As an engineer, I like the Engineer. But, it didnât make me want to play the game. It did make me want to know if sheâs holding a Triac or an SCR. Maybe itâs exotic and itâs a thyristor!
Nope, still donât want to play the game.
I can say that diverse character art is more likely to get me to look at a game/book/film because it tells me the creators of the media are more likely to actually care about their product.
so are there not any white dudes or you just didnât show any because the post is about diversity?
I like the art. But have no interest in a multiplayer game where
Not my thang.
And? What if there werenât any? o_O
For what itâs worth to me (Cisgendered White male) I find things like this refreshing, and it might draw me to a game I wouldnât otherwise play, but not to a whole genre. 4X strategy for example, I am awful at, and wonât pick up even if it was literally face on the coverâŚwell okay maybe then, just to figure out wtf.
It would be interesting to see otherâs responses though. I donât feel like I have a vested interest in playing a character that looks like myself, but I certainly have gotten the opportunity enough times that maybe the novelty is playing a female black amputee bisexual instead.
Iâm a white dude, but Iâve also been playing games for many years, and over time the sameness of character art gets pretty dull. I like these portraits. Only slightly because theyâre not white (though proper diversity in games should have happened a long time ago) but more because they look like something other than âgrizzled cynical anti-hero-but-really-hero with biting sense of humor struggling with a Dark Pastâ. I am so done with that character.
There could be interesting white characters, but for whatever reasons we mostly just get Grizzled Guy With Dark Past again and again and again. (Ok, to be fair, he was interesting once, before all the âagain and againâ but letâs have more than that). So at this point I donât really care what it takes to get interesting characters, Iâd just like some 
Diversity and broader demographic identification should have also happened regardless, but if it takes one to get the other, well, two birds with one stone I guess. Bring it on.
To be clear, thereâs no political snark there, just a frank interest in playing characters that donât match with my known world.
Yeah, this is something I bring up a lot when people say that thereâs no problems with current representation in gaming - I point to the parade of games with exactly that. Grizzled Guy with Dark Past. That doesnât make Geralt bad or any one of them bad - some are bad on their own merits. But Geralt would be refreshing if he was the only one, like Elric from Moorcockâs novels was interesting and refreshing when he came out, but if he were written today would be overplayed and boring.
I like to see a broad array of characters in order to simply drive better and more varied design, not just out of some sense of social justice - the social equality canât hurt but I think that even if you donât care about social justice stuff you can rally behind âletâs have better main charactersâ.
I realise that matey, but framing other peopleâs lived experience as a ânoveltyâ isnât gonna go well in a lot of places. 
Yes, but I must qualify this that I think that most of what passes for âdiversityâ to those I talk to still strikes me as awfully superficial. Most people on Earth are women, and I think that itâs natural and desirable for games to reflect that. Most people on Earth are not âwhiteâ either. But, going further still, most people on Earth are other species entirely. Diversity should go beyond simply seeing people with slightly different-looking bodies. And as I think @daneel was intimating - more diverse motivations are at least as important. There is a strong (overwhelming?) tendency in media to make people ârelatableâ by reducing them to the stereotypically familiar.
I dunno I guess the rule would be I get to be offended if I want because my race/gender isnât represented.
Oh, arenât you precious! Youâd get to experience what many people experience with every game they play!
Can diverse character art invite you into a game genre you normally avoid?
No.
A genre I normally avoid? Nope. To start with, youâd have to get me to pay enough attention to a specific game in the (say) MOBA genre to notice. Youâd have to bring a lot more than just âdiversityâ to the table.
Someone smarter than me suggested that experiencing such things as a novelty might be considered insensitive =(
Yeah, Iâm really struggling to think of a strategy game that doesnât have a diverse cast. Sounds like more lecturing from a blogger thatâs never played a video game that wasnât on an iPad.
