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Suicide Squad Ex-Developer shares frustration with uglification of black female characters in the industry

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Draugoth

Gold Member
Del Walker, a Principle Artist (lead) at major studios such as Naughty_Dog, Rocksteady Games and Respawn talked about his frustration at trying to get his designs for beautiful black female characters approved at AAA studios.

There's been a handful of times I've pitched black women characters that look like this, then after 10 iterations the concept or model comes back without a speck of the original beauty I pitched.

I'm not taking about mild changes. I'm talking about pose, aura, style, softness, age, flair. I hate giving gamergate men fuel - but it's very difficult to pitch beautiful or vain black women in games without them coming back like grocery store aunties. There is room for both.




GQcpUayaIAUHB1Z

 
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Saber

Member
To surprise of who exactly?
For years it has being that way with big jaws, muscles, attack to the female beauty/attractiviness(thanks to fellas like Cuckman)and lack of feminine traits all over the west. At this point I even doubt the intention of the tweet, must be because even black characters are being affected and they are probably saying "that crossed the line". I hope more people fight against it.
 
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The biggest issue with DEI and its weakness is that it convulutes a variety of unrelated issues under the same banner that conflicts with each other on its face. The only real thing that they can come together under is this mantra of "We hate how shit used to be" and coming together for a vague negative is destined to fail due to infighting and people just getting over their issues eventually.

Many of the issues, when broken out and rendered thoughtfully and tastefully as an organic element to a grander narrative are fine and will find an audience that appreciates it. Depending on what the topic is, it may never find anything that can be considered mass appeal so I don't know why the fuck anyone would invest hundreds of millions on it.

DEI as it is right now is this artificial bastardization that gobbles up the issues of these different groups and tries to mash it together as being the same thing. Then, the attempts to brow beat the general audiences (many of which don't have remotely the same issues) will fall flat on its face. Corporate shaming of the consumer does not and will never work.

It's a similar issue to intersectionality in liberal talk spaces. It attempts to create a larger thing that cannot stand as composite no matter how hard carpet baggers and grifters force it. Different groups of people have different issues.
 
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kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Is gaming the only entertainment medium where this happens? I find it impossible to come up with similar things happening in the world of popular music or movies/TV. I don't think any young female pop star gets told to stop using makeup and dress more modestly, I don't think any Hollywood producer would ever tell the director to cast more ugly actresses because that's what the public wants.
 

Toons

Member
S
Del Walker, a Principle Artist (lead) at major studios such as Naughty_Dog, Rocksteady Games and Respawn talked about his frustration at trying to get his designs for beautiful black female characters approved at AAA studios.








GQcpUayaIAUHB1Z


It seems like hes coming from a genuine enough place.

Theres a few I find who look fine but some could be better. I dont hink using an e thot posting a selfie is the best example though
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Not just black characters.
It's like the industry is trying to make every women look as ugly as possible.
Yeah, I think that's the big pointer, it's not just black characters at all. But I'm glad someone said something, especially a dev that has worked with said studios. It's just so bizarre. Why can't male AND female characters be attractive? Hell, in some situations why can't they both be unattractive? It always feels one way or the other, even more so one way.

Theres a few I find who look fine but some could be better. I dont hink using an e thot posting a selfie is the best example though
I think it's fine, it's merely an example. He probably also did it to further prove a point, that "beautiful or vain black women" don't exist in games at the moment.
 
I remember when Mexican actors were upset that Roma was receiving global attention. Because they felt it was unfair they weren’t being represented by some beauty.
roma.png
There is a conversation to be had here. Rather than the woke idiocy.

Yes every character shouldn’t be a victoria secret model, but it is hilarious when the colored characters are always the “realistic” model.
 

Lethal01

Member
S

It seems like hes coming from a genuine enough place.

Theres a few I find who look fine but some could be better. I dont hink using an e thot posting a selfie is the best example though


Yeah, actual diversity in character design is good, I like having a game full of super models but also with a solid helping of normal looking people
 

Angry_Megalodon

Gold Member
I don't think any Hollywood producer would ever tell the director to cast more ugly actresses because that's what the public wants.

This has been happening for at least 10 years. Female leads are either ugly or desexualized to make them look ugly/average. And if it's physically impossible to make them unattractive, they give them hideous personalities. Just look at Star Wars or Tomb Raider.

It's the same in every entertainment media.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
I remember when Mexican actors were upset that Roma was receiving global attention. Because they felt it was unfair they weren’t being represented by some beauty.
roma.png
There is a conversation to be had here. Rather than the woke idiocy.

Yes every character shouldn’t be a victoria secret model, but it is hilarious when the colored characters are always the “realistic” model.
This is a good line of argument too because it short circuits their intersectionality circuits. Shit, mexican women want representation but I hate men, what do I do?
 

Lethal01

Member
Yeah, I think that's the big pointer, it's not just black characters at all. But I'm glad someone said something, especially a dev that has worked with said studios. It's just so bizarre. Why can't male AND female characters be attractive? Hell, in some situations why can't they both be unattractive? It always feels one way or the other, even more so one way.

Yeah, without diversity you get a game where they try to stop and go "oh my god, this character is so hot" but they look just as hot as everyone else but witha fancier hairstyle or something.
 

miklonus

Member
Gaming? Fuck planet you been on? This the whole world. It's the whole planet. Thee entire planet. Thee entire "place"...is infected with this shit. Where da fuck you been at? Democrats/extreme left wingers used Obama and blacks as Trojan horses to usher that tranny bullshit in. They used us to push white people's bullshit on the extreme left, and voila, you have June 2024 and counting.
Been like this for a minute yo
 
Is gaming the only entertainment medium where this happens? I find it impossible to come up with similar things happening in the world of popular music or movies/TV. I don't think any young female pop star gets told to stop using makeup and dress more modestly, I don't think any Hollywood producer would ever tell the director to cast more ugly actresses because that's what the public wants.

They ain't paying millions for actresses just to uglify them.

Hollywood knows sex sells hence why we have the skank awards
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Makes sense.

You got a lot of ugly politically driven women in the industry who cant stand good looking women. And a lot of weird male manchildren. So in the creative process, they aim for fuglies because it makes them feel better like it's them in the game (the typical weird video game employee who brings their home life crisis to work). But funny how the guy characters are almost always still hunks.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Yeah, we have known this for a while. It's not just black women but they do get the short end of the stick. We can at least look at some hot white female characters in games. There have been zero hot black female characters in games. Everyone looks like shit.

Its not that hard to get a beyonce or rihanna or even a zendaya you know.
 

Angry_Megalodon

Gold Member
Cowards love qualifiers. He is no different to me than those he is complaining about. Standing silently only until the ideology he subscribes to affects fictional female characters based on his race is not bravery. I don't sympathize with him.


He's clearly a piece of shit that now complains because the problem impacts HIM. Anyway, It's worth celebrating that even these dudes finally open their eyes.
 
Instead of Naomi Campbells, Tyra Banks and Alicia Keys, we're getting Leslie Jones and Debra Wilsons 😬 (and I say this as a fan of Debra when they were on MAD TV).

Yeah, we have known this for a while. It's not just black women but they do get the short end of the stick. We can at least look at some hot white female characters in games. There have been zero hot black female characters in games. Everyone looks like shit.

Its not that hard to get a beyonce or rihanna or even a zendaya you know.

Fighting games have routinely been good at sexy black females tho (Elena, Master Raven, Vanessa etc.). Well, fighting games have been routinely good at sexy females in general, specifically the Japanese ones.

Making women look ugly has to be like some anti man shit. It's the only reason I can think of.

Some angry lady is somewhere saying fuck the male gaze.


Make video game woman hot again.

The ironic part is, it also screws over lesbians o.0
 
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ProtoByte

Weeb Underling
He didn’t go so far as to say women…. no, only black women. Isn’t this the future he asked for???
Unfortunately, no developer would be able to say this right now without the plausible deniability that the racial angle gets them.

There's a lot of discourse about "beauty standards against black women in the west" in leftist circles.

If you were the guy who pitched a more feminine or beautiful" looking Mary-Jane (in visuals or in writing), Abby or any other straight white woman character and made a similar post, you'd probably just get called an incel or something.
If you were the women who pitched the same, you might get called a pick-me, appealing to the chuds, or a traitor perpetuating "unrealistic beauty standards for even white women, but especially BIPOC women".
 
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yurinka

Member
Not only black ones, western devs uglify all of them due to woke censorship. It must be frustrating for the devs, since they want to make cool, appealing and charismatic characters.

And well, same goes with forcing the inclusion of non-white male heterosexual characters.

Yes every character shouldn’t be a victoria secret model, but it is hilarious when the colored characters are always the “realistic” model.
Woke censorship bans female beauty for all skin colors. The problem is that western studios don't allow to have any remotely close to a Victoria's Secret model.

What happens is that they don't have enough characters to fill the censor's tokenism checklist, so they sometimes put multiple checks on the same character as could be "woman", "black", "ugly", "lesbian", "not young", "deaf/blind/etc" etc.

Main characters are meant to be charismatic, relatable and appealing to their target demographics, the type of people who buys that type of game. And these labels of the long checklist only represent a tiny portion of these demographics, so mostly are applied to secondary/npc characters instead.

Same goes with the personality: now almost all female characters must be strong, though, smart, gruff, confident etc. They also must have an scene showing they are stronger / better / smarter than the men. And if it's a non-white character, then to have that gotcha scene vs a white character.

That also applies to movies, tv shows etc., not only to games.
 
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