So a handful of the comments I saw say something along the lines of, "I don't mind diversity, but I want my historical games to be accurate"
Let's break down what it means to be "historically accurate" and why diversity should still factor in (1/x) https://twitter.com/KiennaS/status/1007670671030259714

History is written by the winners, and it's written by people. This means that most of our understanding of history (since we're relying mostly on written records) are influenced by the biases and agendas of those writing it, i.e. the people in charge (2/x)

Whoever is writing the history of an event usually want to portray a certain narrative, and they will include certain perspectives and exclude others. This can be as subtle as overlooking certain people, or can be as insidious as actively erasing them (3/x)

Good example of the former would be the fact that we have records of black people in Rome, but most historical canons have overlooked them in favour of portraying a certain image of Rome (4/x)

Good example of the latter is the attempted erasure of Hatshepsut by her successor, who thought it was disgraceful for Egypt to have a female pharaoh (among other things) in its history, and almost successfully managed to quite literally scratch her out of the records (5/x)

The omitting of certain people from historical canons doesn't mean they didn't exist in history though! I'm pretty sure LGBT+ people and women and POC weren't just invented one day (6/x)

On top of this, how we interpret history is also going to be influenced by our own biases. Because of our experiences and viewpoints, we may look at the same text and see completely different stories from it (7/x)

Written records are messy, and unfortunately we can't actually check whether something is "accurate" or not unless we've time travelled
It also doesn't help that real life is also messy, and it would be impossible to document everything needed for a comprehensive history (8/x)

So history as we understand it may not actually be all that accurate!
"Ok Kienna," I hear you say, "but it's harder to believe that XYZ could exist in that point of history"
So let's move on to the role of suspension of disbelief and how it gets influenced by bias! (9/x)

Before we continue, I should say that biases are completely human! But they can also bar you from considering/understanding other viewpoints due to confirmation bias and internal double standards (10/x)

Confirmation bias is the subconscious tendency to search for evidence that supports your viewpoint and dismiss evidence that doesn't, and the double standard is the subconscious tendency to hold evidence that doesn't support your viewpoint to a higher standard of quality (11/x)

We're all biased (myself included!), which is why we have to be critical of our biases and how they influence what we say/do/feel, and make corrections in our judgements if needed (12/x)

So why is bias important to understand in this discussion? Well, every single game requires you to suspend your disbelief in some way. I don't think I could find a game that was 100% percent accurate to reality in its story and mechanics (13/x)

Honestly, making the mechanics for things like movement, actions, character death, etc. would probably make a very frustrating and boring game. Same goes for story, there wouldn't be much excitement if you couldn't influence the story outside of historical canon! (14/x)

So we're able to suspend our disbelief on a lot of those things that aren't "historically accurate," but there are a lot of things that we seem to not be able to suspend our disbelief on (15/x)

Why are we able to suspend our disbelief that a character can do a series of inhuman attacks but not if the character is a woman? Why are we able to suspend our disbelief that a character is able to take lethal shots and still run but not if the character is disabled? (16/x)

We've already seen that it isn't exactly the historical accuracy (mechanics aren't accurate, and history as we understand it probably isn't accurate), so what gives? If you said biases, you're correct! Biases dictate what you consider as an acceptable threshold (17/x)

We especially have to be critical of these biases when there *is* historical evidence that sets up a threshold. For example, when it comes to Battlefield V, we have a lot of evidence of women fighting in WWII! Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the Night Witches, and so many more (18/x)

But even when there isn't historical evidence, games and game designers tend to prioritize fun over 100% accuracy. So why limit ourselves to suspension of disbelief over mechanical and story things? Why not also extend that to a diversity of characters? (19/x)

There are so many ways we expand a story with diverse characters. Even if the identity of a character doesn't affect the gameplay (e.g. Battlefield V), it's still cool to have that option available, especially for people who don't see themselves represented often (20/x)

TLDR: history isn't that accurate, and our interpretation of it is influenced by biases. If we're able to suspend our disbelief around mechanics and stories, we should be able to as well for diverse characters
Be critical, be thoughtful, be kind (21/21)