2013-05-30, 10:40 PM
Just as i felt with the first video, my opinion remains the same.
I feel there's a huge problem with focusing so much on criticizing the creative choices of others. You may disagree with fundamental core concepts of what companies choose to release, but in the end they're still private works and i can't help but cringe at the thought of what's basically being said: 'your imagination causes problems, stop that.'
No matter how prevalent the trend is, i just don't feel like that's okay on a moral level unless its an explicit promotion of oppression OR the offensive trope is clearly intended to be the focus of the work.
Even I, being black, have played through many a game where either no people of my skin color were in the game or remained in background, irrelevant roles. However, I still don't hold it against these specific companies cause i believe in the right to someone's creative space that strongly.
The point of that wasn't to say 'if i can deal with it so can you'. But to emphasize how central that belief is to me.
I believe this the wrong way to fight this battle as its percieved. I feel if we really want to change this; then instead of attacking the imaginations of others and violating people's creative space as if its public property;We use that SAME energy to PROMOTE the games that ARE more equality friendly, or involve a strong, female protagonist to help shape and BRING BALANCE to the characters and stories games have to offer.
Heck, one of the games I'm excited for and actually just made a blog post about seems to describe a very promising female protagonist in Cryamore; All the descriptions so far describe her as a intelligent female character; being an inventor that the whole town relies on for research on the resource known as cryamore. The trailer video also fully emphasizes her love of technology too.
Rather than just attacking tropes, I feel there's so much potential if this level of energy was used to seek out and actively PROMOTE active female characters to bring balance to the media.
I feel there's a huge problem with focusing so much on criticizing the creative choices of others. You may disagree with fundamental core concepts of what companies choose to release, but in the end they're still private works and i can't help but cringe at the thought of what's basically being said: 'your imagination causes problems, stop that.'
No matter how prevalent the trend is, i just don't feel like that's okay on a moral level unless its an explicit promotion of oppression OR the offensive trope is clearly intended to be the focus of the work.
Even I, being black, have played through many a game where either no people of my skin color were in the game or remained in background, irrelevant roles. However, I still don't hold it against these specific companies cause i believe in the right to someone's creative space that strongly.
The point of that wasn't to say 'if i can deal with it so can you'. But to emphasize how central that belief is to me.
I believe this the wrong way to fight this battle as its percieved. I feel if we really want to change this; then instead of attacking the imaginations of others and violating people's creative space as if its public property;We use that SAME energy to PROMOTE the games that ARE more equality friendly, or involve a strong, female protagonist to help shape and BRING BALANCE to the characters and stories games have to offer.
Heck, one of the games I'm excited for and actually just made a blog post about seems to describe a very promising female protagonist in Cryamore; All the descriptions so far describe her as a intelligent female character; being an inventor that the whole town relies on for research on the resource known as cryamore. The trailer video also fully emphasizes her love of technology too.
Rather than just attacking tropes, I feel there's so much potential if this level of energy was used to seek out and actively PROMOTE active female characters to bring balance to the media.