Just as much as feminist critics – Sarkeesian included – play and enjoy a whole lot of games that disproportionally draw on sexist stereotypes, so EA fans have accepted a whole fucking lot of crap that comes with their "good" games. You're correct to say that EA fans can not vote with their wallets in that respect, just as much as feminist critics can't change the portrayal of women in games by not buying the games that have aspects they dislike. Same thing to a degree, yes of course.

However, my examples went worlds beyond that. What EA pulled off in the last four years alone would have smashed consumer trust in just about any non video game related company, letting their sales plummet. But, nope, EA is up and running. They haven't even felt a real backlash switching to Origin (and describing it as spyware, but that did create a backlash in Germany), insolent DLC troubles, microtransactions, forced multiplayer in single player games, diverse DRM lies etc. Hence they will continue that wildly successful path. That's what 'hyper consumers' enable. And let's not forget that present video game culture also includes grossly submissive stances towards all those strangly anti consumer proceedings (look up e.g. the "trap of gamer gratitude" Jimquisition video).

I myself am done with EA – until they actually publish their newer games on GOG (or other places sans DRM).

Why, in just about 10 years, hyper consumers have narrowed down millions of possible PC game distribution channels on the internet to just one is completely beyond me. But it happened. Today's PC gamers are on the forefront of desperate consumerism. Imagine Sony pulling off "Early Access" on PSN: they'd be cut to pieces by the consoleros. Imagine Microsoft pulling off "Curator": oh no, the conflation of publisher and press! In what way wide spread hoarder statements like "I want all my games in one place" and "I need Steam to organize my game library" play into hyper consumerism — I hope I don't need to elaborate on that. Judging from 25 years of experience with the medium, today's gamers know comparatively shit about their hobby and the art form it constitutes.

I do question why Assassin's Creed continues to be so successful, but I don't look down on players that happen to like the series. I myself would have been content with e.g. the Tomb Raider concept seeing its 20th iteration had it not all went downhill with the 'innovations' of the reboot and, well, Steam. But the more successful the series continues to be, the less risks Ubisoft will take. Spreading out with small gems like Child of Light or Valiant Hearts might prove unlucrative in the long run. Here of course, voting with wallets would be possible.

It is of course interesting for me to note how even still today, indie game conventions are twitter-destroyed in connection with gamergate while the AAA industry and the monopolist PC publisher has nothing to fear at all, welcomes, profits from and in some cases pours fuel in the fire to keep the controversy going. I do relate that to underlying hyper consumerist attitudes — under no circumstances are the big dealers to be attacked. Hence the discussion of "ethics in game journalism" instead of the ethics of the AAA video game industry, i.e. where the money hence the corruption actually is.

We do have a huge problem with hyper consumerist attitudes in the games industry, I agree with Alexander at least in that respect. I may not necessarily agree with all her examples of that consumerism.

No, not "activist". Not the Social Justice Warrior narrative, no thank you. Writers are using diversity as salt and pepper (while the Witcher doesn't reflect diversity in skin color, the game definitely tries to be diverse outside of a RL historical/racial context). Not as political statements. There's no "must" here. I'll refrain from quoting the article's conclusion yet again, but this is "Yes we can", not "damn it you must".

And Chironis hardly always sticks with the idea of historical accuracy to advocate the possibilities in game design. Take the paragraph on The Order — read as straight out hating by RWarehall. Chironis' main argument here is that The Order draws on the Knights of the Round Table (fiction, not history!), so it could well reflect the diversity of that fiction. Which is the stronger claim for me personally, and in fact far more reason to offset a factual lilly white 'historically accurate' protagonist cast with the exaggerated 'exotic' diversity of the Arthurian myth.

But, what is 'historically accurate'? This is where your forest and leaf comparison comes into play. We would have to agree that the leaf is there of course; and I would say that a black leaf in a lily white forest would visibly stick out. In other words: While Katie Chironis could call her game 'historically accurate' in the sense that a black person could have been there somewhere, her idea that this character would be representative of the time and age, hence "historically accurate", I fail to follow.

No, a black person in there would not necessarily be a gross historical inaccuracy, I agree with Chironis here.

Still pretty unusual, of course (unusual in Denmark at the time — not at all in London).

As to the boredom, yes, I happen to find historical accuracy quite boring. I don't play games for their historical accuracy, thank you very much. Thankfully, I've never played one. Uhm, is there even one out there? Every time a game designer justifies a bad design choice with 'historical accuracy', I have to laugh. Chironis justifies a good design choice with historical accuracy, and I STILL have to laugh.

And in a Shakespeare game? Shakespeare? The guy who infamously let a clock strike three in 44 BC (Julius Caesar, Act II)? No need for it. No need to "justify" a black character in game based on Shakespeare's work, as the author was obsessed with diversity, faraway places, exotic characters, cultures he never came into contact with (like Jews, banned from England during Shakespeare's lifetime).

Chironis takes great pains to justify historical accuracy in a game based on the work of an author who was never, ever concerned with historical accuracy. And that's that.