Default Hero: Your Protagonist is Boring

It’s a long running joke that just hasn’t hit a lot of developers yet. In some focus group somewhere somebody decided that controlling the world around you isn’t enough immersion, we need to relate to these gamers. So what they decided was to make the character you play as a blank slate...

[Nyxus]

A character's gender or skin color doesn't mean anything in terms of how interesting they are as a character.

[frosty92]

Agreed, but when Video Game character are homogenized in terms of development and overall look it starts to get boring. a different skin color or gender wont help that but thinking outside of what a default character is, is a good start.

[Nyxus]

Nothing against having different kinds of characters, but it shouldn't be necessary in order to make the character interesting. I think Drake and Ezio are very different characters, and both are interesting, it doesn't matter what their gender or skin color is.

[Somebody]

"The Developers are making their vision and their story and a large portion of Developers are White guys."

I don't see anything wrong with sticking to things that they are familiar with. White men make games for white people. Japanese game devs made games with Japanese characters. There have been some weird interpretation of the Westerners in Japanese games and just recently the writer for GTA V was called out for being just another white guy writing about black people.

A lot of people have been hounding game devs to change their ways but into what, exactly? Conform and change or stay the same - either way game devs are caught in a sticky situation.

[Sly-Lupin]

The protagonist of a game is usually meant to personify the audience of the game. The player character is, essentially, an audience surrogate.

A disproportionate number of game characters are white men because a disproportionate number of game developers are white men--and in the infancy of gaming, so, too, was the majority of the audience.

But that is no longer the case, and hasn't been the case for some time. Each new day brings a more diverse gaming community, and the games industry is largely ignoring that diversity.

Is this a problem? Yes. Of course it is. But its one of many big problems facing the medium these days that many people don't even want to recognize, along with preservation and basic consumer rights for digital products.

[Somebody]

I don't think the industry is deliberately ignoring this rise of diversity out of malice. A big, "disproportionate" chunk of the demographic is white men so the market caters to them first and diversity second. Once diversity found it's place on the top then the market would undoubtedly cater to them first and white men second. At the end of the day money is still money no matter how they get it.

We've seen this among games themselves. No matter how many advanced features games like Battlefield or Rainbow Siege have or realism like the Arma series has, they will always have a hard time toppling the CoD series from the top position simply because they don't the same amount of "disproportionate number" of established CoD fans. As long as there are millions of fans pumping money into CoD, Activision don't have any reasons to make major changes.

I'm not against diversity, far from it. It's that I prefer it's inclusion to be a much more natural process instead being forced upon. Show the devs that it can bring money and safe from them to try(when no one will question why a white guy is telling the story of an Indonesian rice paddy farmer). When we demonized them in order to have them to comply to our wishes, then there will be push back.

Let diversity grow, not artificially accelerate it.

[Yehshuah]

always typical white guy that looks hot

[Bigpappy]

Not getting into this fight over diversity. I like RPG's as my favorite genre, and those that allow me the freedom to customize the look of my character, e.g. Elder Scrolls; Mass Effect, add that extra layer of emersion for me. Sometime the default does match my mental image of who I would expect in that role. If the game is good though, I usually still enjoy it, and the look becomes a very small issue.

[frosty92]

thank you for reading first off :) and i think your right I really like Drake and Ezio and they are very different. they both have great personality. weather they are black or purple doesn't matter.

[InMyOpinion]

Ezio? You mean Token Italian Guy, who speak-a like-a this-eh? lol.

[KryptoniteTail]

Is this one of those "we need more half black half Mexican bisexual transgender transvestite militant Atheist liberal misandrist main characters" topics?

[Tonykid]

Yep

[Tonykid]

Here we go again with these "We need more diversity in games". Changing a character's skin color or sexual preference doesn't make the character any better. You people trash character's like Aiden but if he was black or gay then people would be praising this game for being diverse.

[urwifeminder]

Yes we need more Junkies or wino action toothless becoming something great, burying their demons being tempted by their vices physical and mental transformations .

[InMyOpinion]

Trevor in GTA 5 is one of the most interesting playable characters since I can remember.

Would be nice to have more anti-hero type of characters, with questionable morals etc.

[Yehshuah]

white nerdy males stuck in room playing games and fantasizing about how hot they can look with sexy girls in another world. "one day im going to be a game developer and put myself in there and no one else!"

they grow up and make the game and put themselves in the hottest form with the hottest girl sidekicks. this is the reason why.

gabe newell is pretty much gordon. they wear glasses with brown hair and alyx vance is his dream girl