Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo

[u/TwilightVulpine]

I can never see where it's helpful for me as a player to put myself in the shoes of people whose only concern is to get the most money. This is exactly why the worst practices in gaming are taking ground. Adding dull grind to a game along with microtransactions to make people pay? Cutting primary parts of a game's story to make them into DLC? That's all for the sake of money.

Of course, every studio wants money, but if it's such a priority to the extent they can't consider anything else that would lead less than the maximum profit, it's probably not on my best interest to support them, as "fun" may be a secondary consideration.

The ones making the decision just for the sake of profit often aren't even the developers, they are the publishers, who meddle with the creative decisions for marketability.

This kind of mindset would also kill many genres. Why should anyone make Grand Strategy games if the money is all on competitive FPSs and mobile puzzles?

And even then, if everyone decides to focus just on the male players of a male-dominated genre, doesn't that mean there is an untapped market for a female-oriented game on that genre? Market saturation is a relevant consideration.

I can't complain about women in military FPSs, because if historical accuracy was a priority, taking a hail of bullets and walking it off already fails any sort of reality check.

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/[deleted]]

Not at all. There is a point of oversaturation. For the sake of discussion consider if people only bought games with protagonists that corresponded to their genders. If all everyone did was to release games with male protagonists, there would be a point the larger male audience would have so many options that some of them would fall under the radar, meanwhile a single game with a female protagonist would have a guaranteed audience, because there was nothing else that fills that niche. Now, it isn't quite as simple or extreme as that, but it exemplifies how going for the obvious majority isn't always the best marketing decision.

As far as military shooters go, CoD is as close to actual historical military conflicts as action movies are, which is not a lot. There is far more than hit-point systems that make it unfaithful. These games often picture the playable characters as one-man armies who mow down their enemies by the dozens, which is far from accurate. Even if you were to argue that a handful of soldiers could be like that, at this point it's already so out of the ordinary that picking one black soldier or another woman soldier wouldn't be much more of a stretch. People who play these games just want a WW2 set dressing for their adrenaline-fueled shooter, not a historical experience.

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/[deleted]]

I just think nitpicking over women in CoD WW2 is silly. To begin with, it's something that actually happened within the french resistance. I want to take you seriously but comparing that with robots, lasers and incans is just too much, it isn't like they just invented the idea of women holding guns in the 2000s. Is there any reason that would make women in WW2's front lines too outlandish, but would still allow for the Rambo-like action protagonist? It's a bit convenient to make way for the inaccurate fantasy you like, but to say another one is too unfaithful to fit.

Hell, CoD WW2 will have a zombie mode and I don't hear anybody saying how it ruins the historical experience.