147 - Diversity

[matt]

In this developer diary, I talk about the advantages of diversity in games and ways to have more diverse game characters.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Yeah I think people tend to write what they know, and historically video game developers have been largely white dudes. That seems to be changing gradually, so you can see the field opening up a bit, but I think it's going to take a while longer before there's a good representation in most games.

One potential problem I could see with writing diversity into games just for the sake of it or to appease people is it could run the risk of coming across as disingenuous or lazy if it's not handled well. As you said, if someone just added some skin tone variations, that's probably a pretty easy thing to do and really should be happening anyway in the majority of games where it makes sense to have a realistic diversity of characters. But if it gets into issues that the writers aren't familiar with or able to speak to genuinely, then it could come across as pandering, inaccurate or even offensive. Gone Home touched on some really good issues, and although it was made in the most part by a white male, I remember hearing him talk about how he made sure to take the effort to speak with people who had actually gone through similar situations as the characters in the game, because he wanted to handle the subject matter appropriately.

One big problem I think games still face is the issue of actual women characters. A lot of games seem to equate "empowered" and "strong" with "overly sexualized", and rather than nuance and personality, you get ridiculous proportions and excuses for the characters to wear fewer and increasingly less practical clothes. The best example of a strong female lead in games is probably still Lara Croft, and man that series has gone through some embarrassing trends with regards to model designs.

I guess you could say the similar things about a lot of male characters in games, like you said, the Gears of War guys have muscles straining up through their muscles. The sexualization problem isn't there though, or at least not as overtly anyway!

[gagaplex]

"...in a way that doesn't change..."

I'd very much agree with this. The problem with "forced diversity" arises when people try to create a "black character" or a "gay character" or a "female character" rather than just "a person", because they - perhaps unwittingly - tend to resort back to stereotypes and cliches when trying to make the character in question that "category". That's when you get "token" characters. But if you just focus on creating a relatable character, then something like their ethnicity or gender remains incidental. It doesn't define the character, especially not as a character of tropes rather than a person in their own right.

In a video review I saw about Independence Day, I learnt that Will Smith's part was originally written for a white actor. But when Will Smith showed up and gave a trial so convincingly, they just gave it to him. So his race was irrelevant, incidental. It should be like that more often (and then that same movie has so many stereotypically Jewish characters that it's kind of sad and laughable... ).

Speaking of making characters' gender less relevant: Rogue Legacy has male and female characters and there are very few distinct features. I think females' breastplates have breast-bulges and they have a pink bow on their helmets. They also have different voices, but other than that they are exactly the same (yes, female mages even have flowing white beards). Some people still dislike such an approach because it boils gender down to something as stereotypical as a pink bow, though. Maybe the bulges would've been sufficient? But that boils it down to breasts. Maybe the voice? But some males have high voices and some females low voices. I'm really not sure how to best do it.

[matt]

In the general case, it can be a tough problem to solve. Most recently Assassin's Creed: Unity came under fire because they promised a female playable character and then said "nevermind". Their explanation trying to minimize the importance of it was pretty poor. They basically said that everyone plays as the same character, so it was no big deal.

I feel like they should have just made the main character female. Problem solved!

[ranger_lennier]

Regarding complaints about too much diversity--at least on the Internet, you can find people complaining about anything. Some people complained about the possibility of same sex relationships for male Shepard added to Mass Effect 3. I don't think this makes much sense given that, among other reasons, Shepard only gets into these relationships if the player chooses to pursue them. But who said everyone was logical? I do think that the Tomodachi Life controversy shows that we're getting to a point where excluding same sex relationships is more controversial than including them.

I think that for a lot of stories, Matt's idea about adding women / racial minorities / sexual minorities, etc. as basically like everyone else works fine. At the same time, I hope more people will make games that tell stories specific to these groups. What's it like to live in an impoverished minority community, or grow up gay in a conservative town, or be a woman during the women's suffrage movement? This is much harder to do, but also really rewarding if anyone can pull it off.

[matt]

I agree that stories centering about different life experiences would be truly great narratives. However, I think they are a lot harder to fit into the context of video games. Gone Home succeeded somewhat in that regard, but at least to me, I felt like it wasn't much different than a heterosexual teen romance... Perhaps had it been written by a lesbian woman instead of a white male, it would have been different. (I'm not criticizing it - It was very well written)

The advantage of diversity of game developers is that hopefully other people can bring their stories to games. Anna Anthropy makes games about being transgender, so there are some diverse voices sharing different life stories - but not as many as they should...

[ranger_lennier]

I agree that stories centering about different life experiences would be truly great narratives. However, I think they are a lot harder to fit into the context of video games. Gone Home succeeded somewhat in that regard, but at least to me, I felt like it wasn't much different than a heterosexual teen romance... Perhaps had it been written by a lesbian woman instead of a white male, it would have been different. (I'm not criticizing it - It was very well written)

I'm surprised you thought of the lesbian relationship in Gone Home as so similar to a heterosexual teen romance. Now certainly, it has many aspects in common, and I imagine that was one message the writer was trying to convey. But I also can recognize in the story many aspects that are unique to or at least far more common in the gay experience. Admittedly, I'm sure it helps that I'm gay and have thought/read a lot about these issues, and can personally identify with many of them, even if I don't have such a dramatic story to tell. Spoiler warning for pretty much the entire rest of this post...

One of the first things you see is the difficulty in finding a relationship when everyone is afraid to come out of the closet. Initiating romance is awkward enough for everyone, but here Sam and Lonnie have to go through this elaborate series of sending subtle signals and reading innuendo, with potentially disastrous consequences if they guess wrong. I went to high school in a pretty socially conservative area from 1995-1999 (so around the timeframe of the game), and I don't think there was a single openly gay student there. I didn't date at all until I was in college, and even in a bigger city and more supportive and independent environment, it was hard to get over my insecurity. I actually found out years later that one of my biggest high school crushes actually was gay. Even though I'm currently in a happy relationship, I can't help but wonder what I missed out on.

Even once Sam and Lonnie have confirmed that they're into each other, things don't get easy, because they have to pretend that they're not dating. And many people in the closet find those little lies they have to keep telling everyone around them a crushing burden. Or they worry about drawing attention to themselves for something as innocuous as holding hands, which would hardly even be noticed for a straight couple. Still, Sam and Lonnie draw enough attention to themselves to face bullying at school. One of the gamier aspects of Gone Home is the carelessness with which Sam leaves notes about her sexuality scattered about the house. I seriously doubt a real person in her position would have done that.

Then Sam's fears come true. The school finds "inappropriate" material (basically just a zine about girl punk bands as I understand it), and she's involuntarily outed to her parents. They restrict her freedom to travel and her ability to see her girlfriend. And they won't even recognize her sexuality as a fundamental part of her. They view it as just a phase, and research ways to "cure" the condition. Now personally, I chose to come out to my parents when I was in college, though even then, part of my reasoning was that, as more people at school learned about it, the news might get back to them. And even though I got to choose how to roll out the news, I still got somewhat this reaction. My mother asked if I'd been hanging out with a "gay crowd" as if gayness was contagious. And she even suggested that I should at least try dating women. I suppose the pithy response would have been that she should try dating women too to make sure she's not actually a lesbian, but my actual response was that this wouldn't be fair to me or to the woman I'd be dating. Talk about the world's most awkward breakup conversation--"Yeah, I knew I was gay when I started dating you, but my mother wanted me to make extra sure. Hope you weren't inconvenienced too much." Even now, my mother's better about things, but I don't know that my boyfriend will be allowed to set foot in their house for as long as my father's alive.

And, getting back to Gone Home, in the end, Sam and Lonnie take a huge gamble by leaving town without any clear plan of where they're going to go and what they're going to do. For Lonnie, I think she probably made the right decision in not joining the military. I know she'd been working toward it for years, but was an anti-authoritarian lesbian really going to fit in during the era of Don't Ask Don't Tell? With Sam, it's more difficult to say. As much as her last message put a positive spin on running away, she's still a minor, and while she had been in great position to go to a good college, now she may not even finish high school. But it's definitely true that gay kids are far more likely to run away or be kicked out of their homes, and many wind up homeless.

OK, I think that completes my thesis on Gone Home as a piece of LGBT fiction (with bonus autobiography). What's truly horrifying is that, as real and serious as these problems are, there are places like Uganda or Russia where they're far worse. I don't know how someone would integrate that into a video game, but if they ever do, I want to see it.

[matt]

I guess I missed out some of the subtext. Maybe I missed some of the notes or maybe I just don't remember it very well.

I still feel like it is somewhat similar to Romeo and Juliet where their romance was "forbidden" (due to family rivalries) or perhaps a cheesy teen movie where the protagonist falls in love with someone outside his/her socioeconomic circles.

However, when I read your summary of it and how it lines up to your experience, it sounds much better, and I feel like I was missing out. I guess perhaps I was expecting a homosexual romance story to be more different than a heterosexual story, but in hindsight, obviously there will be similarities between a heterosexual romance as well as a homosexual romance. It's love either way...

Maybe I was just hoping there'd be more to the story. It was pretty simple.

Plus, Sam totally ruined her life. Lonnie joining the military never made sense since she has a rebellious spirit, but I would have rather seen her join a community college rather than running away with no long term plans.

Maybe my problem is that I'm just boring and want everyone else to be. hahah

[ranger_lennier]

Perhaps one of the big successes of the gay rights movement has been making gay people just as boring as everyone else.

I think you can definitely compare the relationship in Gone Home to other relationships disapproved of by family and/or society. It could be due to family rivalry, rejection of arranged marriages, socioeconomic status, interracial relationships, or any number of situations. To me, that illustrates the universal aspects of love, and unfortunately prejudice as well.

Do you think the story should have been more complex? I think it may be just a result of the medium. I'm not sure they could have made a much more complex story in a video game of that length. As it was, plenty of people didn't like the game because it was so focused on story rather than gameplay. Even though I enjoyed it, it did seem like some sort of interactive fiction distinct from the style of most games I play. Maybe you could put something like Telltale's games in the same category.

I definitely think Sam's euphoria will wear off as she realizes the difficulty of making it without her family. But I like to think that the player character tells her parents what jerks they've been and the family reconciles. Or maybe Lonnie supports Sam for a little while so Sam can get her GED, then Sam gets financial aid to go to college. It doesn't really seem like the sort of game they'd make a sequel to, so such speculation may be the best we can do.

[matt]

I think it was a great game, and I'm not sure the story needs to be more complex.

I guess maybe I am less enthusiastic about the actual story being told is because I frown on high school romances in general, and it's a subconscious that's been done to death. However, maybe it's just my subconscious being bitter that I didn't have any luck with the ladies until after college. hahaha

In the end, it doesn't matter what Lonnie and Sam do since they don't exist outside of the game, but it is always fun to speculate. I expect there will be quite a bit more speculation on the endings of Neverending Nightmares - especially once I get in the others, which will contradict the current one. hahaha