Whenever I hear about people complaining about representation in video games, stories, and shows and wanting more diversity, particularly cultural diversity, I usually wind up annoyed and tired. Namely, because there’s usually nothing more to a character but “LOOK WE’RE TOTALLY <INSERT NATIONALITY>! LOOK LOOK! WE’RE DIVERSE!! PRAISE US FOR WE THOUGHT OF INCLUDING YOU!” and then you have those whiners just sucking up all that crap.
You know a game that actually did cultural diversity right?
To those who don’t know what this game is, it’s an educational point-and-click series of games made by The Learning Company. It features four kids who go on bizarre adventures.
But the question is, how did it do diversity right?
Simple: the kids were not defined by their nationality or ethnicity and actually had personalities, and never was their identity taking away the story or shilling it. It was never phoned in or meant to be a huge message of “look we’re doing this!” or pandering.
Also, these games were released in 1998 and finally stopped in 2002. Yeah, they’re that old: and apparently, they did a better job at cultural diversity than most shows and games do today.
