Representation is suffering in DBD

First of all, In the LGBTQIA2S+ area. There are so many amazing trans creators and members, and we still do not have an original trans character. I do love that we've got Tubarão, he's an amazing addition to the game. Nonetheless, you would bring so much joy to so many people if you would bring an original trans character (preferrably survivor, so there are no malicious incidents like with the Unknown). It would also show that you support trans members of the community and that they can feel safe in DBD. ❤️

Second, huge imbalance in the cosmetic department. 2 big licenses (D&D, Castlevania) with cosmetics for original chracters, and not a single skin for a black survivor… How did you let this happen? Claudette can be a D&D magician too! Adam and Élodie can be vampires too! So many cool cosplay ideas. Also, Castlevania skins that got announced are both for female survivors. One of them being Mikaela, who got a skin in the D&D collection. Did you know that you have dozens of original survivors in the roster? Did you know male survivors exist? I sure do!

I keep seeing people on Twitter complain about this and ask you to give POC characters more skins and include them in big collections. It feels like we are being ignored. Can a developer muster some courage and let us know what's going on?

Comments

  • TheRealConsent
    TheRealConsent Member Posts: 245

    I was careful with my wording :)

    Clearly not enough though, as my statistical part was cut out.

  • moputopia
    moputopia Member Posts: 150
    edited August 30

    I don't really watch dev streams, I mostly only care about the content that's actually in the game. And there is currently only one gay character, so I honestly don't know what you mean by "catering". Are you talking about the pride flags being equippable as charms?

    Also, I checked out the 2v8 announcement stream out of curiosity from what you said, and there are several white guys presenting and participating in gameplay, so what you just lied about that.

    And what are you even talking about in regard to the 10%/90% thing? I'm genuinely confused.

    Post edited by moputopia on
  • Tits
    Tits Member Posts: 305

    So far so good. Hopefully it gets snuffed out within the next year or so then we can all go back to enjoying games because they are fun and not because a 36 year old licence didnt change their characters around to please someone that doesnt like their licence to begin with

  • ExcelSword
    ExcelSword Member Posts: 512

    It should be pointed out that dressing in drag is not always the same as identifying as a different gender. I know someone who likes to dress in drag but they still identify as a gay man, not a trans woman.

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 14,792

    oh wow. And I wanted to stay quite on here…

    90% of the world at least, is non-LGBTQ. 

    and you got that number from where? And how certain are you that within this 90 % there is no one in the closet because well… look at the world (not only the western progressive cities but the whole world), also keep in mind how many characters there are in DbD.
    And remember the fact those characters are not randomly chosen by the Entity if you want to look from a lore side of it.

    The point I'm making is that it's insanely out of ratio

    is it though? DbD is known for having a big LGBTQ+ community. And especially for the Fig Whisperers program there are plenty of queer folks and even those that are not are known to be allies afaik. Also.. trying to dictate which content creators they should chose and which not is kinda weird..

    If you really want a fair, non biased way to add "variety" to your game, grab the percentage of people that exist in a certain ethnicity or sexuality irl.

    no one is asking for that though. Fair is a very subjective word and your definition doesn’t seem to be the objective truth at all.

    Btw, are you mad about the overrepresentation of white characters compared to the actual world population?

    And I say, since when does it matter? Why are we so obsessed with a bunch of pixels on the screen having sexualities? If you're so obsessed with your sexuality that it determines the character you play, that's an issue that you need to resolve.

    you are just as much -if not more- obsessing about it here, aren’t you? Especially considering that just having the charms isn’t equal to having characters

    I don't think straight people mind playing David, so why should gay people mind playing someone else?

    no one said that lgbtq+ people only play respective lgbtq+ characters. though there have been plenty of people on here that directly exclaimed they stopped playing David because of the reveal of his sexual orientation. You can search for it here with any lgbtq+ topics on this forums created during the time of that reveal and see for yourself.

    Since when is representation so massively important? 

    it’s always been important, especially for people ‚outside the norm‘ so they can feel like there is nothing wrong with them for being who they are. That’s also why we don’t need direct statistical representation. We are talking about media, characters, that are not real people. especially main characters are never just representative of the statistical ‚norm‘ but show very specific traits and also rare ones.


    fact is, BHVR has stated themselves that they care about representation and inclusion and they want to create more LGBTQ+ characters though haven’t delivered at all. Susie is only confirmed in outside media so we only have one single original character that’s gay out of.. how many characters are there now? And there is also non-playable/story-only characters taking it way more out of proportion.


    as for the choices for this specific chapter, i think everyone agrees that they chose fitting ones when just looking at appearance. But characters are more than just gender, skin and hair colors. And even then, Mikaela’s hair doesn’t represent the character from Castlevania well enough. I bet there would be some character that would fit Haddie or Elodie just as much as Mikaela fit this character. (We all know why Mikaela was actually chosen and I think no one wants to argue against the cash cow, but it shouldn’t be completely overshadowing everything else)

  • Are there no Black characters in the D&D collaboration? That's right, but there are also no Asian characters. Are there any LGBTQ characters? If a character prefers not to be openly identified regarding their sexual orientation, would they be outed? I identify as queer, and I don’t want characters with the same LGBTQ attributes as mine, nor do I want Asian characters in settings that don’t relate to my cultural themes. What’s the point of bringing such elements into the game?

  • ReverseVelocity
    ReverseVelocity Member Posts: 4,492

    Why do you say ridiculous like that's a bad thing?

    Also by several, you mean 2, right? We got Susie and David. The other characters that are LGBT like Tubarao are from other IPs, not DBD.

    I just think it'd be cool to have more canon LGBT characters. I personally wanna see a trans woman be added specifically, since I'm a trans woman myself. People feeling represented in the games they play is a good thing, it helps people feel included and connect to a game.

  • BugReporterOnly
    BugReporterOnly Member Posts: 545

    The comics are cannon and Susie ( Legion ) is lesbian if I'm not mistaken and they are collaborating with The Boulet Brothers and if I understand correctly they will be killer skins.

  • OnryosTapeRentals
    OnryosTapeRentals Member Posts: 1,028

    Watch any chapter reveal that happened recently

    It’s very obvious they’re picking people based upon characteristics and anyone saying otherwise is just being wilfully ignorant. The content creators BHVR promotes do not represent the actual demographic of this game’s top content creators.

    Not saying I’m against it. I’ve found some great content creators from BHVR’s streams, but the trend is noticeable.

  • TheRealConsent
    TheRealConsent Member Posts: 245

    Really? Because I really don't feel represented as a killer main, as most of them don't even look human and the straight white males among them tend to be murderous. And even then, I main Singularity.

    I don't know why anyone would need to connect to a game character any other way aside from motives and personality, not sexuality.

    Thanos worked in Infinity War not because there are a lot of giant purple people with streaks on their chin, but because you relate to his ideals and hardcore commitment to his cause. And he was right according to his own experiences.

    That's how you connect. Like what, if Feng Min all of a sudden got revealed to be trans, would you be happy? If anything I'd say:

    Let's just leave sexuality out of the ######### murder game. I'm not against characters being LGBTQ, I'm against anyone's sexuality being open for whatever reason. Who gives a #########? You know what comes after an explicitly trans character gets put into the game? Then people start tunneling the trans character, causing more problems.

    But instead, if we keep it a secret where everyone sticks their genitals to, nothing bad happens.

  • Caiman
    Caiman Member Posts: 2,835

    Way I see it, it doesn't really matter to me what a survivor's sexuality is, because they're going to get stomped to death by a perverted fat clown, among other really brutal and terrible ways to die, no matter who or what they are.

    I'm LGBT but, speaking solely for myself, I don't care much for representation. Would it be nice if there was a character that shared my traits? Sure, I guess, but this is a horror game, so such things are not very important to the themes of terror and brutality. And more importantly, for anyone to accuse BHVR of not caring about the LGBT community is straight-up laughable.

  • OnryosTapeRentals
    OnryosTapeRentals Member Posts: 1,028

    I'm LGBT but, speaking solely for myself, I don't care much for representation.

    I'm the G in LGBT and also don't really care for it. I don't feel any particular affinity towards playing a character based off of their sexuality alone.

  • ReverseVelocity
    ReverseVelocity Member Posts: 4,492

    The characters in the game have backstories, and who someone loves is a pretty damn big part of someone's life. The survivors specifically are meant to be regular people whisked away from their lives, and the deeper their backstory, the more built up of a character they are. The point is they're meant to be mostly regular people, which isn't necessarily true about the killers obviously.

    Reducing sexuality to purely "who sticks genitals in who" is kind of a crass way of thinking about it, since for a lot of people, romantic attraction goes hand in hand with that. Love is a pretty core human experience, and extremely driving for a character.

    We can't keep sexuality out of the game at this point. It'd involve a serious amount of retconning, long before the first canon LGBT character was introduced. It's also pretty curious that people weren't up in arms over Felix having a wife and kid, but the second people start talking about LGBT representation it's "keep sexuality out of video games!!!!!!!!!" all of a sudden.

    Also side note, why do you relate to the ideals of a guy, who given infinite power, decided to kill half the universe instead of making resources limitless???

  • bleep275
    bleep275 Member Posts: 260

    I didn't say ridiculous as in bad. I said it in hyperbole in response to how many there are.

  • Rokku_Rorru
    Rokku_Rorru Member Posts: 1,231

    Give me a pretty male that's an original survivor with lots of cute and pretty cosmetics, thanks… an archetype we've not gotten yet I feel, Trickster is the only character like that.

    That's all I've been asking for for years.

  • RpTheHotrod
    RpTheHotrod Member Posts: 1,894
    edited September 13

    Keep this up and they aren't going to even bother doing skins - just not worth the drama and stress.

    I'm LGBT. We don't need "equal representation" in every video game in existence. BHVR is plenty supportive of the LGBT community. It's unrealistic to expect to make one of each kind of possible representation. These things take man hours, time, and money. We're getting to the point that we're going to start demanding game companies to make 50x the amount of skins\flags to be "represented" when they only have it in the budget to make 1.

    Just chill - it's a video game. Enjoy what comes our way. No one realistically cares if a character is straight\bi\black\white\good at calculus\prefers pineapple on their pizza. They aren't real. It's just words in a Bio. David isn't really gay - in fact - he doesn't actually exist. Dwight isn't really straight - he too does not exist. At the end of the day, whatever something says in a bio accomplishes absolutely nothing. It has no gameplay affect - it's just fluff. Heck, did you know that Lambert in the original Alien film is trans (MtF)? Probably not - because it doesn't even matter.

  • Orthane
    Orthane Member Posts: 432

    Ugh… this game has gone so insanely far out to give as much representation as possible to the point where they have flags for every letter of the alphabet and that still isn't enough. Jesus man.

  • UndeddJester
    UndeddJester Member Posts: 3,259
    edited September 13

    I actually didn't know that... wow learn something new.

    Reminds me of a character from Dirty Bomb who was lesbian named Nader. You wouldn't know she was lesbian unless you took the time to read her character bio and it was one line talking about the tensions her going back to mercenary life caused between her and her partner... it used the word "wife" and otherwise read exactly the same.

    That was it... no other mention of her sexuality anywhere else within the game... I think subtle things like this are the best way to do LGBTQ (or any diverse) characters, where they are treated like everyone else and no big deal is made out of it.... you know... like they're a normal people...

    It's a much better approach than heavy handedly trying to throw it in people's face at every turn. Smushing a characters diversity in people's face tends to make a character feel forced, fake, token, and that their whole personality is obnoxiously defined by that one trait, which often leads to an equally obnoxious response…

    People don't tend to like an obvious immersion breaking cariacature of a character thrown in with bells ans whistles to push a political statement, rather than someone who is just a person who has a trait hidden away you wouldn't know about unless you took the time to really look/get to know the character. Adam for example isn't "the black male OC", he is a hard working straight laced teacher who just so happens to be black... proper characterisation makes a big difference.

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 14,792

    Representation does matter. That’s a fact and there are plenty of research articles out there validating that. No one said those characters are real people either, and they don’t have to be. And no one realistically asks for ‚equal‘ representation - but direct exclusion is something that should be frowned upon (and DbD actually started with direct exclusion of anything LGBTQ+ related while including plenty of heterosexual contents for some time - luckily they don’t do that anymore)

    Just because you are part of the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t mean you can or should talk about them as a whole. It’s okay if you don’t care. But plenty of people (LGBTQ+ or not) DO very much care about these things. To the point where many of those that ‚don’t care‘ start to boycott things for just existing. People relate to characters, it’s always been a thing, and especially in DbD the characters have well established lore, background stories, lives.


    also, Lambert being trans matters! That doesn’t mean everyone should focus on it or be aware about it. But i can guarantee you that there are people out there that are angry about this fact or even deny it and there are people out there that celebrate this or just like this.

    Also also, Dwight has not been confirmed straight.

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 14,792

    the flags are just charms and banners. It’s great to have them for player expression and customization, it it’s hardly ‚representation‘.

    also, they are just small little colorful pixels, really. („ugh… „for every letter of the alphabet“, „Jesus man“) - why would you let this upset you to this extent when it could just exist without bothering you at all?