LGBT and the nature of art
So, I posted something along these lines earlier today, then the entire post disappeared, so I'll paraphrase and expand on my original point. Firstly, I think adding diversity does fit. There's a lot of racial diversity already in the game. I remember reading through the backstory for Ace and finding out he's from Argentina, Elodie is from Madagascar and Nia is Scandinavian, not just 'generically white'. There's a lot of cultural representation here and it's deliberate, more than the 'ambiguously brown' than you often get where someone is going to include diversity but not really comment on it. That's the safe route I suppose, but you're not really cutting new ground there.
As far as orientation goes, part of the reason for all the gay pride is as a rebuttal for the common narrative that there's something wrong with being gay. As a bisexual skeptic, I often find myself shaking my head whenever someone claims to be straight because that often ends up not being the case. Preference is a spectrum anyways. However, there's not equal or accurate representation. Consider Hitchcock's "Psycho" or Silence of the Lambs. For decades, the only representation trans people had in media was as crossdressing serial killers, and then people wonder why the public is so up in arms over bathroom rights. Representation has consequences on public opinion.
But my original point was about art. People complain that it feels forced. Does it though? You can stereotype, which is bad. You can avoid diversity, which is also bad. You can make someone gay or dark skinned but never address it, which is the safe option. And lastly, you can explore what being part of a minority does to shape your character's life and experiences. The problem with that in this specific case is that all the survivors are dead. Their character development is past tense. There's not currently a way for the survivors to grow as people canonically; all their interactions and potential friendships are in game, all conversations are hypothetical, that's just the nature of the game. The story of DbD is a passive thing, not an active one where, like in the case of a traditional rpg, you're watching characters change as the story progresses and new plot points are revealed. DbD is much more of a slow burn in the plot department.
So where does that leave us then? Diversity is good, but it necessarily can't be plot relevent, that means it must be arbitrary at least in the context of the character backstory. All survivors play identically, do a custom game where everyone has all the perks and their appearance is functionally just a cosmetic choice. The backstory doesn't matter to the plot of the game until it's written. If BHVR is going to go out of their way to talk about someone being from Argentina or Jamaica then why not gay or trans or whatever? But even on that rational, you have some who think people shouldn't tell stories that aren't theirs to tell. Do we have gay writers on the dev team? Maybe. I have no idea. But that touches on the 'stay in your lane' perspective. Others think that going the safer route and not including or commenting on diversity is spineless. You can't make everyone happy, but we should be able to have a productive discussion about what we think and why.
That said, I do want to ask everyone to treat the naysayers with compassion. If someone is against diversity, try to find out why. People are a product of their environment and if, say, the only opinion on the matter that someone has been seriously exposed to is that being gay is wrong, what else can they think? I don't think people are responsible for how they were raised and we should offer the benefit of the doubt. Once someone knows better, then they have responsibility for if they decide to remain ignorant but it's unhelpful to assume that everyone is in that situation. Up until a few years ago, I had no idea that transgender rights was a thing. Someone says there are two genders, sure, ok. Then I did my research, totally changed my opinion. If you immediately jump on someone as a homophobe without understanding where they're coming from, then you risk pushing someone ignorant away from wanting to learn about where you're coming from. So yeah, just some rambling thoughts on the matter.
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Mods really need to make a megathread for all these topics being largely the same.
Half the front page at any one time seems to be about the same topic.