Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone, hope you enjoy today's essay. I dumped a lot of time into it so as per usual, please consider supporting my work by checking the links in the description. Also, here's the link promised in the video. See ya next week with the next video web.archive.org/web/20220512185745/www.activisionblizzard.com/newsroom/2022/05/king-diversity-space-tool
you are not black so you wont get it. Dont get me wrong I hate tokenism and pandering but i hate it more when people put a biracial or racially ambigious woman and say she is black. Dark skinned black women do not get proper representation in media. If there is a role for black women its always filled with black women who have a more acdceptable skin colour or a birtacial woman who does not have Afrocentric features. Do I think these companies should pander to black women or anyone else for that matter? No i do not. But there is an issue with representation for dark skinned black women.
@@Nikkeishajk that's not true on the you're not black so you won't get it how many European people from the smaller parts of Europe get accurate representation rather than some were in the ballpark of Europe I'm not talking France and Germany I'm talking places often represented that just use Russian or similar accents because "Europe" America is in general seen as having a child like view of race for this very reason they often discuss black and white forgetting the insane amount of other cultures like the increasingly ignorant Jews are white view point taking over alot of blue states
"Representation" IS tokenism. Creating relatable characters is not about skin color, ethnicity, or gender. It's about giving them strengths and weaknesses, struggles and journeys, that anyone can relate to on a human level.
Not necessarily, it is simply what it has degenerated into. Having a variety of cultures represented isn't 'tokenism'. Symmetra, for instance, isn't a great character because "she indian and she autistic". She's a great character who also is Indian and autistic. She represents those aspects but isn't defined by them. It's when a characteristic becomes the solde defining factor of a character that the whole process degenerates.
@@lyravain6304 Obviously creating characters from different cultures isn't tokenism unless it's the sole defining factor of the character, but the term representation is only used in reference to making it the sole defining characteristic. Nobody called Mace Windu "black representation" when the prequels came out. He was just a Star Wars character. Nobody called Toph "Female Disabled Asian Representation" She was just an Avatar character. The term places importance on surface level traits as if they're a substitute for who the character is. In my experience, what makes an audience truly feel represented is characters with relatable experiences or personality traits. None of my favorite characters have ever resembled my ethnicity or appearance.
@@Ladondorf I quite agree. Having something represented isn't by definition tokenism. As you showed; Mace Windu and Toph were great characters that 'happened' to show a specific characteristic but weren't defined as that characteristic. When and if the current batch of hack writers get chucked out to the street we might once again get interesting characters to follow.
@@lyravain6304 Representation is tokenism. Because a person is more then just skin color. Emotional people seek validation for their insecurities, and instead of looking for character qualities they agree with, they support and demand tokenism instead of anything else. People say "I don't know anything about the story, but its bad because there's no so and so characters". Its a sign of a shallow person. Sincerely, a person who grew up idolizing a green alien who smiled.
@@UltraKardas I disagree. A good character has characteristics. These characteristics define parts of them. When a character is "so and so and happens to have X characteristic", that characteristic is represented but it is not tokenism. When a character "has X characteristic and thus they MUST be so and so" becomes tokenism. Example; I don't like Batman because he is white like me. I like Batman because he's resourceful, cunning, plans ahead and has cool gadgets. He HAPPENS to be white, I'd have liked him the same were he black, purple, green or polka-dotted, I don't care. It's why I also like Wonder Woman (well, SOME of her versions); she is cool and HAPPENS to be a woman. She isn't cool BECAUSE she's a woman. Or Storm, she's also cool. She has characteristics, she represents them, but she isn't defined by them alone.
@@neil_mch not even true. an email can be a predator, I've seen both conservatives and liberals so predatory behavior. from The Men who wish to marry young children and conservatives, to the map allies in liberals.
The phenomenon of only seeing skin colour as a sign of diversity is really Americentric as it seems to only come from americans. To me (european) it just seems weird to diversify people solely based on race when even my geographical neighboors that are in the same country are very culturally diferent to me yet an american would see us as a bunch of whiteys. I'd imagine it probably feels the same for people in Africas and Asia. I realize that not every american thinks like that but most of those who are demandig diversity do, they don't care that Slavic people were historically enslaved (guess where the word slave came from), that Japanese culture is much diferent from Korean or that people from Liberia eat diferent traditional dishes than people from Madagascar. They see ethicity only in the ammount of pigmentation in individuals skin which is honestly racist as all hell. This is the reason why in pursuit of diversity as perceived by them the literally made a Token Machine (TM).
So much this I'm from Australia and the idea of the "black" community makes no sense whatsoever as we have aboriginals and they have nothing in common with black Americans it's such a child like view of culture as a whole and I agree there are a few Americans who realise this but that's on places like you tube most Americans aren't on social media so how many think like that that we don't get exposed to online
Only comes from Twitter users or "game journalists" is more like it. Fat quotes on game journalists because they probably never played a video game and just wants people to read their article.
Sadly its made to seem like most people in America think that way because those of us that do disagree with it online get silenced. I have been Perma Banned in multiple Forums on Steam because I would speak out against this kind of crap in my games. Once those like me get silenced all thats left is the crazies pushing this nonsense, thus making it seem like all Americans think like this. In the 90's and early 2000's you heard so little about Racism that you would almost think it was going to be thing of the past. Then all of the sudden came the rise of the SJW and it all went down hill fast.
The traits which leftists use to construct "identity categories" have nothing to do with identity, and in fact, are the most surface-level characteristics of any human. Race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality are WHAT you are. The thing that matters is WHO you are.
pretty sure i've never meet a leftist that categorized people based on their identities, maybe we should all stop listening to terminally online people about what they believe
@@FantasmaNaranja The basis of identity politics is that your race/gender/sexuality are what constitute your identity. It's the reason why woke people always put stuff like "black/cis/lesbian" in their bio. I'm in college and I can tell you first hand this is what they teach us to believe. Being in college is like being surrounded by terminally online people IRL. Obviously regular liberals don't think this way. Leftists and liberals are two different things, in fact, leftism is antithetical to liberalism. People get the two confused and as a result, a lot of liberals absorb woke leftist talking points from the news or social media without fully understanding what it's all about. Maybe those are the people you've met.
@@lucascoval828 TBF, the japanese didn't had the marxist "oppressed x oppressor" justification, they were just plain "my people are better than everyone else" racist.
Ah yes because they haven't done so already I totally believe blizzard tell the truth why wouldn't I I mean war craft 3 was everything they said it would be when they took peoples money
@@LasagaMan Yeah him and a few other youtubers on that side have "transitioned" as well. I think they are trying to copy contra points. A lot of their styles copy his/hers whatever.
It was literally something you would have expected from The Babylon Bee to make up as a parody. It is just so bad that words are not enough to describe it.
Can someone please plant the seed for woke crybullies to scream at blizzard to add a taiwanese character into overwatch? The absolute chaos of watching blizzard trying to appeal to them and china at the same time would be sooooo funny
9:25 Fighting games definitely represent when it comes about this because the genre itself is only made better by having a variety of martial arts to choose from. We have Katarina and Eddie (Tekken); Laura, Sean and... Blanka (SF); Giovanna (GG); Roberto (Rival Schools); Bob Wilson (Fatal Fury) and the list goes on... I also can't forget the good ole' Jetstream Sam.
The Ethnicity rating means nothing as a whole as there is no way to gauge how one Ethnic group is more ethnic than another. One might as well rate how dirty one pile of dirt is compared to another equally sized pile of dirt. It would only make sense if a character is a robot or a void walking abomination. to have no Ethnicity rating score and even then, a robot is produced as part of an Ethnic group's culture so it could be considered part of their group even if on a lower rung. The measure of how common something is or not would have to vary from place to place for any of these rating to function in any meaningful way at ll.
The majority of examples will likely come from Fighting games. They’ve always done well with incorporating other countries. Which makes sense considering they’re often global tournaments within the story
i find it funny how African is its own ethnicity, but we get really, really specific when talking about people from South America. why are people talking like Brazil is the only country in South America? its like pretending that Egypt is the only country in Africa. its weird.
It's really good to see OW devs come out and outright state that this tool has never been used by them in order to create one of the most diverse casts in all of AAA gaming. It's a real shame that the clueless boomer higher-ups don't have any idea how to actually do any of it, so they take this tool and use it for some dystopian shit. When all else fails, I can always count on the OW dev team to have a semblance of common sense, morals and a brain.
well many claim it was never used, but can we truly believe them? some devs hinted otherwise and deleted their tweets. Early on in the game's development, yes it wasn't used. We know this because the whole world united global organization with nations from all over taking part totally fits the story and thus why there is such national diversity... but lately with some of the team changes and other things, that is another story.... I have my doubts it didn't come into play a bit in their discussions internally.
@@goddess_bree I'd rather take the word of the devs themselves who stated they didn't even know this tool existed until a few days ago than some random journo making wild claims. I heard an article state that OW2 had used this tool, while OW devs were just as horrified and clueless about the whole thing as everyone else.
There is a point where you can't trust the people who have just been discovered to have made a "diversity creation kit" that they didn't use it at some point in development. That goodwill has long since been destroyed when they started just casually removing old movie references, callbacks to old employees, flirty character lines, and even pictures of women from WoW which had been fine for years. They used it, and now that it's out in the light they can't admit to have using it.
Looking at the character design from OverWatch it does give you a whole bunch of themes to play with, and if you use those themes well it can give you something amazing. The reality is the gameplay could be reduced down to grey boxes and different sized capsules for characters, and still have a mechanically identical game. So basically no, but themes really do matter to your mushy human thoughts (would you rather push to a loud beep, or push to a Brazilian bro yelling "crank it up" when Lucio activates their ultimate).
Visual diversity (shape and color) helps identifying classes / characters among your & enemy teams - just compare Team Fortress Classic with Team Fortress 2. Other than this, as far as multi-player goes? NOTHING.
The thing is, you can have diversity that makes sense and is a fun part of the game experience, without even trying or even coming off as a concious inclusion. But that requires an actual, skillfull writer and Blizzard only hires twitter pests.
Sophia, Keep on calling out these fake victims, Keep on calling out Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Jack Thompson, Marcus C. Evans Jr., Froskurinn & ZombiUncorn We got your back
but he's also hot as fuck, but im not sure how that effects his DST score. maybe that would be some sort of "oppressive tendency" because he could topple countries with his smile alone i guess?
This just straight up baffles me. I don't even play Overwatch but I've always thought it has always been genuinely diverse both in "this" way and in terms of gameplay, there's some unique characters you can play as with all sorts of looks and personalities. Somehow they found a way to call the brazilian DJ that hurts and heals people with his tunes while riding walls not that diverse, while that's a genuinely cool as hell and unique concept. Like they have a game that's actually diverse in both mechanics and lore/characters that for the most part kinda just is without being too obnoxious about it, yet they found a way to piss everyone off. Almost impressive tbh.
I hate the way blizzard is with overwatch. like you said them saying soilder 76 is gay.. when they said many times he was marry to widowmaker and then by magic they turn him gay. they just do what they want to try and get brownie points and i found the overwatch fan are toxic as hell as to me there is already black females in the game . but they are not black black in there eyes.
It's also weird because gay people are born gay - but by simply making a specifically straight character gay is really kind of - strange - if you get what I mean. Like, it's almost like it forgot that gay people are born gay - that's why sending them to conversion camps (regardless of ethicality) doesn't work. Yet, there seems to be this weird idea in Prog circles that - because of their dislike of the norm as opposed to revolution - they see being gay as a choice in a roundabout way. It's weird.
Honestly I want the tokenism software only so I can make something where every character is white, straight, and male and STILL have it be more diverse than Overwatch
Activision-Blizzard has use the ever changing, ever excluding rainbow flag as a shield for years now, so them developing a software to create tokens is the next logical step for the western game development. These companies who are all too willing to edit, remove and erase "problematic" elements from their game into a safe gruel too appease the always-offended for a handful of articles from sites because hate will be the cause of the new video game crash.
I just wanna enjoy playing video games, have fun, be entertained & escape from real world shit, alright? Not being preached at or lectured by freaks that don't have any particularly set of skills to survive in the real world
'challenge pre-conceived notions of how characters should look and act' [by making sure all superficial, mostly-uncontrollable identity boxes are checked]
I don't understand why "black female" is the be all end all for these people. Kotaku wrote an article praising Street Fighter 6 for FINALLY having a black female. Everyone in the comments was rightfully saying what about Elena? Apparently because she is from Africa it doesn't count. It HAS to be African American or it doesn't count. There will always be some new caveat that must be met. I was surprised thought that the people in the comments weren't having it so maybe the tables are starting to turn.
Honestly, the _original_ Overwatch, the way it was as upon release, impressed me with how varied the cast was, and how I got to experience cultures that I've otherwise had zero contact with through it. Some of the later additions, such as the sexual orientation of some characters, already felt very token by the way of "we don't need to know this to play the game!". Overwatch had excellent in-game dialogue interactions between some characters, revealing likes, dislikes and relationships. Dedicating half a comic to the fact that Tracer is gay really felt forced. I've long stopped playing Overwatch because I do not enjoy where they took the gameplay. However, I didn't even think this "diversity tool" would be something controversial. It's how _they_ want game casts to be viewed anyway, _right?_
Why are they even judging sexual orientation in a Multiplayer online battle arena ? Yes it's a AAA game but you're not playing for the story or "character development." OverWatch is basically just a modernize arcade game, you pay your fee, you go have fun, and you let loose.... it's never meant to be anything deeper than that. The depth behind the game is how many hours you put into a character that you choose. So with that being said I can see people wanting a diverse cast but once again it's not like you're playing a game like The Last of Us. So the backstory behind the characters are more of an afterthought really. Representation is important but yet easily exploited, so demanding for representation in a game like this is basically just.... Silly, ha.
I love how one of the 6 characteristics this chart measures is "ability" - as if you can just add wheelchair bound characters to violent video games. It is fetishization. It's sick and the pandering makes me more homicidal than the self check out line at the grocery. "Gotta catch em' all! WokeMon!"
When to see the comments on the GDC video they turned off comments lmao. Sadness I wanted to hear cover the overwatch porn scene a little more then passing mainly because she's right mei with dong is hot but also I'd dare say that side of overwatch is far more popular
Overwatch was interesting due to its diversity in its nationality which you don’t normally see as well as personalities that were striking, dumbing their characters to just race, disability, or sexuality/ orientation harms the development of good characters
They fucked up OW so bad because they focused diversity over gameplay HARD Lets be frank it IS TF2 subclasses. BUT without any thought to game balance. Pre "lets introduce 100 characters" it was genuinely fun because the entire game was a rock, paper, scizzors game. Akin to how in TF2 : Sniper kills pyro (from range) , kills spy (negating invis ability), kills sniper with backstab (you cant shoot what you cant see). Base class combat
Brazilian Here, and I Must Say, Júlio is a Great Character and Represents Well the Brazilians (Most of Us shows a Similar Personality) and I Glad Such Good to Represents Brazilians (like Sam form Metal Gear Rising) so I wanna know… WHY DID THE CULTURE SCORE IS SO LOW?! WHY?! He's Awesome! is a Shame He don't Get the Respect He Desserves form the People You Mention.
Not only would Overwatch's "first" black female need to be a thing but she'd also have to be the go-to meta, and even then I'm sure no one would be happy with that. Also, how does this company even try to quantify something like orientations? Is being pansexual higher on the point system than plain gay? This sounds exactly like what centrists/rightist mean when they talk about "The Oppression Hierarchy."
Good grief, RPS dropped Tim Stone? For THAT? I stopped reading them a long, long while back and had no idea. When RPS first started out, it was a website penned by some of the best writers for the UK version of PC Gamer in its absolute prime, Tim included. They even had VideoGaiden's Robert Florence penning a column. You got a real sense they were doing something they loved; It was pretty great. Over the years, more and more of the original writers either left or completely lost their touch. At this point it's a sucking vacuum of talent: there is nothing left worth the effort of actually reading. I hope Tim goes on to bigger and better things. Because, to be fair, I don't think you can really go lower than RPS at this point.
Everything needs to be diverse to the point that it becomes grey sludge. Everything has to be represented. Ironic, the only diversity they´ll accept is no diversity at all.
Inb4 we meet the long-awaited first black, non-binary, disabled, old, zulu, fat and pansexual character in history. That's literally the only way to fill that chart, and I'm ironically hyped to see it become a reality.
They could do a female char called Sarah Jessica White. Her power could be typing text walls in a gadget for like five in-game minutes. If and when she finishes texting, every non-white male char in the game gets some kind of buff. While White males get a debuff.
yeah I think that probably the one game that didn't depict my ethnicity (Egyptian) as a camel riding, desert living wanderer in the desert isn't diverse enough, beautiful executive decisions
if you are dedicating creative focus to insuring a certain number of certain ethnic groups are show in certain ways then you are willfully choosing a creative focus that limits the range and depth of stories you can tell
There's dozens of quest chains that seem to focus on "identity" or "trauma" in dragonflight ive noticed. There's two where they give you dialogue options that are pretty much "affirm their identity" that you must select to progress the quest. I can't tell this gnoll that they are delusional? Why do I have to conform to a self-affirmed identity rather than an externally observed one? In an attempt to be progressive and tolerant they are regressive and bigoted. It's wild.
There's no winning so why even try? One side says it's not diverse enough, and the other says it's forced diversity. This is a problem with trying to appeal to everyone, you will appeal to no one. Trying to diversify a game like Overwatch is like a trap since there's no real story or one specific theme to the entire game for these character make sense in a contextual way. I think it's better to only appeal to a niche so it won't become super popular and the diversity won't become a problem, or if they made Overwatch very alien or otherworldly they could have fictional races instead of real races and the problem wouldn't have existed, I've never seen anyone say a Dark Souls game or Elder Scrolls game to not be "diverse" enough because the races in the games don't exist.
The sad thing is, its more then possible to have a theme that would work with Overwatch's diverse cast. But it would only work, with a diversity of THOUGHT. Imagine this; A big global threat immerges. Aliens, robots, or some other big thing that threats the world. To combat it, Overwatch is formed using geniuses and high skilled individuals from all over the world. The talent and skill the organization has on paper is the peak of human performance, but because they come from all over the world... They naturally clash in ideas, ideals, and other matters. Maybe you could have Genji give Mei the cold shoulder due to long standing tensions between China and Japan. Or have Zayra constantly treated poorly due to Russia's recent actions and her being a scapegoat for her country. May have an Arabic hero strongly dislike Tracer because he is a devout Muslim and that is heavily against Homosexuality; which is a problem for the openly Gay tracer who has a girlfriend she's frequently in contact with. You could even have it so that over the course of the story, the crew slowly peel away these political stigmas and start looking at the people as people instead of as [insert country here] representative. Hell, if they didnt want to touch real political issues, they could invent conflicts. The best Real Overwatch got was the omnic discrimination, but even then they gave that issue a clear good and evil answer, and any character that discriminates against omnics are either villain or treated as in the wrong on the issue.
Even without the pure tokenism, the characters imo, are very well written despite the “diversity quirks” Because sexuality, ethnicity etc literally didnt play much of a role in their actual written characters lol, tracer would still be that annoying chippy speed girl, gay or not, etc.
I like how we already have another game series that also has a large diverse collection of iconic characters that are each from a different country in a competitive genre but approaches it in a manner of representation that is personally in a lot of cased even more diverse than Overwatch. It's called Street Fighter. Because in that game series you can play multiple Brazilians and a black DJ who while being Jamaican, is also playable. His name is Dee Jay and I hope he comes back in SF6. Kinda wild when you compare Street Fighter to Overwatch. It really goes to show how behind the series was in it's efforts that another game already achieved over 20 years ago.
i am so confused. it's 2022 A.D. and everything is still about skin color, ethnicity, and gender. imagine mankind going into war over skin color, ethnicity, and gender. sounds like some petty ass bullshit of course eh? oh wait i might've spoke too late. anyway though, i frequently taught myself something that i've heard before somewhere; We would all either love each other.......or die.
Funny how they just go with "normal" making it look like everyone they claim to be trying to appeal to are "abnormal" in their eyes. It's really a shame that they are finding doom in the very road that they foolishly rushed to avoid it because despite all I kinda still kinda like the game. I downloaded it today again and it was fun.
It's so gross how the people who emphasize this the most are the exact same people who are tied up in massive scandals and are KNOWN to harbour sex abuse and support regimes actively engaged in ethnic cleansing. That is NO position to speak down to or impose upon anyone else from.
Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone, hope you enjoy today's essay. I dumped a lot of time into it so as per usual, please consider supporting my work by checking the links in the description. Also, here's the link promised in the video. See ya next week with the next video
web.archive.org/web/20220512185745/www.activisionblizzard.com/newsroom/2022/05/king-diversity-space-tool
you are not black so you wont get it. Dont get me wrong I hate tokenism and pandering but i hate it more when people put a biracial or racially ambigious woman and say she is black. Dark skinned black women do not get proper representation in media. If there is a role for black women its always filled with black women who have a more acdceptable skin colour or a birtacial woman who does not have Afrocentric features. Do I think these companies should pander to black women or anyone else for that matter? No i do not. But there is an issue with representation for dark skinned black women.
@@Nikkeishajk that's not true on the you're not black so you won't get it how many European people from the smaller parts of Europe get accurate representation rather than some were in the ballpark of Europe I'm not talking France and Germany I'm talking places often represented that just use Russian or similar accents because "Europe" America is in general seen as having a child like view of race for this very reason they often discuss black and white forgetting the insane amount of other cultures like the increasingly ignorant Jews are white view point taking over alot of blue states
Yes, please.
Also great video soph I love the videos like this that you do
You can tell your writing & jokes where excellent in this video. 👏
"Representation" IS tokenism. Creating relatable characters is not about skin color, ethnicity, or gender. It's about giving them strengths and weaknesses, struggles and journeys, that anyone can relate to on a human level.
Not necessarily, it is simply what it has degenerated into. Having a variety of cultures represented isn't 'tokenism'. Symmetra, for instance, isn't a great character because "she indian and she autistic". She's a great character who also is Indian and autistic. She represents those aspects but isn't defined by them. It's when a characteristic becomes the solde defining factor of a character that the whole process degenerates.
@@lyravain6304 Obviously creating characters from different cultures isn't tokenism unless it's the sole defining factor of the character, but the term representation is only used in reference to making it the sole defining characteristic. Nobody called Mace Windu "black representation" when the prequels came out. He was just a Star Wars character. Nobody called Toph "Female Disabled Asian Representation" She was just an Avatar character. The term places importance on surface level traits as if they're a substitute for who the character is. In my experience, what makes an audience truly feel represented is characters with relatable experiences or personality traits. None of my favorite characters have ever resembled my ethnicity or appearance.
@@Ladondorf I quite agree. Having something represented isn't by definition tokenism. As you showed; Mace Windu and Toph were great characters that 'happened' to show a specific characteristic but weren't defined as that characteristic. When and if the current batch of hack writers get chucked out to the street we might once again get interesting characters to follow.
@@lyravain6304 Representation is tokenism.
Because a person is more then just skin color. Emotional people seek validation for their insecurities, and instead of looking for character qualities they agree with, they support and demand tokenism instead of anything else.
People say "I don't know anything about the story, but its bad because there's no so and so characters". Its a sign of a shallow person.
Sincerely, a person who grew up idolizing a green alien who smiled.
@@UltraKardas I disagree. A good character has characteristics. These characteristics define parts of them. When a character is "so and so and happens to have X characteristic", that characteristic is represented but it is not tokenism. When a character "has X characteristic and thus they MUST be so and so" becomes tokenism.
Example; I don't like Batman because he is white like me. I like Batman because he's resourceful, cunning, plans ahead and has cool gadgets. He HAPPENS to be white, I'd have liked him the same were he black, purple, green or polka-dotted, I don't care. It's why I also like Wonder Woman (well, SOME of her versions); she is cool and HAPPENS to be a woman. She isn't cool BECAUSE she's a woman. Or Storm, she's also cool. She has characteristics, she represents them, but she isn't defined by them alone.
Couldn't have backfired on a better company
@@neil_mch not even true. an email can be a predator, I've seen both conservatives and liberals so predatory behavior. from The Men who wish to marry young children and conservatives, to the map allies in liberals.
@@neil_mch It's the only way they can get laid! :D
The phenomenon of only seeing skin colour as a sign of diversity is really Americentric as it seems to only come from americans. To me (european) it just seems weird to diversify people solely based on race when even my geographical neighboors that are in the same country are very culturally diferent to me yet an american would see us as a bunch of whiteys. I'd imagine it probably feels the same for people in Africas and Asia.
I realize that not every american thinks like that but most of those who are demandig diversity do, they don't care that Slavic people were historically enslaved (guess where the word slave came from), that Japanese culture is much diferent from Korean or that people from Liberia eat diferent traditional dishes than people from Madagascar. They see ethicity only in the ammount of pigmentation in individuals skin which is honestly racist as all hell.
This is the reason why in pursuit of diversity as perceived by them the literally made a Token Machine (TM).
So much this I'm from Australia and the idea of the "black" community makes no sense whatsoever as we have aboriginals and they have nothing in common with black Americans it's such a child like view of culture as a whole and I agree there are a few Americans who realise this but that's on places like you tube most Americans aren't on social media so how many think like that that we don't get exposed to online
Hey don't rope all of us in together. Some of us hate this crap as much as you do.
Only comes from Twitter users or "game journalists" is more like it. Fat quotes on game journalists because they probably never played a video game and just wants people to read their article.
In Europe this regressive phenomenon is strong in UK and has been spreading to other Western European nations.
Sadly its made to seem like most people in America think that way because those of us that do disagree with it online get silenced. I have been Perma Banned in multiple Forums on Steam because I would speak out against this kind of crap in my games. Once those like me get silenced all thats left is the crazies pushing this nonsense, thus making it seem like all Americans think like this. In the 90's and early 2000's you heard so little about Racism that you would almost think it was going to be thing of the past. Then all of the sudden came the rise of the SJW and it all went down hill fast.
The traits which leftists use to construct "identity categories" have nothing to do with identity, and in fact, are the most surface-level characteristics of any human. Race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality are WHAT you are. The thing that matters is WHO you are.
Well said
Agreed
can I steal this?
pretty sure i've never meet a leftist that categorized people based on their identities, maybe we should all stop listening to terminally online people about what they believe
@@FantasmaNaranja The basis of identity politics is that your race/gender/sexuality are what constitute your identity. It's the reason why woke people always put stuff like "black/cis/lesbian" in their bio. I'm in college and I can tell you first hand this is what they teach us to believe. Being in college is like being surrounded by terminally online people IRL.
Obviously regular liberals don't think this way. Leftists and liberals are two different things, in fact, leftism is antithetical to liberalism. People get the two confused and as a result, a lot of liberals absorb woke leftist talking points from the news or social media without fully understanding what it's all about. Maybe those are the people you've met.
And thus zoomers have invented eugenics
Uncle Adolf is proud of you
I seen academics defending that white people lack of melanin makes them inferior. We are just missing the skull measures of frenology.
Racists 🤝 “antiracists”
*Scoring based on skin color*
🎩
🐍no step on Snek! 🇺🇸🇭🇰
It is okay to hate "the oppressor" race. That worked fine for 1930-40's Germany...
No step
@@Noperare damn, that do be accurate 😂
@@Noperare
And Japanese?
@@lucascoval828 TBF, the japanese didn't had the marxist "oppressed x oppressor" justification, they were just plain "my people are better than everyone else" racist.
"can you name any Brazilian video game characters?"
me: *THERE WILL BE BLOOD.....SHED!!!*
sorry i had to :)
Eddy Gordon, Blanka, Laura & Sean Matsuda, Christie Montiero, Lucio
I thought the exact same thing! Immediately said "SHOW ME A GOOD TIME JACK"
Anyone else curious for Winston's chart?
😅
Overwatch doesn't have a Jewish male/Israeli male but I ain't bitching.
I've never been happier that i don't have nor never had any love for Blizzard.
This company used to be a paragon some decades back. How did they fail so hard?
@@BrunoMaricFromZagreb greed
The sanctity of this developer has been fouled
I guaranfriggintee you that if Blizzard wasn't called out by this by the internet, they would have implemented this dystopian tool.
Ah yes because they haven't done so already I totally believe blizzard tell the truth why wouldn't I I mean war craft 3 was everything they said it would be when they took peoples money
@@volkerxd8821 The devs have said they never used this, they prob made it to swindle more investors, seeing the way they marketed it.
You know Blizzard fucked up when in the same week both Sophia Narwitz and Jim Sterling put out a video tearing apart their diversity tool.
Really? You'd think Jimmy boy would have loved that tool.
@@DukeWooze He's been leaning heavily into politics and trying to profit off what he can do. not even his 'transition' has salvaged his decline
@@LasagaMan Yeah him and a few other youtubers on that side have "transitioned" as well. I think they are trying to copy contra points. A lot of their styles copy his/hers whatever.
@@DukeWooze Finally somebody pointed out the odd trend of male breadtubers starting to transition all of a sudden in the past couple years lol
@@LordVader1094 Yeah it's strange. I don't think it's a coincidence.
It was literally something you would have expected from The Babylon Bee to make up as a parody. It is just so bad that words are not enough to describe it.
Can someone please plant the seed for woke crybullies to scream at blizzard to add a taiwanese character into overwatch? The absolute chaos of watching blizzard trying to appeal to them and china at the same time would be sooooo funny
9:25 Fighting games definitely represent when it comes about this because the genre itself is only made better by having a variety of martial arts to choose from. We have Katarina and Eddie (Tekken); Laura, Sean and... Blanka (SF); Giovanna (GG); Roberto (Rival Schools); Bob Wilson (Fatal Fury) and the list goes on... I also can't forget the good ole' Jetstream Sam.
True.
Diversity is part of the genre's DNA anyway.
Got to have variety.
The Ethnicity rating means nothing as a whole as there is no way to gauge how one Ethnic group is more ethnic than another. One might as well rate how dirty one pile of dirt is compared to another equally sized pile of dirt.
It would only make sense if a character is a robot or a void walking abomination. to have no Ethnicity rating score and even then, a robot is produced as part of an Ethnic group's culture so it could be considered part of their group even if on a lower rung.
The measure of how common something is or not would have to vary from place to place for any of these rating to function in any meaningful way at ll.
Especially since "White" groups like Europeans (more specifically Italians, French, Germans, Spanish, etc) are Ethnic groups too lol
@@LordVader1094 Whites have no culture or ethnicity.
its almost like this rating system is entirely arbitrary or something. its almost like all rating systems..
"Diversity Inclusion, Equity" is just having a diverse range of human shields.
I land in the center of the matrix in every single category, the density of my points forms an exclusivity singularity.
ironically forming a black hole, which improves your ethnicity score and forces you to expand. you are the beginning of the universe
Eddie Gordo and Christie Montero from Tekken, And Laura and Sean from Street Fighter are the only Brazilian game characters I can think of
The majority of examples will likely come from Fighting games. They’ve always done well with incorporating other countries. Which makes sense considering they’re often global tournaments within the story
Jetstream Sam's Brazillian too.
@@TheEmperorHyperion Oh yeah how could I forget about him good shout
i find it funny how African is its own ethnicity, but we get really, really specific when talking about people from South America. why are people talking like Brazil is the only country in South America? its like pretending that Egypt is the only country in Africa. its weird.
Blanka from street fighter also
It's really good to see OW devs come out and outright state that this tool has never been used by them in order to create one of the most diverse casts in all of AAA gaming. It's a real shame that the clueless boomer higher-ups don't have any idea how to actually do any of it, so they take this tool and use it for some dystopian shit. When all else fails, I can always count on the OW dev team to have a semblance of common sense, morals and a brain.
This is sarcasm, right?
well many claim it was never used, but can we truly believe them? some devs hinted otherwise and deleted their tweets. Early on in the game's development, yes it wasn't used. We know this because the whole world united global organization with nations from all over taking part totally fits the story and thus why there is such national diversity... but lately with some of the team changes and other things, that is another story.... I have my doubts it didn't come into play a bit in their discussions internally.
@@goddess_bree I'd rather take the word of the devs themselves who stated they didn't even know this tool existed until a few days ago than some random journo making wild claims. I heard an article state that OW2 had used this tool, while OW devs were just as horrified and clueless about the whole thing as everyone else.
@@bellsknell3297 Why would it be?
There is a point where you can't trust the people who have just been discovered to have made a "diversity creation kit" that they didn't use it at some point in development. That goodwill has long since been destroyed when they started just casually removing old movie references, callbacks to old employees, flirty character lines, and even pictures of women from WoW which had been fine for years.
They used it, and now that it's out in the light they can't admit to have using it.
A question: what will having a "diverse" cast of characters actually contribute to the gameplay of a video game?
What's all this about "gameplay"? Such nonsense! What kind of regressive troll are you? ;)
Nothing
Looking at the character design from OverWatch it does give you a whole bunch of themes to play with, and if you use those themes well it can give you something amazing.
The reality is the gameplay could be reduced down to grey boxes and different sized capsules for characters, and still have a mechanically identical game. So basically no, but themes really do matter to your mushy human thoughts (would you rather push to a loud beep, or push to a Brazilian bro yelling "crank it up" when Lucio activates their ultimate).
Nothing, but media has always been used for propaganda
Visual diversity (shape and color) helps identifying classes / characters among your & enemy teams - just compare Team Fortress Classic with Team Fortress 2.
Other than this, as far as multi-player goes? NOTHING.
The thing is, you can have diversity that makes sense and is a fun part of the game experience, without even trying or even coming off as a concious inclusion. But that requires an actual, skillfull writer and Blizzard only hires twitter pests.
Sophia, Keep on calling out these fake victims, Keep on calling out Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Jack Thompson, Marcus C. Evans Jr., Froskurinn & ZombiUncorn
We got your back
9:14 Jetstream Sam is both brazilian and also disabled
but he's also hot as fuck, but im not sure how that effects his DST score. maybe that would be some sort of "oppressive tendency" because he could topple countries with his smile alone i guess?
This just straight up baffles me. I don't even play Overwatch but I've always thought it has always been genuinely diverse both in "this" way and in terms of gameplay, there's some unique characters you can play as with all sorts of looks and personalities. Somehow they found a way to call the brazilian DJ that hurts and heals people with his tunes while riding walls not that diverse, while that's a genuinely cool as hell and unique concept.
Like they have a game that's actually diverse in both mechanics and lore/characters that for the most part kinda just is without being too obnoxious about it, yet they found a way to piss everyone off. Almost impressive tbh.
I hate the way blizzard is with overwatch. like you said them saying soilder 76 is gay.. when they said many times he was marry to widowmaker and then by magic they turn him gay. they just do what they want to try and get brownie points and i found the overwatch fan are toxic as hell as to me there is already black females in the game . but they are not black black in there eyes.
It's also weird because gay people are born gay - but by simply making a specifically straight character gay is really kind of - strange - if you get what I mean. Like, it's almost like it forgot that gay people are born gay - that's why sending them to conversion camps (regardless of ethicality) doesn't work. Yet, there seems to be this weird idea in Prog circles that - because of their dislike of the norm as opposed to revolution - they see being gay as a choice in a roundabout way. It's weird.
everytime a dev says a character is gay or trans after the fact it never feels genuine.
Now that you look back on it, they didn't consider Pharah nor Ana black yet that Cleopatra documentary happened.
Ryo from Shenmue's dub is peak Autism representation.
When you have an idea hated by most people, you know you dun goofed Blizzard. This company deserves to burn.
Honestly I want the tokenism software only so I can make something where every character is white, straight, and male and STILL have it be more diverse than Overwatch
“Can you even name that many Brazilian video game characters?”
*The Only Thing I Know For Real intensifies*
This video needs to be force-fed to Americans, A Clockwork Orange style. And I say that as an American. (And also the Devil for the hyper-progs.)
Activision-Blizzard has use the ever changing, ever excluding rainbow flag as a shield for years now, so them developing a software to create tokens is the next logical step for the western game development. These companies who are all too willing to edit, remove and erase "problematic" elements from their game into a safe gruel too appease the always-offended for a handful of articles from sites because hate will be the cause of the new video game crash.
the term's overused but "soulless" really is the most accurate term for these people.
I just wanna enjoy playing video games, have fun, be entertained & escape from real world shit, alright?
Not being preached at or lectured by freaks that don't have any particularly set of skills to survive in the real world
'challenge pre-conceived notions of how characters should look and act' [by making sure all superficial, mostly-uncontrollable identity boxes are checked]
I don't understand why "black female" is the be all end all for these people. Kotaku wrote an article praising Street Fighter 6 for FINALLY having a black female. Everyone in the comments was rightfully saying what about Elena? Apparently because she is from Africa it doesn't count. It HAS to be African American or it doesn't count. There will always be some new caveat that must be met. I was surprised thought that the people in the comments weren't having it so maybe the tables are starting to turn.
Honestly, the _original_ Overwatch, the way it was as upon release, impressed me with how varied the cast was, and how I got to experience cultures that I've otherwise had zero contact with through it.
Some of the later additions, such as the sexual orientation of some characters, already felt very token by the way of "we don't need to know this to play the game!".
Overwatch had excellent in-game dialogue interactions between some characters, revealing likes, dislikes and relationships. Dedicating half a comic to the fact that Tracer is gay really felt forced.
I've long stopped playing Overwatch because I do not enjoy where they took the gameplay. However, I didn't even think this "diversity tool" would be something controversial. It's how _they_ want game casts to be viewed anyway, _right?_
The kid who used Doomfist's gauntlet in the first trailer is never becoming a hero, is he?
Couldn’t hit like fast enough, Soph.
I'm at the point where anything that comes out of a positive Blizzard activisms is covering up whatever they are just doubling down from.
Keep on making awesome content, Sophia
They deserve to hear the truth about what's going on
I swear to god if this ever reaches a Crash or Spyro game my soul is going to leave my body.
I love seeing companies like blizzard fail. I hope they close down there’s nothing that will be lost
Starting to really love this channel.
All this box ticking is boring. Most of my favourite characters from media I gravitated towards was because of their character, not their ethnicity
Why are they even judging sexual orientation in a Multiplayer online battle arena ?
Yes it's a AAA game but you're not playing for the story or "character development." OverWatch is basically just a modernize arcade game, you pay your fee, you go have fun, and you let loose.... it's never meant to be anything deeper than that. The depth behind the game is how many hours you put into a character that you choose. So with that being said I can see people wanting a diverse cast but once again it's not like you're playing a game like The Last of Us. So the backstory behind the characters are more of an afterthought really. Representation is important but yet easily exploited, so demanding for representation in a game like this is basically just.... Silly, ha.
I love how one of the 6 characteristics this chart measures is "ability" - as if you can just add wheelchair bound characters to violent video games. It is fetishization. It's sick and the pandering makes me more homicidal than the self check out line at the grocery.
"Gotta catch em' all! WokeMon!"
That fucking Sonic joke goddammit🤣
When to see the comments on the GDC video they turned off comments lmao. Sadness I wanted to hear cover the overwatch porn scene a little more then passing mainly because she's right mei with dong is hot but also I'd dare say that side of overwatch is far more popular
Overwatch was interesting due to its diversity in its nationality which you don’t normally see as well as personalities that were striking, dumbing their characters to just race, disability, or sexuality/ orientation harms the development of good characters
"But known loser dipsh*ts online" Ok that made me burst out laughing.
They fucked up OW so bad because they focused diversity over gameplay HARD
Lets be frank it IS TF2 subclasses. BUT without any thought to game balance.
Pre "lets introduce 100 characters" it was genuinely fun because the entire game was a rock, paper, scizzors game.
Akin to how in TF2 :
Sniper kills pyro (from range) , kills spy (negating invis ability), kills sniper with backstab (you cant shoot what you cant see). Base class combat
"Ever growing group on the fringe..."
*Video of a screaming, crying child*
checks out
Brazilian Here, and I Must Say, Júlio is a Great Character and Represents Well the Brazilians (Most of Us shows a Similar Personality) and I Glad Such Good to Represents Brazilians (like Sam form Metal Gear Rising)
so I wanna know… WHY DID THE CULTURE SCORE IS SO LOW?! WHY?! He's Awesome!
is a Shame He don't Get the Respect He Desserves form the People You Mention.
Oh god you said "Circle back" and I got nauseous XDD
The world has gone crazy, everything is moving too fast and if you don’t keep up with them you’re now Public enemy #1
Corporate bigotry is the most reprehensible, and it is shameful that as many people that do currently support it.
it's the family guy skin color meme but unironically.
Not only would Overwatch's "first" black female need to be a thing but she'd also have to be the go-to meta, and even then I'm sure no one would be happy with that.
Also, how does this company even try to quantify something like orientations? Is being pansexual higher on the point system than plain gay? This sounds exactly like what centrists/rightist mean when they talk about "The Oppression Hierarchy."
Good grief, RPS dropped Tim Stone? For THAT? I stopped reading them a long, long while back and had no idea.
When RPS first started out, it was a website penned by some of the best writers for the UK version of PC Gamer in its absolute prime, Tim included. They even had VideoGaiden's Robert Florence penning a column. You got a real sense they were doing something they loved; It was pretty great. Over the years, more and more of the original writers either left or completely lost their touch. At this point it's a sucking vacuum of talent: there is nothing left worth the effort of actually reading.
I hope Tim goes on to bigger and better things. Because, to be fair, I don't think you can really go lower than RPS at this point.
We have reached all the way around and became racist again with implementation of systems like this
Everything needs to be diverse to the point that it becomes grey sludge. Everything has to be represented. Ironic, the only diversity they´ll accept is no diversity at all.
I was super depressed today and the entire sonic joke made me bust out laughing. Thank you so much I needed that!
Inb4 we meet the long-awaited first black, non-binary, disabled, old, zulu, fat and pansexual character in history.
That's literally the only way to fill that chart, and I'm ironically hyped to see it become a reality.
Remember. It's not what you are. It's WHO you are
They could do a female char called Sarah Jessica White. Her power could be typing text walls in a gadget for like five in-game minutes. If and when she finishes texting, every non-white male char in the game gets some kind of buff. While White males get a debuff.
Sophia means wisdom
one day activision blizzard will not exist, that will be a good day
No interest in the game, but I agree that the Overwatch pr0n scene is sublime.
yeah I think that probably the one game that didn't depict my ethnicity (Egyptian) as a camel riding, desert living wanderer in the desert isn't diverse enough, beautiful executive decisions
I know of more Conservative Trans people than I know of Brazilian DJ's. Or Super-intelligent apes.
Sophia using "You know it. I know it." I wonder where she got that habbit lol 🤔
That was absolutely marvellous.
"Yeah this shallowness sucks and all. But c'mom, Blizzard made Warcraft so how bad could they be?"- Blizz defense force.
Great vid, well done 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 thank you
New Sophia upload! Fuck yeah!!
Another great vid Soph. Love your video essays. So well thought out.
if you are dedicating creative focus to insuring a certain number of certain ethnic groups are show in certain ways then you are willfully choosing a creative focus that limits the range and depth of stories you can tell
Holy shit I thought you were talking about Vailgaurd
I completely forgot Vangaurd was a thing lol
There's dozens of quest chains that seem to focus on "identity" or "trauma" in dragonflight ive noticed. There's two where they give you dialogue options that are pretty much "affirm their identity" that you must select to progress the quest. I can't tell this gnoll that they are delusional? Why do I have to conform to a self-affirmed identity rather than an externally observed one? In an attempt to be progressive and tolerant they are regressive and bigoted. It's wild.
There's no winning so why even try? One side says it's not diverse enough, and the other says it's forced diversity. This is a problem with trying to appeal to everyone, you will appeal to no one. Trying to diversify a game like Overwatch is like a trap since there's no real story or one specific theme to the entire game for these character make sense in a contextual way.
I think it's better to only appeal to a niche so it won't become super popular and the diversity won't become a problem, or if they made Overwatch very alien or otherworldly they could have fictional races instead of real races and the problem wouldn't have existed, I've never seen anyone say a Dark Souls game or Elder Scrolls game to not be "diverse" enough because the races in the games don't exist.
The sad thing is, its more then possible to have a theme that would work with Overwatch's diverse cast. But it would only work, with a diversity of THOUGHT. Imagine this; A big global threat immerges. Aliens, robots, or some other big thing that threats the world. To combat it, Overwatch is formed using geniuses and high skilled individuals from all over the world. The talent and skill the organization has on paper is the peak of human performance, but because they come from all over the world... They naturally clash in ideas, ideals, and other matters. Maybe you could have Genji give Mei the cold shoulder due to long standing tensions between China and Japan. Or have Zayra constantly treated poorly due to Russia's recent actions and her being a scapegoat for her country. May have an Arabic hero strongly dislike Tracer because he is a devout Muslim and that is heavily against Homosexuality; which is a problem for the openly Gay tracer who has a girlfriend she's frequently in contact with. You could even have it so that over the course of the story, the crew slowly peel away these political stigmas and start looking at the people as people instead of as [insert country here] representative.
Hell, if they didnt want to touch real political issues, they could invent conflicts. The best Real Overwatch got was the omnic discrimination, but even then they gave that issue a clear good and evil answer, and any character that discriminates against omnics are either villain or treated as in the wrong on the issue.
Even without the pure tokenism, the characters imo, are very well written despite the “diversity quirks”
Because sexuality, ethnicity etc literally didnt play much of a role in their actual written characters lol, tracer would still be that annoying chippy speed girl, gay or not, etc.
We need you so much Sophia. Thank you for spitting all the truth you do.
Fantastic video Sophia! Can’t wait for your next one already!
I don't care about representation as a whole, but when it's the forefront of your game before you even make it. Yeah I'm out.
the fact that diversity can be made into an algorithm and even measured (lol) is a joke from the universe I didn't know I needed
I like how we already have another game series that also has a large diverse collection of iconic characters that are each from a different country in a competitive genre but approaches it in a manner of representation that is personally in a lot of cased even more diverse than Overwatch. It's called Street Fighter. Because in that game series you can play multiple Brazilians and a black DJ who while being Jamaican, is also playable. His name is Dee Jay and I hope he comes back in SF6. Kinda wild when you compare Street Fighter to Overwatch. It really goes to show how behind the series was in it's efforts that another game already achieved over 20 years ago.
I also was suprised by the regressive-left's outrage over the diversity tool,
that crap was made to please them.
Damn, really threw shade at Sonic's IQ.
i am so confused. it's 2022 A.D. and everything is still about skin color, ethnicity, and gender.
imagine mankind going into war over skin color, ethnicity, and gender. sounds like some petty ass bullshit of course eh? oh wait i might've spoke too late.
anyway though, i frequently taught myself something that i've heard before somewhere; We would all either love each other.......or die.
"Get woke, go broke"
thank god am not buying Blizzard's shit, lol, i'd rather just see Overwatch's fan art for free
Does any other male character matter if Reinhardt already exists?
I ran all this data through the predictotron. It told me that by 2026, all video game characters will be bisexual.
_Or at least claim to be bisexual._
Ahnenerbe-Blizzard is at it again.
Funny how they just go with "normal" making it look like everyone they claim to be trying to appeal to are "abnormal" in their eyes.
It's really a shame that they are finding doom in the very road that they foolishly rushed to avoid it because despite all I kinda still kinda like the game. I downloaded it today again and it was fun.
"OH my God!!!! One of our boss couldn't keep it in their pants, again. Emergency diversity GOOOOO! SAVE US!"
It's so gross how the people who emphasize this the most are the exact same people who are tied up in massive scandals and are KNOWN to harbour sex abuse and support regimes actively engaged in ethnic cleansing. That is NO position to speak down to or impose upon anyone else from.