't include people who have shorter bouts of depression, which would really pump the number up. Given that, it shouldn't be too difficult to find roles on both sides of the aisle.

Well I just say "negative" in the sense that that's how these people are generally portrayed, potentially with a good chunk of society agreeing with those portrayals. Stuff like Antisocial Personality Disorder (generally portrayed as serial killers) or pedophilia. I can't think of any instances of the former, but Drakengard does have a "good guy" that also happens to be a pedophile (which was edited out of the North American version).

 

[Palette Swap]

In all honesty, if this thread points out anything, it's how laughable the "please hear my diversity-cry" trend on GAF is. It's getting completely ridiculous; everyone is offended because X, Y and Z is "underrepresented".

Dude, you're the only offended party here.

As someone who knows very little about these mental disorders, probably because I have no real life experience of them, my takeaway from this thread is that, if anything, having neurally challenged protagonists in games could allow for different stories or for stories to be told differently. I don't see how this takes anything from anyone.

Also, since games can rely on so many different cognitive aspects, they're probably the best way to tell us about these conditions. This, in itself, is a pretty great way to widen the scope of our experiences, which is a great function of stories and art.

 

[Gartooth]

In all honesty, if this thread points out anything, it's how laughable the "please hear my diversity-cry" trend on GAF is. It's getting completely ridiculous; everyone is offended because X, Y and Z is "underrepresented".

Ces' t la vie. The question shouldnt be whether black/women/disabled people are not represented enough, its whether their representation truly adds to the artists concepts.

Thus far, the market has declared the answer be a big, fat NO. All the cries on GAF are a scream in space; they dont mean a thing on the grander scale.

So to answer your query: neurodiversity doesnt exist because a) clearly no artist incorporates it in their work and b) the market does not want it.

When that changes - which it might - then we'll have another discussion.

Sorry, trying really hard to think of games with neurological diversity that the market rejected solely because of those characters having neurological disorders but can't think of anything.

 

[RMS Gigantic]

In all honesty, if this thread points out anything, it's how laughable the "please hear my diversity-cry" trend on GAF is. It's getting completely ridiculous; everyone is offended because X, Y and Z is "underrepresented".

Ces' t la vie. The question shouldnt be whether black/women/disabled people are not represented enough, its whether their representation truly adds to the artists concepts.

Thus far, the market has declared the answer be a big, fat NO. All the cries on GAF are a scream in space; they dont mean a thing on the grander scale.

So to answer your query: neurodiversity doesnt exist because a) clearly no artist incorporates it in their work and b) the market does not want it.

When that changes - which it might - then we'll have another discussion.

Actually, given that these disorders affect how a person thinks and behaves, it does affect the artist's concept. The example given in the original post explains how an autistic player character could provide a narrative justification for the otherwise jarring "universal driver's license" trope seen in games like Grand Theft Auto. In cases like this, having the player character have a mental disorder according to the narrative would solve at least some cases of -- pardon my use of such a cliché term here, but I legitimately mean it -- ludonarrative dissonance.

If this does not address what you mean, I apologize for misunderstanding.

 

[mugwhump]

We don't have many characters in wheelchairs, either...

There's always happy wheels...

 

[w00twood]

So what is it about straight, 30-something white guys that makes them particularly well-suited to fronting basic gameplay mechanics masked in pretty graphics?

The easy answer to that is straight young white men are the best combination of demographic characteristics (ie. they offend the smallest number of people) so they make the most money. Whether you think that in turn is the right or wrong thing for a company to do is another issue.

No one ever suggests this except as a straw man in complaints like this one. This shouldn't actually be a concern because no one is actually demanding it, nobody would do it even if it was being demanded, and the current situation is so far to the other side that it'd take a tremendous change to even get close to being problematic.

What people request here is pretty much the opposite: instead of thinking of everyone but straight white guys as some mysterious "other" that can only be included by a conscious effort to be "diverse," creators should start from a diverse view of the world and include a broader array of characters just by having them emerge naturally in crafting their stories.

Whenever these kinds of debates emerge it's not long before people say, 'I don't want quotas or anything like that, I just want more diversity in lead characters.'

That's a shift in argument, though. The original position is usually a criticism of the games industry as it is ('there aren't enough characters in games with Asperger Syndrome, developers should pay more attention to it'). When the counter argument comes up saying that they shouldn't be blamed for catering to mainstream tastes etc, the critics cop out. They say something like, 'I mean that developers should do what they want, but wouldn't it be nice if there were more games that had characters with Asperger Syndrome?' That's a fairytale argument though, they're essentially saying it would be better if the games industry was a hundred times as big so there was more variety anyway. Who would disagree with that?

 

[charlequin]

The easy answer to that is straight young white men are the best combination of demographic characteristics (ie. they offend the smallest number of people) so they make the most money.

This is a total punt. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who offers this up on social issues going to bat for the same argument in favor of price-gouging DLC models, games shipped unfinished, or other things companies do to bolster their bottom line at the expense of their customers. When a particular position never hits the table except when it's in defense of exclusion, you can tell that it's not being offered in good faith.

That's a shift in argument, though. The original position is usually a criticism of the games industry as it is ('there aren't enough characters in games with Asperger Syndrome, developers should pay more attention to it'). When the counter argument comes up saying that they shouldn't be blamed for catering to mainstream tastes etc, the critics cop out. They say something like, 'I mean that developers should do what they want, but wouldn't it be nice if there were more games that had characters with Asperger Syndrome?' That's a fairytale argument though, they're essentially saying it would be better if the games industry was a hundred times as big so there was more variety anyway. Who would disagree with that?

It's only a fairy tale argument when you start from the maximally exclusionary position: that all content by its very nature will be about majoritarian figures, that all creators will naturally only be interested in such characters, and that therefore any time you ever see a woman, a gay person, a person of color, a neurodivergent person, in a game, it's some huge sacrifice by the creators that could only possibly exist as a sop to diversity.

It's easy to see how absurd this position is if you make it about something like game genres. When someone says "it would be nice if the market had more adventure games instead of being dominated by shooters," you wouldn't assume that it's a passive-aggressive wish that developers would be economically punished for making shooters. In reality there are lots of ways for more adventure games to get made, most without even particularly affecting the volume of shooters: maybe more people who aren't game developers could get into the industry to make adventure games. Maybe some people who work on shooters now because they think they're the only commercially viable games could work on adventure games too given proof that they can succeed. Maybe some companies could develop small-budget adventures as a way of diversifying their output on the side. There might be story-driven shooters with adventure elements, or spinoff games like the Borderlands adventure from Telltale.

The point is, people who ask for this aren't hoping to shame or badger people into reluctantly writing in diverse characters; they're hoping to move from a world where people think it's impossible to include them to one where they're just one of the normally viable options.

 

[PK Gaming]

I'm never clicking on spoilers ever again.

I've gotten a couple PMs about this:

It's not a huge spoiler, I just wanted to be safe. I apologize for the terrible wording/misleading nature of the post.

It was an aspect of a character that's revealed through the free time events. I'll say that what you think you got spoiled on basically gets discussed really early on in the game, so it's nothing particularly integral to end game spoilers.

 

[CambriaRising]

That was a great OP, and a wonderful topic to discuss. I believe I saw you mention this in one of the Tomadachi threads, and may have been one of the ones who encouraged you to make a thread about it. To be honest, I have been thinking about this a lot since you brought it up, and I am loving reading the responses so far. I will definitely further educate myself on this so I can better participate in the discussion, as someone with 3 people in my family who are autistic.

 

[RMS Gigantic]

That was a great OP, and a wonderful topic to discuss. I believe I saw you mention this in one of the Tomadachi threads, and may have been one of the ones who encouraged you to make a thread about it. To be honest, I have been thinking about this a lot since you brought it up, and I am loving reading the responses so far. I will definitely further educate myself on this to I can better participate in the discussion, as someone with 3 people in my family who are autistic.

Yep, I mentioned this in the Tomodachi Life and racial/ethnic representation threads. People were accusing me of trying to distract from those topics (I personally thought it was in-line), so I stopped discussing it there and made this thread on the topic. Upon expounding this much on the idea, it occurs to me that this really is significantly different than racial or sexual orientation representations. Heck, even companies that strive for widespread representation in their video game protagonists most often forget to mention mental disorders: they most often specify race, creed, color, and sexual orientation. It seems that it never even occurs to most people that "neurodiversity" is a concept (I honestly didn't myself until about a month or two ago).