I think people are kind of triggered by the word "diversity" or exhausted from reading about socio-political debates (or both) and honestly I don't blame them.
As for more guests, yeah I'd be up for it. The few guests they have had on was a nice change of pace.
As long time DF youtube viewer I enjoy your content, and congrats on new website and independence. But it would be great to get more diversity on the shows like DF Direct, and newly announced DF retro which also has an all-white-male panel. Otherwise keep up the great work and all the best!
As nice as it would be to see a diverse crew on DF, I think people come here for analysis of the small, cozy team of passionate experts that Rich has assembled, who all do their job very well.
If anyone ever departs that team or if there's a time that scaling up makes sense, maybe when hiring new folks there can be more attention paid to broadening the makeup of the team. But until that day comes it feels like keeping the core crew employed and busy with work is a more important focus.
Funny how it's never a problem when all the members are black or women.
Yes, because media in general is dominated by white-centric and male-centric views. If you set out to do something that would break from that norm, you don't really need to add to it by including perspectives that "cover" ground that's more than well treaded already. In fact, it would just make whatever it is closer to the norm that it is trying to break away from.
At a glance this post reads like a polite suggestion that Digital Foundry should add “more diversity” to their on-camera teams/panels, however specifically calling out that Digital Foundry is “all-white-male” demonstrates otherwise — it is primarily about race, with gender as a secondary (or cover) element:
By saying “all-white-male panel” instead of just “all-male panel,” finnguin is deliberately injecting race into the criticism. If the real/only issue was gender balance, “all-male” would have sufficed. Adding “white” makes the primary complaint race-based.
In current internet/YouTube discourse, “we need more diversity” in this exact context almost always functions as a socially acceptable way to say “there are too many white people (especially white men) on screen.” The gender part is usually included because straight white men are the one demographic it’s still widely seen as okay to criticise for lack of diversity.
The phrasing is classic “praise sandwich” or “concern-trolling” style: start and end with compliments so the criticism in the middle can’t easily be dismissed as hate, while still making the real point crystal clear to everyone reading it.
In practice, comments like this are rarely about “diversity of opinion” or “diversity of experience” — they’re almost always about visible identity categories (race, gender, sometimes sexuality or disability). Here, the explicit mention of “white” removes any plausible deniability.
The core subtext is “Digital Foundry is all white guys and that’s bad/problematic issue” for the OG poster. The “diversity” framing and the polite tone are just the socially-approved packaging that lets the them say it in public without getting instantly ratio’d or dismissed as a troll.
There's a word for people who are obsessed with the race of others. 🤷♂️
It’s certainly possible, but you have to make a ***** load of assumptions to read that into what OP said… There’s what he actually said, and then there’s this fantasy strawman position that you came up with.
The internet is a big place my man. You don’t have to look very far to find the overly woke liberal caricature that you want to make OP in to. I would say go argue with them instead, but you seem pretty well versed in the culture war vernacular, so I’m guessing you already do plenty of that.
Great to see generally positive discussion here and support for more diverse perspectives on the show, including from people from more diverse backgrounds (eg guests would be an easy way to achieve this). And I mean diversity in the broadest way, whether neurodiverse or other people with disabilities, cultural and linguistic, race, sex, etc. I like hearing about others’ perspectives and experiences on various aspects of games (ranging from the tech and gameplay aspects to the art and sound design etc), and I think it could potentially make the DF show better too.
Giant Bomb does a great thing where they have a lot of guests for GOTY discussions, and just the other day I think Jeff Grubb had Alyssa Mercante as a guest in their show. I think initiatives similar to these could be a great fit for DF.
This whole debate works off of people thinking they've earned what they've achieved, which really isn't true. Sure you have to work hard to get what you get but it's all circumstantial. You're just born where you're born, you have zero say in where or who you're born to and you have access to certain privileges based off of that. The reason DF is predominately white male and western is because the entire team were born in places that allowed them access to the resources needed to make DF happen (money, education, ability to pursue hobbies etc). If they'd been born in an Indian slum we wouldn't have a fully Indian cast of DF, it would just be a different set of white western men.
If you get so upset by this all you can do is rage about your fear of any change on the internet and not recognize it and think "maybe it's okay to allow people from different backgrounds to be on the show" then maybe it's a you issue, rather than an issue with the perfectly nice suggestion that the OP had.
India famously doesn't have legions of tech reporters on YouTube, and a CEO in place in nearly every tech company.
"White, western." Are they the primary identifiers if the DF crew? That's it? They sound boring.
John and Rich for example, are the same? Nevermind the fact they have an age difference, come from different countries, raised in different cultures, different life journeys, never mind the personal differences.
Didn't bother with Age, nationality, ethnicity, region, religion, class, or economic background or any of a myriad of things and experiences that make up a human.
Stunningly small view of humanity
"maybe it's okay to allow people from different backgrounds to be on the show"
Lol you are arguing against yourself here because nobody said that.
This whole debate works off of people thinking they've earned what they've achieved, which really isn't true.
Unfortunately, seems most people still forget that the whole social and economic paradigm we all live in only exists due to colonialism, the systematic genocide of non-white folks and patriarchal power structures. Discussing diversity is but a small way to acknowledge all of that and take steps towards a more egalitarian world.
Forums
Topic: DF diversity?
Posts 21 to 40 of 55
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic