BAFTA Adds 'Diversity' Requirement which must be filled in order to Qualify for an Award

[Nowak]

By the way

 

I'm Big Leftist Disabled Gay

We weren't asking for this, because this doesn't do anything to help us. All it does is make us look like entitled children.

If they actually did care about us, they'd be calling out injustices and donating proceeds to pro-BIPOC, pro-LGBT orgs.

 

This is, as I said, performative. Cool that they acknowledge that not everyone's a straight, white man or fully able-bodied. Now why not do something that actually helps? Oh wait, they won't, because they can't be assed to actually do anything beyond meaningless gestures.

[Guest]

i don't think they have thought this through. Games are meant to be an escape of reality, not representative of them. Even historical games are set in a different time peroid. What message are they sending, that without diversity, perhaps a LBGTQ+ individual cannot become a super mega space marine in the 24th century? People know games are fictional,  lets keep it that way. 

[sof006]

Seriously? Fuck sake, this doesn't solve anything. If anything it now just adds random characters to games "just because" and gives them no value whatsoever. If you're going to have a game with diversity included actually make the game good, don't just force it because "diversity".

[Trik'Stari]

Why is it that people who complain most loudly about discrimination seem to only come up with more discrimination as a solution?

 

Seems like there's something darker behind their complaints.

 

Edit: I wanted to be a bit more clear.

[Nowak]

1 minute ago, Trik'Stari said:

Why is it that people who complain most loudly about discrimination seem to only come up with more discrimination as a solution?

 

Seems like there's something darker behind their complaints.

 

Edit: I wanted to be a bit more clear.

It's just performataive neolib shit. It doesn't do anything to help anyone.

[Trik'Stari]

Just now, Nowak said:

It's just performataive neolib shit. It doesn't do anything to help anyone.

I'd argue that it actually hurts society. It gives people a reason to be hateful.

 

Hate, breeds hate.

[Sauron]

I don't think this should be a requirement to even qualify because it could rule out some contenders that have legitimate artistic reasons to have a non-diverse cast, even though the standard does seem to account for that somewhat. I do think it's a good thing to include as a metric for the jury though.

4 hours ago, comander said:

So basically having double the number of gays is one way of checking the box. 

Something tells me if it were 5% you'd still be complaining. Also LGBT does not only mean gay. Anyway they aren't required to meet all those criterions, they're required to meet at least one. Surely a 50/50 men/women ratio doesn't bother you on grounds of statistic discrepancy...?

4 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

Movie: Cats

 

Summary of Race in Production: Cat

 

Result: denied

To be fair, Cats should be instantly thrown out

[Nowak]

Just now, Trik'Stari said:

I'd argue that it actually hurts society. It gives people a reason to be hateful.

 

Hate, breeds hate.

If they did care about minorities, they'd be calling out injustices against us and donating proceeds to orgs. Not this shit.

[JZStudios]

Well I guess Naughty Dog is winning game of the year again after all.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Garbage. Now everyone will just have token "diverse" people to tick off on the checklist just to comply. Yeah, racism and diversity problems solved. Congrats. Why haven't we thought of this 50 years ago... So much diversity, so progressive!

 

Also the bullshit idea that everything has to be represented with 50/50 just needs to die already. Unless they'll also demand 50% representation of women in garbage collection, construction, sewer maintenance, remote oil rigs, fishing, deep earth mining etc, you know, all the nasty disgusting soul and body crushing jobs almost exclusively occupied by men. Of course they won't. They'll demand fancy leading positions with office and AC. Been there, seen that. 5-6 years ago or so. And they are still pushing this drivel. *Sigh*

This is what's known as "award bait" (see oscar bait), 

 

Checklist progressiveness is still performative wokeness. If a game can't figure out how to do these things by itself, it has worse problems than trying to win an award.

 

Now I think the specifics are way too specific.

Quote

For non narrative game where the cast is an ensemble - the total roster of playable characters meets one (or more) of the criteria below:

• 50/50 gender balance
• 20% belong to an under-represented group
• 10% LGTBQ+
• 7% D/deaf and disabled
• Significant amount of characters featuring regional diversity
• Significant amount of characters from lower socioeconomic backgrounds

You should explain where there are characters that are not frequently portrayed on screen and/or how the game is offering a non-stereotypical representation.

 

Let's hit all the points just for giggles:

- 50/50 gender balance. So does NB not count? Do trans people count as both or neither? Who gets to decide if the gender is a 50/50 split? So this criteria falls apart almost immediately because of the binary aspect.

- 20% belong to an under-represented group: So this means you need to have at least 5 playable people in the party. I'm not sure who decided on this critera, but the average RPG game has a playable cast of 1, with usually 2 additional computer-controlled players that can be switched between (see the FF7 remake)

- 10% LGBTQ+ , so now we need 10 characters.

- 7% D/deaf/disabled, so now we need 15 characters.

- Significant amount of characters featuring regional diversity. Hmm so what if the world is nothing but cats. How do you even approach this.

- Same, but socioeconomic backgrounds. What if there is no socioeconomic difference in the world? What if it's all communist cats.

 

Now the above should all be taken tongue-in-cheek, as it intentionally ignored the "meets one" part of "one or more", clearly you can hit three checklists by having a disabled POC woman as an option, but when you start doing "two-for"'ing it looks more performative than inclusive.

 

So it should be pretty clear that the only thing required for an ensemble of playable characters to qualify for the award is to have a representative configuration of characters to play when non-configurable, and if they are configurable, twist the players arm to not be able to party with ensemble characters that throw the balance off. So if you pick Mr.Whitey Shootyshooter, you can't party with Mr.Blonde SwordKnight, but you can party with Miss BlueEyedPunchy. They can still be in the storyline, but they won't party with you because you already have your necessary DPS needs met or whatever.

 

What I think is going to happen here, is that crappy games will still continue to do what they've always done, placing sexy lamps in places to fill their checklist of wokeness, and then try to go "see we did the woke thing" rather than just produce the game they want to make and consider how these things exist in their world.

 

I don't really see anything wrong with the BAFTA award creating criteria, but it's not really making diversity a requirement to win, it's just encouraging games to do the minimum of minimum to qualify for the award. 

 

Now if they were serious, that "one or more" would have been defined better. Which appears they try to address with:

Quote

a3 - Main storyline/subject matter.

 

The main storyline/themes/narrative of the video game is about under-represented group(s). The game should demonstrate this across the MAJORITY of the game to meet criteria.

So to win a BAFTA award, it has to actually be a story with a central theme on diversity which, fair enough, but look up the term "oscar bait". You really don't want games to be produced entirely to win awards, by having the game's story completely supplant any focus on gameplay, mechanics, or choreographic synchronization (beyond QTE) to produce that narrative. 

 

Visual Novels, are basically games with the least amount of "gameplay" that can fulfill the BAFTA awards criteria. Where as your average FPS/TPS shooter tells the story through narration and the occasional "wingman" character to act as a hintbook. A game that is entirely mechanics based (eg think Tetris and Match-3 games) really has no way of fulfilling a checklist since the presence of any story, only exists to tell the player how to play the next level, there's not really any purpose other than a framing device for the mechanics, and if you happen to win with one character, you can go back and play with another, if that was even an option in the first place.

 

So IMO, the awards criteria makes it favor narrative-heavy games and makes mechanic-focused games not able to be considered past putting the character on the box art.

 

 

[gloop]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

all communist cats.

I want a game about communist cats right now.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

- 20% belong to an under-represented group: So this means you need to have at least 5 playable people in the party. I'm not sure who decided on this critera, but the average RPG game has a playable cast of 1, with usually 2 additional computer-controlled players that can be switched between (see the FF7 remake)

The criterion specifies "for a non-narrative game where the cast is an ensemble". Think Fortnite, not Bioshock.

[SolarNova]

Just another reason to ignore large Awards like these.

 

utterly ridiculous.

 

Can u imagine their response if it was suggested that such representation should be equal to the currently agreed population breakdown of any given country / state where the game world is based ?

That there is actual equal representation.

If the game is set in the USA and has 100 character in it, then no more than 1 (ONE) character should ever be even considered to be made as 'transgender'  and maybe 4 'gay'..because thats just the simple facts of population demographics.

 

Now you bring that down to just the main cast of characters, say 5 ..or even worse just the main playable characters of 1 or 2, then guess what, they are going to be straight, and if set in a predominantly Caucasian location , they will be White.

 

But lets not get bogged down with the facts of reality , thats to 'problematic'

 

 

Oh but ok what about completely fantasy based location settings. Ok ok cool .. fantasy based, so anything goes. Ok well if anything goes, why should there be rules on representation ..its a fantasy setting after all In a fantasy setting perhaps there simply are no major ethnic differences, maybe its just one people, one group and they all look the same ...imagine that.

[Kisai]

Just now, Sauron said:

The criterion specifies "for a non-narrative game where the cast is an ensemble". Think Fortnite, not Bioshock.

The same list was used for both sections. And yes, Overwatch, Fortnite, DOTA, and similar "avatar" based games should be able to do this easily, as nothing about the character really matters in the game other than their special power. It's not like "the power of sexy makes enemies weak" or anything.

[JZStudios]

4 hours ago, thorhammerz said:

One really begins to wonder if physical execution is any worse than online-social & career exocommunication  nowadays.

If Count Dankula is anything to go by, I'd say no. He even got a job with the BBC that newspaper found out about before it even aired and they plastered the front pages with "BBC hires Nazi!" I'm pretty sure the only income he has is direct contributions from his subscribers, YouTube has blacklisted him and he can't get any ad revenue at all, if he gets a job the newspaper will find out and get him fired, random people in the streets try to attack him, etc. If he didn't have a semi-successful YouTube channel I guess he'd have to just live entirely off of his wife.

 

4 hours ago, Nowak said:

I'd suggest watching Matt McMuscles' video on Battlefield V, because it was a whole lot more than "forced diversity" that killed that game.

It was forced diversity and the devs calling the fanbase stupid that killed it on arrival. After it arrived it just wasn't very good thus people continued to simply not buy it. Most things Matt mentions could be said about the previous titles that did well. Except they didn't force ideologies and the devs had a good relationship with the fanbase.

[Kisai]

2 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

 

If the game is set in the USA and has 100 character in it, then no more than 1 (ONE) character should ever be even considered to be made as 'transgender'  and maybe 3 'gay'..because thats just the simple facts of population demographics.

 

Nah, based on the entire population, minorities do not make up as big population. Rather games and films need to over-represent minorities based on their setting otherwise the setting would preclude having any minorities at all except in belligerent positions.

 

There are far more people who are trans or NB in cities that are "out of the closet" than those that are in small rural towns, because in a small rural town, everyone knows your name, and your inability to conform will create nothing but difficulty for you. The actual representation of GLB people is probably a lot higher, like 30%, and for Trans and NB it's closer to 15%. It just depends on who's interpretation and gatekeeping you're using. There is a lot of gatekeeping in GLBT+ communities, and that's unfortunate. 

 

The amount of trans people who actually get to medically affirm their gender is far lower, because in a place like the Unitied States, access to medical options is a giant gatekeeping problem (eg medical insurance) where as in a country like Thailand (which has very low gatekeeping barriers) the average trans person will get medical intervention when they are young enough to not develop secondary characteristics of the gender they're not. In Canada there was, for the longest time, only one person who did these kinds medical affirmations and they were not as good as some of the American or Thai surgeons, so as a direct consequence of that, Canadian trans people would have to pay entirely out of pocket a lot of expenses to go down this route, insured or not.

 

[suicidalfranco]

3 hours ago, Vishera said:

Also some feminists believe that women should do whatever they want with their body,and that it's nobody's business.

Explain booth girls and race track babes

 

[Vishera]

Just now, suicidalfranco said:

Explain booth girls and race track babes

 

What i said explains it all,if the girls like it good for them,if not they can quit.

[Vishera]

44 minutes ago, Benji said:

Besides Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general which always presented itself as overly politically correct, did anyone of different ethnicity or sexual orientation ever actually complain about that? I mean normal people that are not into extreme manipulation like the "gender science" or "feminist" people?

Their obsession with gender and race exposes an underlying issue - they are sexist and racist that hate white men and want to replace them with something different,hence "diversity" came into play.

While the original people that sparked those movements had a legitimate and just cause,it blew out of proportion by those seeing the movement as an opportunity to gain power and influence,therefore it got politicized and quickly grew to resemble ultra-nationalism,after the two movements kind of merged,their ideal human is black women,therefore this is the replacement for James Bond.

 

The Guardian: Bond's number is up: black female actor 'is the new 007'

[Nowak]

2 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Except they didn't force ideologies

Oh wow other people exist, I can't believe this! Must be pushing an ideology!!!!1

 

"Forced diversity" doesn't exist and there's no agenda going on. A game dev being shit at PR doesn't change that.

[JZStudios]

2 hours ago, Nowak said:

And it was pretty rough around the corners, was it not? Pretty buggy, limited saves in an open world RPG and the castle sieges were much smaller scale than promised. 

Technical limitations and bugs don't really detract from historical accuracy.

 

1 hour ago, Nowak said:

This is, as I said, performative. Cool that they acknowledge that not everyone's a straight, white man or fully able-bodied. Now why not do something that actually helps? Oh wait, they won't, because they can't be assed to actually do anything beyond meaningless gestures.

Nu-uh! Rockstar shutting off GTAV online for like 2 hours to fight racism totally helped! Because of black people I couldn't play my game!

 

46 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Why is it that people who complain most loudly about discrimination seem to only come up with more discrimination as a solution?

But it's inclusive discrimination and racism. After all, why be rewarded on merits when you can just be praised for breathing? Unless you're white. Then you can fuck off and die.

 

44 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Also LGBT does not only mean gay.

Lesbians and gays are the same basically, bi is half gay, and trans is a whole can of worms, but typically still gay.

 

45 minutes ago, Benji said:

And now they're basically ruining a part of that freedom by practically forcing their quotas down everybodys throats that forces them to include stuff that was never actually intended to be there in the first place.

It's important to note that no one is required to meet these criteria to sell a game. If they don't they just simply won't be in the BAFTA running. There's other game awards.

Though I do question something like Ghost of Tsushima. I guess it's set in Japan so it might have Asian "minorities" (Despite being the majority globally) but it's not like the Mongolian invasion had tons of queers or other diversities around.

[JZStudios]

7 minutes ago, Nowak said:

Oh wow other people exist, I can't believe this! Must be pushing an ideology!!!!1

 

"Forced diversity" doesn't exist and there's no agenda going on. A game dev being shit at PR doesn't change that.

I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Battlefield V literally replaced real men with a 15 year old girl.

[StDragon]

1 hour ago, Nowak said:

By the way

 

I'm Big Leftist Disabled Gay

We weren't asking for this, because this doesn't do anything to help us. All it does is make us look like entitled children.

Labels in general are just toxic to society. Personally, I don't care what anyone's race, creed, or orientation is so long as respect is reciprocal. Everyone is unique with unique circumstances in life. Also, everyone has opinions of others. But, that whole "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" still applies.

 

Essentially, this whole award based on quotas is virtue signalling to the highest degree. I don't like it one bit. It's arrogant, condescending, and most importantly divisive. Nothing ever good comes of it.

 

 

[suicidalfranco]

16 minutes ago, Vishera said:

What i said explains it all,if the girls like it good for them,if not they can quit.

girls liked it

feminists didnt

those jobs are now a dying breed because of the feminist backlash 

[Nowak]

1 minute ago, JZStudios said:

Nu-uh! Rockstar shutting off GTAV online for like 2 hours to fight racism totally helped! Because of black people I couldn't play my game!

"We did it, fellas! Our performative action ended racism!"

 

ftr, nobody thinks rockstar's meaningless gesture actually helped, because it's, as I said, meaningless.

 

2 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Battlefield V literally replaced real men with a 15 year old girl.

And I'm sure Battlefield 1 was a realistic depiction of World War 1. Hey tho, keep trying to find agendas that don't exist outside of what a lib who got, like, 3 retweets on Twitter thinks is "helping".