Steve?

There’s been a lot of (well raised) noise lately about the absence of women, and indeed a lot of other flavors of people in many of these new AAA video games, and I wanted to say a couple of things about it.

Part of the problem as I see it isn’t that there are white people headlining games. It isn’t that there are men headlining games. It isn’t even that straight, cis people are headlining games.

What I’m talking about is that far too often, characters that only match all of those exact characteristics are headlining games. It isn’t that it’s a straight white cis dude all the time. It’s that it’s the exact same straight white cis dude all the time.

If you were to leave out every argument about gender, race and orientation inclusivity out (even though all of them are very valid) - you would still be left with an identical, overused archetype that is just plain dull as dogshit.

We want publishers to put women into their games? Nonwhites? Queer people? They won’t even change the one generic hero template that they DO use! And he shows up all the time as if this masculine cracker ass motherfucker is the default. We’ll call him Steve:



• Steve is in his late twenties or early thirties.

• He is reasonably fit and handsome.

• Short hair, sometimes he forgets to shave.

• Speaks in a low, husky voice and is very serious.

• Only gets emotional when his motivation (usually women) are threatened.

• Loosely chaotic good motivation - he’ll save innocents usually by using violence.

• WHERE’S MY WIFE!?!!??!??

Every once in a while if we’re lucky a publisher will change maybe ONE attribute of this template. It’s a fucking miracle when we get to play an asian person or a young boy, much less anything else.

I want to play interesting white people. Give me a coward, give me a pacifist or a clown. Let me play a woman. Let me play an wise old person, let me play a child. Let me play african, south american, chinese. Give me someone who can’t walk, give me someone trans or gay. Just give me something different.

I’m of the demographic that is meant to identify with this Steve. He’s aimed squarely at me, and I can’t fucking stand him anymore. It’s like being served a heaping plate of saltines whenever there’s a new dinner being served, even when I really like the company.

There are billions of unique people that I could be playing as, but I keep getting the exact same one over and over. Please, please stop making me play Steve. I’m so bored of him.