I should probably not dignify you with an answer, since your post has several dog whistles.
Name them. Examples?
Like many others who tried to discuss about diversity before, you hide your disgust for it behind "I don't care, so why should you," or "I don't see color."
I'm not attempting to "hide" my disgust at all. My frustrations with the current state of creativity in most media nowadays primarily revolves around the idea that everything has to be as inoffensive as possible and that it should attempt to appeal to everybody...or it's bad. That one's emotional feelings or opinions pertaining to some presumed injustice or injustices in the world right now, automatically trumps everything else that goes into the development of any art form. That such things like creative writing and internal logic, for example, have to be sacrificed for the sake of satisfying a select group.
By superficial, do you mean shallow, or in the sense that it's visible from the surface? I hope the latter, since ethnicity and sexuality play just as an important roles in our lives as religious or political beliefs. Either way, I don't understand the need for characters that are part of a minority to have their existence justified to the player. Of course I'd rather these characters are well developed, but it's not like every single white male character ever made had effort put into them. Some characters are going to be trash, are going to have badly written backstories and weird motivations, but that has nothing to do with whether they are black, asian, homossexual, trans etc. Also, not every game is going to be about social issues, but it doesn't mean minorities can't be added. So what if one of your team members is a trans men? He doesn't need to have an entire questline about how he was brought up, all the misgendering he suffered, all the bullying, and so on. If the writers want to tackle that, great! If they don't, then so what? Maybe the creators of the game knew a trans man and wanted to honor him, maybe they thought it would attract more players, maybe they just wanted to try something different. It doesn't matter.
First of all, my argument is that ethnic and sexual representation shouldn't be the point where character development stops. I agree that not all video game characters are going to get sufficient levels of development or that they're all going to be interesting, doesn't matter if it turns out to be a character who is white, black, straight, gay. But if all you're going to do for a character who is gay, for example, is to hammer players over the head the fact that said character is gay, undermines that character's relevancy with the larger narrative in question. Are they there for any reason other than to have a token gay character, or do you instead focus on other aspects and perhaps slowly, subtly weave in connotations and associations to one's sexuality. Indeed, not all games are going to have social, religious, philosophical, political leanings in their core premise or themes and providing characters serve to form a greater narrative in regards to their actions and interactions, it doesn't matter who you involve. The point is to not be so afraid or distrustful of player intelligence that you feel have to ham-fist your approach. As you put it, I agree to an extent: if a developer wants to do this, great....but you have to respect the foundation of the IP it's based off in the case of previous material already established (be this reality or self-contained), or at the very least make me believe in the characters you're presenting. Don't, for example, portray a European country set within our own reality in the 12th century comprised entirely 100% of trans-men and trans-women, say "THIS IS HOW THE WORLD WAS" and expect me to just go along with it...especially if you're trying to keep to historical accuracy, because that won't work. On the otherhand, if it's fantastical in nature, then of course limitations are significantly lesser since we're not basing this off of our own reality.
Concerning the second bolded statement. I imagine the reason we see more outrage nowadays is due to how society has started to accept these minorities (very slowly and painfully), and how social media has allowed these same people to voice their concerns and desires without the fear to be attacked (physically, at least). A gay black man received an award one day in the United States, and seconds later the entire world was talking about him. Our voices can be heard by everyone, and some people are mad.
My argument was that there are certain people accusing "the fringe" let's call it, of having been forever racist or sexist and that they never have and never will tolerate characters that aren't white or straight. If that is the case, how do you explain the popularity of several media properties over the past 50 years that have featured characters of differing ethnicities and sexualities. My problem here is that people aren't willing to counter their own predetermined line of thinking by going: "oh wait hang on, people really liked the older media that featured black characters? is it right for me to make assumptions, i could be wrong here." Yes, social media has indeed given a platform for people to complain about the most pointless and mundane things - it works both ways. You will always gets extreme fringes on both sides, but there seems to be lack of research and retrospect when one complains about "no THIS and no THAT" in any creation. Am I to deduce in the past 50 years of video games, TV, movies, books, art, whatever....there has been no attempt, none whatsoever, to diverge from focusing entirely on characters who are white and straight? OR...in the other extreme case, that in the same 50 year period roughly, we haven't allowed for content that simply has...I dunno....five male party members in a JRPG, without cause for concern?
You speak as if that's all people did. When I watch a movie, I don't start making notes of each character's race, sexuality, gender etc. I just watch the movie and enjoy if for what it is. You talk as if each minority had its own club, in which they had weekly meetings and discussed how only X% of characters from released medium that week shared their "minority". The reality is that, when a minority shows up in media X, it highlights how few are present in similar works.
You don't make notes of each character's race, sexuality, gender etc....and yet, when a supposed minority shows up in media X, you still think its worth making a note of, as if we're keeping a running tally across, as you say, "similar works"? You're contradicting yourself there.
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I appreciate the responses though.
