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Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

>> I've grown up in a period when pop culture didn't care much about cultural sensitivity.

>Same, and as unpopular it may be, i firmly believe it's kind of better to not care.

As a white dude, I've found that "not caring about it" means "only white male characters are allowed"

I've noticed that folks who "don't care about it" actually care A LARGE AMOUNT, A VERY VERY LARGE AMOUNT, when a non-male or non-white protagonist is the only option. And heaven forbid we not let you play a straight character...

Just saying, in my experience, "don't care about it" is literally identical to "marginalize everyone but me", as that's our history.

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> when a non-male or non-white protagonist is the only option

There’s a difference between a racist or sexist reaction (anger about a character’s race or sex) and anger that the studio picked the character’s race or sex as a nod to their own identity politics (or perhaps kowtowing to the broader identity politics that are so fashionable these days). It’s the same difference between racism and equality. It’s hard to tell from your comment whether you object to the racist reaction or the egalitarian reaction or both, but at least in my opinion the racist reaction is very uncommon.

> Just saying, in my experience, "don't care about it" is literally identical to "marginalize everyone but me", as that's our history.

That’s not our history though; our history was literally “marginalize blacks, women, native americans, italians, irish, eastern europeans, asians, etc”. We have made remarkable progress toward equality, and that’s due to egalitarianism—teaching people that superficial characteristics oughtn’t matter—not merely a different identity hierarchy. “Not caring about it” is precisely the key innovation and the catalyst for so much progress.

As another white dude, I call BS. The world has changed. Even in the backwards semi-rural area where I live there is enough diversity to beat it into my head that "people are just people". Let alone connecting to the internet, where you have no idea what another commenter looks like. So, it boggles my mind that people still care about this so much. It's self evident to me that people need to be treated based on what they do or say and not oddities of their genetic structures. I tend to think that if people stopped pointing out those differences, the problem would eventually grow much smaller. Some people are always going to not like each other for trivial reasons at some level, but why point out such differences to them?

Its not really true.. 99% people will not care if you play a black guy or woman.

People made the same argument about women representation in video games but hey have you heard of "tomb raider" ?

There's other: "Urban chaos" with a black female, some character of unreal tournament were poc...

Most people dont care and when they do they find diversity cool. The point is that as a political fight its useless and may actually be on the side of harmful for society.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted because you have a point. Remember the controversy that ensued when a black girl was cast as Rue in the Hunger Games movie?

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/white-until-prov...

But controversy on the internet doesnt represent any reality. Like at ALL.

Get off the internet forums

That sexuality of a character in a game is even known is problematic; this implies the sexuality is being acted on. I wish developers would stop exploiting the four Fs to induce us to buy, and sadly my minimal consumption of video games is only a splash against the tide.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a video game character being gay, straight, or otherwise. for the most part, I do think video game romances are incredibly poorly done. I have not yet played a game where the romantic/sexual tension was not intensely cringey. we are still deep in the uncanny valley here. usually it's a fully optional side arc (eg, mass effect), so I can't say it's much of a problem in practice.

Baldur's Gate 2 ? Though not having fully animated 3D models (so you have to imagine it) probably helped a lot !

Some (many/most?) rp-games do not fix sexuality, allowing to choose any option available at playtime. The earliest that I remember is fallout 2 where you can play both guy and girl and marry/engage with both.

But it's unclear why you see that "sexuality being acted on" is problematic. It depends and is very situational, imo.

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