Angelus Errare
Banned
word.
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The Black Culture Thread |OT7| Luigi took our stare
- Thread starter Silky
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word.
Spring-Loaded
Member
Considering how bad Other M was, they could now justify a reboot, follow the shocking "reveal ending" model from the first Metroid and reveal that Samus is black at the end. The reaction would be worth the price of the game's development
Angelus Errare
Banned
Damn that's some Sahara desert no water for 5 days levels of thirst.
A new character anyway. I thought they were being bold and bringing in a female stringer to play 3/4ths of a game as main character, sort of like Arbiter for Halo. With more of a projectile and long arm weapon type attack set. That would be cool.
Zelda fans might lose their nut over a female dark elf ranger, a la Drizzt .
Uno Venova
Banned
That reminds me of where the fuck are my vine comps.
Man, they could just use Impa. I'd play that.
I think the public is.
Let's face it, like most of Nintendo's core franchises these days, there's a significant group of people who just don't give a single fuck about them. Regardless of what Nintendo announced about the new Zelda, it was only ever going to be relevant to Nintendo's hardcore
But making Link female? That would have been a major deal. That alone would have had more people talking about a Nintendo game than 500 thug Luigis.
What thread is this?
Oldschoolgamer
The physical form of blasphemy
Yeaaa...
They def should have had someone in the office to tell him how bad he was fucking up with the narrative...
Like, slap the pen out of his hand and take away the keyboard type of tell him.
Devolution
Member
Missed opportunity to have a Sheik protag. Best character in the games.
Should have clarified that my post was more directed towards black Link. Female Link is less of a problem than black Link. Hell, most of the common public thinks the game stars Zelda anyway, and obviously Nintendo has no issue with female leads these days based on their E3 showings and Samus.
The other problem is Nintendo is a Japanese company, and when they develop their games they always think about their homeland first. I can't see them marketing a black male Link in Japan. I can't even think of a single anime or manga in Japan where there is a black male lead.
EscoBlades
Ubisoft Marketing
I'll say this again.
The issue with diversity in games won't be solved until we have a more diverse industry workforce. I fully stand by the notion that especially in games, you write/ create what you know. And the majority of creatives currently in the industry are overwhelmingly white and/or male.
I'm far more interested in getting more minorities on the path to working in the industry and thus making it a more diverse place to be. Almost everything else will flow from there. Far better than banging my head against the seemingly immovable and entrenched view of whom to market games to.
The issue with diversity in games won't be solved until we have a more diverse industry workforce. I fully stand by the notion that especially in games, you write/ create what you know. And the majority of creatives currently in the industry are overwhelmingly white and/or male.
I'm far more interested in getting more minorities on the path to working in the industry and thus making it a more diverse place to be. Almost everything else will flow from there. Far better than banging my head against the seemingly immovable and entrenched view of whom to market games to.
You are better than this
Devolution
Member
Personally I think some kind of pressure for outside consultation will help as well. Minorities having to push their own stories or rock the boat puts some undue pressure on employees. If say some independent people are basically tasked with critiquing the lack of diversity or even critiquing an existing diverse cast (them tropes ugh), that would take a lot of the responsibility off minority devs to feel they need to facilitate change and possibly alienate themselves in the process.
I agree with this.
Personally, it's not so much that I care about Link being female. But, like with the Ubisoft shit recently, I'm just fed up with the bullshit excuses used to explain why there isn't more minority/female representation in games.
Like, devs can't just SAY "We're creating what we know," or "we want to go with the status quo because we feel that's what will sell." No, they always got to give some bullshit reason, because they can't ever be seen as not doing "the best they can." They don't want to have to give a fuck, but they don't want to be perceived as not giving a fuck. But, sadly, in 2014 most of these reasons they give are easily exposed for bullshit.
Devolution
Member
Honestly some transparency on that end wouldn't hurt. The incessant doubling down on why something isn't included. Just say you fucked up and you'll do better next time.
Angelus Errare
Banned
I kinda of agree, but not really. I mean if Ubisoft/Activision/EA can fund teams going on trips to <insert exotic location here> so they can take pictures of some fucking pebbles at some random river bed and other research to make said place in the game more authentic then they should easily be able to do such for minority groups. I just refuse to believe these companies can't find a single minority figure who would tell them "hey...this shit is fucked up bro".
Like United Front went to Shanghai to do research for Sleeping Dogs, and ended up making a pretty decent protagonist and cast. And that team was all white literally. Shit they even hired actual Asians for the VO work. That's like better than 90% of these bigger companies do.
This excuse gets used a lot in Hollywood but I mean you have people like Joss Whedon who is as white as December snow in Alaska but he's somehow able to write minority characters outside of Hollywood's 'crate of stereotypes'. Shit I'm an avid reader and I've read so many books that have amazing minority characters despite vast majority of the authors being white, and some have most likely only interacted with minorities via news reports. In fact that's what many authors do, they research.
With as much knowledge as we have at the tip of our fingers via the internet I really can't cosign this argument.
Really I read it all as "these huge companies can't be bothered to research on other groups of people, so they take the easy route and just stick to the tired stereotypes; and that's fine because vast majority of gamers won't complain about them."
Exactly.
Just had a talk with my mom and grandmother where they basically are saying its best that shit like NSA leaks didn't hit the internet abd that we dont need to know everything because people dont fact check and can take a story too far.
The divide between what older gen and current on the way info and gov't shit leaks is kind of shocking. Like to the point its beter if some of these crazy things never hit the mainstream on some see no evil hear no evil shit.
I dont talk pol sci here but it was just something I realized
The divide between what older gen and current on the way info and gov't shit leaks is kind of shocking. Like to the point its beter if some of these crazy things never hit the mainstream on some see no evil hear no evil shit.
I dont talk pol sci here but it was just something I realized
More minority devs would be great, but I think this whole argument of "portraying what you know" is a cop-out.
The same ones that say this use it as an excuse to justify giving female characters unrealistically big boobs and the like. There's no way in hell that every girl these guys have met has paraded around in most of the outfits these guys give their characters.
The same ones that say this use it as an excuse to justify giving female characters unrealistically big boobs and the like. There's no way in hell that every girl these guys have met has paraded around in most of the outfits these guys give their characters.
Devolution
Member
Biggest problem with the "need more minorities" angle is it doesn't truly solve the issue of getting one group to view another as people rather than stereotypes.
I seen too many coon characters in video games and comics to doubt this being true.
sheik is as one dimensional as the rest of the characters in the zelda series
It's also a cop out in that it's an arbitrarily drawn line. You don't have to make your game characters look like you any more than you have to make them law abiding citizens who never cause physical harm to any other characters in their virtual world. Developers literally get to choose what the character is and does at every step, and they can simulate murder with a white guy just as easily as they can with a black chick. They generally don't "because."
I don't know why we shouldn't be able to encourage more minority creatives to enter and ask the current batch to step their shit up in regards to handling minority characters.
We can, and should, make a push for both. I am not at all comfortable with letting devs off for doing shoddy work because "we just gotta wait till more of the wimmenz and negros get a shot."
We can, and should, make a push for both. I am not at all comfortable with letting devs off for doing shoddy work because "we just gotta wait till more of the wimmenz and negros get a shot."
That can be said for a lot of characters in OoT.
Devolution
Member
Right they all are but I would like to play as Sheik. Hell an OoT from that POV would be sweet.
i know. thats why i said it.
Devo makes a great point too. Sure, bringing all this variety is nice but if it comes in the form of superficial characterization, it's not helping much at all.
I wanted to jump through the screen when some guy said "well, isn't it good to at least have girls in the game, even if they're scantily clad?". No, it isn't.
It isn't cool when the same black character stereotypes are always enforced either. If the only portrayal they're gonna have is crappy, they're better off not there. POC aren't clones, we're people and should be portrayed as such.
I wanted to jump through the screen when some guy said "well, isn't it good to at least have girls in the game, even if they're scantily clad?". No, it isn't.
It isn't cool when the same black character stereotypes are always enforced either. If the only portrayal they're gonna have is crappy, they're better off not there. POC aren't clones, we're people and should be portrayed as such.
EscoBlades
Ubisoft Marketing
It is more true than i care to admit, which is a damn shame. Especially amongst writers. I'll leave it at that for now.
Devolution
Member
One of those things where it's both a cop out and kind of the reality of the situation so it's just basically "fuck it."
The Insane Dufresne
Member
I'm learning that some threads in OT are best ignored. The outrage in the EBT thread is fucking hilarious.
In other news , Penny Dreadful is that shit. I highly recommend it.
In other news , Penny Dreadful is that shit. I highly recommend it.
Really is. Eva green is so gorgeous and amazing on the show it's ridiculous. I bet your her pum pum taste like strawberry crepes.
Devolution
Member
Poor people doing anything but basically buying lentils with their assistance sure angers folks.
Character creators are fine if that's what the game was made around. They're usually never simply a solution for diversity in a game, but rather a mechanic for RPGs written around having "you" as the protagonist. That said, I almost never try to craft a black dude in those games anymore because in a lot of them it's hard as shit. It's basically impossible in Dragon Age. I was able to do it in Mass Effect but at great difficulty.
This has been my position from the start. There are other things that can be done, but this is probably what would help the most. But that get's into the whole issue of women and minorities in tech, which is a whole problem to be solved in itself. Even the indie scene is mostly white dudes from what I've seen.
Japanese games are an interesting side to this issue too though. If you ask most Japanese Zelda players, they'll probably tell you Link looks Japanese, not white. It's the same for most characters who follow anime aesthetics. Maybe the fact that those games are made for such a homogeneous market means they don't have to focus one one archetype to appeal to everyone over there, because who else in Japan are you going to target? Then white people end up seeing those characters as themselves because they aren't designed to specifically look like anyone. I'm not gonna pretend Japanese character design doesn't have it's own whole host of issues though. I will ask though if anyone else has noticed Japan's higher percentage of female player characters.
Oh, and there's also getting minorities into higher ranking production roles -- the people who actually greenlight shit based on whether or not they think it'll sell. That's another side -- the money side. A lot of this is based on what producers actually think will sell. They're still stuck on primarily selling to the young white male. Female player characters in Far Cry and AC Unity probably got left on the cutting room floor because somebody didn't think it would help the games sell more copies.
If you take it that far, minority representation in media is just a microcosm of the general racial issues in the US.
I'd like to think the British TV shows I've seen are a pretty good example of a society's diversity and integration naturally playing out in its media. On that subject, I remember reading that for GTA:SA, Rockstar (a Scottish team) actually did go out to Compton or somewhere in California and talk to people down there.
This has been my position from the start. There are other things that can be done, but this is probably what would help the most. But that get's into the whole issue of women and minorities in tech, which is a whole problem to be solved in itself. Even the indie scene is mostly white dudes from what I've seen.
Japanese games are an interesting side to this issue too though. If you ask most Japanese Zelda players, they'll probably tell you Link looks Japanese, not white. It's the same for most characters who follow anime aesthetics. Maybe the fact that those games are made for such a homogeneous market means they don't have to focus one one archetype to appeal to everyone over there, because who else in Japan are you going to target? Then white people end up seeing those characters as themselves because they aren't designed to specifically look like anyone. I'm not gonna pretend Japanese character design doesn't have it's own whole host of issues though. I will ask though if anyone else has noticed Japan's higher percentage of female player characters.
Oh, and there's also getting minorities into higher ranking production roles -- the people who actually greenlight shit based on whether or not they think it'll sell. That's another side -- the money side. A lot of this is based on what producers actually think will sell. They're still stuck on primarily selling to the young white male. Female player characters in Far Cry and AC Unity probably got left on the cutting room floor because somebody didn't think it would help the games sell more copies.
If you take it that far, minority representation in media is just a microcosm of the general racial issues in the US.
I'd like to think the British TV shows I've seen are a pretty good example of a society's diversity and integration naturally playing out in its media. On that subject, I remember reading that for GTA:SA, Rockstar (a Scottish team) actually did go out to Compton or somewhere in California and talk to people down there.
hes really a nice guy. battle thirsty as fuck, but not hostile to non combatants
ViewtifulJC
Banned
she's a got a point
if you can friend Akuma, you already winning
if you can friend Akuma, you already winning
Vermillion
Banned
Ooh! If there's any game I want to play from Zelda's perspective, it's Skyward Sword. They're actually off doing their own shit that whole game.
In OoT, Sheik kinda just jumps around, guiding Link.
Devolution
Member
Wants that fuck one thousand fucks.
shes just a kof character in street fighter.
You got Tourette's or something?
Devolution
Member
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