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Naoki Yoshida addresses Final Fantasy 16's lack of diversity

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Kumomeme

Member
he actually give understandable reasoning here and yet those twitter folks and at that other site narrowed their view, make unnecessary big uproar, complaining like this is some big sin toward 'humanity' while end up completely disregard all others larger portion sign of positive aspect from the game that should get more attention at first place. adding stuff like that should be secondry or fourthy priority. most important is make good game. good gameplay and good story. developers need to has unswayed strong vision. dont force to push these kind of things foremost just for sake of 'pretty presentation' to please certain minority group of people. to be fair, there is tons of race with different skin colour and culture on OTHER different country thats not fortunate enough to get proper attention all this time and yet nobody bat an eye. not having this element doesnt immediately gonna result to a bad game. these merely just a 'presentation' and not necessary must be presented all the time 100% without fail. while i understand what the fuss is about but people should set their priority straight and dont forget, despite he said some stuff is inspired from our reality world, this still a fiction.

in the end it is japanese developers that develop western setting game with english voice acting as main focus. this already speaks something.

it is makesense that they strictly adhere to their in game narrative and geography foremost. Valisthea not a whole world. it just a part of it. it is nice that they wont budge. this actually shows how confident they are at the worldbuilding, character and story which is, a good sign.

also some nice message here from Yoshida. there is more to 'diversity' than it is just all about skin colour, gender or sex preferences and too focused on outer appearance could make us unable to see what underneath of people.

however im not suprise if this lack of 'diversity' displayed in trailer is intentional as it is part of on going problem that the storyline gonna address later in the game.

i say the game is moving on right direction. i hope Yoshida and the rest of the team stay firm on their ground. they should continue to stick to their philosophy. dont let others tell them what to do but they themself should know the best what should they do.
 
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Kumomeme

Member
The real issue here is that this is yet another FF game where we only get to see a fraction of the world. One of the best parts of the earlier games was the ability to travel across the whole world, be it with airships, chocobos, or other vehicles. But starting with FF12, their worlds became more restricted, and we only got to see a small part of the planet.

I just wanna fly around with an airship and discover secret locations again; is that too much to ask?
this stuff like this is what people should concern more when we want to talk about videogame

not about being obsessed over certain skin colour, gender or sex preferences foremost above anything else. that should not be main priority.
 
*sigh* tired of this crap!

Do people really lose their sleep because they don't feel represented IN A VIDEOGAME?? I'm never represented too, as in I'm ugly as fuck and almost every male protagonist is good looking but I'm not gonna become a journalist so I beg them to create an ugly male protagonist so I don't feel alone.
 

Myths

Member
How many movies have you seen lately where inexplicably the dad is white, the mom is black, the kids are Asian. RINGS OF POWER faux-Hobbits are the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Edit: dwarves too


Edit: damn also the elves
But that’s the problem: the minute they decide to do those things then you guys bring it up anyway. Makes no sense to say devs should do what they want, then they decide to do something “different” and it comes under scrutiny as pandering or signaling.

The energy needs to be kept the same in both directions.
 

Needlecrash

Member
I'm Black. Tying forced diversity into a video game is shitty projection. The Final Fantasy series has all types of characters, don't know why people are bitching about it especially when the series already has it. Really wish these shitty journalists stop pushing this shit on game developers. It's tiring.

Also, isn't the protagonist from Forespoken a black woman from NYC 🗽and people are complaining about diversity??? The fuck??? Why

Ideal game for very good diversity that's not forced? Mass Effect 2.

Not ideal? Mass Effect Andromeda.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
IMHO, it's just a really silly question to begin with, and not even a very interesting one. "Where's the diversity measured against modern 2022 culture in this medieval fantasy RPG?"

Doesn't seem like an interesting question, and seems like a waste of time to answer it or spend time dissecting it.

Where's the diversity? I don't know, Japan's not a very diverse country, ethnically. It's 99% Japanese. What are they supposed to base the ethnic diversity of their games on? United States-specific norms for what is considered culturally acceptable by current 2022 standards? That seems like a lot of unnecessary work, and honestly, a huge waste of time.

I think it's a boring question that nobody is asking except someone at IGN who wanted the headline for clicks.

Are they going to ask this Q in every game interview now?

"Where's the diversity in the Toads for this Super Mario game?"

"Why does Link have to be white?"

Like, at what point does this just become completely ridiculous?
Lol it's been a while since we look at "completely ridicolous" from the rearview mirror dude, now we are already in the "reality is more absurd than fiction" phase.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
Still waiting for an apology from Square Enix for this retarded shit.

ApprehensiveGivingGrayreefshark-size_restricted.gif
What...what the fuck is that?
 

Rykan

Member
You mean like this......
I don't think it's really fair to use extreme examples. There are people having wild and extreme opinions, but in itself I don't think that the call for more diversity in video games is a bad one and I don't think it's bad or wrong to ask developers why there is a lack of diversity in their fantasy game.
 

UnNamed

Banned
The ironhee of this story is people who address the problem of the lack of inclusion of blacks are not inclusive because they only think of including blacks and not other races.
 

Doom85

Member
Also, isn't the protagonist from Forespoken a black woman from NYC 🗽and people are complaining about diversity??? The fuck??? Why

To be fair, that move resulted in some people bitching about her “not fitting” or “being out of place” in the world despite the entire point being she was teleported from our world into their world, so even when writers go to the most extreme to “justify” to the nitpickers how such a character exists in the fantasy world, they still find an angle to gripe about it.
 
Where are all the real people that give a shit about this? It's always the media and online. In the real world most people can't stand this forced diversity and inclusive shit.
 

TheCed

Member
My opinion : It's a bummer.

I do think diversity in gaming is a cool thing. But there's no good in going to one extreme or the other in this situation.

Being disappointed is fine, being outraged isn't.
 
And as far as video games go, where exactly is this “white supremacy” we’re trying to avoid? I must of missed the offically licensed Klan and Neo-Nazi games from back in the day. You’d be hard-pressed to find a game, from any era, with even subtle right wing themes. And when it comes to representation, I can’t find any solid evidence or study showing any significant disproportion of white characters relative to the demographics of the population. The only “evidence” they ever point to is a small handful of B-tier games staring military haircut white bros from the Gen 6-Early Gen 7 era. Then they memed that into being something way bigger than it actually was, and used that as the basis for a crusade to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
That's exactly the problem, it was a strawman all along.
 
It’s set in the medieval west for fucks sake. man I hate the woke crowd. What next Jesus as an African. The rewriting of history needs to stop.
 

Needlecrash

Member
To be fair, that move resulted in some people bitching about her “not fitting” or “being out of place” in the world despite the entire point being she was teleported from our world into their world, so even when writers go to the most extreme to “justify” to the nitpickers how such a character exists in the fantasy world, they still find an angle to gripe about it.
Of course she's fucking out of place LMAO. Walking down 5th Avenue, next thing you know, she's in the Corel Desert fighting Ruby Weapon lol (yes I know that's FF7 but I think you get it).
 

sachos

Member
I feel bad for the devs because i feel people are expecting them to have the same experience and tact when dealing with this questions/answers as a Western/American developer, i feel its hard for them to give a satisfactory answer by western standards because of the society in wich they grow up/live.
I also wonder how many people would have brought up the diversity topic if no big media site had put it in the spotlight to begin with, i sometimes feel people are being brainwashed into caring about this stuff.
 

Ozzie666

Member
Japanese made game full of white peoples and Japan doesn’t complain.
Rest of the world complains
This is getting old
It’s diverse an inclusive from a Japanese view
 
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Neofire

Member
You don’t consider Japanese people to be POC?
As a whole I personally do not. Then again "people of color" is both a modern and misused term.

Somehow Asian's (especially most japanese people) are "poc" but are the same phenotype as typical Caucasians but Irish aren't and some actually have a degree of melanated pigmentation 👀

That term was created as a "me too" to include Asians in with Black Americans to make it seem like they have something in common. Which is not true.
 

PJX

Member
So why are all images of him as white man, and where dose it say in the bible, he was black. Ur the kind woke nutjob I’m talking about.

No where in the bible did it say he was white either. As a matter of fact there are over 70 versus that talks about his skin color being dark. You're the white power nutjob that keeps racism alive.
 

Luc2010

Member
No where in the bible did it say he was white either. As a matter of fact there are over 70 versus that talks about his skin color being dark. You're the white power nutjob that keeps racism alive.
Jumping to conclusions off of this one post. Don't tell me you have white guilt or some shit?! LOL He must be some white supremacist because he thinks Jesus is white. Just something you grow up believing. Doesn't mean he is wrong. Possibly made observations over the years from pictures and statues. Me, I don't think he is white, but he ain't black, either.
 
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killatopak

Gold Member
The fact that the color or Jesus' skin is even brought up is ridiculous. Shit doesn't matter. That's just surface level thinking and he wouldn't be as universal to the world if color is more important than the values he demonstrates.

Why is it so hard to understand that one can be deemed relatable without even a speck of genetic similarity to a person.

I relate a lot to Simba and he's a fucking lion.
 
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