Hopefully in time for the character survey - An MPQ Census

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

So, I did a census of the playable characters in MPQ. If you want to get to the reason why I did this and what I hope comes from it, you can skip the giant wall of text that is the next seven paragraphs. Look for these: ********************

To start out: there’s no good way to do a census. Even when you can get everyone to report. Which thankfully isn’t an issue here since everyone that’s being counted is sitting in my roster except for Devil Dinosaur. Race, ethnicity, sex and gender are tricky topics that don’t parse into neat categories or binaries no matter how badly people might want them to. Since it can’t be done well, I tried to do it in the least bad way possible. If there’s a way you think would be better, I’d really like to hear about it in your comments.

I took every character and categorized them as appropriately as I could by sex/gender and race/ethnicity. Those terms aren’t synonymous but I treat them as such for purposes of this exercise. Female, Male or Other. Asian/Pacific Islander (API), Black, Caucasian, Latin@, Middle Eastern, Native American and Other. These categories aren’t perfect, but they’re the best I could come up with and seemed most relevant to me. I did three versions: I counted all iterations of all characters (Storm, Wolverine etc. are counted three times), each character only counted once (Storm, Wolverine etc. are counted once) and a count in which only characters that have multiple versions are counted. I’m showing the charts up front, the full data can be found at http://imgur.com/a/n0o3v

I probably didn’t categorize all the characters the same way you would. Stylish cravat in comic books notwithstanding, Devil Dinosaur in game seems to be sexless/genderless. Same goes for Gr00t. Loki has been genderfluid in comics but in game is solely presented as Male. Ragnarok and Vision are both robots, but present as Male. Ragnarok presents as Caucasian so I classified him that way, Vision doesn’t really even though he’s the rare case of a character looking exactly like the actor who plays him in the movie. Seriously, that’s obviously Paul Bettany. I could have taken that and classified him as Caucasian, but went with Other. Meh. Individual data points can be quibbled over, but I don’t think it changes the big picture.

Finally - and the part that I’m the most ambivalent about - characters with parents in separate categories are counted as 0.5 of each. I realize this is kind of gross. One of my alliance mates mentioned hearing “you’re not half and half, you’re whole and whole”. I think that’s amazing for individuals to hear. For purposes of this census, it would mean counting Daken four times instead of two. I went with the latter. There’s no good way to do a census.

Here’s the results:

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Now, I like White Guys. White Guys are awesome. I’m a White Guy. But here’s the thing - as White Guys we don’t need to just keep seeing ourselves and being told that we’re awesome and we’re the (only) ones who matter. We can take a break from that. We’ll be fine.

Kamala Khan was a great addition to the game. I know there were players incredibly excited that there was a character being brought into the game that looked (if only a little bit) more like them. However since then, I believe there have been nine characters added. 8 Male, 1 Female. 8 Caucasian, 1 Other. I don’t think that’s great. I don’t think that’s the way the game should go.

Here’s what I’m concerned will happen. Miles Morales will be added to the game. High Fives! Yes! Diversity! Cool, we did it! Now here’s Angel, Iceman, Gambit, Jean Grey, Ghost Rider, Silver Surfer, Mr. Fantastic, Lockjaw and Winter Soldier. icon_neutral.gif

My point:

This game is not very diverse. It is based on source material that is historically not very diverse. As such, the easiest, most likely result is that the game will get less diverse going forward.

I’m not completely caught up on the current Marvel Universe so I don’t know how many viable characters there are to help with this. I can think of Miles Morales, Nico Minoru, Jubilee, Echo, Silk uh… Misty Knight, Collen Wing, Shang-Chi, Monica Rambeau… Sunspot? He’s in the Avengers now, right? Is anyone doing anything worthwhile with Dani Moonstar? Forge? Anyone Latin@ or Native American or Middle Eastern that can bring the representation above 0%?

It’s important for people to see themselves represented in the media that our culture produces. This is a thing. It’s a real thing. Not particularly for me, but for many, many people. And it’s changeable. It can be made better.

I’m hoping there are players that can help come up with viable characters. Please bring them up below or enter them in the current survey if you’re still able. Or yell at me I guess because, well, internet. Thanks for reading however much of this you were willing to. I hope that you’ll recognize this as a valid point even if you don’t agree with it. I hope you’ll help.

2

I am glad there’s lots of black ppl in here tho, BLACK POWER represent!

But yeah I hope we get more POC and women-representation. And Shuma Gorath.

Like, someone pointed out we have a lack of female villains.

3

I already answered the survey before seeing this, and would feel unethical answering it again. However, almost the characters I put in were female - Rogue, Kate Bishop, Mockingbird. Cable was the other.

In hindsight, I needed Emma Frost and the butterfly-wing girl from First Class, too. (Cannot remember her name.)

4

I think this is a really interesting chart in how things go, but I do question if this is a puzzle quest issue or a Marvel issue. Look a the original Avengers movies all white. Ant Man white. The only 2 marvl movies coming out with super heroes who are non white that I can think of is Fantastic 4 and Black Panther. Yes in captain America Falcon is black, but he is also a much smaller hero. Luke Cage will be coming to Netflix, as well as Iron Fist. The fact that there is as much diversity as there is, should be applauded and encouraged. Many of the Marvel characters are 40+ years old in a time of little diversity. Now Marvel makes more of an effort to create new diverse heroes. It is challenging to get people to buy new things, but many of the heroes are very good in the comics, they just need time to be appreciated. So as MPQ got out a lot of Popular characters that we wanted, they have also incorporated some diverse characters. They have added a lot of woman over the past year. I remember when Black Widow and storm were the only real women in the game. The game has made major progress. Can they do better sure, but we should applaud them and encourage them first.

5

Emma Frost and Dark Phoenix would be good additions to the villains lineup. icon_e_smile.gif
Rogue was actually a villain for a while too. Mystique adopted her.

6

Who are all popular, highly requested characters that a lot of people want to see in the game.

Diversity is a fine thing to strive for, but it shouldn’t be the only thing to strive for. I’d hate for any of the above characters to be left out of the game because some kind of diversity quota wasn’t being met.

7

Thanks for compiling this data, although obviously it’s a bit disheartening. I mean yes obviously it reflects the broader compensation of Marvel characters but nonetheless–obviously they have to pick and choose which characters get added to the game, and as such they have a chance to tilt representation a bit more toward real-world levels diversity than what is reflected in Marvel’s fictional universe when considered as a whole. A chance which obviously hasn’t been taken.

I’d personally love to see Monica Rambeau, Jubilee, White Tiger, America Chavez…and those are just some names from comics I’ve been reading and enjoying over the past couple of months, there is no shortage of characters the game could draw from to add some much-needed representation.

8

You’re obviously gonna get those characters.

We’re just asking for representation. As a black man, it’s awesome having kickass black characters. not every POC can say that right now.

Ultimately, kids look up to this stuff and it must be the most heartbreaking thing when a kid figures out “Sex/Race isn’t usually a superhero”

The thing is, you don’t get applause for being a good person.

That being said, I do think Marvel, and partly D3 has been pretty good about this whole thing: putting in 4*Thor as a real, nonjoke character, putting in Kamala Khan, no questions asked.

Miles Morales…even Stan Lee said the average american kid probably can’t relate to Peter Parker anymore, so that’s where Miles comes in.

Iron Man 3 having kickass female interactions, Captain America 2 giving Black Widow awesome SHEEP to do.

I mean, Marvel is the company that had Storm for a very very long time. It’s awesome to see.

Black Panther is a really really awesome character and Wakanda is pretty awesome. Like, having Black Panther take down Captain america canonically is an awesome show of competency.

And in the comics, stuff is still happening.

Captain Marvel seems pretty awesome. Haven’t read too much of her stuff. And apparently before her was Monica Rambeau. So yeah.

And on the small screen, we’ve got Daredevil. Main character is white, but like…honestly supporting cast of the gods.

Heimdall is black. No explanation given or needed. Awesome.

Gamora has a latina(black?) actress. Awesome.

I kinda forgot about Mystique since she’s so bad, oops icon_redface.gif

9

Extra-terrestrial former Sentinels of The Planet Devourer Galactus are under represented. Therefore I demand you pander to my special interest group and immediately introduce the Silver Surfer to this game post haste. Expect shrill accusations of bias if our demands are not met! icon_mad.gif

10

There’s especially no good way to do a census in a comic book universe. You counted Psylocke as .5 API, which seems about as good as you could do under the circumstances. But it’s one thing to be Daken, with an Anglo-Canadian father and a Japanese mother, and another thing to be Betsy Braddock, whose Asianness was thrust upon her in a way that can only happen in a comic book.

A while back someone did a post where he had screenshots of all the different diverse teams he could throw together. His “Asian pride” team included a blond guy in Asian pajamas, the aforementioned white British lady who was transformed Asian later on, and the best person to sub in for either of them was the half-Japanese guy whose very name means mongrel. Just trying to comment on it made me so uncomfortable I ultimately didn’t bother.

But that’s comic books for you. Marvel is a shared universe that’s considerably older than I am, and I’m not young anymore. I don’t want to be anyone’s apologist, but it’s not something that can be transformed quickly or easily, and they’re quite visibly working toward transforming it. I’d love to see more diverse characters added to the game, but I’d hate to see obscure characters just for the sake of diversity.

For what it’s worth, of the characters I voted for in the survey, one is blue, two are gay, two are female, and all four are mutants.

11

I truly get that everyone wants to see heroes and villains that are like them in the game. As a bisexual male, I would definitely like to see more LGBT characters in the game, since currently it’s just Mystique. But I also realize that D3 doesn’t exactly have a large pool of iconic older and/or popular newer LBGT heroes and villains to choose from, and I wouldn’t want them to pick some b- or c-lister who just happens to be gay, because that would seem like token representation or pandering to me.

Right now, every character in MPQ is in the game because they’re awesome, well-loved characters. Only the most prejudiced of people will call characters like Storm, Luke Cage, Kamala or Jane Fos-Thor token additions, they’re in the game because they’re awesome characters that can stand shoulder to shoulder with icons like Iron Man or Wolverine. But I do feel it’s up to Marvel first to create those diverse heroes. They’ve been doing a pretty good job of late with cool new additions like Kamala or Miles Morales (although I have to admit I’m glad Peter Parker will still be part of the post-Secret Wars universe as well), or supporting female characters that now get their chance to shine like Jane Fos-Thor and Spider-Gwen. And Sam Wilson definitely makes a lot more sense to me as Steve Rogers’ successor than Bucky, who has been through way too much dark stuff as Winter Soldier to be the kind of paragon Cap should be. Now let’s hope there’s plenty more where that came from, so D3 has more to add.

PS: if you’re unfamiliar with Monica Rambeau, I really recommend for you to try and check out some of the older Avengers issues featuring her. No offense to Carol, but since Monica’s the one I grew up with (I still have the Spider-Man issue with her origin), she’ll always be the ‘real’ Captain Marvel to me, and she’s a really cool character who had some great stories (the occupation of Avengers Mansion by the Masters of Evil will always be one of my favorite Avengers stories), and who was even the leader of the Avengers for a while when Wasp stepped down (and personally I should really check out Nextwave sometime, which features her as well and is supposed to be really fun).

12

marvel is perfectly capable of taking obscure and making them relevant…Avengers didn’t matter 10 years ago. Same for Guardians of Galaxy. Hell, we’re getting a movie called Antman this week and its not going to be a complete joke.

13

The girl from First Class was Angel Salvador, but hey, she’s so small time I don’t want to see her.

I agree we need diversity, in hindsight I should’ve more diverse characters down, I put Miles Morales down but apart from him most of mine were caucasian males (Females being Jean Grey and Domino, one caucasian, the other is somewhat blue).

With the New Mutants film announced, hopefully they consider some of these for the game, they have Native Americans Warpath and Danielle Moonstar, Latino Sunspot, Vietnamese (and LGBT) Karma. However I think they will complete most of the A-List characters they can obtain licenses for first as well as more of the most popular villains before they add diversity, it will happen, we just need to be patient

14

http://marvel.wikia.com/Category:Homosexual_Characters

Also..how do you classify Other? lol

A little too PC but once again, we need more female villains.

15

Pretty interesting data set.

I’d say Marvel is getting better about representation but it’s still far from ideal. The game does pretty well with what it has, though does lack women and POC. I don’t think sexuality would really affect the game much, except for a few mini-cutscenes.

16

If the census were of characters in the Marvel universe, how is MPQ doing?

Really, so long as they make the abilities cool and useful in the game, we are all going to use them. If Hulkbuster was being piloted by ISIS, I would still roster him because he is incredibly useful.

So I don’t care if they put a non-affiliated stick figure in as the next character… I’m still going to collect the covers if that character is going to be fun to use and help me win matches.

17

My issue is with color.

How is it that Thor is the best Yellow tile producer in the game? AFAIK, MM is the only ability that adds yellow tiles. I’m sitting on a bone dry board with Falcon and Daken, wishing that I had brought Thor along to help boost those strike tiles.

18

Curious, what colors did you put for Beast and Mystique, as their natural states are blue… movies non-withstanding.

19

How is there no lavender on your pie chart? Did you miss Kamala?

EDIT: Let’s take a survey: Is Pakistan in the Middle East or API?

20

Other?

Also, I hope that Vision got his own category. He may look male, but I’m guessing that he’s sexless.