nesdev.org

Well, there's the other side to what I was saying too. I don't want to come across like I'm accusing anyone here of being thoughtless; my goal was to point out that being ruled by your subconscious makes you vulnerable. Toughen yourself up with conscious goals and self analysis.

I don't want to accuse someone of being thoughtless because their character is white or male or whatever; not my intent at all. I just want you to be able to say why, so that when someone asks it's a real conversation, or a real disagreement, and not just them picking at your weak spot.


Diversity of representation is something that's worth considering whenever coming up with character concepts, but there are a lot of other things worth considering, too. If you take it on as a goal, this puts constraints on your game's design (and nowhere is this more true than here in NES development). If you have too many constraints, they'll choke your game. For example: in the post that spawned this thread, I thought it was pretty clear at face value that darryl.revok wants a strong homage to Contra. That's a pretty well formed goal. The suggestions being made were anything but arbitrary; they were proposals for new constraints!


There's a danger here of conflating corporate concerns with the homebrew developer's, and it's hard not to imply it when you start insisting on this kind of stuff. It's difficult to make suggestions like this without insulting someone by collateral association. There's a big difference between complaining about trends in aggregate, and getting in someone's face about a game that they're making for themselves.

I've worked on a game project where all sorts of ideas for the main character were proposed, and eventually it came down to the financial interests in the project saying that it must be a white male. "We think it's less risky, and we're paying for it." This happens, and it's shitty. It's worth screaming about, but you'll never get to meet the person making these decisions, though, and they don't care what you have to say either.

Homebrew developers aren't that, and you can't paint them with the same brush. They're probably not expecting to make any profit from it; the decision making process is fundamentally different. They are also the one who's paying for it. They're not even taking a financial risk with it, they're literally just paying for it, and the only thing they want out of it is to have their game exist. Many of them are polite enough to listen to you, too. It's important to remember these differences.

rainwarrior wrote:I don't want to come across like I'm accusing anyone here of being thoughtless; my goal was to point out that being ruled by your subconscious makes you vulnerable.

I didn't think you were making that accusation. What I saw more from your comments were that reflecting upon the decisions behind your choices would make your choices, and your faith in them stronger. That's why I felt like the paraphrasing of your words was very out of context.

I also think that it's quite possible to use a combination approach wherein you trust your intuition when it seems appropriate and thoughtfully review it later. I don't think that discounting either the conscious or intuitive portions of the creative process is the best choice. I think that both are important to making good art.

Another danger I'd say though in relying too heavily on intuition is that it would be easier to get frustrated when things don't come naturally. In these cases you have to be able to analytically work through the problem.

I mentioned before, something about doing the bulk of the work based on intuition. Well, to break this down though, (and these are more or less bullshit estimates, just off the top of my head. I don't clock my time or anything) I'd say it's something like, I do 90% of the work on intuition, but spend 90% of my time doing the remaining 10%. For example, if you've done it before, you can throw together a really rough game engine in about a week, sure. But is it ready? No way. The vast majority of making it prepared for your game is yet to come. And all of these little tweaks are what are going to take the most analytical review.

rainwarrior wrote:I don't want to accuse someone of being thoughtless because their character is white or male or whatever; not my intent at all.

I didn't get the impression that you were. You also said:

If you're making a game for yourself, I think you should represent whomever you want.

and further elaborated upon it, so I thought that was clear.

rainwarrior wrote:It's difficult to make suggestions like this without insulting someone by collateral association. There's a big difference between complaining about trends in aggregate, and getting in someone's face about a game that they're making for themselves.

Absolutely. And when someone is suggested to make a change for the sake of "correcting the dominance of white male protagonists," then that could easily be interpreted to accuse my game project of promoting the dominance of white male protagonists. I would like to hope that isn't the criticism that the author was hoping to make. If it's not a criticism then it's an imposition of an agenda and I don't feel that has a place here.

If it's a criticism that I am perpetuating stereotypes, then that would suggest that my game is doing harm by existing. I think that's pretty rude to say to a hobbyist if their game isn't truly doing something extreme, like, promoting naziism.

In a sense, I suppose you could say that if someone in the macrocosm of this community will make that comment, then I should be prepared for it to happen upon the release of my game. I believe that correlates to some of the points you were making, rainwarrior. However, I surely think there are ways that it could be done without being rude.

Even so, would I have rather it not have been said? Absolutely. Now I have the stigma of perpetuating racist stereotypes attached to the first page of my progress thread. Even if I can argue that the comment is invalid, the James Rolfe incident should show us that makes no difference in the eyes of the "diversity swarm." Now I don't pretend that my game will get as popular as James Rolfe, but what if somebody sees something about the game and comes to my thread? Implications of heavy social issues and racism will be tied to the discussion. That's definitely not what I wanted the game to be about, and it's distracting from talk about gameplay mechanics, graphics, weapons, bosses, explosions, you know, the things that matter for something like this.

I've said before that I don't favor censorship so I guess all I can say is bring it on, but it will really cut into my progress if I have to keep defending myself.

Look, D.R., my intention on the suggestion of varying the characters was intended to be a criticism on the uniqueness of your character designs (graphics, which falls under the list of topics you mentioned as being appropriate to critique), intending to suggest that, parody or not, further differentiation could be beneficial. (You disagree with that, that's fine. No one's pushing otherwise. (The follow-up comment I made regarding the choice of Sly and Arnold was in absolutely no way associated to diversity, as I explained earlier.)

The comment about white male protagonists was intended as an aside. Rereading my post, I see that I definitely did not make that intention clear, and as such, should have rephrased it more specifically.

However, as soon as I realized that the conversation was at risk of going off-topic, I took it to its own thread about diversity in games in general, and despite quotes which gave foundation for the beginning of the discussion, the closest thing that came to mentioning your game at all was to use Contra sprites to illustrate a response to the technical limitations of displaying a range of skin tones. I could have probably used Double Dragon II sprites for the same effect (IIRC, it uses the same setup of player one using a different palette for pants while player two uses the same palette for shirt and pants, but I might be mistaken).

So, despite this conversation starting in your thread, this wasn't about you personally, and if you feel that your thread has been "tainted" by the questioning of your character designs, then a PM to request me to edit my posts would have been responded to much better than whatever this is.

But, if you really want to make this about criticism regarding representation in your game, I would like to point out that in justifying your choice to parody of Stallone and Arnold, you posted,

darryl.revok wrote:But, Stallone and Schwarzenegger sound funny, and they have distinct voices which would sound particularly funny with (impersonated) death groans.

It didn't cross my mind until I went back to reread your thread just now, but, as you may or not be aware, Stallone's voice "which sounds particularly funny" is the result of an injury caused at child birth due to malpractice, which has left a quadrant of his face paralyzed. So, as common as parodying Stallone is, I'd say that specifically parodying him because the result of his disability "sounds funny" is arguably insensitive.

But, do whatever you want, man. Your game, your call.

M_Tee wrote:So, as common as parodying Stallone is, I'd say that specifically parodying him because the result of his disability "sounds funny" is arguably insensitive.

I'm pretty sure 90% of people had no clue about that, myself included. Most people I know who've seen Rocky couldn't sit through the whole thing because they couldn't understand a word that was said.

Was there any point in even bringing that up, other than trying to "get back" at him?

But, do whatever you want, man. Your game, your call.

He probably already knew that, unlike the incident with Sylvester Stallone.

M_Tee wrote:whatever this is.

How were you expecting this thread to turn out? I feel like all this thread did was bring people's attention to what you think is an issue that no one else even thinks exists, especially if we're talking only about modern NES games. I see no other way how this could have turned out.

Alright. Now I feel this has gotten ugly. This thread has been way out of hand and my name and project have been attached to it from the beginning. (See first post) It got to the point that you were attempting to silence the views of those who opposed your opinion and that's when I got to the point that I couldn't take the bullshit anymore. Those who said this mentality is killing the fun and that these types of agendas should be left out of the homebrew scene had very valid perspectives. I didn't want to ask you to change what you said, but I think a negative reflection of the effects of pushing the diversity agenda upon people is entirely valid.

M_Tee wrote:Stallone's voice "which sounds particularly funny" is the result of an injury caused at child birth due to malpractice

Yes, I am aware of his injury. This is the reason that he can't move his part of his face. But that's only a small part of why his characters sound funny. It's also his accent, which is often played up in his characters. If I see him in an interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1LF5d7FT2w I honestly don't see anything humorous about his voice. But when you see him as a character, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iAB4C8B9U4 he sounds funny. I appreciate that about the characters he plays. My friends and I (who watch a lot of films together) have a special appreciation for Stallone. We'll even seek out B-movies because he, or his brother, are in them.

He's also a famous hollywood actor. His appearance, his voice, and his film characters are the types of things that are valid to parody. I'm not making fun of his disability, I'm making fun of how incoherently his characters speak, which should be pretty evident from the links that this is a choice he makes.

This is the type of stuff that kills the fun. I would appreciate if you would stop compounding accusations.

Edit: 1) added "see first post" 2) minor typo change 3) added edit caption and name on quote

Espozo wrote:I'm pretty sure 90% of people had no clue about that

darryl.revok wrote:Yes, I am aware of his injury.

Oops...

Seems I let my frustration with the differences between what I was intending to communicate andwhat I was actually communicating get the better of me. Point made, Espozo. Will step away from this.

Espozo wrote:what you think is an issue that no one else even thinks exists

Nonsense. Stereotype threat is a thing. Erasure is a thing. To deny that these are real things is disingenuous. To deny that we can fix them is defeatist.

Whether we have an obligation to fix them is a separate question. And where, I think, the argument really boils down. (But how better to avoid having that uncomfortable argument than to deny that the problems exist in the first place?) (edit: fix typo)


I think that's where rainwarrior's point about acting deliberately comes in—if you made a conscious decision, you will be able to sleep with it, even if someone takes you to task for it.

This thread.

I didn't read all new posts, but to go from somewhat technical discussions about character representation to agenda police... that's quite the escalation. I think this thread has ran its course.

lidnariq wrote:Nonsense.

Well, In the context of "modern NES games", I don't think so. I'm not ignoring it as a whole. Many homebrew NES games I've seen don't even have human protagonists.

lidnariq wrote:Whether we have an obligation to fix them is a separate question.

You're right. That's mainly what I was thinking of, but didn't know how to phrase it. I don't think we, or anyone else, has the obligation to fix it. Video game companies (for the most part: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... s-Very-Low) give people what they want, like what rainwarrior said about how some business analysts find out that a white male is the most profitable. We're just the minority in that we don't seem to like it. If anything though, blame the people buying the games for that reason.

It seems like having a female protagonist would actually be more profitable at this point. I saw something that said that females make up 48% of video game players (how this was found is beyond me) and women like to be represented in these sorts of things, more than men seem to, because this is new for women. Look at where Hillary has gotten off this, of course, this isn't where all her support comes.

Espozo wrote:...business analysts find out that a white male is the most profitable. We're just the minority in that we don't seem to like it.

They don't "find out" so much as presume based on past sales. The standard mentality is to copy the thing that is making the most money right now, and unfortunately that works well enough that they wouldn't see a reason to change.

If you take a look at the kind of content Netflix has been funding lately, it's not based on that old style of research, but on very intense profiling of people's movie watching tastes. This is a kind of data that was never available before in this kind of magnitude and detail. They don't have to take up shared space in theatres like a Hollywood film, and they can deliver niche content right to your home. It's a completely different ballgame and they're targeting groups that have been largely ignored until now. I've found it quite exciting to see such a rapid shift in media happening over the past couple of years.

Interesting article: http://www.wired.com/2016/03/netflixs-g ... uer-world/

“There’s a mountain of data that we have at our disposal ... composed of two things. Garbage is 99 percent of that mountain. Gold is one percent… . Geography, age, and gender? We put that in the garbage heap. Where you live is not that important.” Stereotypes about what one region might like versus another are largely useless to Netflix.

It's not just Netflix, though, I was just using it as an example. There's a big global change going on across all media right now, and I find it fascinating.

lidnariq wrote:Whether we have an obligation to fix them is a separate question. And where, I think, the argument really boils down.

When it comes to the matter of whether or not this issue is something of which we should have awareness, I wouldn't argue. Whether or not we have an obligation as content creators in general to address this issue is outside of the scope of this thread. As to whether or not there is an inherent responsibility in creating NES homebrew, to address these particular social issues, or any social issues at all, I would say absolutely not. That would imply that the act of creating a homebrew which doesn't address racial representation is creating harm, versus the alternative of not having a new NES game at all.

Espozo wrote:It seems like having a female protagonist would actually be more profitable at this point.

I don't know about anybody else, but I tend to choose the female character when there's an option. For me, the choice is less of a reflection of which character I want to represent me, but rather of which I'd rather look at on the screen while I'm playing.

I noticed that there are a lot of people in this forum who are working on projects starring female protagonists. Without being asked, several of us independently sought to create games with strong women. I'd say that speaks well about the interest in diversity among NESdev as a group. I can't think of any homebrews in production starring a protagonist of a dark-skinned ethnicity, so I think the topic is worth bringing up. But anything involving obligations or responsibilities or consequences is too strong of wording for this hobby.

You know what I think is funny that I've noticed? In anything, you often see a white man, a white women, or a black man, but very rarely do you see a black woman unless she's the black man's husband.

darryl.revok wrote:I don't know about anybody else, but I tend to choose the female character when there's an option.

For me, it depends on how they look/sound. If they make sexual noises upon being hit and have exaggerated female features, than no. Otherwise, maybe. I often like the hairstyles available to women more in games.

My own point of view is you do not need to have ability to select from multiple characters unless either gameplay is affected by the choice or if it is multi-players and it help to tell apart which player. (If you make the game yourself, of course it is up to you. Make the protagonist to whatever character you want, with or without ability of selection. Same with other characters in the game.)

Well, what you described is how most games handle it, although now thinking about it, there are plenty that don't although less.