Do you think woke people would accept it if you made a game set in a traditional african village and for some reason there were White people in african clothes just wondering about like they belong there? (Remember they complained about White actors in the crowd in the Aladdin live action movie https://archive.ph/84oi2)
Thats what i think when i see some games that randomly shove black npcs in East Asian or European settings.
Rune factory 6 (edit: sorry i meant Rune factory Guardians of Azuma) has black npcs despite being set in a feudal Japan setting. (and also lgbt but i already knew they had gone woke since rune factory 5 when they added gay marriage in that one too when the localizers asked them to)
Edit: lol redditors downvoting me.
I’m still not sure why this matters. Is the game good or not? When I played Ninja Gaiden back in the day the pixel colors weren’t an issue.
It is a signal.
Would I eat at a restaurant with a big sign out front saying "tastes like shit, and we spit in your food!"... Maybe? Could be some kind of anti-marketing gimmick, and maybe the food is great and the service is impeccable. But maybe, just maybe, the food tastes like shit and the staff spit on the food.
Putting these things in is signalling that you have a bad game, that you've spent money, man-hours, marketing efforts, and artist funding, on something that NO GAMER EVER CARES ABOUT. You're signalling that your primary effort is NOT making a good game. You're loudly declaring to the world "we don't care about good gameplay" when you make these choices, because you DID make choices: That money from the diversity consultant could have gone into hiring more bug-testers, for the simplest, clearest example. Give a million to Sweet Baby Inc., then you don't have that million to give to 50 artists, playtesters, and programmers to actually make a good game.
That restaurant is called Dick’s Last Resort. People do go there and the food is good. What’s your point? If by signal you mean indicator, then I agree with you. But that doesn’t mean it actually sucks. I’ve played plenty of games that suck. This might be one but I haven’t played it. If I play it and it sucks then I’ll move on to something else. It’s not an emotional decision.