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Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books"

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cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I don’t think representation is the main issue, it is more about how they are presented.

Striding for a perfect 50/50, doesn’t really sense if they are all just stereotypes and sexual objectified. Also there are many other underrepresented population groups.

IMO, it is more important to focus good well written and complex characters, that represent real circumstances right.

I don’t complain that AAA studios have gone ‘woke’ because they now include choices to select from marginalized groups, I complain about them because they are often do not offer a deeper perspective of people in that group and are just different skins.

In some way, I can understand, games often happen in a Fantasy world, but I would wish that selecting different characters would do more than just exchanging the player mesh, texture and voice pack.

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medgremlin@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s why the trailer has me so hyped for this game. It looks like the game is going to be different because Ciri is the protagonist. Her experience, reactions, and approach to saving a young woman from being sacrificed are totally different than what Geralt’s would be. I hate it when games like Mass Effect are like “Oh! You can play as FemShep! That totally counts as representation!” even though it changes literally nothing about the story.

I want more games that actually address the real and significant differences in the experiences and perspectives of different characters. I’m always disappointed when there’s a “female” option that’s just a re-skin of the male character with no changes in how the character interacts with the world and the story. (This happens a lot in non-video game media too.)

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Comrade_Spood@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Unless you are also complaining about it when white male characters are also surface-level, 2-D, copy-and-paste characters then all you are saying is “Only white male characters are allowed to be simple or a stereotype/trope.” Lets be honest, not every game needs a complex and well written character, and that is fine. If they choose to go that route it doesn’t matter what race, religion, or gender the character is in the first place. So it doesn’t matter if they are a white male.

Now I’m also not gonna shut down your solution without being constructive and providing my own solution, cause I don’t think quotas are the answer either. Instead we should be uplifting and empowering marginalized creators and game designers so that they can make more characters that they want to make. Which is generally characters they can relate to. If people want more characters that are women, then the game industry needs to become a safe space for women and empower them so they can provide more representation for characters. Same thing for any other demographic. That will make sure that these characters are being made in an aethentic and organic way, and not just being pumped out to meet a quota, but also isn’t restricting when marginalized demographics can be used as characters.

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- cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Unless you are also complaining about it when white male characters are also surface-level, 2-D, copy-and-paste characters then all you are saying is “Only white male characters are allowed to be simple or a stereotype/trope.”
  
  What? Where am I saying that?
  
  Yes I would complain about all kind of stereotypes. Even the “white muscular tough guy” could be considered sexual objectification. IMO CoD is sometimes pretty gay coded.
  
  Lets be honest, not every game needs a complex and well written character, and that is fine. If they choose to go that route it doesn’t matter what race, religion, or gender the character is in the first place. So it doesn’t matter if they are a white male, a latina woman, or a black non-binary person.
  
  I wasn’t saying that. You can have games without a single character. Or where the character doesn’t really matter, because it just an empty shell you are driving around and not more.
  
  But IMO I mostly play story driven RPGs, where you are someone, and where you want the environment to react to you. It would be awesome if when you run around with colorful hair or tattoos, it would slightly change the disposition of the NPCs or cause them to comment on your appearance. Don’t let this stuff be just cosmetics, it should be more meaningful, and embedded into the game world.
  
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  - Comrade_Spood@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Then yeah I get that. Your initial argument without the context you just added was just reminiscent of bigoted arguments. It was wrong of me to assume
    
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Bieren@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The well written part is my concern. Or we will get the same quality as a lot of recent movies and shows. Where the characters are stereotypes, poorly written, poorly developed. With plot points that are just randomly forced into the story, and that plot point has nothing to do with the rest of the story. You know the ones, where something has been added to the story and has no reason or meaning or benefit to being part of the story.

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