E3 serves up gender diversity in gaming and we say YAY!

In the grand scope of things, it’s more fair to call me a comic nerd who games heavily rather than a gamer with comic book tendencies. Both feature heavily in my life, but of the two, comics are where my confidence lies and a lot of that has to do with comic books having a long history of readily incorporating mass diversity and featuring touchstones that I can relate to. Not just in gender either, but in race, class, ethnicity and life experience. I feel like a large amount of the appeal comics have for people is that there is just so much range offered that no matter what your tastes and inclinations you’ll find a comic that has a voice that lends itself to your own reality.

That said, comics also have the luxury of often being a long form medium which gives them the advantage of time to explore all of those things, and often with subtlety. Games, in general, have a much more contained amount of space with which to tell their stories. It’s a fact of what they are and I’m entirely aware of it as well as the preference for a studio to play it safe in such a costly gamble as building and marketing a hopefully profitable game. Rocking the boat and veering away from a proven method has got to be terrifying for the investors and is an additional layer of stress for the studio undertaking the challenge.

The last decade has seen the audience for gaming radically changed, and consumers are no longer willing to just accept what is being given and are willing to ask for the kinds of representation that they themselves want to see. Not only that, we’re reaching a point where gaming is starting to feel like an echo chamber and stories and characters are blending into each other like white rabbits in the proverbial snow storm. The tried and true always seems to be rugged male protagonist, with a veneer of the antihero and just about always of Northern European extraction. It’s not a bad formula, not at all, but it’s an exhausted one. As gamers we deserve more effort and we also deserve not to be treated as if we’re too stupid to tell the difference between the limits of an art form and lazy storytelling.

However, diversity is coming to the genre as a whole, even if it’s in starts and stops. We’re seeing it in movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and in TV shows like Marvel’s Agent Carter, and things like this are making an impact and offering much needed new perspectives and opening up new avenues for storylines that we haven’t seen before. This is the kind of thing to get excited about! This is good stuff!

Along with millions of you this week, I was glued to E3 coverage and one thing that stood out to me is that in the sea of games being showcased, this year seems to have been a boon for diversity and not just in the token femme fatale or the damsel in distress. There are new faces who are being the displayed, and with them come new and exciting stories. Not only are we getting the return of some classic female protagonists in the forms of Lara Croft in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Faith making a return in a prequel to 2008’s Mirror’s Edge, but we’re also getting a whole new crop of diverse characters in some eagerly anticipated AAA titles as well. Arkane/Bethesda announced a sequel to their steampunk action-adventure, Dishonored, which will feature not only Corvo Attano, but his protégé, Emily Kaldwin. Bethesda also made waves by giving us our first official look at Fallout 4 which will boast a character generator that will allow you to customize your character to which ever gender, race and appearance that you prefer.

In 2014, Ubisoft ended up with a serving of fresh hell over their decision to include 4 assassins in Unity’s co-op mode, none of which had a female option despite a planned inclusion that was eventually scraped. As a result, they became the center piece in a larger debate and caught more than their fair share of flack over this very topic, deservedly or not. This time around, however, we get to see the franchise take the on the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of the first female assassin in the main franchise, Evie Frye who enters the story as already being a master assassin, something previous installments of the series have made you earn. She walks on as already being an established badass and I can’t wait to get my hands on the controller for this one.

Last year, I criticized Anita Sarkeesian for not giving enough attention to the successes in gaming that do feature female characters who fall outside the negative stereotypes we have all become bored by. The best thing we can do to expand diversity is to celebrate when it’s done correctly, which is beginning to happen more and more. I still believe that. This week’s E3 coverage has done nothing but show me that we are finally seeing some legitimate traction in this arena and that’s something to get stoked about.