The following story is spun out of an episode of the Hit The Limit Break podcast. For the full conversation, check out the the video below.
You can also find the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pocket Casts.
Persephone Valentine has been playing video games since she can remember. “My mom got us a used NES,” she says. “I was playing The Legend of Zelda, and she realized ‘Oh, this holds this little ADHD riddled monster’s attention!’ I also played Final Fantasy, which became one of my favorites, but I hated the first Final Fantasy. Despised it as a child.”
After going through some of her gaming memories, Valentine shows off her Sega Genesis game collection that sits on a shelf behind her. They’re all copies she has had since childhood, most of them still in cases, all in excellent condition.
As a Black trans woman, Valentine has utilized her history and expertise in order to help developers properly represent more diverse, equitable, and inclusive stories and characters in their games through consultation. The kind of work Valentine does has recently come under fire from bigoted commentators on the internet who wrongfully claim that this consultancy work is ruining gaming by shoehorning in “political agendas”, which they use to mean people of color and various queer groups.
Valentine explains the numerous ways in which their fundamental understanding of her work is wrong. “Usually we’re brought in as consultants on characters that are already intended to be different races, different sexualities, different genders,” she explains. “Usually it’s a contracted amount of hours. Sometimes there’s longer term projects where you’re basically on call, and then you invoice them based on that. It depends on how involved they want you to be.”
Valentine then goes on to explain how studios are not contractually obligated to use her consultation: “Generally, in my experience, they have [taken my advice], but that doesn’t always mean that they do. People seem to think we have ultimate control over the games, and we do not. Not even a little bit.”
While Valentine didn’t mention any negative experiences she has had while working with studios she’s been contracted with, she did claim that she found it easier to do her job when she was brought on to consult earlier in the process. “The earlier you get your consultants in, the easier it is for everyone to stomach things, because you can get in on the ground floor and help guide them towards what kind of portrayal they want,” she explains.
However, while there’s certainly been pushback against DEI consultation from internet commentators, Valentine believes that their sentiments are shared by some developers within the industry. “There are game studios that are led by people who are actively against it,” she says. “But you have to remember that the gaming industry is not a monolith. They are as affected by politics as everything else.
“People in power at these companies tend to be very wealthy, and can tend to be more conservative. Different companies are going to have different leadership values, and therefore, different companies will push back against this, even just internally. That is something that we are seeing. That is something I don’t expect to go away. That is something I expect to get worse in many ways.”
Valentine points towards games such as Stellar Blade as an example of a title that is catering more toward the sex appeal that apparently some on the internet believe to be a cornerstone of what makes a good video game. However, she doesn’t see anything inherently wrong with this kind of titillating content: “It’s all about how the character is portrayed in games. You can do sex appeal. It’s just a matter of how they’re portrayed. Are they in their own bag, do they have their own power, do they have their own autonomy?”
For Valentine, it all comes down to these kinds of questions, regardless of whether a character has sex appeal or not. “The core of characters and story is humanity,” she says. “You can identify and see bits and pieces of yourself in many characters, regardless of whether they look like you or not. And that’s something that people like me have sort of been doing since media became a thing.
“It’s a weird sort of hypocrisy, because when it comes to story, people are so willing to dive into the belief that this person who may look like me, who has these super, awesome, phenomenal powers and is facing this great evil, and can identify with that, but not be able to do the same if the character has brown skin. It’s very strange.
“How many Black people love DBZ? How many love Goku? Love Vegeta? There ain’t a Black character in there! Except Piccolo. I will die on that hill.”
While Valentine is hoping that video games, as well as other forms of media, will continue to improve upon and expand their inclusivity, she makes it clear that additional representation will not lead to fewer characters that have traditionally alwaysv been represented in the medium: “No one is erasing anyone from the political majority of games.”
For more from my conversation with Persephone Valentine, please watch the full episode of Hit the Limit Break. Also, consider donating to help build the Limit Break Network into a video game outlet for the future (more details in our FAQ), and check out our own video game Punctuation Pop!
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