This I completely agree with, but then this is my problem with the ‘sensible armor for women’ trope too. It’s got dragons and magic in it, there are no rules or need to connect to realism. After all, you can be an elf in dungeons and dragons, so surely you can be black?

# And to argue that a game that is based on medieval Europe and written by
# Europeans must reflect the demographics of 21st century North America
# because diversity is also bollocks, because such a game isnt default D&D.

Yes, and this exposes the tendancy of Americans to project their culture and situation onto everyone else. Still, I can see an argument for offering diverse characters as a choice for the player. Now, this is not so much to offer these choices so the player can be someone like themselves. One of the things that no-one expected when female characters finally were allowed to appear in violent video-games, is that a lot of people like to cross-dress in games. Admittedly, some of this is just that people like to stare at Lara Croft’s ass while she runs about in the game, but I think people in games like to try on being someone else. Why do we expect that people seeking escapist entertainment want to maintain their identity?

Of course, the ‘social justice’ crowd will say that’s a form of tourism or appropriation. But handled well, and without being preachy, I could see it could be used to get a view of someone else’s worldview via gaming. I don’t think anyone will ever try though, because the political risk is too great: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.