So are you saying that a white male cis hetero character IS the default. If you don't care than just put more white male cis hetero characters ? This makes absolutly no sense.
I don't do that at all. I've spent years arguing that
character creation should be the default, unless you can justify your main character. Two weeks ago, I was sitting in England telling the developers of Homefront: The Revolution that I thought their main character was done poorly, and that they should either make him a more worthwhile character or have him be selectable in terms of gender / race.
What I'm arguing is that if you're going to put minorities in your game, don't put them in as token characters. Give them value, at least for now, as we struggle to have positive representation in our games*. Token characters can grow to have value, but that's not a good reason for their initial inclusion. Me, personally, I don't want to be something for someone else to include as a way to make themselves feel better, or show how "progressive" they are. And if you're going to include us token characters, at least get it right. That's what I want.
* And to be clear, I don't mean every minority or trans character has to be a good person. You can have characters that are written to be the bad guy or jerks or shitty people or whatever else, and still have them well-written.
If a cis character does not need to add nothing to the story because they are cis, than a trans character can be trans just because as same !
CIS people are like 99+% of the population. You're going to
have to throw in a bunch of them that have little to no value to populate your world, unless you want a game that's unrealistic.
You don't need a PRATICAL reason to make the game world more like the real world.
But let's be honest here: the "real world" typically doesn't have examples of us in it most of the time. There aren't that many of us to guarantee that you'll always have on trans person in a group of ten, or a hundred, or even a thousand. Over-including us makes games less realistic—which I'm totally fine with! But that isn't striving for realism, it's the opposite.
IF you need a character on a quest to talk about identity, yes, a trans character will help your quest ... but trans characters can and NEED to exist everywhere else because if you go by your standards than we would have EVEN LESS than the 8 trans characters we already have.
And all I'm saying is don't half-ass their inclusion. The point that a trans character in a world with gender-change potions and belts and whatnot doesn't make a lot of sense has been brought up, and that's a damn fine point. Our notion of being "trans" wouldn't exist there, but similar ideas could still be done.
Maybe you go on a quest for this person, and you find out it's a cursed belt that causes gender change, and you take it back to them and warn them, but they admit that's what they wanted? Or maybe you've got a character who was cursed by the belt, realized that was who they were always meant to be, and now are trying to save themselves from people who want to force them to remove it?
A bit of creativity would come up with plenty of great ways to include trans characters without tossing someone in who tells you their gender story shortly after meeting you which
is not at all a thing most of us would do.
Remember the Poison you always love ? Beat em Ups does NOT NEED a "checklist". It adds NOTHING to the Final Fight game to make Poison trans... so she would NOT be trans in final fight, meaning that she would not be trans in Street Fighter.
I've never not said Poison's reason for being trans wasn't dumb. It is! But she's grown into something more over time, and she's also a product of an era that had less concern for us. We can do better in 2016 in terms of character creation.
P.S. - I still love you Platy, even if you think I'm dumb on this. <3
(okay not nearly as much thats an exaggeration but I'm not quite in the completely understanding mindset yet)
