OK, OK.... I'l be honest here, I'm pimping an article I've written on a blog. It's not exactly my normal behaviour, and I know it's the first time I've posted here, but this isn't as catchy as our Bioware/Straight Male Gamer article, but never the less it's just as valuable, and I genuinely believe it will be of interest to people here... but more to the point, is relevant to game devs, and I'd like to share what he has to say. I sincerely hope you don't mind my having posted like this.

http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/04/08/equality-in-the-gaming-industry-interview-with-ernest-adams/

Mr. Adams is founder of the International Game Developers' association, has helped put on the Game Developers conference, is a 22 year industry veteran, a writer, game designer, consultant, and fellow/professor at a number of european universities.

Not quite sure where you got that idea from. He's talking about a few things, and race doesn't enter into it in any way shape or form.

One thing is including options for LGBT people, where appropriate. Another is about women in the gaming world and the industry itself. Yet another is about accessibility in games for people with physical impairments and disabilities.

Given that at least 40% of gamers are in fact women, with 23% of the population having some form of physical impairment, I'd imagined that such issues would be of significance to game developers. My apologies if this is in some way not the case.... though I'm still unsure of where "getting gay white people into the industry" is assumed to be the full thrust of the article.

I'm going to respond here since you posted it here-- because otherwise this topic would get mod-locked and deleted as Spam. I do believe it's a good enough topic to discuss though.

To sum up my general opinion about the article and issue as a whole comes from a dichotomy of the "creative vision" and "capitalistic model":
A game company that functions as a means to provide goods for consumption with the goal of maximized profit, employment and target audience diversity should be (near) paramount.
A game company that functions as a creative expression outlet, diversity should not need to be a consideration.

I think there are game companies of varied types / sizes / and goals, and that needs to be considered. In its infancy, games were developed by smaller teams and more of dream-realization by the creators to build worlds, objectives, experiences, (so on) that they want to craft and send out for experience. Similar to a painting, or book. When it's just creative expression, considerations of diversity likely don't play too large, if any, in that process unless it just happens to fit under the vision of the creator. Throughout history, these types of considerations are either naturally present or specifically addressed in order to illustrate some sort of grand ideal.

However, the game industry is 'growing up' and becoming more commercial driven rather than expression driven. There are more people employed, more creative inputs, and greater risk and requirement of sales. Aside from small indie studios, a game is/will get funded if it fills a need rather than if it creates an experience. With this mentality, modern game development DOES need better diversity in both the construction makeup and targeting of material. While I think having so many artificial modifiers to the creative expression in order to appeal to a wider audience dilutes the idea, it's simply better commercially to do so. Mainstream Games are truly becoming more of a product and less of a creation. This is pretty evident in almost every new game that has only one gender or race for the lead character, simply scan review sites. The creator(s) are chastised for their choices with the projected idea that "You're not making what I want, you're making what you want. Stop it!".

I wouldn't classify a male (or small group of males) creating a story/game/experience from the perspective of a male and with a males goals in mind as anything negative, just as I wouldn't with a female writer who writes stories intended for a female audience. I wouldn't even go so far as to brush them with the "they lack enlightment" brush that Ernest Adams does. People generally wish to create stories that they like and can (quite possibly) identify with, and create because they want to create. The only "enlightenment" they may need would be that games are now an industry, and unbridled creativity should remain at the door.

Personally, I think diversity in the games industry should come from a different direction. I prefer a single person (or very small group of people) creates a more cohesive and directed story than created-by-committee. With that, to me it would make more sense to have different pillars of likewise development communities to fill these niche groups desires by effect rather than by design. So for example, if over half of gamers are women, then it makes sense that the games for women should be developed by women as they'd likely know best what to create and what they'd like. I do think that studio makeup should reflect audience makeup, but I don't think that all studios should try and market to everyone. Specilization is a powerful thing. Just look at Clamp for an example. I dare say that what may be hurting the industry is a lack of all-female development studios. In fact, I think that studios should vary wildly in their diversity (all male, part male part female, all female, race mixes and religion mixes similar) based on the types of games they like to make and who they like to target. This line of thinking is rather taboo and/or illegal-- and I'll likely get flamed for it.
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In short, I'm not a fan of rules around creativity or over-generalization in more modern games. Nor am I a fan of the vilification of some for creating worlds that don't appeal to everyone. I like a concise idea expressed with as few external modifying forces as possible in a game. I don't mind playing as a Female or Male character (Valkyrie Profile being my favorite game of all time, actually), as long as the games execution and perspectives are clear.

I'm going to respond here since you posted it here-- because otherwise this topic would get mod-locked and deleted as Spam. I do believe it's a good enough topic to discuss though.
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I don't mind playing as a Female or Male character (Valkyrie Profile being my favorite game of all time, actually), as long as the games execution and perspectives are clear.

I may not personally agree, but that's a rather well thought out reply. Thank you.

My personal feelings revolve around a social scientific concept of continuity and change. I see the dichotomy you speak of, but do not nessecarily see it as being entirely correct - for example, as you say it is indeed now an industry for better or for worse, and while diversity is clearly beneficial in capitalist terms with regards to appealing to as wide an audience as possible, I also believe it's of benefit to the industry in creative terms. There's always a new and original idea floating around out there somewhere and waiting to be seized upon, but as the industry has grown and grown, this pool of original ideas has become harder to reach out to - a 'norm' has developed, and while creativity flourishes within and around it, the wholly original concepts aren't quite as prevelant. So much has been done, that as people have ideas they have to ask themselves whether it's been done already. A surefire way around this problem is indeed an influx of new games developers with new perspectives and new ideas, be they LGBT, women, people with disabilities... anyone really from outside of the current assumed/percieved mainstream.

As to commercial diversity - I guess in the modern age, if it's a full scale game it's going to be expensive, and it's likely to need sales. While I would agree that no person of any group has the automatic 'right' to be included in games, I also find myself thinking that even in games aimed at a traditionally favoured audience can do very simple things to be made accessible and inclusive to a wider demographic, and consequently recieve greater following as a result, whether that's gay people, or people with some sort of impairment. I don't nessecarily see that such things need impact upon the creative decisions of a writer/developer at all, and indeed, could often only serve to provide benefit.

I'm not sure that you do. The article is on an LGBT blog, yet is diverse enough to encorporate discussion of a number of other groups. The fact is, diversity applies to any given group - I speak of the ones I identify as being particularly talked about in the article, as being particularly large demographics to be dealing with. To speak of absolutely every group that exists in the world would be a monumental undertaking and would rather kill the object of the discussion.

I'm not sure that you do. The article is on an LGBT blog, yet is diverse enough to encorporate discussion of a number of other groups. The fact is, diversity applies to any given group - I speak of the ones I identify as being particularly talked about in the article, as being particularly large demographics to be dealing with. To speak of absolutely every group that exists in the world would be a monumental undertaking and would rather kill the object of the discussion.

While "Fl4sh" was quite a bit inelegant about his point, I can see where he (she?) is coming from. The topic header and summary here doesn't specifically call out sexual orientation as the scope of equality/diversity. You're right though, the link is clearly LGBT.

To the points you made, I completely see where you're coming from. Though I think I disagree on different issues than you do. I'd rather state that having norm (and gravitating to it) is fundamentally a problem. It's this homogenization within each game genera in order to facilitate a streamlined production-line of games that I disagree with. There are types of games that I think you're 100% right about on all accounts. An example would be, say, Dragon Age series. This is a game series in a 'choose-your-own' adventure series type story set-up western-style RPG that would lend well to such diversity in creation and aim. The players personal life is fairly unimportant compared to the world crisis. It's the push to make all, or rather, most games into the mould that I have exclaim with. Sometimes I like a sandbox story, but sometimes I like the story simply told (more asian-style RPG). My opinion above is that 'cover all the bases' style of game development with high diversity (this 'norm' you have pointed out, which is quite true), is becoming the safe standard in which game companies are willing to default to in order to maximise sales and exposure. The 'safe road' if you will.

I guess another way to put it, I'm worried that if we get comfortable in a norm- more provocative storytelling or game-play becomes too risky and less commonplace. And to an even stronger degree, author expression gets squelched in order to accommodate a repeating 'choose-your-own-adventure' experience. For example, prejudice is a powerful factor in almost everyone's life to the point of it's a base character building element; such as the woman in a patriarchy that rose up to save the world, the man that escapes the clutches of a life-dictating religion to expose the true intentions, or some other story of oppression and perseverance that would be considered 'too expensive' to do in high detail in an open-story style game or too provocative for the 'core audience'. For a character challenge to be optional or dynamic, is for it to not be meaningful to the grand scope.

I value storytelling in a game a bit too much. I wish to experience the game play, but be told the story. I do realise that I may be in a minority here.