The State of Gaming in 2021

[AlizsahTheBard]

As many of us know the state of being a fan of gaming or even considering ourselves gamers (less so that) has reached a point where it's difficult to really ignore the inherent problems in the system. AAA Companies often exploit and abuse their workers with horrendous crunch, lack of unions, plain misogyny and encouraging a culture of 'neutralness' in all important matters. Further, we have these problems where Alt-Right pushed the idea of any game without a straight white man as being political. And heaven forbid if the game has a woman protagonist and is not an adventure game, VN or another type of 'casual' games. With Microtransactions, Lootboxes and other gambling practices plaguing the space it seems we're due another Video Game Collapse and many people even want this.

A big cause of this problem is most CEOs in the gaming space are not even fans of games and instead come from the packaging industry. They don't care about good games, they care only about short-term profit and they never look beyond any of that. There are voices on YouTube who have spoken about this countless times two being YongYea and James Stephanie Sterling, yet people still defend it and refuse to acknowledge that Capitalism has enabled this destructive and harmful system.

Now we seem to have hit a point where this seems inevitable. Activision-Blizzard had a two years investigation and what was discovered (these are not allegations) is Activision-Blizzard was disgusting from the top-up. Of course, there has always been speculation about AAA Companies and how they treat employees is frankly cruel beyond measure. But outside of Ubisoft most of these accusations are ignored or worse buried. The whole of the Triple-A space is invested with this rot.

The question we need to ask though, can it be saved or have we gotten to the point where only a video game collapse will fix this?

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Well a great deal of this seems not so much to be the disgusting treatment of employees in general, but of women in the gaming industry in particular. Unless something else has come to light that I am not aware of this is largely focused on the culture of misogyny that Blizzard promoted and has been in trouble for previously. There has been much criticism over the years about sexism in that industry and unfair work practices. So there certainly needs to be a cultural shift and movement within the industry but I doubt video games at large are going to stop being produced.

[RedRose]

As a gamer, the sexualization or the rejection seem to be the only option in some games... Apart from those with many women. I can't help noticing, that when I was a teen, most gamers were teens to YA, and now there are many 30's and 40's moms and dads. I had an opportunity to work in video games (my SO's cousin works in a famous brand) but after a semester in hell as the only girl learning computer in university, NOTHANKS.

[Haibane]

I think there are plenty of games that steer a good middle road and mix up the genders and roles. Fallout 4 was a great one, especially in the number of ethnic characters and the romance system which was completely pan-sexual. A couple of puzzle games I played a while back were the Witness and the Talos Principle - this last one had a genderless existentialist robot as your character.

OTOH I tend not to play many video games and some I do are strategy where you push around "things" or assets and there are no people at all except tiny pixels you don't identify with.

[HannibalBarca]

My son, his boyfriend, and I play Apex Legends, which has several LGBT characters, but such games are not the standard yet.  However, there are badges you can place on your character's loading screens, and some of those have included Pride Month, Black Lives Matter, and Asian Lives Matter--which we display on our screens.  It's something that's needed more in the gaming sphere.

[Twisted Crow]

Busy working on some stuff, but I find this topic interesting. As I've been having some similar feelings lately about this from a birds-eye view. Sadly, a lot of the AAA game industry has been in that bottom-line camp of "whatever makes us money".

Positivity toward female VG heroines is still a thing, though. There are quite a bit of star/key role females that (I feel) have been looked on quite favorably over the years -- I love me some female heroes!


Some examples, from memory?

- Terra Branford (Final Fantasy IV)
- Evie (Assassin's Creed: Syndicate)
- Kassandra (Assassin's Creed: Odyssey)
- Lara Croft (Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider series)
- Claire Redfield (OG Resident Evil 2)
- Jill Valentine (OG Resident Evil 3)
- Chun-Li (Street Fighter, considered the 'first lady' of fighting game characters, although this is (actually) untrue.)
- Heather Mason (Silent Hill 3)
- Ellen Ripley (Alien: Isolation)
- Lian Xing (Syphon Filter),
- Commander Shepherd (female) and Jack (original Mass Effect trilogy)
- Max Caulfield (Life is Strange)
- Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII)

... I am sure I could think of more if I wanted to further tear away from my focus on what I should be working on at the moment. 


But anyways, I often roll my eyes at the base "I don't want politics in muh games" complaint, because a lot of games (outside of maybe Mario or Pac-Man) have these themes in them at varying levels. Sometimes the game even slaps the player in the face with it, constantly. Although, to be fair to sentiments like that one; I do understand the distinction between that complaint (at its face value) as opposed to having political themes that are poorly injected/presented in a given game world's story. I am not normally too keen on games that do this because it can easily create a bad look on whatever cause the author is attempting to highlight in their writing.

Several peeves of mine could be directed at Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear (as one example). Where I felt that some core dialogue of its characters painfully deviated from the world around them too much; choosing instead toi beating the player over the head with clumsy representation of issues from our world that are not all easily comparable within the scope of that game's world. Then a couple of "political quota" characters that serve little to no purpose but to berate the player with an author's political stances (all without trying to make the player care about these characters, thus... poorly representing the problem and doing nothing to try to win over the player's heart). In short, bad representation could potentially be worse than no representation.

And then there is stuff like the Metal Gear Solid franchise, where people should expect political themes. It's like picking up a Tom Clancy novel... these people know what they are getting into, there.  I mean, nearly everything in those games is political in nature. And they aren't exactly subtle, sometimes:

I mean... the Big Bad in MGS2...

...is the goddamn President of the United States and he wields two swords; both named "The Democrat" and "The Republican."

... Really.

As, sort of a counter to my own initial point... a key theme in Final Fantasy VII is how a world could turn ugly when a single corporate industry superpower essentially controls everything and basically forms its own military. Then there is also the ruining of the planet with its progressive industrial focus. Strong themes of crony corporate greed at the expense of the planet's future. Even at the age where I played the original, back in the 90s, I wasn't bothered by this. Mostly because I cared about the characters and their stake in things. The characters made me care about what they cared about. I ended up wanting to save their world from both the Shin-Ra corporation and, later... Sephiroth.

In closing, I suppose I don't object to having political themes being in my games provided that I feel that the execution is good?

[Oniya]

But anyways, I often roll my eyes at the base "I don't want politics in muh games" complaint, because a lot of games (outside of maybe Mario or Pac-Man) have these themes in them at varying levels.

I give you 'Super Mario Sunshine' - where your literal task is to clean up the environment. 

[Twisted Crow]

Holy crap... I guess not even Mario is politics-free!

[Tolvo]

It is hard to nearly impossible to create media and art that does not reflect aspects of how we view the world, show me a non-political game and usually it is rather political. The classic example often is when people talk about before games were political like during the days of Tetris, which that game had one of the most political developments and releases in history(If someone reading this is unaware simply google Tetris and the Soviet Union). Everything is political in one way or another but it's often about how it's handled, the more subtle aspect of media being political is what they omit and how that reflects the creators views(Whitewashing history being a common example or just pretending war-crimes didn't happen at an event or a different group did it). Metal Gear is almost funny in just how in your face it is with it's politics, it is one thing I like about Kojima regarding his politics is he is honest about them and loves to address them(Unless it's relating to his views on women where he becomes a coward). Then again there are lots of people who complained that Metal Gear Solid 2 put politics in Metal Gear, and that same complaint comes up from certain crowds every released game in the series despite it being like politics with anime dialogue immaculate men's asses and giant robots the series.

In regards to the actual industry culture, they have no concept of care for their industry, well I already feel like I'm going a bit long. Suffice to say I have a lot of anti-capitalist and feminist thoughts about the gaming industry and about cultures of abuse which are rampant across many industries. I have often heard first hand accounts of people in the industry before it gets to the news and I have become very jaded unfortunately. I don't think it will change but I wish it would, outside of a massive financial crash or government involvement I'm not sure what could cause the sweeping social and structural changes needed to prevent this culture from persisting all over.

[Twisted Crow]

Oh man. In addition to Mario, I also take back my Pac-Man mention, as well.

Just now remembering Ms. Pac-Man and how it was like a 'must-have' game for arcades to have, back in the day! 

[LostInTheMist]

These days, I tend to just ignore the politics of gaming. I used to pre-order everything that came out of BioWare, but now that they're owned by EA, 90% of what they produce is crap designed to make money off of gamers still deceived by a BioWare logo.

So while I still snatch up RPGs from independent developers, most of the games I actually pay for are Paradox Interactive. Folk don't like their DLC policy, but their minor costume/outfit DLC are fully optional, and you won't miss anything if you don't get them. I do, just because, but there's no obligation. Their larger DLC inevitably will add major features to the game, although the game will simultaneously get a major patch that will give you some of those features for free, so if the major feature you want is a free feature, you don't have to pay for the DLC.

But, separate from all this, I've been playing a lot of Stardew Valley this week.

[Laughing Hyena]

Shouldn't even buy at launch. It's usually always going to have a definitive edition or such and you'll wind up spending more in the long run as a result. Honestly triple A titles no longer appeal to me for that reason, especially since they just run on hype machines for day 1. I get more entertainment out of a free to play title like Warframe than I did for Cyberpunk or Shadow of War.

Games really started to decline after Mass Effect 3. Not because of the ending but because this introduced micro transactions into their multiplayer mode and it was highly successful. We are still going down that rabbit hole because it makes money.

[Azuresun]

Shouldn't even buy at launch. It's usually always going to have a definitive edition or such and you'll wind up spending more in the long run as a result. Honestly triple A titles no longer appeal to me for that reason, especially since they just run on hype machines for day 1. I get more entertainment out of a free to play title like Warframe than I did for Cyberpunk or Shadow of War.

Games really started to decline after Mass Effect 3. Not because of the ending but because this introduced micro transactions into their multiplayer mode and it was highly successful. We are still going down that rabbit hole because it makes money.

Man, Mass Effect 3 was the first game I ever pre-ordered. It was also the last game I ever pre-ordered.

[Oniya]

Shouldn't even buy at launch. It's usually always going to have a definitive edition or such and you'll wind up spending more in the long run as a result.

Not to mention the ubiquity of 'Day 1 patches'.  I was actually part of the QA team for a fairly major piece of software (bug report collation and verification, along with tester comms), and while it wasn't a video game, I cringe at the idea of a company releasing something as buggy as what I've seen with AAA games.

[Azuresun]

Not to mention the ubiquity of 'Day 1 patches'.  I was actually part of the QA team for a fairly major piece of software (bug report collation and verification, along with tester comms), and while it wasn't a video game, I cringe at the idea of a company releasing something as buggy as what I've seen with AAA games.

Really, anyone who pre-orders an AAA game, or buys it before reading non-bought reviews, deserves everything they get.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

Really, anyone who pre-orders an AAA game, or buys it before reading non-bought reviews, deserves everything they get.

Throw enough shit and something will stick.

[Saria]

- Terra Branford (Final Fantasy IV)
- Evie (Assassin's Creed: Syndicate)
- Kassandra (Assassin's Creed: Odyssey)
- Lara Croft (Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider series)
- Claire Redfield (OG Resident Evil 2)
- Jill Valentine (OG Resident Evil 3)
- Chun-Li (Street Fighter, considered the 'first lady' of fighting game characters, although this is (actually) untrue.)
- Heather Mason (Silent Hill 3)
- Ellen Ripley (Alien: Isolation)
- Lian Xing (Syphon Filter),
- Commander Shepherd (female) and Jack (original Mass Effect trilogy)
- Max Caulfield (Life is Strange)
- Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII)

I don’t consider myself a gamer (for reasons that are about to become abundantly clear), so I don’t know most of the characters listed here. But I’m genuinely curious: How many of them are not white? (Or, in the case of games made in East Asian studios, East Asian?)

Even for those characters who don’t come from our world, and thus, technically don’t have our ethnicities… how many of them “look” white (or East Asian)? (Like, Lightning for example. In fact, is there even a single woman of colour in Final Fantasy XIII… at all? At least they have Sazh, I guess. Is there a single woman of colour in any of the Final Fantasy games? I guess Fran in XII sorta-kinda counts, because she’s almost human.)

[ReijiTabibito]

Positivity toward female VG heroines is still a thing, though. There are quite a bit of star/key role females that (I feel) have been looked on quite favorably over the years -- I love me some female heroes!

- Terra Branford (Final Fantasy IV)
- Evie (Assassin's Creed: Syndicate)
- Kassandra (Assassin's Creed: Odyssey)
- Lara Croft (Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider series)
- Claire Redfield (OG Resident Evil 2)
- Jill Valentine (OG Resident Evil 3)
- Chun-Li (Street Fighter, considered the 'first lady' of fighting game characters, although this is (actually) untrue.)
- Heather Mason (Silent Hill 3)
- Ellen Ripley (Alien: Isolation)
- Lian Xing (Syphon Filter),
- Commander Shepherd (female) and Jack (original Mass Effect trilogy)
- Max Caulfield (Life is Strange)
- Lightning (Final Fantasy XIII)

Dallas.  Dallas.  How could you forget one of the most important heroines in video game lore, dating back to before literally every game you've listed here?

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Honestly, video games are still one of the places for me where I literally don't have to have a position beyond "Do you want to kill the rabid anti-magic Nazi commander, or have them commit suicide because you've broken their paradigm by sparing their life?"

Though this is at least in part due to the nature of the games that I choose to play.  Hyena mentioned Warframe, which is one I got into thanks to the influence of a friend.  It's been a while since I played it, but the various Warframes themselves come in both male/female setups, and while I have ended up with a male-heavy stable, that's more or less because of the playstyle of the Frame itself rather than any sort of other consideration.

Another game I get a ton of fun out of is One Finger Death Punch, where 'you' is literally a stick figure (as are all of your opponents).

Yes, AAA developers are jerks and probably have fallen afoul of the sin of spending too much money on advertising at the expense of properly budgeting the game.  But the good news is that more and more games I buy these days come from places I've never heard of, or know them from that one game that was fun.  And most of them aren't games that I buy because of the ad-hype.  I buy them either because friends recommend them to me, or I run across a YT LP of the game and I watch it and go 'that looks fun, I'd buy that!'

The LP genre in general has done amazing work in getting the hidden gems out for better public awareness than anything else that I'm personally aware of.

[Twisted Crow]

I don’t consider myself a gamer (for reasons that are about to become abundantly clear), so I don’t know most of the characters listed here. But I’m genuinely curious: How many of them are not white? (Or, in the case of games made in East Asian studios, East Asian?)

Even for those characters who don’t come from our world, and thus, technically don’t have our ethnicities… how many of them “look” white (or East Asian)? (Like, Lightning for example. In fact, is there even a single woman of colour in Final Fantasy XIII… at all? At least they have Sazh, I guess. Is there a single woman of colour in any of the Final Fantasy games? I guess Fran in XII sorta-kinda counts, because she’s almost human.)

Barret and Kiros are the only other people of color (that I can think of) as major-ish characters in the Final Fantasy franchise. Though they are also both male. And Kiros isn't even that important in the Final Fantasy 8 story. He's more of an extra. There is a lot to unpack about Japan and its limited understanding of other cultures.

[Twisted Crow]

Dallas.  Dallas.  How could you forget one of the most important heroines in video game lore, dating back to before literally every game you've listed here?

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

I didn't get to play much Nintendo, growing up. So I forget about Samus Aran.

[Twisted Crow]

Barret and Kiros are the only other people of color (that I can think of) as major-ish characters in the Final Fantasy franchise. Though they are also both male. And Kiros isn't even that important in the Final Fantasy 8 story. He's more of an extra. There is a lot to unpack about Japan and its limited understanding of other cultures.

Oh, yeah... speaking of Final Fantasy 8, there is also Raijin, ya know?

He talked weird along with his partner Fujin... who spoke in single words IN ALL CAPS, most of the time. They were a rather strange pair. 


Now that we're talking about that, I find it interesting that Final Fantasy XII and XIII starts getting more diverse (for the FF franchise, anyway), only for FFXV to go right back to a pretty much all white-looking cast. 

[Twisted Crow]

Sorry for so much posting, but I need to make a correction. Terra Branford is from Final Fantasy VI (that is, six)... not to be confused with IV (four).

Yikes...

Terra is (kind of?) the first female protagonist in the Final Fantasy series? If we're counting X-2, that would make Yuna the second? So then, Lightning would be the third female lead protagonist in the main series history.

If I'm not mistaken, anyway.

[ReijiTabibito]

I've always taken the idea that the protagonist is the character but for whom the story could not have started without them.  And that's ignoring the idea that there can be such a thing as a deuteragonist or tritagonist - essentially the relevant characters are not one person but two or three, respectively.

If you open your mind up to that, Final Fantasy as a genre starting with IV (since I and III were basically 'whoever you want' games, and II...we do not speak of II) has a lot of important female characters.  Heck, in V half your party is female!

[Twisted Crow]

In a similar vain, I don't normally look at the front man on the stage as the decider on who the key character is. It reminds me of similar arguments with friends about where either Luke or Anakin was (technically) the "main character" of Star Wars (before the prequels happened).

I also would ask how much of a part they play in the story, and how it is presented. Cloud and Squall are easily considered leads in advancing their given stories. Weird thing about Zidane (Final Fantasy IX), is that it was hard to call him the protagonist given how often the story jumps from character to character. That story gives so much to other characters like Garnet and Vivi that calling Zidane the main character is... kind of weird. It's technically true, but in presentation -- it's dubious.

Vaan and Penelo also come to mind... given that they are always "along for the ride" while Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran are constantly stealing the show at every turn. Calling Vaan the Protagonist is also just strange to say, even though it is (again) 'technically' true.

Then there are games like the Dynasty Warriors franchise, where basically every playable character is typically a main character in the overall story. 

[Twisted Crow]

On the subject of diversity in the character casting side of gaming, this is kind of why I love games that allow me to create my own protagonist.

Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, KOTOR, HBS' Shadowrun franchise, etc.

That way, inclusion isn't as much an issue when it comes to "what race/sex is my main character?"... the player gets to decide that. The question, then, becomes: "What about the other characters in this story?"