On 6/20/2017 at 10:43 PM, frob said:

However, a WW2 war game striving for accuracy ought be predominantly white males, with a few other skin tones mixed in. Women will be citizens or non-combatants.  Anything else would not be accurate.

Uhhh...depends entirely on where the game is set, and what viewpoint is chosen.  The whole pacific theatre has Japan and China.  Japanese Americans fought in the war too, even as their families were in internment camps.  In North Africa, there were Indian and Australian regiments.  The Maori's had their own battalion.  

I think the problem is that people tend to have a vision of the allied forces being all-white, and therefore not bothering to model or show anyone of any other color in the war.

9 hours ago, swiftcoder said:

It's a customisation in multiplayer only... And since you can't select which side you play for, characters will randomly be assigned either an Allied or Axis uniform (hence black/female characters can end up on the Axis side).

Honesty, if we can have Zombies in WWII, I don't see how letting people play who they want in multiplayer is going to cause any less realism.

Well, maybe a Zombie mode in a WW2 CoD should ALSO anger people just as much as a black wehrmacht soldier? Now, we both know that for some incomprehensible reason Zombie Modes are AWESOME still to some people even though they have been done to death and were a stupid idea to begin with... so you will get less complaints about these because some people still seem to be suckers for a SEPARATE MODE they can SELECT to take part in... and because SOME people on the net just complain about anything that reeks of diversity pandering just because of "f*ck liberals".

I bet with you there are still a ton of history buffs that would complain about a Zombie mode should CoD:WW2 feature one. Should it also be forced into the one and only multiplayer mode so you HAVE to see Zombies if you want to play the multiplayer mode, you can bet the shitstorm will only be marginally less than for the black wehrmacht soldier thing.

WW2 Zombies belong into Wolfenstein and similar alternate history settings. These can be awesome stories and games in their own right, altough I hat how the inclusion of "n4zis" often lead to boring black and white stories. I do prefer more nuanced bad guys, and the ones inspired by the n4zis often are just cardboard punching bags without personality. But that is a different discussion altogether.

Personally, I wish only for the devs to make one simple basic decision: are we aiming for historical accuray, or a fantasy setting tuned for maximum entertainment. Make the basic decision, and follow through. I can enjoy both just as much, given they get their history right for the historical setting, and a good story for the fantasy one.

Mixing or mislabeling on the other hand is a nogo for me. ESPECIALLY when history sometimes still is a touchy subject to this day, you want to avoid historical accurays which can rile up history fanboys.

So yeah, it might be a small thing given its only multiplayer and it just wasn't possible any other way with their existing CoD matchmaking and avatar creator... but it highlights the devs LAZYNESS in about every topic when developing their game. They couldn't be arsed to rethink their matchmaking for CoD:WW2, they couldn't be arsed to rethink the avatar creator, and they most probably couldn't be arsed to read up the WW2 history to make a more accurate depiction of it.

And given how many people only buy CoD for the multiplayer... no, its not a small thing. Its actually a big thing. Even I as someone who serially ignores the mutliplayer modes of games he just buys for the singleplayer campaign can understand people that would expect MORE of the multiplayer mode of a game labelled "WW2" than modern warfare multiplayer with a WW2 skin. And yeah, I complain about the BF1 multiplayer expierience just as much, without any black german soldiers in it. They got their weapon selection totally wrong, should have limited the amount of automatic weapons, or have given them the severe drawbacks all of these first gen weapons had as of WW1.

18 hours ago, ferrous said:

You can 'get past' a female jedi?  Oh gee, how enlightened of you...  I think your sexism is showing.  Even the OT hinted at Leia having force powers, and being the last hope if Luke failed.

 

The multiplayer portion of a CoD game doesn't need to be historical, and it's really not going to be, nor should it, so it's a little weird to enforce the, "No women or people of color" rules.  Yes, I'm sure it will drive the weeaboos insane.  I guess they could do something even sillier like with the America's Army games, where everyone always plays the 'good guys', and all the opponents always look like the 'bad guys'  (AKA everyone who is not on your team looks like a Nazi) Though to be honest, I find that disturbing too.  Though a more practical option, would be a way to disable all player customizations -- which might be kind of nice anyway, since i find games where everyone gets to wear an entirely different hat / outfit / painted guns, the games look really garish.

If they wanted to have a historical campaign (SP or MP), and do it from a different and accurate perspective, that'd I'd be all for.  Maybe someone of color from the australian or indian regiments in North Africa, one of the actual famous russian women (yes those are three separate links)

Nothing HAS to be historical accurate, you know? The dev is not forced to create a historical accurate game. They can do whatever they please, have the germans win the war (wolfenstein), or feature n4zi zombies.

But they cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot do whatever the f*ck they like and shove fantasythings into their game, and then enter the big stage and boast about how historically accurate their game is (which AFAIK they did, even IF they were talking about the single player campaign).

And then there is the thing that gets me most, the apparent lazyness on part of the dev such light historical skins over a clearly modern warfare game show. Nobody seems to care to think outside of the box, maybe for fear of players not liking it, or because they ARE lazy (or just lack the money or time), and it just shows how little they think of their player base. Just give them their yearly dose of modern warfare, skin it however you like, but don't you DARE change the tried and tested gameplay to better suit the skin were putting over the whole thing.

Yes, currently we don't know about the story campaign (given its CoD, I don't expect it will make history buffs happy), and its only the multiplayer. But we have seen how this kind of thinking ruined the single player campaign of other games *cough*BF1*cough*, and it is not diversity that is the cause. Its game developers playing it safe and not investing enough anymore into their games, money and time just as much as brain power.

18 hours ago, ferrous said:

Uhhh...depends entirely on where the game is set, and what viewpoint is chosen.  The whole pacific theatre has Japan and China.  Japanese Americans fought in the war too, even as their families were in internment camps.  In North Africa, there were Indian and Australian regiments.  The Maori's had their own battalion.  

I think the problem is that people tend to have a vision of the allied forces being all-white, and therefore not bothering to model or show anyone of any other color in the war.

Well, then offer factions, imperial japanese army, the different factions of the chinese civil war going on at the time, the all black US divisions, the different regiments of the commonwealth nations of color, the german african auxiliaries.

You can easely find asian and black combatants for both the allied and the axis side. You sometimes just have to dig deeper. And then invest a little bit more into additional uniforms. Hell, nobody would care if the african auxiliary fighting on the axis side would get the latest german tech.... germany normally gave their allies the older tech, but then it is quite feasible that out in the field the germans hand out newer stuff to their allies just to make sure they can hold the line.

Hell, THIS actually would be diversity. Over all those generic black and asian and caucasian avatars skinned with german or US uniforms all the smaller combatant nations of WW2 get forgotten. What about the ottoman empire? What about all the eastern european nations that fought for their nations freedom vs the red army? What about the african auxiliaries wo fought for countries they most probably haven't visited in their life?

Of course that costs time an money to recreate. Its much easier to do a half assed job, and pat each other on the back on a job well done.

12 hours ago, swiftcoder said:

I'd like to point out that about 1 million black men served in the US armed forces in WWII.

That isn't some drop-in-the-bucket number where you'd be unlikely to ever see a black face. That's nearly 10% of the total US armed forces by the end of WWII.

Which is why at least I like to see black soldiers appear in a WW2 themed game... just not in the lazy way as CoD:WW2 currently features them.

10 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Fair enough, it's definitely not a realistic game. It's just..weird I guess to see that? It won't make or break multiplayer, sure. 

Like I said, I hadn't realized it's a customization option for multiplayer, so I can understand why they have it. The only other option would be no customization at all, which I guess wouldn't be ideal.

Well. I might sound like a broken record here, but multiplayer IS an important part of a CoD game. Is it striving to be as historical accurate as the single player campaign? No. Is it able to tell a story like the single player campaign? No.

But just like Zombie modes stick out like sore thumbs in a game set in a historical setting, a mutliplayer done in such a lazy fashion does as well. Really, its not a binary choice. You can have customization AND historical accuray. Sure, there are some limitations as to what uniforms your avatar can wear depending on the skin color and gender you select. You can still participate on both sides, you might just get assigned a different uniform.

Some people might dislike the idea of having a bunch of allies fight together instead of germans vs. US, sure. You could make everyone happy by adding a switch so you could activate or deactivate faction uniforms. History buffs would never have to see black wehrmacht soldiers, and guys who like their games more uniform would only see wehrmacht soldiers on the other side.

And that is just a stupid idea I came with in minutes. I am sure if you would really invest the time one of the main modes of your game deserves into thinking through how to balance customization vs. historical accuray, you could come up with better, and maybe cheaper ways to allow the maximum amount of customization for the minimum amount of time and money invested.

And yes, IF the developer went unto the stage clearly depicting this game was a fantasy alternate history story meant to entertain, I would stop complaining as much... it would still be a missed opportunity to move the FPS multiplayer format forward, and I still might talk about it as modern warfare in a new skin.

But the whole reason WHY the thing is worth talking about is because some corporate shills from marketing cannot stop themselves going on the big stage and talking big about how this game is historical and patriotic and all... I know, marketing. But how many people are going to believe the crap? How many people take the fantasy WW2 story they came up with as canon without ever opening a single history book?

History deserves more than that.

EDIT:

To give some more examples on how this can be a problem and how others think outside of the box to give the history buffs something:

I am a longtime World of Tanks fan. Yes, that game is about as historical accurate as Wolfenstein. It has no real PvE or single player content as of yet, and historical accuray never has been the main goal, no matter what some marketing shills claim.

WG.net did a test run with a more historical nation vs. nation mode some time ago, where each side only would have tanks of a single nation, fighting against tanks of a single nation on the other side (normal random matches have mixed nations). The mode totally bombed. The nations were just not very balanced against each other, so the french tanks slaughtered everyone else because they were the only ones with autoloaders at the time.

Now there is talk about WG.net finally returning the the nations vs. nation mode, but as a PvE mode, where people choose a campaign, pick their tanks from a limited set of tanks of the right nation (for example russian KV-1 or T-34, or a select few russian light tanks that participated in campaigns of the time), and then get to fight against AI controlled Pz 3 and 4 in a team... as some kind of cooperative mode.

Now you could say that this is also some kind of lazyness, showing how clearly the devs have trouble balancing their tanks against each other and the different maps. On the other hand, it is a brilliant solution to give the more historical interested people a mode in which they can play a historical campaign with more or less historical gear on either side, without restricting the choice of other people that can still have their random free-for-all-fests.

Will the mode drum up enough interest to survive? Will it upset the matchmaking for the random mode? Time will tell, but WoT clearly has a big enough playerbase to survive with some players less in the random matchmaking queue, and some of the history buffs complaining about having to fight 70's tanks in their Tiger 1 might actually be happy for once, shut up and just enjoy the game... who knows?

Sometimes a small change goes a long way... well, maybe that IS the longterm plan of the CoD:WW2 devs, starting with a free-for-all-history-be-damned random multiplayer mode, and adding a more historically accurate campaign mode later on. Who knows.

EDIT 2:

Oh, and before anyone else mentions it: yes, all of the problems I am talking about are not "caused by diversity". Because I don't think the call for more diversity by itself is the problem. More diversity is good. But its becomes a problem when such righteous calls meet general dev lazyness. That is why I opened the topic. Because I at least feel currently devs are approaching this diversity thing from the wrong angle.

And yeah, maybe I am asking for too much given all the risks and interests these devs have to juggle with at the same time. Still, I think its a discussion worth having.

Multiplayer deathmatch does not need to be historical.  Having a black guy in a wermacht outfit is no worse than having players respawn, or take multiple bullets to the face, no bleeding out and able revive a dead comrade and have them up and fighting without penalty two seconds afterwards.  Why is the first one a big hang up for you and not the others?  It's more telling about your hangups than it is anything else.

Similarly with all your complaints about BF1 and it's level of realism.  Yeah, it's not realistic, and you call it a complete failure -- except it's not, from all accounts it sold very well (around 15 million in the US alone!)  So it would seem people would much prefer fun over realism.  So let people who aren't white males have the ability to have avatars that actually resemble them, make the game inclusive. 

And WoT, yeah it's not historical, no it was not balanced for nation vs nation play.  Also good on them for finally adding women tank crews, though a bit shitty to make them hard to unlock as opposed to a standard option, and I think they still don't have black crewmembers -- which they really should have for the US forces, considering there were all black crews back in WWII.  Definitely one of the pluses of Armored Warfare was it's variety of crew members.

EDIT:  Re EDIT2:  Look, for the campaign, if they want to be historical, that's great, but the multiplayer portion of the CoD series has never pretended to be historical in any form, so it's silly to push back against any a-historical changes, especially ones that are about inclusiveness.  Like I said, I'm right there with you if they want to add a campaign that is from the viewpoint that we usually don't see, but was actually historical, like the 761st Tank Battalion for example.

15 hours ago, ferrous said:

Multiplayer deathmatch does not need to be historical.  Having a black guy in a wermacht outfit is no worse than having players respawn, or take multiple bullets to the face, no bleeding out and able revive a dead comrade and have them up and fighting without penalty two seconds afterwards.  Why is the first one a big hang up for you and not the others?  It's more telling about your hangups than it is anything else.

Similarly with all your complaints about BF1 and it's level of realism.  Yeah, it's not realistic, and you call it a complete failure -- except it's not, from all accounts it sold very well (around 15 million in the US alone!)  So it would seem people would much prefer fun over realism.  So let people who aren't white males have the ability to have avatars that actually resemble them, make the game inclusive. 

 

And WoT, yeah it's not historical, no it was not balanced for nation vs nation play.  Also good on them for finally adding women tank crews, though a bit shitty to make them hard to unlock as opposed to a standard option, and I think they still don't have black crewmembers -- which they really should have for the US forces, considering there were all black crews back in WWII.  Definitely one of the pluses of Armored Warfare was it's variety of crew members.

 

EDIT:  Re EDIT2:  Look, for the campaign, if they want to be historical, that's great, but the multiplayer portion of the CoD series has never pretended to be historical in any form, so it's silly to push back against any a-historical changes, especially ones that are about inclusiveness.  Like I said, I'm right there with you if they want to add a campaign that is from the viewpoint that we usually don't see, but was actually historical, like the 761st Tank Battalion for example.

You are right, a team deathmatch is not realistic. Nor is any FPS really realistic. And yes, that isn't the point of an FPS. But then, what is the point of skinning that game in WW2 uniforms? Why not have fantasy factions and uniforms like in many other successfull FPSes? And why then go on stage an clamour about the WW2 historical aspect when your game cannot really be realistic by design?

Consider this: if you create a product that claims to depict history, even if only by not making it abudantly clear what you did is a work of fiction, IMO you have an obligation to not misrepresent history as it took place back then. Doing anything other than that, you are creating propaganda, no matter if intentional or not. You are promoting a wrong image of history. That is why to me, at least, soldiers respawning, which is clear to everyone is not happening in real life, is less of a problem than completly misrepresenting historical factions... BECAUSE those things are 70 years in the past, and not everyone playing that game is reading a history book to know to tell fact from fiction.

About BF1. I am NOT calling it a failure as a game. Seems many people enjoyed playing it. Seems it did sell well (altough some comments made me believe the online number dipped quickly, but then IDK really... thirdhand information).

All I was saying was that the whole thing is as historical as wolfenstein. There. That was all I said. Seeing the whole team run around with chauchats and BARs that actually work like a charm and without being slowed down by the heavy weapons is just laughable.

Now, I can get over that... because as said, its an unrealistic Team deathmatch. I am still a little bit PISSED that Battlefield didn't try to be a little bit more "innovative" (for lack of a better term) and actually try to design their gameplay around the historical event, not bend the historical event to fit the inteded gameplay.

Would players like to crawl around in the dirt, firing single shots from slowly reloading rifles at each other? Well, we don't know. But even then, there was the whole storm trooper thing at the end of the war. How awesome would it have been to create classes around stormtroopers, getting access to the fast firing weapons usually used in all modern FPSes, and the martial arts training to actually do the close combat attacks many FPS feature, but paying for that with severly limited range on maps that actually sometimes force stormtroopers to take a different, and longer route, because they are not equipped to fight the normal grunts armed with long range weaponry?

So, I do lament that DICE did not have the guts to go the extra mile with the multiplayer setup and gear. The campaign on the other hand really gets me. Biplanes armed with rockets firing at Zeppelins. Come on. That now is wolfenstein level of fantasy alternate history. But as said, I do appreciate the first level of the campaign, I think its a wonderful idea. I maybe wouldn't be so harsh about the general campaign if DICE wouldn't have shown they obviously KNEW how to make a more fittig, more historical campaign for WW1... and then most probably felt they needed to create something more traditional to satisfy the usual FPS tropes.

As to the female tank crews... yeah, I mean, its quite historical at least on the russian side. No one besides the player itself has to listen to his own tank crew talking, and you actually don't see tank crews on the vehicles anyway (thanks, age rating...). So even IF some history buff (and maybe some mysagonist, which, lets be honest, are also out there and playing these games) would object to the inclusion of female tank crews... they have the option to never put ANY female tank member on their tanks, and their opponents don't see them if they do. So in my opinion, its the best solution for such a thing. Everyone is happy besides the people on both sides who want to shove their worldview into other peoples faces.

The fact that you have to work hard for them is... yeah, not ideal. But then, the free skill IS powerful (which is why premium vehicles coming whith free skill crews is kinda... P2W, if only a little bit), and really, its a start. Maybe, with WoT 2.0 they go the route of armed forces and make gender a part of the crew generator just as name and ethnicity, in case were different ethnicities were historical (the US for example, and yes, you get mixed crews, which is not historical, but I don't care here, because by now it has been made abundantly clear that WoT is not in any form or sense meant as a historically accurate game).

Again, as a closing statement, I have to stress that I am NOT saying CoD is in any form obligated to make their multiplayer historically accurate, or they have to treat their multiplayer with the same amount of care as the single player campaign, which DOES have some form of story thus is much more in danger of delivering historical misinformation.

And again, I am less concerned about this incident (which even I have to admit is blown out of proportion in the end), and welcome any form of diversity in games which is intelligent and built into the games core... what I am concerned about is the general lazyness and risk avoidance of big AAA releases as of lately, because THAT is why new factors like diversity and inclusiveness become problems.

The AAA studios seem to just try and tick boxes, while investing as little as possible to tick those boxes. What could have been an INCREDIBLE expierience for fans and casuals of the topic alike turns into a light skin on top of a generic expierience. Again, talking BF1 here, and not because I think it failed as a game, but because it could have been so much more: We get BF skinned with a WW1 theme. I think a lot of BF1 were happy about a new BF game, they appreciated the different skin and updated graphics. Hell, the first level of the campaign alone most probably was quite a relevation for some because it was so new and unexpected.

But it could have been so - much - more than just yet another BF game. It could have been one of the few true WW1 FPSes that are depicting WW1 not only as a skin, but with gameplay, story, characters, everything. And no, I am not talking about a simulator here. I am talking about taking a bold step to balance an expierience true to the reality of WW1, and still making this a fun expierience fans of traditional modern shooters can enjoy.

If BF1 would have lived up to that potential... it would have been the first BF game I would have buyed myself and wholly played through. Because I at least am burned out of the ever same modern automatic gun filled shooter... a slower, more tactical expierience where a good bolt action rifle is king, until you meet the machine gun nest and the storm trooper, tweaked for fun, would on the other certainly rekindle my appetite for a shooter.

Coming back from this tangent: my problem is not diversity in games (so please stop trying to paint me as a sexist or racist... I am neither, and my posting history should make that clear). My problem is how these new factors are highlighting the problems this industry is already facing. And thus having unintended consequences. Consequences maybe not even the parties pushing so hard for diversity in games wish for.

22 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

Because I don't think the call for more diversity by itself is the problem. More diversity is good. But its becomes a problem when such righteous calls meet general dev lazyness. That is why I opened the topic. Because I at least feel currently devs are approaching this diversity thing from the wrong angle.

That's the trick, isn't it?

I'm wary of calling it "lazy" in all cases.  All development has a cost. The cost of assorted skin textures is very low but not quite zero.  For a hobby developer, that cost financially is relatively large. Instead of buying/finding a single texture, they now need several at several times the cost or effort. For programs in the past that needed to fit on tiny cartridges or downloadable bundles measured in kilobytes or megabytes that cost in terms of space can also be large.

For large teams in professional settings who have the resources to change a few skin textures, though, I agree it is mostly laziness. There may be some UI costs and some systems work, but relative to the rest of the game it is small if designed from the beginning. 

More versus better is why I said what I did above.   I wrote for WW2-era games realism means predominantly white males (about 80%) if you're striving for a realistic number for the main game.  Critically, that doesn't mean 100% white, nor does it mean 100% male.   A studio building a WW2-era game that claims they chose exclusively white males for historical accuracy is being lazy/cheap.

If you're not looking for a realistic blend and you have the budget, let them be whatever options you can imagine. Pick a mix of races and genders, even skin tones adjusted by a color-picker so you can have blue skin, red skin, green skin, whatever. 

"More versus "better" is important both in real life and in game designs.

Better diversity does not mean equally represented, with 50% male and 50% female, and each race or ethnicity represented in equal shares, although frequently that's what you hear from people wanting "more" diversity.  For many reasons (both good and bad) there are socially prevalent gender roles.  In the US, about 91% of nurses are female, about 94% of childcare workers are female, about 99% of bricklayers and stonemasons are male, about 98% of all fire fighters are male. Computer programming is a similar mix to nursing, about 90% male and slowly shifting more female.  While people constantly debate if the ratios are healthy for society, it is foolish to ignore the fact that they exist and are the levels that they really are.

Based on that knowledge, for our real life diversity that means women programmers should be about one in ten and stay at the ratio as studios grow. A studio who has 45 male programmers and 5 female programmers is right on target for gender diversity. Racial diversity depends on location, but again should be roughly those of the demographics around them.  In that environment people aiming for a mix of 50/50, or even 70/30, are pushing for "more" rather than "better". 

Using that knowledge in the game's diversity, I would expect that if visiting an elementary school in the game I'd see an equal gender mix of children but a mostly female teaching staff.  Players visiting a construction site would expect mostly males. Shoppers in a grocery store would be about 3/4 female, shoppers at a hardware store about 3/4 male.  Demographics of the area matter as well, the area outside a building should have a similar racial makeup as those inside the building.  A level designer wanting to make them all equally gendered and equally raced is confusing "more" with "better".

Better diversity does not mean perfectly equal distribution. In games it can mean enabling more choices for skin tones so players have options, but even then it should not mean perfectly equal distribution.  Those who fight for a perfect 50/50 gender balance or equal racial divisions may have "more", but it is certainly not "better".
 

It doesn't need to be just about gender and skin color. 

Many games these days follow a good balance to elements beyond gender and skin color.  Traveling to a mage city has more mages but still a mix of rogues and soldiers, traveling to a military barracks will be mostly buff soldiers but still some mages and rogues.  Or if you've got a mix of humans, elves, dwarfs, rat-men, and treefolk, expect the city in the forest would be mostly treefolk, some elves, and an appropriate mix of others blended in, similarly an underground fortress I'd expect predominantly dwarfs and rat-men but almost no treefolk.  Not "more" diversity, but "better" diversity.