I don't know why you mentioned that you are mixed race. It doesn't change my argument against what you have said.
No one is pointing a gun to developers' heads like "make him brown if you want to live!" Of course developers have their freedom to make what they want. Except when they don't. Games make decisions based on marketing all the time and what they think their demographic will want. You think no white, male protagonist has ever been "forced" because the devs wanted to have a relatable main character to sell the game with? Why is that ok but people wanting diversity is bizarre and wrong? In a perfect world, devs would do what they want and we'd have decent diversity but that's not how things work in the real world and they aren't just going to change by doing nothing. People actually have to say something. Why get in the way of people saying what they want? Why are you so resistant to the idea of more diversity?
Give a black man an inch and he'll take a mile, right? Black people will just never be happy no matter how many black characters we give them so we should just not try to be better. I don't think I need to explain why this is a problematic approach you're taking here.
You asked what about Asian people. You're deflecting. When a minority brings up an issue, it's not uncommon for people to nitpick and bring up the other minorities they did not bring up to discredit their point. "Black History Month? What about Asian History Month? Isn't that important too? You don't care about women or LGBTQ? They're minorities too!" Look, black people should not have to bring up every minority that exists just to say they'd like to see more black protagonists in their games. They aren't saying there doesn't need to be more Indian or Southeast Asian or Native American characters. You're requiring this big burden of a qualifier for people to simply say they want to see more representation for people like them in the media they enjoy.
Apparently wanting that is bizarre to you. It's bizarre to be a little kid and all your favorite cartoons and games barely have people that look like you in them. And when they do show up, they're usually stereotypes or not important. Usually they're comic relief or they're bad guys. And that's just when they actually exist. It's bizarre to feel left out a bit, like you don't matter when you're just a kid experiencing this. When you wish that there was someone in one of these things you like that made you feel normal, like you belonged, it's bizarre. It's bizarre.
I can't be bothered to have massive strings of arguments where the original point is lost.
So lets have a look at some of the latest offerings in Nintendo franchises:
Pokemon: Protagonist can be black. Has black gym leaders. Hau and Prof Kukui are essentially mixed race. This is one, if not their biggest franchise, a mainline Pokemon.
Mario: 0 new human characters in Odyssey.
Zelda: The only human champion is a middle eastern woman. Every other prominent character was previously established in other games.
Splatoon: Nintendo's most succesful new IP in ages. When did they have a new IP do this well? In the sequel they decide to make one of the mascots black. The Inklings can be black.
Fire Emblem: Not many minority characters.
Xenoblade: Not many.
Sushi Striker: General Kodiak.
ARMS: Plenty of characters of different racial backgrounds.
Metroid: The majority of games only have Samus in them.
So we have Xenoblade and Fire Emblem being poor in representation. Especially with such large casts of characters. Splatoon and ARMS two of their latest franchises have black characters. Pokemon has black characters. Mario has no new characters. Zelda had Urbosa. Metroid for the most part only has one character.
All of these games are on Switch or will be soon. Sure, the black gym leaders are from Sun/Moon, but you'll be able to have a black avatar. So 2 out of 9 games are poor for diversity. 2 out of 9 games rarely introduce new human characters. Then 5 out of 9 had someone who is not white playing a major role. 4 of those 5 featuring black male characters.
If you think that's bad representation I don't know what to do or say. Nintendo rarely introduce new characters for some of these franchises. I could throw in Animal Crossing as well as it is inevitable they will let your character be black. What can Nintendo do?
