So I am going to be going on a huge rant of video games where it is currently and potentially why there is either lack of care or no creativity anymore.
AAA GAMES
So back before 2010 games were at its peak in regards of creativity or even the mass scale of content that was put into games. Everything from COD WAW, Fallout 3, GTA IV, Left 4 Dead, Dead space,Metal Gear Solid etc all of these games were revolutionary with the mass content with 30+ hours and can be played over and over again without being bored.
Jump to now with how the current games are orchestrated with day one patches and loot boxes as you pay 120$ for 10 hours of game play. Now with loot boxes its semi alright with games like CS GO where there is no game breaking loot though depending on the game it eats at the development times towards games that the content creators are wanting to create new modes or new levels.
Our great games this year that runs under AAA games are The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,Resident Evil 7: Biohazard,Super Mario Odyssey and Assassins creed. Now my thoughts for as to why this is the case as to why this has happened other than greedy companies is unfortunately politics. Everything between from Gamergate to Feminism has stopped the creativity within these companies (I dont care for politics for where it doesnt belong btw) and thats why we have seen a surge into indie games as the shackels are gone.
Now if this example isnt enough look at something like Assassins creed as a big comparison when both the company hires were forced to fit an agenda and the creative teams were restrained due to gamergate and all the drama surrounding it. If you look online Black Flag the prior big game has a 88% vs Unity one of the most controversial with politics and also adding loot boxes etc having a 64%
Unity
Black Flag
What's gonna suck is if all of this gets worse the game pool could worsen and all we will see with all these companies are the same rehashed stories that were handed to them by one company who has no care except not to offend anyone.
INDIE GAMES
So with everyone upset over the over saturated loot boxed buggy games costing 60$ of AAA games the new trend of all now is to consider for indie games. This trend is the next big thing as people can simply make a game from simple assets and either grow the game/community or end up scamming lots of people. We have something as simple as Unturned which is a very simplistic game where you try to survive in a world against players and zombies.
Now people who make Indie Games can go to a couple types of places to make these kind of games as those being either steam direct/early access or even crowd funding. Now both have issues like take for example Kickstarter which has issues within it which are the fact of you pledging to back an idea not even the game itself so technically they dont even have to give you a game and the other huge issue is having these newbie devs calculate the numbers of how much money they need and most of the time they throw a dart at the wall and go from there.
Now one game we have seen this lack of knowledge is Dead Linger
They realized halfway they messed up and bought a new engine and within doing so and having to start over they in the end went bankrupt and everyone who backed are left dirt dry with nothing to play.Now whats interesting are devs like Smedley who made H1Z1 wanted to go down a "Indie" route and when doing so failed miserably and in doing so blamed the community within it.
The other huge factor is Steam's early access program which can prove for good games in the end or simple messes. With games like White Noise or Kerbal Space Program that did well, this program can work well as the community can help shape and test their games.
Though there are other games like Rust or Overgrowth that have been/was in early access for 3+ years and no end in sight. Having had multiple of these games like Dayz which I love dearly though the lack of content and having to come back every other year to see them add one item/animation is plainly sad.
Now with the rampant amount of indie devs soaring to make games when AAA devs wont, there are now AAA devs quitting their jobs to achieve this life like Bioshock or Smedley
We saw this when the devs of Bioshock went on to make Flame in the Flood which was a hit on Kickstarter.
OVERALL
In short point if politics pull out of video games and these companies stop treating this like a strict business and let creativity flow through we will see games go back to how it was. I fear a bubble is going to pop soon between loot boxes and low quality games like Mass Effect this will get a lot worse unless people talk about this. Luckily we saw a slight push back against EA and their games as they lost millions towards making games the community sees as toxic. I hope you guys like my rant as I love video games but we have gotten to a point of waiting for updates vs releases.
So Feminist Frequency talked about representations of women and about having a gender inclusive culture? Normally talking about one excludes the other because it's hard to be gender inclusive when you are walking on eggshells. It depends what they talked about but if they were saying "this representation of women is wrong" or "women should be represented this way" etc, that is a big part of the reason female characters in media are sometimes either not very well fleshed out at all or not present. It's not the only reason - sometimes it just doesn't make sense - it would be dumb to put women in a situation that only involved men - like in roles in a real life war they historically weren't in etc - but it does play a big role.
People have a tendency to respond to male characters as though they are only that one character, but people have a tendency to respond to female characters as though they represent all women and that means we get less variety in what sort of female characters we can have without people getting angry.
As a female gamer myself, I relate just fine to male characters but I personally would like to see female characters in a wider variety of roles, provided they made sense - but this isn't something I'd be yelling and screaming about like some would - it is a nice to have thing, simply because it is rarer so it is therefore more interesting (just like an unusual plot turn is more interesting than a cliche one). However, those who bitch about how one character is represented, deciding that that character represents the whole sex is detrimental to this happening. I want variety but I kind of want the opposite to what those who complain about representation want because I want variety in characters and the roles they play which will sometimes mean a character - and that's what it should be seen as, is a character, not every member of a group a character is part of - is the sort of character you might not want representing a whole group of people (which is fine because it really isn't representing that group - idiots just think it is). I would also rather people want to create these characters than feel compelled to - as an artist I have an issue with people pushing agendas onto other people's art - so I guess I wish people wanted to create more variety in characters and character roles and more variety in general honestly whether that be the plot itself etc - I just want people to want to create things a bit more out of the box and to want to create these characters in the first place due to an actual want to create them. Bitching when people do create these characters doesn't exactly help create this want in people.
If feminist frequency were discussing representation in terms of "represent this way and not that", they are wanting contradicting things because making creators tiptoe around how to represent characters because people get angry thinking they represent everyone in a group, is a surefire way to make people make less characters that fit into that group and will make a less gender inclusive culture. If that's the case, they are not being very intelligent by contradicting themselves like that. It's not surprising unfortunately though. Feminism was very important back in the day when it achieved a lot but now it seems to focus on really stupid stuff. It still could be helping real issues but that doesn't seem to be the focus, unfortunately.
I like the Feline Frequency spoof twitter though: https://twitter.com/catfreq
There was a lot spewed depending on exactly and I for one am not going to re hash gamergate again lol but essentially yea exactly. Though with Feminist Frequency you can tell they had a huge say when something thats suppose to be a WW2 game turned its game slightly to add something thats not that historically accurate as being something like a black female nazi which is possible sure but like what .02 % and I dont mind females in games at all. It just solely depends on an organic story not one thats prodded and rushed like what these companies are doing. I love Leia in Star Wars, Alien and even the most recent game Hellblade as these characters are fleshed out perfectly. It just sucks when people think there is something missing in an industry and they go and shackle down some workers and have them half ass something that has no meaning or heart in it. We also have to see it too more males do play video games especially a certain category so sometimes depending on the category you might have the same kind of characters though that goes with the same for males too lol. Its very recent we have seen more females playing more competitive/action games like Overwatch which is awesome to see I just hope the market itself works decently with it. Yea I totally agree Feminism was great when it was needed though now its really not needed its pushing many things to far like when Yahoo instead of hiring people fit for the job they were forced to hire 80% women and in result of grabbing people who had no experience in the field though it fit their diversity hiring it resulted in every single Yahoo account to be hacked. I want a nice blend for women though I dont want someone like Feminist Frequency to step in honestly lol I dont want another crash for video games like Atari. Indie game market needs an honest fixing and AAA devs need to ignore banter and work on their project
With Cod I had heard originally that the historically inaccurate characters were only in the multiplayer and well, COD isn't normally that accurate in regards to multiplayer as they don't care about historical accuracy in multiplayer that much, so I didn't really care about too much, but I heard later that the inaccurate characters (either by sex or race) were also in single player? If that is true, that doesn't really seem like good writing since that isn't historically accurate and the single player is supposed to be at least to some extent. If it is like that in single player, I don't agree with that, but I didn't care so much either way about the multiplayer simply because they don't claim to make those historically accurate in the first place. I wouldn't miss it if women weren't there but I wouldn't care they were in multiplayer, but having women in what is supposed to be a historically accurate singleplayer game in a situation that didn't involve women just seems stupid. Issues aside I enjoyed the beta for WW2, but my partner recently got the full game and he says it seems worse somehow than the beta. I haven't hopped onto his and fiddled yet so I can't comment on the difference between beta and full game, but it is disappointing if it is because I had fun playing the beta with my partner and a friend of ours that hopped on for a bit.
I did remember the Gamergate stuff going on, and I remember the ETC people talking about it too, but kind of forgot about the details of it.
As for more males playing games, that still is true, but not by much nowadays when you look at adults. Last I saw those stats, it was getting pretty close to 50 / 50. It's definitely true about the categories though. Males dominate some categories and females others definitely and you are right about Overwatch being one that stands out for shooters since it attracts a lot more women than a lot of the other shooters. I quite like Overwatch personally but I like some of the others too.
I agree with you in that I also don't want people stepping in to change things because I believe that is the wrong thing to do the other people's art - I just want people to want to create things outside the box and sometimes that involves various character roles etc. As for how we reach that point I don't know - other than creating stuff myself - but I think those who interfere with other people's art are actually detrimental to people gaining the want to do this. I just like seeing things that are a bit different, whether that is in gaming or on TV or YouTube or in books so I would personally like more variation because writer's / creator's themselves want to create something a bit more varied.
I didnt play to much of that game I stick with Treyarch myself but I heard a lot of negativity towards it and with that game I feel couldve been a lot more if they didnt sit down Frequency to discuss elements of the game. I completely agree with you as I would like to see more creativity in all forms of media though with a lot of them wanting to go down a certain road and for others to not do so gets shamed over it is awful.