How is this relevant in any way? where's the clickbait? Clickbait would be more like "You won't believe what these devs said!"
Kotaku: During a preview, Forspoken devs described their black protagonist in cringe-inducing ways
- Thread starter Saucycarpdog
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How is this relevant in any way? where's the clickbait? Clickbait would be more like "You won't believe what these devs said!"
I'm sure they did tons of research watching black people hip hoppin' and jivin' in their natural habitat. You want to be as realistic as possible about this sort of thing. Otherwise it'll break the immersion, or worse, players won't even realize when a character is supposed to be black.
Yeah… That's something alright. I don't understand the reticence to hire a lead writer from the community your lead character is representing, if you want to root character in their background and tell a story around that. It almost reads like they might be a stand in for a blank slate character, and they scrambled like 5 minutes ahead of the presentation to come up with some additional grounding for them in case someone asks. If this is the best they could come up with, imagine the shit that didn't make the cut.
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They call me the Hiphopopotamus, my writings are bottomless.
um...
Frey's very angry and In trouble with the law in this metropolis?
um...
Frey's very angry and In trouble with the law in this metropolis?
I don't necessarily see anything wrong with a stereotypical character anyway. Regardless of what it's concerning, but only if the medium isn't ENTIRELY comprised of it, otherwise it ends up being damaging since it paints a singular vision that isn't necessarily very representative of an entire group.
I was having a similar discussion with my boyfriend about how gay representation in media is often the stereotypical loud, promiscuous, flamboyant and feminine depiction...and I've heard arguments that we should be seeing way less of it to represent a broader spectrum...but then what of representation for those who ARE like that. If you lean heavily in the opposite direction you just end up under-representing the group that DOES more closely fit that stereotype.
I'm not saying there's swathes of black kids on the verge of prison with "hip hop swagger" that might end up feel under represented if these things were changed. But I think as long as we have a variety of backgrounds and motivations for characters. I don't necessarily think it's the worst thing to see SOME stereotypes in some games.
There was a thread a while back about how someone thought there needed to be less English speaking Spanish characters that randomly dropped Spanish words into English sentences because they saw it pretty insulting...and it was flooded with stories about how people's friends, brothers, sisters or parents did it all the time.
Do you remove it from media because it appears stereotypical. Or do you keep it in because it clearly does represent a lot of people?
In isolation I don't mind the idea of this as an origin story, because even though black trauma as a story telling device is becoming tired, it's still, admittedly, topical and a huge issue in our community, even if it does border on stereotyping.
Where it becomes an issue for me is the hip-hop walking nonsense. Coupled with the fact that the writers are all white, it puts that origin story in a completely different context and makes me question how well this character will represent black people.
Where it becomes an issue for me is the hip-hop walking nonsense. Coupled with the fact that the writers are all white, it puts that origin story in a completely different context and makes me question how well this character will represent black people.
the description of her being angry confuses me because absolutely nothing of what's been shown makes me think she's angry. honestly, her normal life seemed kinda miserable and she quips like crazy in the trailer.
personally, i think the "hip hop walk" comment is insensitive and crass but not something that completely turns me off from the game.
personally, i think the "hip hop walk" comment is insensitive and crass but not something that completely turns me off from the game.
This is a genuine question: what's the problem with Gary Whitta?
I'm not massively familiar with his written stuff (saw Rogue One, which I think he was ultimately minimally involved with, and played TWD) but on content like his KF stuff, he's never come across as problematic or anything. In fact quite the opposite.
That's fair.
I just wondered given the nature of the thread if there was something I had missed.
Reading this and I'm not sure how you jump from the idea that we need to see less stereotypes to allow space for more diverse representation of minority lives, to those stereotypes being massively underrepresented. When the overwhelming majority are stereotypes, having a broader palette of experience represented necessitates less space for those stereotypes. Of course you need fewer shallow stereotypical views if you're moving from them accounting for 90+% of representation toward a place that better reflects the diversity of those people and cultures.
There's no real reason to push concern around better more diverse perspectives on minority groups. Even less reason to start worrying about stereotypes becoming extinct as a consequence, in a landscape that is still dominated by the perspectives and leanings of cishet white men.
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Is she also gonna do a crips dance or something? What does Tom Keegan mean here? It's a shame they didn't answer many questions that black journalists had for them. Like superficial representation is nice and all, but diversity behind the scenes is just as if not more important. At least name the consultants, so we can find out from them their input and what was considered. We have seen with the blunders from Naughty Dog with their anti blackness over several games. Now that ND have a black writer, Zaire Lanier, there could possibly be some improvement.
Not sure a reaction image of a sexualised white passing female anime character is the go to 😅
I wanna say I'm surprised, but the real inside me knows that this is literally the best we can do right now.
Fucking sucks.
I wish "A Wrinkle In Time" was a better movie.
That's just the face I make whenever this happens.
IexpectednothingandyetI'mstilldisappointed.webm
Yeah, this is definitely not a good look and has me a bit worried about how things are going to be handled with the character.
Those descriptions are exceedingly stereotypical. Isekai characters are outcasts usually, but more in the fact that they live an unfulfilled life and regret not taking chances or whatever. There are plenty of ways to show that, but deciding that she's on the verge of prison? Describing her as "angry"? Borderline racist rhetoric we hear about ourselves in other forms of media.
Those descriptions are exceedingly stereotypical. Isekai characters are outcasts usually, but more in the fact that they live an unfulfilled life and regret not taking chances or whatever. There are plenty of ways to show that, but deciding that she's on the verge of prison? Describing her as "angry"? Borderline racist rhetoric we hear about ourselves in other forms of media.
Ugh, just when I thought that we finally get a decent black (well, colored) protagonist in a Japanese Square Enix game.. there's always a catch, huh.
This is extremely disappointing. I had hoped that they were closely working with a team of Black writers, but those descriptions ... sigh.
The terms "cringe" and "cringe-inducing" are considered as triggering in modern media. If the author of the piece would have replaced it with "uncomfortable" or "awkward" – I would have no issue with it. As it stands, "cringe" is a social media phenomenon and this author clearly exploits it. Click-bait.
I mean Balinska is about as far from street as you can imagine. Her dad is a literal count. This comes across as clumsy. I'm PoC and this by no means a deal breaker but quite a few tropes in there. Doesn't offset by any means the inclusion of a poc lady in a major SE RPG though. Kind of like black panther. That was super tropey
The standouts are her being "on the verge of prison," describing her motion capture performance as having a "very hip-hoppy kind of walk." That shit is bad. Like, BAD. Not surprising though. I hope this game is good but stuff like this doesn't instill me with a lot of hope.
I mean, Ubisoft is a fairly diverse Corp no?
Like, most of the time I see folks of all demographics make up their leads, staff, writers, etc. During their press bits they do.
This 100%. Embarrassing post and wondered why this image of all things has to be the one used. 🙄
Its weird because nothing they've shown has even reflected that she is angry, criminal? or "hip hoppy" - she seems like a kinda depressed outsider who wants a better life (for her and her cat), maybe an Aladdin type at most, (she is even getting beaten up by actual bullys/criminals). The lack of black writers is concerning and "consultants" are certainly not enough, you do need those voices in the room not just trying to bandaid issues, but one suspects Square (and possibly Gary Whitta leading the team) were more concerned with hiring (as he said when Project Athia was announced) "a crack team of A-list writers from the worlds of film, tv, games, and fantasy literature"/their friends than the writers that could best tell the story of a young black woman - the nails and fashion angle are kinda ick too so... a bit out of touch in general
So at this point we can all agree that including a POC was just to tick the box and get a quick minority representation grab, without any real interest in representing the race/culture yeah?
As a black Hispanic, I'm kinda disappointed in this phrasing, though the key thing is that, whether it is simply phrasing from the PR team or if it's indicative of the actual level of writing within the game itself. I never got the idea that Frey was "Angry" before going to the fantasy world, maybe bitter but definitely not angry. The prison quote is the same, nothing we've seen so far in game seems to indicate that so far. The hippity-hop line also doesn't make sense, though that one is far more inexcusable IMO.
The way I see, this plays out in two ways. Either the person that answered those questions was over exaggerating some of the more isekai tropes when describing Frey's backstory and accidentally made racist comments without realizing it, or this is indicative of the writing of the actual game. I don't know very much currently, I'd rather wait until the final product comes out before jumping to conclusions about whether or not this project had good intentions or not with bringing diversity, but I wouldn't be surprised sadly.
Either way, the key takeaway from this game is that we need to hire more diverse writers to make sure everything is handled correctly.
The way I see, this plays out in two ways. Either the person that answered those questions was over exaggerating some of the more isekai tropes when describing Frey's backstory and accidentally made racist comments without realizing it, or this is indicative of the writing of the actual game. I don't know very much currently, I'd rather wait until the final product comes out before jumping to conclusions about whether or not this project had good intentions or not with bringing diversity, but I wouldn't be surprised sadly.
Either way, the key takeaway from this game is that we need to hire more diverse writers to make sure everything is handled correctly.
Why is it so hard to not fall into tropes and stereotypes when writing a black MC like this?
I mean, I'm only a quarter black, but I could easily think of the experiences of my half black and fully black family members and they'd make great back stories.
I'd expect a major company to have the resources to do much better then this.
It's not a deal breaker for the game, but it is a disappointment.
I mean, I'm only a quarter black, but I could easily think of the experiences of my half black and fully black family members and they'd make great back stories.
I'd expect a major company to have the resources to do much better then this.
It's not a deal breaker for the game, but it is a disappointment.
