Diversity is a Beautiful Thing! <3

We were recently attacked for establishing diversity in our cast for our visual novel.  We expected to be attacked because the internet can be a toxic place and trolls are gonna troll.  It can’t be stopped.  Artists and writers have to develop a sort of thick skin to be able to handle this sort of thing.  We expected to get complaints about 1) being a visual novel and not a traditional “game”  2) not liking the art/writing/story or 3) for not being someone’s cup of tea.  We also take criticism we get to help strengthen our game as a whole. But to be called essentially unrealistic PC nonsense strictly on the grounds of creating characters that are different races and having some of them not be straight?  That was never expected, especially with yuri and yaoi VN’s being popular stories.  It was especially unexpected to get that sort of message from a fellow visual novel developer.  

So, here’s a quick rundown of the diversity in A Very Important Date.  Though our game mostly takes place in another world, the continent that the main character finds herself on one morning is made up of 6 nations.  The people that make up these nations all have their own common traits, be they skin color, eye color, hair styles, what have you, that separate the nations from one another.  The ancestry of our first 8 suitors can be traced back through 5 of those countries.  These same 8 characters come from multiple socioeconomic backgrounds.  Within these same 8 suitors are 2 different LGBT characters.  We have planned suitors beyond the first 8 that are also LGBT characters, including a transgender character (MtF).  We didn’t do this to be all inclusive, we did it because we wanted to create actual, realistic characters, but making different characters is apparently a problem for this dev.  We don’t see it as one.

Even if you don’t think you’ll play our game or don’t like the visual novel genre (which is fine, everyone has their own taste), please vote for A Very Important Date on Steam Greenlight.  We need to “normalize” diversity because there truly is no “normal” and having the media perpetuate what they consider “different” as a problem in our society shouldn’t be something that we’re still dealing with today.  Creators, like myself, can be too afraid to go “outside the box” because of comments and attacks like this, even to the point where they close up and stop creating.  We can’t have that.  Creativity can not be silenced and if we spread news of new diverse media, it can help encourage others to explore diversity and break from this close-minded bubble.