I løbet af vores tid på San Diego Comic Con Málaga havde vi fornøjelsen af at tale med en af de mest indflydelsesrige personer inden for sportsvideospil. Vores egen David Caballero fik muligheden for at være vært for et panel med Gordon Bellamy — måske bedst kendt for sin tid på Madden NFL-serien fra EA Sports — i en længere samtale og interview, som du kan se nedenfor med lokaliserede undertekster.
Under diskussionen kom samtalen ind på inklusion i videospil, og hvor vigtigt det er at skabe mangfoldighed i titlerne — samt hvordan selv små ændringer og tilføjelser kan gøre en stor forskel.
"I think today it's very common that everyone wants to be able to see themselves in games," begyndte Bellamy. "Everyone wants to be a default player, right? And most games have customisation of clothes, of looks, of everything, so that whether it's like you or like you imagine yourself to be in this universe, that's a very normal behavior. And so I think back then I recognised that more people want to be able to see themselves in the game."
Som et referencepunkt delte Bellamy derefter et eksempel på, hvordan enkle, inkluderende ændringer kan have stor betydning.
"So true story, like at the same time I was also... I'm left-handed, is anyone here left-handed? Is it just me? Okay, you're with me. So it starts with scissors if you're left-handed, where they don't even tell you that the scissors are not left-handed and you sit there and you go, 'I can't scissor, wah', right? And so once you have a pair of left-handed scissors, it's a magical moment, you understand, because you're like, oh, scissors. Well, it's the same feeling with games, right? When you're able to find yourself and just be from the start all that you are, it has great meaning.
"And so back then we not only had black players, but we had create-a-player. So in that case, we actually co-opted a game called Track and Field. We turned that into create-a-player, right, so that you yourself could be in the game because we had the players, like you could be a star player on your favorite team. But what if you wanted to be you? What if you wanted to be your brother, your sister, your mom, your dad, right? Which at the time was very progressive because people were like, 'what do you mean? It's in the game. It's in the game', right? We were like, yeah, and it'd be great if we could also be in the game."
Gå ikke glip af interviewet for at høre mere om, hvilke FIFA-spil der lånte idéer fra Madden-titlerne i 90'erne, og meget mere. Og hvis du vil dykke dybere ned i emnet om mangfoldighed og inklusion i spil, så se også vores nylige samtale med South of Midnight's hovedrolleindehaver Adriyan Rae, hvor hun forklarede, hvordan "disse historier er ønskede, nødvendige og nødvendige".
