It's kind of ironic that putting in more POC and women is seen as stifling diversity and "meeting a quota" instead of just...putting in more women and POC.
Wait, it's not ironic. It's fucking shitty.
I'd try to see this from both sides though. There's no right or wrong answer for this stuff, it's all a difference of opinion because ultimately, this conversation will inevitably devolve into "what makes a character worthy of inclusion" or, in other words, what is the most valid qualification criteria?
Let's say we have one slot for a character and we all want to pick who deserves to be in.
We have characters that are black, female, asian, white, side characters, main characters, niche characters, surprise characters, characters with great movelist potential, etc.
Who is to say any one of these is more important than any other? Are we to say that one should outweigh the other? Would a character who is black and appeared as a side character in one game outweigh a white main character of a multi-million unit franchise whose name is in the title? Or what if a female has no real fanbase and no discernable powers and she's up against an alien with cult popularity and fantastic movelist potential?
I'm not trying to say your view is wrong. You want what you want, I'm just saying we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss what others want and what might be more important to them as criteria for character inclusion.
I think some people are afraid there's a slippery slope in which characters without as much going for them (fanbase, movelist potential, notoriety, prominence in their own franchises, etc) will get put ahead of others based solely on skin color or gender alone.
That said, I'm playing devil's advocate here--I don't think such a thing would have to happen because we have more than enough characters of color and genders who can check off boxes on almost all those categories (popularity, movelist etc) to choose from so I don't feel in practice it's quite so bad.
Just trying to help everyone see from both sides. Both are valid concerns because both have a crummy worst case scenario, but that's not to say the worst case scenario would reasonably happen. I actually made a thread on an old forum long ago and asked people to rank what was most important to them when choosing characters for a roster (race, gender, religion, popularity, fanbase, movelist potential, units sold, etc) and the results were fascinating and really shed light on why all these character arguments happen. We're all judging characters based on different criteria.
Sorry for the novel, this stuff has always been interesting to me though!
. Maybe I let the folder "date" in the picture fool me and I'm remembering incorrectly lol.
