Representation

Diversity in Video games:

League of Legends

League of Legends Is a good example of a diverse game. There is a huge variety of characters from all the different (fantasy races) that are portrayed. Some examples below.

These images show a few characters from League of Legends. A chose these images as I think it shows how League incorporates varieties of different races, disabilities and genders.

Protected Characteristics:

The protected characteristics are qualities of a person that are illegal for that person to be discriminated for. These qualities include age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion of belief, sex and sexual orientation. Protected Characteristics allow for the display and representation of all types of people throughout media although this is not always the case, the different representation of people under these characteristics help to improve equality and diversity. In the recent decades, there has been an increase in representation through forms like video games and movies where there has been characters, actors and actresses that feature a diverse showcase of the protected characteristics.

Representation in League of Legends:

League of Legends features 148 different characters all with unique backstories. League of Legends’ designers value diversity in characters as it provides legitimate benefits in player retainment and “keeping the game fresh”. For example, a player typically has a select character that they play constantly, this could be for reasons like ethnicity or just based on how much the player likes their model design, and after time they may become burnt out so having a wide selection of unique characters keeps them interested in playing new ones. Greg Street or “ghostcrawler” is a game developer who stated that in League of Legends “The never-ending path to mastery is one of our core design values.” This means that they will continue to add characters to League of Legends with no correlation to the characteristics leading to the introduction of even more diverse characters to the game. This article explains how more characters are better for gameplay: /dev: On Champ Diversity (leagueoflegends.com) .

Diversity in the larger Gaming Industry:

Diversity in modern video games is not as inclusive as it may seem. There are some examples of games with diverse characters such as LoL but a majority of games feature a smaller set of the protected characteristics.

There are a lot of people in the industry that wish for more representation in games as they feel as if the games characters share little similarity to them as a player. A WildFlowerUSA article from August 2021 explains why under-represented players would like more diversity. A quote from this article reads “if I grew up not seeing the representation of trans people in gaming and I experience hostility as a queer person trying to enter any kind of gaming space or community, then I make the association that this is hostile and then I am rejected from these spaces.” This shows how players with personality and physical traits that are not of a straight white man are marginalized and almost treated with hostility especially in the gaming community as a whole. These players are pushed away from games as they cannot find characters they see themselves in, this causes large numbers of would be gamers to play less as they feel so much separation between them and the games. This article shows different peoples views on this topic: Gaming industry members discuss why we need more diversity in video games – WildflowerUSA .

How I would reflect diversity:

I believe that equal representation is important in gaming so I would try to be as inclusive as I can. The first way I would do this is through having a selection of characters that you can play. I would also aim include characters that cover protected characteristics as side characters if they cannot be the main due to limitations caused by things such as disabilities.

Firstly, I would aim to add a selection of diverse characters to my game because a majority of underrepresented people would really like to see characters that share similarities with them. I think this would be good for the gameplay as well as each different character could be better at other things or have different mechanics. This can be seen in other games like “The binding of Isaac” for example. Having a wide range creates more replay-ability as players would feel like they have accomplished more after beating the game on a selection of characters that play differently. There are definitely limitations around this idea thought depending on the style of game as, for example, a character in wheelchair would be good for representation but would not be good at jumping from platform to platform this ties into my second idea.

Secondly, I would aim to include all protected characteristic with side characters. Side characters give the developer more creative freedom as they do not have to complete the gameplay tasks of the main character. There are obviously lots of characteristics that do not affect this such as race, sexuality and gender but this idea is more focused around being inclusive for people with physical limitation.