She's right. Additionally it's a bit sad how many of the last/current-gen character share a lot of physical traits.
Short-haired white-skinned brooding men with "cool" clothes is the default, or only options for most games.
Say what you will about furries but at least in the 16 and 32bit days we had a lot more diversity, if not of genders then at least of species/character design. It seems that the less restrictive our technology becomes for developers, the less diverse our games become graphically.
You still find this diversity in indie development. Where artists and developers are free to be inspired, and can run wih their inspirations free of creative restriction.
AAA games will continue to have white males leads and generic designs because that's simply what sells.
There's no point voting with your wallet, because there are too many people who will just keep buying.
This won't shift until society shifts, we might see small improvement here and there but I doubt we'll see true representation or balance for a while.
I'm studying game design, and I'm going to write my stories based on the people I know. Men, women, all races, all ages. My protagonist will be Male most likely because I am Male and I'll be writing from a perspective I'm comfortable with, and I won't write In tokens for the sake of it, but in my mind the characters can only be what I know, and that's diverse.
The main character certainly won't be cool. The girls are going to be more than background, and won't be any more sexualised than the males. But then the story I'm going to tell suits that kind of diversity.
Action games set within the confines of a realistic setting are going to have male characters as leads more often simply because male physicality suits that more. There's an element of realism required to make a character feel grounded just enough for the story to be plausible.
For example: GTA style games suit male protags more simply because the kind if crime is male dominated, and women play a sexualised role in the real world examples so their depiction is realistic in context. Of course there are exceptions, and they should consider these, but shoehorning them in could be awkward. You could always do something subtle like Bill's sexuality in TLoU, it doesn't have to be overt (and shouldn't unless the story requires it, this kind if thing should never be a waving flag either way IMO), but maybe they don't want to even risk alienating markets.
The issue here isn't that there are too many male leads imo, but hat developers are too comfortable wrong the type of stories where they more sense as protagonists.
The actual stories need to be more varied, that way we can include more diverse characters and protagonists while keeping their inclusion meaningful and not just reactionary, and we wouldn't have to shoehorn stuff in or make overt reference to sexuality just to show we're including it to be fair. It would just be a natural part of the story, a non issue. Not something to focus on either way. Natural. That's what we need.
Of course. You could just write pure sci-fi and fantasy and negate real world worries, but if you have a specific idea for a setting that won't always be possible.
But, again, it's what sells. And AAA gaming is about what sells.
Anyway, it would be wonderful to see more character diversity. The brooding 30 something male is getting dull, and I'm a brooding 30 something male. I'd really like to experience some different perspectives that were well written. Not only would it be refreshing, but if written well enough would provide insight into diverse chavrater types that I don't have interaction with enough to understand on a personal level. That could only be of for my own development as a person.
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I agree with the Tweet's premise, but I don't always agree with the way the writer presents her ideas. She seems to cherry pick parts from games to dirge the points while ignoring that the same game actually supports the things she calls for.
The video she produced regarding women as background objects, she used an example of female prostitute NPCs from New Vegas, completely ignoring the fact there were male prostitutes too. The game's tone and setting suited the idea of prostitution, that people were desperate in this world enough that they would resort to it, or find a proficiency they could exploit to survive, and the game fairly represented that with both genders.
That kind of tactic or oversight seems to be present in much of her work, and it dilutes the impact of her points (which I understand an agree with).
