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I wanna talk about league champion diversity (and I am prepared to be downvoted)

Ralanr·12/5/2018, 7:37:51 PM·33 votes·6,507 views

Because I brought an umbrella.

Anyway, last week I binged watched the new She-Ra cartoon on Netflix, and by binged I mean I was up till 3AM watching all 13 episodes of season 1. While I'm not the intended target of the show (being a 25 adult male who is retaking classes in college), I tend to watch cartoons to appreciate writing and design, and I found the She-Ra cartoon filled with good characters in both design and personality.

So what does this have to do with League of Legends? Simply put, diversity in cast. The original She-Ra was basically a collection of warrior Barbie dolls, which apparently was the case because toy molds were cheaper when you just had one. So all the characters had the same body type, but were differentiated by different colors and patterns of clothing.

The new series doesn't have this problem, and it allows the cast of characters to be more diverse from the original show. I do not know, nor care to look up the backlash of this (because finals studying makes me depressed enough), but what I can say is that the cast is diverse.

This is princess Glimmer for example, who as you can see has a bit more weight to her than you'd expect in a show like She-Ra (at least in the original).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DosRzTCX0AAvIXt.jpg

Now, league has had a problem with female diversity for a while, and while there are improvements (Taliyah Camille Illaoi etc) there have also been some setbacks (though that's my personal opinion of Kaisa).

And I get that She-Ra and League have vastly different markets. One is targeted towards young girls, the other is targeted towards guys who like seeing women in Bikinis fling spells at each other (If this offends you, I apologize for my terrible humor). And while the gaming market as a whole is filled with many of the male audience that enjoys staring at Frost Irelias ass, that doesn't mean Riot cannot diversify the cast and showcase beauty in other body types. Both as a way to support diverse players, and to cater to players that like different body types (I'm talking about chubby chasers, etc. Yes I'm an ass).

So would I like to see round women in league? Yes. I'd also like to see older women (old as in grandma, not white hair like Camille). Short, tall, Asian, Carribean, South Asian, African, other parts of Europe that aren't France and Germany, etc, I would love to see more characters of these descents, but not made these just to fill out a checklist. One of the biggest problems of diversifying anything is that it can end up feeling like a special form to submit to corporate gods. Like having a black guy in the cast of a predominantly white show to make the show appeal to other viewers. These characters should instead be designed in a way that makes them fit well within their world without just filling out a checklist. Which is honestly not an easy thing to do, creators are people and sometimes they don't want to make a character a certain skin color. Not because they are racist, but because it wasn't what they imagined. Hell, I've been on and off writing a novel for years with a protagonist someone suggested should be asexual because I avoided addressing her sexuality throughout the story.

So this was a ramble. I guess in the end, I'd like more diverse women in league. I'd ask for more men, but I already found Sion so...no thanks, got mine!

105 Comments

SUPERSATANA12/5/2018, 7:51:17 PM25 votes

That being said, LoL is just a damn game, not a "social experiment" or a mean to enforce noble causes etc. In other words: Riot should create champs that have a chance to be overall liked by the community. If you can create an old woman as a champ respecting that prerequisite awesome, if by their calculation that champ would result in a failure cause of it...fuck it. The new champs (like the old ones) NEED to be appealing, that more important than everything else for a game like LoL: EVERYTHING else come in second place, if we wanna be real.

SUPERSATANA12/5/2018, 7:42:51 PM16 votes

Like you said, is an impossible task to please the audience anyway. You insert a black guy? OMG RIOT SJW HYPOCRITE PIECE OF SHIT YOU DID IT ONLY BECAUSE BLA BLA BLA You DON'T insert a black guy? OMG RIOT RENAME YOURSELF "KKK GAMING" YOU FUCKING BLA BLA BLA

Curious Melody12/5/2018, 8:48:13 PM11 votes

Since the topic of Neeko and the way Riot presented her to us was grind to the ground by a lot of people already, in this thread and others alike (me including), I'll focus instead on not her exclusively but the topic as a whole, giving you my point of view as somebody who's knowledge is only anecdotal and who has no interest of engaging in a topic like that in the first place.

Diversity, be it in media, games, books (and basically anything ever) should never be considered good "just because". Your book/show/game/whatever does not (or at least, in my opinion, should never) automatically get better if you shove things diverging from already present ones. Since this is a forum centered around a video game, I'll use all my next argument games in mind, but do remember that it would just as easily apply to other forms of not only artistic expression but real life occurrences as well.

Your game does not magically get better if you put a character of different sexuality than the ones prior. Diversity for diversity's sake is a hilariously bad concept. As a game dev, you should aspire to make a good character first, before making a good lesbian/gay. If your character's sexuality is somehow important to that character's history, believes or personality, do go for it as much as you want. But if it's added just on top of a character, without any particular reason except for media's brownie points, you've clearly done a shit job as a developer.

A game can never "lack" a character of particular gender, race or sexuality. How shallow must one's thinking be to so boldly assume that. Were Witcher games somehow worse due to lack of important black characters? Absolutely not, because character's race gender appearance and many other things like that should only come second, after fleshing out that character's personality and history. Would they become better if there was an another good character that was also black? Yes, because there would be another good character, not because there was a black one.

As a creator of literally anything, only diversity you should be worrying about is the diversity of thought among you and your peers. Everything else is irrelevant.

Also, for the love of satan, please stop mentioning Kai'sa as if she was some sort of stupid mistake by Riot, them going back to their old, misogynistic ways. That way of thinking is broken as all hell for ways people much more eloquent than me explained already, perhaps not in this thread but in many others.

Warlord Rhinark12/5/2018, 7:47:49 PM8 votes

You're making it seem like Riot isn't already trying to do what you're describing.

Malicious Metal12/5/2018, 7:40:32 PM7 votes

I just want a badass evil overlord with steel abs that's irredeemably evil.

Wait a bloody second.

https://pre06.deviantart.net/c9e9/th/pre/i/2014/075/e/a/league_of_legends_female_mordekaiser_by_cowblender-d7adwjr.jpg

Gravesinger12/5/2018, 8:39:41 PM7 votes

Totally off topic of the thread but is anyone else sick of that god-awful artstyle? It's been cropping up everywhere, probably because Cartoon Network rides it so hard, and it really is not unique or interesting in any way. It'd be nice to see something new.

RyzeTheSmurfMage12/5/2018, 8:15:46 PM4 votes

I don't think we should encourage obesity tho... It's a disease afterall and we should help the people that are obese get healthy so they dont have heart attacks at age 40. And yes I am aware the example you give is not actual obesity and is just fat but betwen representing fatness and obesity is a very thin line that we should be carefull to not cross.

Bob the Toastr12/5/2018, 10:18:25 PM3 votes

I definitely think we need a 'grandma' champion

Yordle Xayah12/6/2018, 12:27:18 AM3 votes

I just want the devs to make the character the want in their creativity without being bound to filling quotas.