-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Ethnic Minorities - "Forgot about them".
- Thread starter Authority
- Start date
I really don't want to shit on the thread and the issue being discussed, but Sazh is easily the best character in FFXIII, and not just because everyone sucks, he's actually really well made, and the fact that he looks like your typical black videogame character may be on purpose to break your expectations, since he's just a really cool and responsible guy.
A really bad example imo, I know it's not relevant to the point the thread's making, but using good black characters as examples to discuss bad black characters is a potential backfire to those who could do something about it and follow those discussions closely. Maybe something like "damn, if they think Sazh is crap, I won't even try".
Just talking out of my ass though, I have nothing to support that this could actually happen.
A really bad example imo, I know it's not relevant to the point the thread's making, but using good black characters as examples to discuss bad black characters is a potential backfire to those who could do something about it and follow those discussions closely. Maybe something like "damn, if they think Sazh is crap, I won't even try".
Just talking out of my ass though, I have nothing to support that this could actually happen.
Direct Source: Race in Video Games: Why it Matters... And Why Things Won't Change Anytime Soon
Games are not meant to directly or indirectly produce or support stereotypes. A black man, more important a black person is and can be non-violent, anti-drugs, educated person with intellect and integrity. It should never be a "black man is all about the ghetto, and the money and the bitches".
And all ethnic minority groups have got their own interesting stories and movies like Django Unchained that can be made into a good game.
I agree with what you're saying but my question was specifically related to "black hair" and "speaking like a black man." I don't see anything inherently wrong with those things. My guess is that the image in the OP wasn't specific enough which is why I asked for clarification.
Just_myles
Member
Well OP, what do you mean by 'forgot about them'? I was looking for something more direct. Should I have looked at the links?
Anyway I think that obviously a lot of minorities are misrepresented in games. They have demographics and they have marketing do a lot of these test, so especially here in the U.S. , you will find your protagonist as a white male.
I kind of just got used to it. In Japanese games, well, what do they really know anyway? The characters that are and have been created in the past, don't look that Japanese to me, and I am citing older adventure games and most modern games. To me, that is rather telling.
But yeah, as a whole the industry needs work. Well, no actually society needs work. I actually can't fault a publisher/developer wanting their game to reach as many people as possible. If the population didn't respond the way it does they wouldn't have to.
Anyway I think that obviously a lot of minorities are misrepresented in games. They have demographics and they have marketing do a lot of these test, so especially here in the U.S. , you will find your protagonist as a white male.
I kind of just got used to it. In Japanese games, well, what do they really know anyway? The characters that are and have been created in the past, don't look that Japanese to me, and I am citing older adventure games and most modern games. To me, that is rather telling.
But yeah, as a whole the industry needs work. Well, no actually society needs work. I actually can't fault a publisher/developer wanting their game to reach as many people as possible. If the population didn't respond the way it does they wouldn't have to.
Zomba13
Member
Dark Souls 2 got you covered
No hair even visible, has a wizardy voice, loves magic, no guns, and he's a pretty badass , powerful dude.
Oh so he's the magic black man trope? How racist.
I'm joking by the way. Straid is cool.
Given that I've spoken to many, and read more, people who do care, no, I don't think you're capable or qualified to express the opinions of others. You can argue that if you want to, but it seems a ridiculous hill on which to plant your flag.
Wonder Black in TW101.
GhostTrick
Banned
The main problem is that they're still made to appeal to a demographic and that's a problem IMO. They're not role models but yet, the reason we see the same kind of characters is often a marketing reason and I don't think that's a good idea to make a character just to make sure a demographic will be happy of this.
You did speak for others.
Right above. No indication that you were speaking for others in your ethnic group, if you meant that then you poorly conveyed your message with that sentence. Regardless, you are not qualified to speak about everyone belonging to your ethnic group. Unless you are friends with every single person within that ethnic group in the planet and asked them for their opinion, you are not qualified to generalize your sentiments.
Not everyone is asking for video games characters to be role models, or to propagate a message. Some of us just want to play a character that looks like us to feel included in a hobby we've poured so much time in.
But are those things mutually exclusive to each other? The role of the protagonist and the representation of races among a game's cast can be handled within each individual product. Plus, the OP already pointed out the link between representations of minorities in media and white peoples' views of those minorities in real life.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
True enough. I'm just pointing out that some people seem to rate all of those as equally misrepresented, which isn't true. Representation of women in gaming (both in the medium and the industry) has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade....which is logical tbh, it is half the world's population.
The others you mentioned....not so much. I know it's unrealistic to expect every problem to see the same rate of progress, and the rate of progress for some issues vs. others extends well past gaming, but idealistically you'd like to see them all addressed equally. And there are ways to kill several birds with one stone but most people don't seem able (or willing) to do it.
Portugeezer
Member
This is probably why they make white male protagonists.
I think white characters are generally safer to write for without any controversy. You can write a stupid, redneck, rapist, gangbanger who slings meth and be hailed as one of the greatest videogame characters ever. I can't imagine people would have felt the same if the character was a minority character. Regardless, I would love seeing more minority character in games, pretty weird seeing only white guys being the heroes in media (im noticing especially in the Marvel movies where all the main characters are white)
Why is this so hard for some to understand?
Probably because of the diversity they have in their studio themselves. You'd even find some Indian characters in Bioware games, possibly because of the fact that there are lots of Indians in Canada and they might even work for Bioware. Think Mass Effect itself had a few Indians and wasn't the supreme commander of Allicance or the president of Earth an Indian guy as well in Mass Effect universe?
Well if you want a diverse cast to really work with good characters it probably has to come from a place of genuine familiarity with the diverse groups being represented. The writers or designers probably have to actually come from diverse backgrounds to the point where that's just what comes directly from their heart. That doesn't mean non-minority designers can't try. If they do want to do this and do it with good characters then it probably helps to do some research.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Why did representation of women grow in leaps and bounds? Because it was identified as a problem and people tried to address it.
What does your original post do? Sarcastically derides people who identified it as a problem and try to address it on the grounds that they haven't turned around and jumped to a new problem fast enough when progress was made on the old one, pitting both problems against each other.
SolidSnakex
Member
You can select your race and gender.
GTA 4
GTA 5
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Madden
NBA 2K
Mirror's Edge
Portal
Diablo
Gears of War
Resident Evil 5
Borderlands
Borderlands 2
Come on now the games with minority protagonists are not "usually bad." Anyway seems to me like there are quite a few games out there with minority protagonists.
Thats gotta be a first for a racing game. Awesome.
bobbychalkers
Member
Really, if you add in all the playable 101 characters its incredibly diverse. Only a handful of them have any meaningful plot characterization though.
"I don't see race" is a way to sidestep the issue and is completely disingenuous to those who are daily reminded of their race due to discrimination. Its basically "I don't see race because I'm not facing discrimination".
This is part of the reason I created that thread a while ago asking why Marvel couldn't go ahead and try to get more women into their movies, even if it's gender swapping or something. It bugs me that the only woman on the team is the least-effective person in the film, as well as the only person who actually gets scared--when the Hulk is chasing her. The guys are all like "yeah, I'm so awesome," and she's, y'know, a squishy little person. She's awesome, but Marvel should totally have women on par with Hulk and Thor.
This is why so many threads about women in gaming go wrong. Instead of trying to foster empathy, these threads try to generate list wars or whatever. Even ones where it's a guy talking about how bad women have it--like that Polygon article a while ago. That guy shows up, and basically goes "that problem is worse than your problems, you're a terrible person if you don't help with it." As someone who's endured sexual discrimination, "as a guy, I'll never have sexual discrimination happen to me" type claims upset me. So my initial response, as a human being, is to push back.
But I'm a person who tries to have empathy for this. I wrinkle my nose at the people who express pride at being social justice warriors. I think we need to be social justice educators. Instead of going "X has it worse than Y, so Y, shape up and fix this," we need to go "hey, Y, X has a problem, can you help?"
Gentleman Jack
Member
And you still had to spend an hour learning to swim...
Mithos
Member
You mean I can pick what country I come from and my gender. We are all of the human race are we not?
Or am I so alone in not thinking "race" when I think of different nationalities / ethnic belongings?
RMS Gigantic
Member
Great work with ethnic and racial diversity (even centering on Chinese characters in China Town Wars), but they still have a long way to go in terms of neurodiversity. It's though that around 0.6% of criminals have some form of autistic spectrum disorder, for starters, so a GTA game feature an autistic criminal, even if as just a minor character doesn't strike me as all that implausible compared to real life.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
If it's sincere, I hope you can and it seems like it would be a relatively easy feature to implement.
If this is an insincere way of trying to state that ethnicity is not particularly important, I think it's fair to say that the extent to which particular portrayals make people feel comfortable or less comfortable depends on the depth of the portrayal and the exclusion.
A person of colour typically has no problem with playing as a white character in any one game, they might just have a problem in aggregate with the number of people of colour represented in the medium as a whole and how they're represented. Games that have more player control over the player character are going to feel more conspicuously excluding than games that have less player control, especially as marketing highlights "being able to make the character you want".
A driving game is typically going to be mostly about cars, and thus I suspect most players of colour would find that the colour of the visible wrist skin is probably less significant to them than in most games (and I would hope that a white player would not find it "odd" if a driving game featured only drivers who are persons of colour).
Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
I don't have any percentages or anything, but it seems like the majority of people making most games are not of an ethnic minority. It makes sense that predominantly white males would make games about characters they can most closely relate to. Therein, the problem lies not in the content of our games, but rather the lack of diversity in their creators.
IncandescentPrecept
Banned
Speaking for all white people - way to stereotype.
n00bsauce87
Member
Black female (non-stereotypical) protagonists in videogames?
If we get one more of these threads, I vote for a general minority char OT. We've got enough of them now that we could have some good discussion on this. I recommend that OP puts this in OP. Also, dont look at the thread trying to argue race politics. Just save yourself the headache
If we get one more of these threads, I vote for a general minority char OT. We've got enough of them now that we could have some good discussion on this. I recommend that OP puts this in OP. Also, dont look at the thread trying to argue race politics. Just save yourself the headache
Assassin's Creed Black Flag tackles this issue in one of their real world computer hacks. It stated, the reason why AC3's main character wasn't accepted by the masses, is because he looks too ethnic. I disagree with their point...AC3 failed, because it sucked. The Video Game Industry is improving in this...just look at The Walking Dead season #1 video game. The main character is black, and it was a major hit.
test_account
XP-39C²
I understand. Thanks for the answer. I think he ment it more in the way that he doesnt discriminate between people just because they have a different skin color. As that he personally dont care what skin color people have and that it is a non-issue for him. Hes just speaking from his point of view, at least that is how i understand it.
That part confused me as well.
Furthermore, when people try to suggest "ignoring race" as a solution to racism, it's basically the equivalent of treating all medical problems with "thinking healthy thoughts." A broken arm or a virulent infection only has as much power as you give it, you know?
0ptimusPayne
Member
It would be nice to play as a Black protagonist without the stereotypical ties that the media portrays them as. Black/minority characters do get to play pretty good supporting roles, but I would like to see Naughty Dog or another big game studio use a Black protagonist for one of their main IP's.
n00bsauce87
Member
How often do we see Chinese represented in video games?
IncandescentPrecept
Banned
How often do we see Chinese represented in video games?
Similarly, how often do we see Indians represented in video games?
Zomba13
Member
AC3 and AC3 Liberation both had minority leads and it was a super cool thing to do. Shame both games sucked. I was super excidted for the Vita game but it has a shitty frame rate, looks grimy, the audio just seems bad (bad samples, low quality) and the game itself was boring. Even missed out (from what I played) on really characterising Aveline. It starts with her as a kid, loses he mother somewhere and just jumps skips all the development of her until she is an adult and already an assassin.
I still do want to know how 'blacks talk' and 'blacks act' and examples of it being racist and being correct. Obviously doing a pallet swap of a white character to black isn't acting black enough for some people and some games go too far (apparently Sazh in FFXIII).
I still do want to know how 'blacks talk' and 'blacks act' and examples of it being racist and being correct. Obviously doing a pallet swap of a white character to black isn't acting black enough for some people and some games go too far (apparently Sazh in FFXIII).
MrCunningham
Member
This is true, I live in a small town in British Columbia Canada, and the second largest demographic here outside of white people are First Nation Native Americans. The Majority of them dress just like everybody else around here.