• MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    3 hours ago

    I’m just going to say that a lot of creative, innovative, or interesting things, regardless if they’re physical items, narratives, gameplay mechanics, or even just a new process for handling a particular task, is borne from diversity.

    We are different. That difference is a strength. The more different we are, the larger of a gap between how I approach an issue and how you do the same. The Delta between your approach and mine is beautiful. One may be more efficient, one may be easier, one might be less expensive to do.

    If we all thought the same, and we were extremely similar in what we knew and how we thought, nothing would ever change. Progress would not be possible.

    A great example of this is with the blue LED. Most companies have been able to make blue LEDs for decades. The problem is, they were expensive, and shit. They couldn’t brighten up a shoe box.

    One guy took a blue LED manufacturing process that everyone else abandoned, and worked with it for the better part of like, 5 years or something. He invented the modern blue LED in all its glory. Bright enough to blind you from across the room, and cheap enough to produce that they ended up in a lot of places they probably shouldn’t have been. That experimentation also yielded a near ultraviolet version that with a simply phosphor filter, can be converted to visible light, and white LEDs were born

    • phx@lemmy.ca
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      37 minutes ago

      Yeah, and the guy that invented the blue LED - essentially saving the company - got shit upon because he did so against the orders of the company head. They then went after him legally when he took a job at another company.

      He actually won a lawsuit against them later but my understanding is that after legal fees etc didn’t really come out ahead. It’s a pretty sad story.

      Diversity in entertainment is important, and ultimately done right it’s also good for profits. Having a game, movie or produce that appeals to a broader audience is good for sales.

      At the same time, some entertainment does come with an existing core audience and a bit of a “formula”, so altering that too much does risk alienating that core, and frankly some duds get blamed on 'ism when the reality is they’re just not that good or changed too much. “The Witcher” flubbed because those writing the scripts were increasingly out of touch with the original material, but if they’d also done something like make a Geralt (or somebody else significant) a different orientation, race, gender or whatever then some would have blamed that failure on the anti-diversity crowd.