Yes, definitely, but I think it bears talking about some of the nuance here. GRRM is very liberal, he’s definitely not advocating for gender roles as they are depicted in GoT.
Compare to the explicitly feminist dystopian novel Handmaid’s Tale. The depiction of male supremacy in that book is probably really disturbing or distressing to a lot of people, but it’s not insensitive to the feminist perspective – exactly the opposite. In both that book and GoT, the depictions should be regarded as criticisms of the thing being depicted.
I think it depends on the game. I think The Elder Scrolls games mostly do a great job with race (though there are aspects that are problematic): four years after the release of Skyrim, the game’s fans still argue vehemently and at great length about whether or not the Stormcloak faction is racist. In one city, a racial minority (dark elves) is depicted as living in a slum and not receiving adequate social services, but there are members of that minority who will argue that the route to respectability is hard work, not whining about what isn’t being given to you. Complicating this, the earlier game Morrowind depicted dark elves as extremely racist and xenophobic as well.
But I think TES is actually trying to say something about race relations. I think in games that aren’t trying to say anything in particular about race relations, it’s fine to have player characters treated the same regardless of physical characteristics.
Sorry, let me clarify:
I believe that everyone wants to be included. But it is my understanding of the original article that Author advocates mostly for Afro-Americans. My opinion is that racial discrimination should not be associated only with the skin colour and that calling people ‘white’ is somehow discriminatory in itself, as it bundles too many cultures under one name. I live in a city where we have an empty synagogue, because there is no one to claim it, as everyone of original Jewish inhabitants were murdered during the WW2, those are the issues we associate with ‘race’. As I tried (probably poorly, as English is not my native language) to word in my original response, the fact that many people in USA believe that racial issues=oppression of black people is oversimplification that exemplifies American ignorance. The stance that any game without PoC is bad does not work here in Europe. And this particular game was created in Europe, so Americans should try to understand it a little.
For that last thing - Sorry, I misquoted
You feel as though you’ve been discriminated against in this forum? Because…diverse opinions? And trust me when I say that’s not even close to a fine ad hominem attack–I’ll give you an example:
The American known as Rush Limbaugh is a craven, hypocritical, disingenuous horse’s ass. Fuck him, repeatedly, in the mouth, and know that practically every opinion he has ever offered is lower than the lowest alien pond scum.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, exactly, but I’ll just mention a few things here:
South Africa had apartheid, and the racial decide there is still very pronounced.
My black friend traveled to Japan a few years ago and said that he wasn’t allowed in some restaurants because of his race. He said that his experience was that Japanese people in general were extremely prejudiced against blacks. For what it’s worth, my friend is a very soft spoken, anime-loving, jazz musician, and the very definition of a gentle giant, so I find it hard to believe that it was anything other than his skin color that caused the discrimination.
Norway just had a shocking election in which the winning party’s main platform was anti-immigration, focused mainly on the surge in black and Muslim immigration the country has experienced.
By no means is this a complete list of countries that are currently experiencing issues with race relations. I’m just throwing out these prominent examples as a way of illustrating that it’s quite incorrect to imply that only “3 main countries” are experiencing them.
So, a game marketed worldwide has to go and change the source material (one that is very much about the evil of racism as one of its main themes, btw) to conform to US discourse on race and inclusiveness or they just “dont get it”
Instead of Americans just getting the game, understanding what is the cultural context that produced it is not the US one, and enjoy it anyway, without pretending that the fact that it doesnt reflect your society diversity is a failure on them.
Because we have to adapt to you. You cant bloody well move from your mental frame and say hey, this book, this game, is not made by us. It is not about us. But I can enjoy it anyway.
We, of course, do it all the time. Because we are bombarded by American media, and we can just jump in and enjoy it while kinda regretting there is no more about others, or about ourselves, but no matter, I just let myself in and follow the all-American protagonists and its all-American problems and situations that really dont have much to do with me. But you cant, because America is not only the important market. Is the moral market. Deviation from American standards can only mean failure on our side, to be as open-minded and understanding as the people of the country where something like Charleston happens and half of your media tries to paint it as non-racial, something nobody did over here because it would be bloody ridiculous and stupid.
I agree with you - there are quite a lot countries where people are racists. Racists are ewerywhere. BUT my original point was STRICTLY that there are not that many countries where BLACK-WHITE issues are predominant. I was surprised myself. Yet, If you think about it… Many people in Europe hate Muslims, Russia and Japan just hate everyone else (I briefly studied Japanese and I agree with your friend - many of them are xenophobes to the extreme, smiling and friendly, yet still think of you as some lesser people. And they despise all other peoples, not only black). Rwanda is black on black. Few surviving neo-nazis in Germany hate Jews. Jews hate Arabs, and so on… I was raising a point that ‘white people hate black people’ is not that predominant narrative outside of the USA, RSA and Australia. And maybe few more countries that I honestly cannot name and subsequently asked for someone to help me find. Norway is not a good example either, IMO - again they are not very fond of people who are not from Norway, not only black people. I know that many of them don’t like Poles. It’s more about immigrants than colours.
Please explain why you should need to change source code or the storyline by even one word to offer a player the option to change the skin tone of the avatar.
Also, to reiterate a challenge all you sudden arrivals are ignoring, please explain how allowing the player to change the skin tone of the avatar will detract from your or any other persons enjoyment playing the game with whatever skin tone on your avatar that you prefer.
Are you playing white privilege bingo? Tell me you are, please, because I think you may have won a prize!
As for your statement that:
Was the OP asking for a male character to play the female role? [Gonna go with “no” on that.] So what does the character’s voice have to do with anything?
As for “specific story”, we’re talking about a game. Written by humans for play on a computer console capable of displaying…oh…I don’t know…much more than VGA’s 262,144 possible colors. Or are the game devs contractually bound to write the characters in the story as white?
It’s nice that you see the problems faced by PoC’s when playing the vast majority of games, except the “random” skin tone should be changed to “white”.
There is just one thing that bothers me about this article, and it has been highlighted to some degree by other comments but I think a more fleshed out summary is important here. Internationally the concept of race is not as large of a trigger issue as it is in the US. I’m not saying that other countries are inherently more racist and it’s more accepted, but it’s not at the forefront of other nations conscious as it is in the US and imposing our view of equality isn’t fair or accurate.
This game was created by Polish developers. This is important because in Poland the discrimination suffered by their citizens was more based on language, region of origin, and religion. Not skin color. This game does an excellent job of dealing with those issues and the article highlights how they do mention in game how some of the main characters are minorities, and are being persecuted based on their differences. Culturally from the Polish developers point of view, this is still tackling discrimination, still tackling diversity, and still telling a valuable message. It doesn’t appeal to our sensibilities when looking for skin tone, but why would that be the same concern for a Polish developer?
If you were to watch a TV show or play a game created in Ghana, or Togo or another West African country and the main characters were all black with no representation of Asian cultures, we wouldn’t be concerned, because we recognize the context in which the art was created. It’s not being racist to people from Thailand because they’re not represented in the game/show/whatever.
The Witcher does a fantastic job of discussing injustice in societies, does a nice job as the article says of avoiding sexist tropes we typically see in games (despite the amount of over all sex in the game) and contrary to the article, does at least allude to darker skinned peoples in Zerrikania which may even possibly end up being a focus for future content.
Racism is terrible, certainly exists, but I don’t think the developers of The Witcher have created an affront on equality of all peoples by their lack of pigment diversity when the game focuses on so much other diversity.
I was joking. I do not feel discriminated. Maybe I misunderstood you and needlesly have taken it to the heart, because I was under impresssion tha you’re making fun of my ‘long’ tenure at the forum. So no offence taken, and I hope that I not offended you either.
As for ad hominem argument - sorry, in this case you are wrong. Your example is rather a simple insult. If you would have suggested that my arguments are not worth of your time simply because I am new to the forum - that would be ‘ad hominem’ (There are nuances, please consult Wikipedia or this little book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right).
Please explain how allowing another player to change the skin tone of the avatar would detract from the enjoyment you get playing the game with whatever skin tone you choose to play with.
It is not a simple insult. The example provided demands that the opinions of the subject be dismissed on the basis of the attacks against the person, which were not attacks on the opinions. It is a basic, easily distinguished example of nothing else but an ad hominem attack.
It doesn’t, never said it did. I also play Rust which is mentioned in the article, my avatar is darker skinned, looks Mediterranean, pre-update was white. I love Rust just the same. I don’t care what color the main character is but you seem to be missing my point that cultural prominence of the politics around skin pigment are not as prominent in other parts of the world as they are in the US. The entire cast of the Witcher could be from the Ivory Cost for all I care, the game is fantastic. Enjoyment isn’t based on skin color of the character (I actually go for green skin whenever possible because I love green). Trying to US-politicize another countries game isn’t fair though.
Also, how can someone’s arrival on a forum be more or less sudden? Are you going to ping me and check latency to see how fast my sign up would have taken to see if it was genuinely “sudden”? You had first posts places too. I’ve been reading BoingBoing for years, big fan of Cory, just finally felt the need to make an account because I think both games are doing things right and we could get nit picky over any sort of diversity we want in any work of art (no females in Rust?). Gender diversity, sexual diversity, ethnic diversity, religious diversity, height diversity, hair color diversity, political diversity, I could go on. The fact that the Witcher happened to not do so well with pigment diversity, from an area where pigment diversity is not a hot button issue or at the forefront of their political conscious, to me is creating a stir where there isn’t one. If this was a US game I would completely agree with the author, not made a post, gone on my happy way. There is racial diversity ingrained into the fabric of the US and ignoring that when it’s the culture the game would be created in IS and issue, and unfortunately does happen. The Witcher though is not an example of this, nor would a game from somewhere in West Africa with an all black cast be an example of it there.
