Why not have both?

(Also, the game needs to be reasonably balanced, or that gameplay diversity is wasted and might as well not be there.)

Because the former kind of diversity stimulates the mind and can enrich a person's appreciation for ideas and complex thought patterns, and affect decision making skills in a positive way.

Your kind of diversity stimulates nothing but DIVISION for the purpose of serving a political agenda.

If the diversity provide fun like the original Baldur Gate Edwin / Edwina then yes.

If the diversity sucks like the new Baldur Gate expansion, no I don't want that kind of diversity.

I hope I'd make a good game, too! :D I don't think it has to be considered "lazy" if my world just happened to align with some - or even all - of the character stereotypes.

The STALKER example is a good one: the game is a sausage-fest, and white-skinned in its entirety. Which, given the location and story, makes sense. And that really is a perfect example for my point. As a gaming community made up of a wide variety of people, let's understand that not every game needs - or even should - be a cornucopia of character types and diversity. And when we see games that either follow the stereotypes or don't feature a wide variety of personality / character types, there's no need for social media to blast it simply because the flavor-of-the-week isn't included.

Anyway, diversity done right (read: not preachy and overbearing) is fine. Done badly, it's worse than leaving it out entirely. The hard part for designers is to make it seem like a natural part of the story without being preachy and overbearing, and it's probably not something that should be attempted by every game designer.

You absolutely rock. In every way possible. I tip my hat & bow to you.

What a crazy happenstance! Just three days ago, I installed Alpha Centauri. Again. (I managed to stay clean for almost a YEAR, so I am a little proud of myself)

Seven factions, each one of them building their society around different core value, all of them presented with their virtues and flaws, all of them equally playable, and - generally speaking - well balanced. No designated heroes or villains. The most serious, mature treatise about possible future of humanity in videogame format I have seen so far.
And for those chaps in the audience who don't recognize differences which are more than skin deep, from the seven leaders: one African, one Chinese, one Hispanic, one each for North America, Europe, Russia and west of Asia (judged by names and portraits). Three of them women (judged by names and portraits).

But I apologize, you were discussing the brand-new concept of "diversity".

It's supply and demand because it's what the market has demanded, currently demands and will keep demanding, and is therefore supplied. Games being changed to make for more 'relatable' characters are but a case in point (not that I agree with the latter, mind you, as those are technocratic top-down impositions that no creative individual should capitulate to, and are essentially an inversion of forced diversity). Your specific issue I addressed was, and I quote, "main characters people of a very specific type". None of those rather popular three male characters are of the same "type". As much as men are only grizzly and hardened in videogames, as per your disproven assumption. By "our society", I'm going to assume you mean the West. Western society is very much White by default, both on a demographic and cultural level. To argue otherwise is just presumptuous globalist wishful thinking, not to mention discriminatory, as you wouldn't dare make such statements about any other society, or deny that any other ethnicity has a society to call their own, even if just on a rhetorical level.
And white males are absolutely the majority market for video games, despite all the sophistry and statistical sleight-of-hand that go into these studies to pretend some sort of utopic parity has been achieved: [url=]http://www.statista.com/statistics/232383/gender-split-of-us-computer-and-video-gamers/[/url] EDIT: Never mind, I can tell we're going to start splitting hairs and overlook the issue we're actually discussing. Yes, they are, and yes, they would. Want to know why? Because those games are not about the character's gender or race, as are the "diverse" games that are being decried in this thread. Nor are they based or built upon the foundations of other, specific characters. Note that I was careful to word my statement as "they would have been equally good games if they had been envisioned for white male characters", ergo, not outright character swapping as you're positing. With diversity being the meaningless, empty shell of a buzzword it has become, I very specifically said that they were not called diverse, so I don't get where your confusion is coming from. If you're interested in seeing how I define the type of "diversity" that is being decried in this thread and why I think it's wrongheaded, I'll point you here https://www.gog.com/forum/general/diverse_games_suck/post78 .

Oops: It seems you got the link wrong; it leads to a 404 error.

They usually do that. Since they can never win a logical argument, they confuse & derail, leading you down a twisted path until you make a false move.

That's when they hit you with their final blow, calling you something ending in ist or phobe.

Well done on sidestepping the trap.

I think it would. You don't? If your story is the exact same as every other story that has been told for years, what would make it more interesting?

I'm not sure having no female characters at all makes sense according to the story. I'm only in the first game so far, but how is society even still alive? I mean, I've been to bases where they live as well, and no women? Did they all suddenly die? This is why I only mentioned race when I spoke of STALKER.

I don't think it is that hard at all. Or at least no harder than making a good story and narrative in the first place. And if you can't go through the effort to do THAT, maybe just make Tetris, then?

Yes, and by "type" I was talking about stuff like gender and race. I didn't mean "This one is muscled" "This one is a geek" "This one wears power armour". "Type" is simply easier and faster to type. Although yeah, grizzled generic bland white male does permeate gaming quite a bit as a character.
Anyhow, "that's what the market demanded"? Where? Sorry, I must've missed that meeting. All I've seen is "that's what the marketing executive demanded"- i.e. the sort of technocratic top-down impositions you are railing against, except implemented in the opposite way then what you are saying.

I didn't use the phrase "our society", you did. And I already assumed you meant "white males" by it. "The West" certainly isn't the same as that. So blacks, women, hispanics, etc. aren't considered part of the "West" to you? They're their own society separate from yours?
And your argument is that it would be racist if I applied that to other ethnicities? What, you mean like "Asian society is for asian ethnicity"? What the hell is Asian ethnicity? Indians? Filipinos? Chinese? Japanese? Bangladeshis? I guess they're all the same, right? This magical "Asian society"?

I'm sorry if you missed the news, but "white males" are no longer the majority in gaming at all. In fact, the in the US market, white males (or even white anything) aren't even the majority any more. Interesting statistic you showed me, though. Again, I must have missed where 40% of the games made for US gamers were targeted to women, according to your supply and demand argument. Wow, I must've been asleep for a long while.

Yeah, I'm still not getting your point. If they're not called diverse, they're not diverse? My initial point was that games where actual thought was put into writing the story end up very often automatically being diverse (the very opposite to the narrative being presented in this thread by yourself and others about some external force ruining games by making them more diverse). To this, part of your response was 'Nobody called Memoria, Heavy Rain, Longest Journey, Bayonetta, to name but a few, "diverse". They're just accomplished games which happen to have main characters who aren't all white males.', i.e. they're not called diverse, they just happen to be diverse. Who cares what they are or are not called? My point was never about what they were called, or some pre-biased negative definition of the word diverse you made up for yourself. All you did was prove my initial point (at least to yourself. Like I said, I haven't played all the games you mentioned).

Big sale on. Gonna buy me some games where the men are men, the women are shopkeepers, and the monsters fear the path I tread.

Yeah, I quite liked System Shock as well :P

Like, Recettear?

Haha - good one!

But it was a TRICK! I suck at most games and monsters most definitely do not fear the path I tread!