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The Guardian: E3 2017 diversity report - female characters mask lack of progress

g11

Member
The random comments on the clothing of the female presenters in the article is particularly bewildering. I guess they thought they were covering the Oscars.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
Some of their information is wrong and I'd say personally their scores seem way off especially Ubi's.
 

Phamit

Member
The Bechdel test also seems a bit out of place, at least when you use them on presenters. I don't think the presenters at MS talked to each others at all.
 

Fury451

Banned
Still no disabled representation though.

The Surge had a disabled main character

This article seems downplay and exclude some major positives for trivial reasons- like excluding npcs of color (Wolf 2), calling Chloe white and not mentioning Battlefront 2's lead.
 

nynt9

Member
At least default isn't generic chiselled caucasian man with stubble.

Also, Horizon: Aloy is a redhead, which is as minority as you can get.

Still no disabled representation though.

The Surge had a disabled main character

That, also BJ Blazkowicz is wheelchair bound in the beginning of Wolfenstein 2 and the developers went out of their way to design wheelchair based gameplay mechanics.
 

Momentary

Banned
The rating system kinda of grosses me out. I'm all for diversity, but putting some kind of rating system behind it is super weird to me.
 
What I especially like about this report, is how reductive it sounds when they refer to people who happen to men and white. You go The Guardian, keep fighting the good fight. Ugh.
 

zenspider

Member
Lol why the low score for Ubisoft? They said a ton of great things, and then slapped them with the second lowest score????

Because everyone on stage was white (even though they weren't). I'm not sure if I'm allowed to be offended - maybe disappointed is a better word - but hand-waving the entire staff of Ubisoft because of the color of their skin is really reductive. They are French in an Anglo-American dominated market and have consistently strived to have unique persepctive in the homogeneous AAA space. Being dismissive of culture in lieu of skin color tells me this is a plea for tokenism - diversity in appearance, not diversity in thought (by way of diversity in perspective).

Beyond Good and Evil 2 looked like an outlaw's Star Trek - who could possibly feel like they don't belong it that world?

Far Cry 5 is "diverse" by inversion: people are straight pissed at the idea of shooting white Christian bad guys.

Assassin's Creed Origins obvs (though I lament the likely non-Arabic VO).

Being a brown dude in a sports game isn't breaking any barriers. Unless it is Hockey

I wouldn't be so dismissive of Madden's Long Shot story mode. I'm pretty sure you're playing as a black man breaking into the league as a quarterback - that's not insignificant.


This whole quantification of progress and diversity feels gross, and simply changing who's behind the gun shooting the bad people isn't 'capital p' progress.
 
I think diversity in games is super important.

I think diversity in games is still lacking a full spectrum of representation.

I think diversity in games (and the lack thereof) is something that developers and publishers should be held accountable for.

All that being said...

This was a really poorly researched article. Totally clueless about so many things important to the conversation. I think this talk needs to happen, but it needs to be done better than this.
 
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