Diversity in gaming is something we hear about every day. The question is often is “Do we need diversity in video games?” but I want to ask a different question. I want to ask how we incorporate diversity correctly. It’s a lot easier in the real life, you can just hire the best people from all over the world and immediately reap the rewards. Simulations are more difficult, how do you create a diverse character if you yourself know nothing of the subject matter? I’m aware that this isn’t a popular subject. It seems any criticism levelled at the presentation of a minority character is taken as a slant at that minority rather than that character. Not the best climate for conversation. Let’s go over the basics.

Diversity In Gaming, The Why and Why Not

The main argument for diversity in gaming is that not every person is a muscular white guy or a busty woman. A fair assessment, the fact that most video game protagonists are so drop dead gorgeous I half expect them to start selling me Calvin Klein’s, isn’t lost on me. Many people say they simply can’t get immersed in a game unless the character is like them. This is something I’ve always been sceptical about. I view games as a means of escapism. I don’t want the character to be like me, I want them to be cool. When given the choice I rarely pick or create characters that look like me, just look at my Final Fantasy XIV character for proof. The only thing we have in common is neither of us can put makeup on correctly.

Still, I agree not every character should be mister John McTestosterone Smith, if nothing else it’ll help me distinguish one Nathan Drake from another.

There are many games with diverse characters of course, but they tend to be indie games. Many activists want triple A games to take a dive into diversity. While I applaud them for their ambition, I feel like many companies would rather stick with what they know works. After all, activists usually aren’t the ones buying the game on day one for $60. That means they aren’t the demographic these companies are trying to court. Still, since diversity has been getting more limelight I think more companies have made a genuine effort to be more diverse.

Diversity Done Right Final Fantasy XIV

The reason I’d love to see more diversity in video games is because it expands the possibilities for storytelling. I’ve recently been blown away by the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV and one thing that really struck me was how believable the characters and conflicts were. Being a fantasy game it isn’t the diversity most people think about, but I think its portrayal of such circumstances was second to none.

There are numerous divides between the people in the world of the game. These include divides between races, religions, classes and countries and it doesn’t take too much imagination to link them to real-world counterparts. The whole story benefits from its rich diversity. It was only looking back upon completing a Realm Reborn that I now realise just how well crafted it is. Without giving you any spoilers for the game whatsoever I’d like to talk about one particular element of the game that really caught me.

Racism And Classism In Eorzea

The game takes place a few years after a great battle. Many people are displaced and end up building shanty towns all around Eorzea. On the surface, everything seems fine, but bit by bit you begin to realise the bitter hatred between the displaced refugees of Ala Mhigo and City-State of Ul’dah. You can think of Ul’dah as this beautiful wealthy place where people are judged on their ability to gain money and status.

Reading between the lines a little you realise that most Ul’dahns look down on people like the Ala Mhigo refugees for not being able to pull themselves out of the gutter and draining their economy. It is not the sort of situation where you can point and say “that’s the bad guy” because throughout the game you learn exactly why and what is going on. You end up empathising with both parties. At one point, I was so enraptured by the struggle I was tempted to leave the Ul’dahn Grand Company for no other reason than I didn’t approve of the fictional corruption going on. It was such an authentic experience for me considering we’re talking about the fantasy races of Lalafell and Hyur.

The game wasn’t trying to be preachy. The things I felt and the conclusions I came to were guided by my characters interactions with the world. It genuinely got me thinking about race tensions in the world right now. It isn’t the only point in the game either. The division between the people of the game manifests itself in various ways and to me, it was the perfect example of diversity done right.

It essentially tells a story of racism and classism in a way that is a lot more palatable than I’ve seen elsewhere. It was so thoroughly woven into the storyline and carefully crafted you barely notice it. I can’t imagine the story of the game without it. That authentic feeling is what we should strive for when we want to bring diversity into games. Diversity needn’t be the focus of the player’s attention, it should be nothing more than background noise.

There’s No Need For A Victory FanFare

When I think of my favourite character General Raubahn Aldynn, his skin colour is the last thing on my mind. I just think of him as an awesome and really loyal guy who fought his way up from nothing. Similarly, the homosexual NPCs sprinkled throughout the game and summer events are well done and believable. The thing that makes them great characters is that they are in fact characters outside of their sexual orientations and skin colour. There’s no big song and dance about them, they’re just there quietly like any other NPC. In short, the minorities throughout the game are treated as they should be; like they’re normal.

The fact that no big deal is made about the diversity of these characters tells me that Square Enix wasn’t just trying to score points. Their intention was just to make the story more engaging for its players and add to the deep lore of the game. Let’s take a look at another LGBT character. The trans character from Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragon Spear.

Diversity Done Wrong, Let’s Talk About Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragon Spear

Siege of Dragon Spear was met with controversy for a number of reasons. Among them was their careless depiction of a transgender character called Mizhena. While many transgender players spoke out against the depiction their voices were drowned out by cries of “GamerGate!” and “bigotry” from websites such as Polygon. Let’s clear the air a little and try and figure out what it is about Mizhena that many players found objectionable.

Mizhena is a shopkeeper you see a few times throughout Dragon Spear. You have the option to ask about her name which is apparently unusual. I doubt many players would detect that the name is any more unusual that Jaheira or Hexxat, but if you do decide to ask the character reveals that her old name was unsuitable because she was born a boy. It is worth mentioning that unlike other NPCs you have no option to say anything negative to her after you have asked about her name. The problem that most people have with the Mizhena was how flippant she is about being transgender. To quote one transgender player:

“Let me just say that as a transsexual I would never, EVER introduce myself to someone by telling them that I am a transsexual. Being trans is not fun. People are mean and cruel to you. You are mean and cruel to yourself. I do not do the things I do because I want to be a transsexual, I do them because I want to be a woman. I want to blend in as a girl as a best I can, the last thing I would EVER do is draw attention to myself for being trans” –Full Context Here.

I agree with this sentiment. When looking at the dialogue from my perspective, Mizhena seems like a caricature. In the world of the game, I can allow a little more wiggle room since switching genders is incredibly easy in Baldur’s Gate. Thus the character can be flippant about it since it isn’t an issue. The main issue for me is that this character is nothing more than a token. This is the only mention she’ll make of being transgender and it brings nothing to the plot and adds nothing to the lore. There was a lot of wasted potential here and I hear that thought echoed throughout the community. At best she is a shout out to the LGBT community, but unfortunately, I’m inclined to think the worst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__6nFM5GER8

While I didn’t find Mizhena offensive in any way I was acutely aware that the writer clearly hadn’t studied their source material. Her comments on not caring whether the character seemed force didn’t win me over either.

Let’s Compare This LGBT Character To The LGBT Adventurers In Final Fantasy

The adventurers in Final Fantasy XIV reference their relationship numerous times by calling each other ‘love’ and referring to themselves as a couple. They even go as far as to say that they had to leave their birthplace because they were ‘different’. What’s more, you need to meet this couple in order to gain access to one of the dungeons. They are a lot more ‘invasive’ than Mizhena in many ways. So why is there no hate from the community? If the situation were as simple as “gamers hate members of the LGBT community” than this should have been a point of conflict.

Well, the difference is that their sexual orientation feeds into the plot. It isn’t just a disembodied throw in. They empathise with the Tonberries because they know what it is like to lose their home due to intolerance. If these characters were straight they wouldn’t be able to make this connection in the same way. They are provoked to take action because of the negative experiences they have faced as a result of their orientation.

When Mizhena tells us her name is weird because she is transgender it tells us absolutely nothing other than that. When the adventurers tell us that they had to leave their birthplace because they were ‘Different’ it tells us that homophobia exists in the world of the game. The fact the characters are open about it suggests that where they are now is more accepting of being homosexual. Just that small extra detail takes a token character and makes them much more. Not to mention these characters have repeated appearances.

Intention Is An Important Part Of Diversity

As we can see Mizhena fails as a character because she simply exists to be a trans character. She was simply a company’s failed attempt to tick the diversity box and try and gain the favour of the LGBT community. It backfired because gamers can smell insincerity like a dog can smell fear. In order to make better diverse characters, we need to stop thinking of them as ways to score points with minorities. Instead, we need to think of diverse characters as a way to enrich the world of the game. Exploring the struggles certain minorities face or using a character’s ethnicity as a chance to explore their culture. A character needs to be more than their race or sexuality in order to not be a token.

Diversity In Overwatch, Is It Good Or Bad?

Most of Overwatch’s lore is told through animated shorts released by Blizzard. Due to this and the type of game that it is, it is a lot more difficult to gauge whether it contains token diversity, but let’s look at the facts. Overwatch is meant to be a group of people from all over the world so it makes sense for there to many different races. The game is a competitive FPS game so it needs to have a large roster of characters. Since there is no single player campaign mode we can’t really call any character Token to the story arc. Since each animated short puts one of the characters as the protagonist we also can’t pick out tokens from here.

Overall, I think Overwatch has done a good job, especially with the character skins. Gaijin Goomba does an amazing series talking about these skins and their cultural significance. Upon first glance, I thought Overwatch was using stereotypes too much. I mean the two Japanese guys are Ninjas and one of them is like a cyborg ninja, and the Korean girl is a pro gamer in a mech-suit etc.

Yet, they do a nice job fleshing characters out beyond the stereotypes. This is seen in little bits through the animated shorts and by minute attention to detail (again I highly recommend Gaijins Videos). It all comes down to effort and intention. It is clear that Blizzard intentionally wanted to make a diverse cast, but also clear they weren’t doing it to tick boxes. They wanted to build engaging characters and explore a wide range of cultures and it paid off.

Difficulties With Diversity And Why Diversity Can’t Be Made An Obligation

When trying to create a diverse cast there can be a bit of a stumbling block. What do you know about the perspective of the character you are trying to create? When creating characters we often use ourselves as the base. Our characters tend to view the world in a similar way to us. What do you do when you want to create a character who comes from a wildly different background to you? I wouldn’t know where to start if I had to write a story from the perspective of a gay Nigerian man. Now I could take a stab at it, but without having the proper research done I imagine my character would be a poor representation.

Without the proper research, you run the risk of being insulting to the people you are trying to emulate. Often writers end up falling back on stereotypes. I love Final Fantasy VII to bits, but it wasn’t lost on me that the only black guy in the world was a gun-toting terrorist. This is part of the reason I’m against making diversity in games a ‘must have’.

By making it an obligation you reduce it to a box to tick off. My father used to say “1 willing worker is worth 10 pressed men” and I feel that rings true here. Forcing people to write diverse characters to fill a quota will not make anyone happy. Imagine a militant Christian being forced to create a gay character, how do you think that character will turn out? But then we’re left with another problem. If writers only write characters that they’re comfortable with then we won’t end up with diversity either.

Inspiring Writers And Developers

Video Game development courses in University are pretty volatile. They tend to touch on many subjects to help inspire developers and I think this is a good approach. We need to inspire our developers with other cultures and possibly hire advisers when it comes to certain characters. Better yet, if more women stepped up in video game development we could get richer female characters. This is why the indie market is the great place to find diversity. If you can’t find what you’re looking for they why don’t you fill that niche? Games like Escape From Pleasure Planet were developed by small teams who found a niche to fill.

Diversity is not going to be on the mind of every developer. Games occupy this murky area at the moment. They are simultaneously held to the standard of other arts while also being regarded as for children. Gaming has become almost political due to this and it is important to remember the fun. Not every game sets out to make a point. All we can really do is support the games that we love. If diversity is something you really want to see in gaming then simply buy games featuring diverse characters. Your wallet says a lot more to a publisher or developer than your mouth ever could.

Did you enjoy this article? Then why not consider becoming a Patreon for just $1?

View additional content, vote on articles and pitch directly to me over at www.patreon.com/TheGGSpot