Apex League of Legends marketing crew working overtime.
The fact that any character gets nerfed or buffed isnât a refutation. The only way Brigitte got into the game is because Blizzard consciously put her there.
It would help to read my entire post, namely this part:
Why would I make a case for an argument that youâre putting into my mouth? Iâm not playing this little game here.
Youâre not telling me anything I donât already know. I know that white people tend to be inundated by their own race.
That isnât my problem though. If youâre going to be making a product for a diverse and/or international audience, the fact that your life is racially homogenous is not an excuse for creating insensitive material. We are in an age of unfettered access to global cultures. You can learn how others live by just Googling it. Even Disney takes the time to research its animated movies regardless of where they take place.
White artists donât deserve a mulligan for screwing up non-white characters, diverse locations, or products intended for international consumption just because theyâre white, especially when that wouldnât fly in the reverse.
Good thing I never said that or youâd have a point.
But Blizzard never intended to put her in the way she was, presumably. Thatâs what Iâm referring to: Not everything in game development is a conscious choice of which all consequences have been considered and calculated.
âSloppy and naiveâ is completely different from âNot in tune with your specific world viewâ.
But thatâs the game you HAVE to play if you want to push representation as some kind of mandate or requirement, or that lack thereof is some sort of slight or failure on the part of the dev team.
But thatâs not what I am talking about. I am talking about the idea that the lack of a specific minority is not evidence of active exclusion, and that this can occur naturally without malicious intent.
Um?
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Which again is not the argument Iâm making.
The argument Iâm making against this ridiculous notion that games, or any art, are somehow just born of random cosmic happenstance. They arenât. Theyâre created. As such the creators are directly responsible for the outcome regardless of their intent.
Youâre trying to peg the argument as one of intent. But intent doesnât actually matter; the outcome does.
No itâs not.
Saying that âmedia representation is important because it increases the breadth of storytelling and outcomes in quality of life for minoritiesâ is a different argument than saying âx title is objectively required to include minorities.â Youâre trying to conflate a general advocacy of inclusion with some weird strawman that Overwatch needs to be forced to be better, and again Iâm not willing to play that game with folks where they try to peg me as saying stuff Iâm not. Thereâs plenty of other places online to tilt at windmills.
Ultimately, you can make whatever exclusionary piece of art you want to. Freedom of expression and all that. If you want to make fiction that only features and caters to straight white men, God bless you. Make whatever makes you happy. But in an increasingly globalised world where people who arenât straight white dudes are becoming bigger and bigger shares of the market and bigger voices in our cultural conversations, no one is obligated to pretend that such a default isnât boring or unappealing.
Again, you seem to think intent matters. It really doesnât beyond making a moral platitude about any given creator, and frankly I donât really care to know whatâs in Blizzardâs heart. The creatorâs soul is irrelevant. I care that- if theyâre going to include ethnic minorities in Overwatch- that it be done with the same level of quality as the white folks. Thatâs the beginning and end of it.
Once again, do you think games just randomly sprout from the earth or are they created by human beings with direct control over the product? Itâs one or the other.
I donât give a damn about diversity but I do want to play as that black woman with white hair that it was seen in one of the first overwatch trailers, her design looked amazing.
So letâs collapse everything on this because this discussion started with YOUR accusation that developers are INTENTIONALLY excluding minorities from games. I said that was bogus. That is what this discussion is about. YOU moved the goalposts to some sort of bigger societal goal.
No, itâs not. Thatâs a dichotomy that you envision in your mind, but itâs not actually true. Specifically, thereâs games that BANK on it not being true, like Magicka did. Emergent gameplay is a thing.
Devs have a concept and execute it, but the quality of that execution can create new ideas or make things fail to come together. Your idea that devs are somehow omniscient and have EVERY single eventuality completely plotted out in their heads is a complete folly.
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Iâm just going to make a third person observation and say that Firellius is on point and the other dude(tte) is just being paranoid
Yes, because literally the only way games are created over the span of years is through a conscious effort by a group of tens, sometimes hundreds of human beings. However, that doesnât mean that group of people intended any direct malice or hatred towards the groups they excluded.
This is what I mean by separating the outcome of a product from the subjective intent of a product. A creator has direct control over what they put- or donât put- into their own work. Of course you canât account for how an audience will receive the work, but thatâs why criticism is a thing and itâs why calls for representation are so vocal. The road towards better media is a long process in which the moral alignment of the creator is irrelevant. But progress wonât be had when folks try to stifle the effort because they assume every single time someone criticises a product on that front theyâre calling the creator a bad person. Itâs not about them at all.
Remember when marvel had like no female super hero movies, just side characters.
Then the DC movie universe finally made 1 decent movie which was wonder woman. Then suddenly Disney went into a rush to get a female super movie and the tone changed to ,âwe felt it was the right timeâ.
Yeah I was vocally in favor of a black character in OW, expect them to start working on one now.
YOU wrote âCarefully crafted TO EXCLUDE RACIAL MINORITIESâ.
You CANâT separate that from intent, that is a full accusation of malicious intent, that is the entire crux of the statement and that is what I responded to.
TBF, DC actually has an extremely popular superheroine thatâs on par with the male heroes. They also released Wonder Woman at a time where superhero films were a safe bet.
Until Avengers 1 landed, the whole Marvel thing was a crazy experiment that needed to hinge on the big hitters, and they still faced doubt after the fact when introducing nobodies like the Guardians.
Again: Do you think the inclusion or exclusion of any given demographic in a game is controllable or uncontrollable?
super hero movies always did well, they just had more garbage ones for a period of time compared to good ones.
DCâs fatal flaw was trying to dive into the deep end before slowing starting from the 3ft end of the pool. Weâve had a superman batman movie every Decade. Marvel actually built franchises with each movie they released. With Dc releasing garbage like BvS, Suicide Squad, and man of steel being debatable. Wonder woman make or break for them.
Before Iron Man, the superhero genre was kind of Z-tier trash. Yeah, you had the Christopher Reeves Superman films and the Clooney Batman films. But the other attempts like Daredevil and off-brand superhero films like Blankman were relegated to the junk pile. Iron Man, by conventional wisdom, should NOT have worked. Same with Thor 1 and Captain America: The First Avenger. These are kitschy cartoon characters.
I agree wholeheartedly. They wanted that Marvel pie without putting in the work Marvel did, which is insane to me because Marvel literally laid the path for success out in an easily-observable straight line. All they had to do was copy it.
It also doesnât help that Snyder is a mediocre director. ><!!!
great minds think alike, i could not agree more.
So you didnât read anything I wrote, did you?
I know I donât but in terms of game design a political message ranks pretty low on the priority list (as it should).
Well yeah theyâre not going to say âwe donât want this kind of feedbackâ could you imagine the backlash? Thereâs already backlash over simply not having a specific hero, the backlash from blizzard basically saying âwe donât careâ would be enormous.
I donât know what ads you saw for this game but I never saw any marketing of inclusion.
Yeah that also makes no sense. Wolfenstein is an over the top shooter, having a discussion of real life politics and ideologies in the forumâs of those games makes no sense at all.
Also I just wanna point out I never said âyou shouldnât discuss thisâ I just said complaining about it is stupid. If you just want to ask for a black female hero go ahead Iâll support it all day, but if you act like itâs something overwatch needs then it gets very annoying very quickly.
Well then explain how itâs somehow valid.
Just because an artist doesnât spread a certain political message doesnât mean thereâs anything inherently wrong with the art itself.
See my world hunger example.
Sure, wanting, not complaining about a lack of it.
Education systems in a nutshell. All I remember from history class is hearing the word alamo on repeat for 2 hours.
Well have different opinions here but if you want to see things from my pov itâs like a company making less money because consumers didnât like how little the color green was in the movie or game.
Itâs an unnecessary detail that doesnât need to be there.
Sure it is. A simple sentence of a character mentioning that itâs a problem will inject that idea in a personâs mind. Like those sad music âsave a child with one pennyâ ads, it just refreshes the idea in a personâs mind since itâs an easy problem to forget when youâre not actively affected by it.
If 1 million people get reminded that world hunger is an issue itâs very likely that atleast some of them will decide to donate to a cause.
You didnât address the kind of criticism I was referring to. The whole point of art is to either entertain or send a message, if an artist wants to send a message thatâs not diversity is that a problem?
Do you think itâs an issue that the game dead rising doesnât have a black female hero in it?
If you do think itâs an issue then should literally every piece of media have to have atleast one black female hero?
If you donât think itâs an issue that dead rising doesnât send a specific political message then we agree.
One more time for funnsies, if an artist wants to make a piece of art with no deeper meaning or political message they should be allowed to without being pressured to add one. Or if an artist does send a message but it isnât about diversity that should be fine to.
Iâm not trying to take away their right to say something on social media. All Iâm saying is they shouldnât be taken seriously. Or at least they should be taken just as seriously as someone saying âthis film didnât mention world hunger and thatâs a flawâ.
My opinion is that complaining about this is stupid, not that it shouldnât be allowed.
But I do wish people would back off of artists and stop breathing over their shoulder whispering âyou should make that character black and female, oh your adding another white guy? No make it (insert blah blah) or weâll complain and sells will tankâ
People really do go as far as suggesting a boycott and thatâs ridiculous, artistic freedom should be more valued today than it is.
To be honest though I donât think either of us is going to get anywhere, we may just have to agree to disagree.
In my opinion diversity is (while nice) not a necessary thing in art and should be viewed as such.
And people who complain and moan about the lack of (insert whatever ridiculously specific identify you can think of here) are just hurting artistic freedom and trying to make an artist send a message they didnât want to send.
Obviously you have a different opinion but neither of us are particularly correct itâs mostly just a matter of opinion.
Edit: I forgot to ask a question.
Do you think diversity should be required?
Do you think the lack of diversity is a flaw in something?
Representation doesnât matter. If you want to be bland and project yourself as a character, go play an RPG.
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The major thematic elements of the game do not rank low, nor should they, because that is how you have a coherent game design and continue to please customers. This is why they have an entire library of heroes predesigned just waiting for kits.
No, but they could be radio silent about it like many brands that arenât including this kind of thing as part of their marketing.
They instead went out of their way to get attention on this issue, which has the no brainer consequence of receiving feedback on it. They write letters to gay teenagers, wear Rainbow flag pins to Blizzcon, talk about the importance of diversity, etc.
Blizzard is not facing blacklash because it comes up as a topic of discussion every now and then. There are no calls for boycotts, no consumers leaving over, no giant Twitter hashtags demanding anything, etc.
They discussed it length in many of their panels and to news sites prior to the launch of the game. You can see some of that stuff in Wyoming Mystâs thread. The press blitz they did to sell this game very much played that up. Many of the ads focused on hero design and lore rather than gameplay, as well.
Yeah, it does. Wolfenstein has a clear political message.
Oh please, that is a distinction without meaning. Discussion means that people should be able to talk negatively just as much as positively, or it isnât even worth doing because free expression isnât encouraged. Nobody is being stupid because they care about something you do not, and do so in a way that is honest to how they feel without regard to whether or not you personally feel annoyed.
If you are annoyed, thatâs a you problem.
Your world hunger example is poor because it requires an extensive altering of the gameâs message. Changing the skin color of someone whose race has no bearing on them as a character does not.
And you have had numerous explanations of why representation is important and why people care about it. All of them are backed by academic studies and research, as well as history.
There is absolutely nothing invalid about complaining on a forum that is designed in part to understand customer complaints. What is invalid is going to a place designed for that kind of feedback and complaining that people are giving out complaints that donât suit your personal worldview.
It does need to be there, on the aggregate level. And you have been given many reasons why. If you feel itâs the same as that, then you clearly havenât been trying to understand why it would matter to someone. Because if you did, youâd understand why itâs a big deal to some people even if you disagreed with them.
This would require altering scenes. Or a characterâs personality. That isnât true of representation. Soldier 76âs reveal is a good example. Literally nothing about that scene needs changes if Vincent was Valerie. Nothing.
No. They should be prepared for any and all criticism, and it comes with making art for the masses. If they want to speak to the public, the public gets to speak back. That is how the free exchange of ideas work and it is integral to good art.
Artists know that, and are free to choose what they agree with and what they do not. If the public is tired of seeing something, thatâs good for an artist trying to make money to know before the project fails due to lack of consumer interest.
No.
Yes. And for numerous reasons: psychological (backed by research), economic (job opportunities for poc) and social (backed by sociologists). It isnât a flaw for every work, and it isnât a flaw to not include everyone, everytime. But the media as a whole should better reflect the world we live in.
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Every piece of triple A or blockbuster media is specifically designed to appeal as broadly as possible to generate as much revenue as feasible.
That is just a simple fact, itâs just business.
Which means that whether you want it or not, a Black Female character is coming.
I for one simply hope sheâs fun to play to be honest, I believe that instantly relating to a character simply for sharing your skin color is a ridiculous idea but both sides of this argument disagree with me and my radical notion of valuing the character traits, backstory, feelings and all that actually makes the character.
On one hand you have the people who claim âA black/asian/LGBT character exists without a reasonâ to whom if you need to explain why that is wrong and dumb, at this point would be like trying to teach a tiger not to have stripes.
And on the other hand, you have people who want to make Triple A and Blockbuster media even more of a soulless cashgrab and eliminate the traces of artistic integrity it may have.
Iâd love to see a new Character, Iâm just more excited about her/his gameplay and role rather than her/his skin color 