What's an example of diversity being done "properly" in a game or show?

[Cranster]

I never played it but just from the poor writing and stereotypical hipster style humor I've seen of it, the new Saints Row strikes me as a poor attempt to be overly political correct and yell "look were diverse". This from a company that did an AMA on 8chan.

 

[TheChrisGlass]

 

[astro]

Do You Mean Dallas? The Captain? Because He have a big role or focus him in first half and actor name become first on intro.

Well, when I watch first time I know that Ripley is Heroine of the movie.

She have a lot screen time and Weaver name appear after Dallas actor.







Hardcore LOTR fan complain Ring of Power show when Black Elf and Female Black Dwarf reveal

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Yeh brain fart, I meant Dallas.

 

[sora bora]

I never played it but just from the poor writing and stereotypical hipster style humor I've seen of it, the new Saints Row strikes me as a poor attempt to be overly political correct and yell "look were diverse". This from a company that did an AMA on 8chan.

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Wait what? Massive record scratch in my head rn.

 

[EraLurker24]

It's hard to find, mainly because devs and writers continue to be majority white.

 

[Nimbat1003]

huh you know what the Fast and furious movies honestly have pretty good diverse ensembles.

anyway i guess i would say it's more "pandering" more so than "forced diversity"

it just kinda bugs me when it's obvious that it was never really planned and they squeeze in a character or "moment".

the whole female avengers assemble thing from avengers endgame, where all these character who were never really developed and were never given there own movie team up to protect Cpt marvel who is so powerful and just flies through all the villains anyway because she's the only one with her own movie. hey black widow is dead how about ur own movie now. though the upcoming line-up of marvel movies finally seem to be pretty diverse leading roles.


a weirder pick but i think that harley quinn animated show has done an excellent job of being modern and diverse i think partly because it pokes fun all ways(and good writers help.)

harley and Ivy are a lesbian couple and they develop that relationship well, constant issues about toxic masculinity, women in the workplace and unhealthy relationships etc but also one of the villains get's cancelled for calling wonder woman a C*nt.

though for games Deathloop and psychonauts 2 comes to mind and in a different way Returnal (seriously how many gave have an older woman lead.)they just simply have diverse central characters.

edit: oh god you know what, Strive has done an amazing job of adapting characters that started as "look how weird we are", to a diverse and modern cast from a fat character who is not just fat jokes to a variety of of trans characters.

 

[Budi]

I never played it but just from the poor writing and stereotypical hipster style humor I've seen of it, the new Saints Row strikes me as a poor attempt to be overly political correct and yell "look were diverse". This from a company that did an AMA on 8chan.

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It's a game developed by Volition, published by Deep Silver. THQ is pretty far removed from the contents of the game, the AMA doesn't mean shit in the context.

 

[HBC_XL]

I'm always curious to understand what the parameters of "forced diversity" are, like what determines it was forced? Cause usually, it seems just having a non-white front in center is 'forced'. So I'm inclined to believe your last feelings OP

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This diagram might help:

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"Forced diversity" isn't a thing. It's just right-wing conservative whining and being ignorant assholes

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All of the above nailed it on the head. People who identify with Whiteness (and not "White People") look to feel victimized, so anything to fuel that fire is fair game to them.

The framework is interesting, though. I think in North America (Canadian here, and a visible minority if that matters), there's a big "White vs Black" thing where any notable shift towards Black is "pandering" from that point of view. You can also insert Trans, Gay, Women, and whatever else in place of Black these days. The issue (again, from a "right" point of view) is that it's all happening at once. It's not just "two white girls, two white guys, and an "other"" but instead, it's "a gay white guy, a black woman, an Asian couple, and a Latina." It went from 4/5 of visibility to 1/5 if they even count the gay guy (in my example).

To address the OP: A Good Place is an excellent example of "forced diversity" that worked (or what I would call "good casting"). I would argue the point where others may say, "but what does it add to the narrative" by proposing, "what did being white add to the narratives before?" It's weird that there has to be a reason to "not" be...

 

[Bodhi]

I just wanted to shout out Star Wars Rebels. When I saw the first episode, I thought it was really unique... As we never see such a colorful cast. As well as its setting being Arab inspired. Just look at the Ghost crew below.

 

[Gay Bowser]

it just kinda bugs me when it's obvious that it was never really planned and they squeeze in a character or "moment".

the whole female avengers assemble thing from avengers endgame, where all these character who were never really developed and were never given there own movie team up to protect Cpt marvel who is so powerful and just flies through all the villains anyway because she's the only one with her own movie. hey black widow is dead how about ur own movie now. though the upcoming line-up of marvel movies finally seem to be pretty diverse leading roles.

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I see a lot of people online knock this scene as "cringe" or "pandering," but I know women in real life who loved that scene and think of it as one of their favorite moments of the film. Come to think of it, I don't know a single woman IRL who criticized it for being forced or pandering or whatever. And I have a pretty nerdy social circle, and we talk about Marvel movies a lot.

So it's probably good to remember that not everyone is terminally online and tuned into The Discourse and constantly navel-gazing about whether or not even this thing that seems positive is actually positive or if it's actually negative and only seems positive because of the decades of oppression that came before it, and are they really hoodwinking us by exploiting our desire for such a scene and selling it back to us as something progressive and groundbreaking, and if you read theory you'd understand…

Sometimes, for some people, fun things can just be fun things.

Could Marvel (both on-screen and behind the camera) be better at reflecting the diversity of our world, especially in the first decade or so of the MCU? Of course. Does it suck that it took until Ant-Man and the Wasp for a woman to be a named title character in a Marvel movie and until Captain Marvel for one to be the lead? Heck yes. Was that scene in Endgame still meaningful for many women, who appreciated it even with this history? Anecdotally, I'd say yes. Was it worth including in the film? I think of all the young girls who got to see that scene, with not just one superheroine, but a whole team of them, all having their Big Moment and saving the day on IMAX, and…

I sort of doubt those girls are thinking "well, none of those heroines even matter because Captain Marvel is so OP"

 

[Katbobo]

I think League of Legends is a good example of diversity. They've been releasing more and more characters that are representative of other cultures and ethnicity.

Like some of the most recent champions:

Nilah (southeast asian)

Spoiler

Akshan (India)

Spoiler

Zeri (Brazilian)

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Then the most recent announced champion, K'Sante, is the first openly LBGTQ black champion in the game.

Spoiler

They've put a lot of effort into portraying a massive and diverse world, and have started to focus on exploring it by having a wide range of diverse characters.

The community seems to love it, so they're doing something right since I don't think i've seen a single comment about "forced diversity" in the game.

 

[Morrigan]

I get OP's point, but having the thread title worded as if "forced diversity" is a genuine valid concept rather than a white supremacist one, and people are going to solely read that title and reply to it which just perpetuates it's sense of validity.

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Yeah pretty much. "Forced diversity" is almost always a dog whistle for bigotry, like, cishet straight white male characters don't need to justify their presence, but anything outside of that needs a reason? That's pretty BS.

That said I suppose there could be a valid conversation surrounding tokenism, but that's a different concern.

The only instance that comes to mind was the Chinese woman in Vikings. I am all for adding PoCs to a lily-white show, but even not considering how seriously unlikely it would be for a Chinese woman to end up in medieval Norway, I would certainly not mind it if they did something interesting with that character... but she was kind of terrible and her character went literally nowhere. She was a victimized slave, didn't add anything to the story beyond a tiresome opium addiction subplot for the lead character, and just end up being murdered horribly by the lead male character. And then the story just moves on from that and nothing of that is ever mentioned again.

I could be very wrong, but I can't imagine that anyone would think this is a good example of Asian representation in TV, at least. But maybe even that is better than nothing at all? I don't know.

 

[Nimbat1003]

I see a lot of people online knock this scene as "cringe" or "pandering," but I know women in real life who loved that scene and think of it as one of their favorite moments of the film.

Sometimes, for some people, fun things can just be fun things.

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Yes you are right, especially since the marvel movies in general are all just nerd pandering in general, And yeah I don't remember any of my girl friends commenting on that part either, though I remember my sister got very eye rolly at the " just a girl" section at the end of CPT marvel.

i didn't even really notice it my first watch through, it just became a famous and easy thing to reference.

if anyone saw the Wheel of time show i have very mixed feeling's about it, and it has some better example of this,

it has some great cast diversity and good changes to the book such as expanding on the "pillow friends" relationships of the aei seadai. sure i could poke holes of this village of 100 people known for being isolated being so racially diverse.(but that's truly a dumb nit-pick.)

then as a fan of the book, playing games with who was the dragon reborn was a bit weird but i've heard people who only watched the show found it fun not knowing.

but then in the shows finale they have this whole moment with some of the female cast basically going out to help defend the city, the weird thing is they fully hang back from the main army allowing them to be wiped out then, they tap into the magic and destroy the full wave of trolocs, multiple of them die in that process, but then one of them is reived "somehow", it's weird because this whole moment is meant to showcase the full power of the dragon reborn, but it feels like they are trying to move as far away from the white farm boy hero trope as possible, too their own detriment, he never really gets his moment in that first season at all,

 

[Love Machine]

Diversity being done poorly to me means things like stereotypes or ignorant portrayals of something the writer doesn't understand.
"Forced diversity" is just an alt-right talking point where they try to dress up "I don't want to see people different from me" as something other than what it is. Like when you apply any amount of critical thinking to the situation the whole thing falls apart. "Forced Diversity" is just "Diversity". Everything about writing a character or casting an actor is "forced", it's not something that occurs in fucking nature.

So, in turn, the vast majority of diversity is doing it "properly" because diversity in general is good.

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This pretty much.

edit: oh god you know what, Strive has done an amazing job of adapting characters that started as "look how weird we are", to a diverse and modern cast from a fat character who is not just fat jokes to a variety of of trans characters.

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Oh gosh, Faust's chart lmao
Strive has awesome diversity in terms of design and identity of its characters.