The alt-right attack on the Netflix Witcher makes me feel a bit uncomfortable about CDPR
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"There's no PoC involved so therefore it can't be racism"
The color of your skin is such an important subject when it comes to racist actitudes, that's why Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant are treated just the same way people treat a black homeless man on the street
I respectfully disagree, and I say this as a black man who lives in America and is girding himself for what I perceive to be an awakened confederacy on our soil. I'm not asleep about race at all, which might explain why I find The Witcher 3 to be a game that has resonated with me. I think its exploration of race and systemic persecution of the "other" is extremely salient to what is now occurring in the U.S. and other nations in the West. I also feel that they made some extremely pointed mentions in the story that clearly allude to Trump and the alt-right, placing them beneath a very unfavorable light. I really can't fault CDPR for the the lack of diversity in The Witcher 3, when the game is one of the few titles that treats racism in an honest way that isn't patronizing and reductive.
If you're gonna take shit, may as well take it for doing the right thing and be more diverse. Who gives a fuck what racist little snowflake babies think, anyway.
I read The Gunslinger when I was in middle school (my mother was a Stephen King fan), but never read any of them beyond that (wish I did, because it was a pretty decent book). If it trickles on Netflix or other streaming services I use, I will give it a watch out of pure interest.
His books are plenty popular in his homeland, that's why they made the games
The thread should've ended after this post anway:
So everything else is just an icing on the delicious cake. Let's see how far this will go.
Poles were systematically exterminated by Einsatzgruppen for being subhuman. Ethnocentric pogroms, especially directed at Central/eastern Europeans, were a common facet of life until the end of WW2.
The world is not America man. Other people's have their own historical baggage loaded down with blood and tears. This is sort of like telling a Korean he can't make a fantasy game an allegory about historical repression by the Japanese because both groups in the fantasy are Asian. Just because you don't view ethnic makeup in the same way they do does not mean their history and culture is wrong to portray the very real fight against oppression that has dominated Polish culture since the end of the 18th century.
He definitely made a mistake, and I can't blame him for being salty over the outcome, either.
Preach! People from US should realize this and understand this is a worldwide forum and not every member is from the same country.
I agree, actually. I wish racists and alt-right fanatics wouldn't constantly derail this topic (see the desperate attempts by them in this thread, including a joker that equalled wanting more gay characters to Nazis) because you're completely correct.
It would be nice if games, especially fantasy games, would have more varied settings of all kinds. Slavic, african, egyptan, korean, you name it. It would be nice, and good for all of us, because it'd give us different, varied settings instead of the same thing. The "slavic"-inspired setting in Quest for Glory IV felt quite interesting and different to me, for example, much like the egyptan setting in Quest for Glory III. Not perfect at all, obviously, but it was absolutely better to have a varied settings over the same boring middle-european copypaste towns.
Is it sad that the first game that came to mind when thinking about a slavic-ish (if imperfect) setting was from 1993? Yeah, absolutely :/
I just do not understand why the internet alt-right freaks out so much over even the tiniest variety. All it'd do is enrich the experience of everyone. Instead, we're stuck in a loop, with people pretending that a single character outside their norms is already a horrible crime.
His "narrative" is correct, though. In the US, PoC are disproportionally often shot to death by the police for far more minor offenses. This is proven over and over by the statistics, including the very own you linked.
The US has long cultivated a culture of brutality against minorities, especially LGBT and black people, to an extent that it's even notable among europeans like myself. Trans people are outright warned from visiting the US nowadays, for example, and there's a reason for that.
I can't really comment on the political landscape there, as I have never been there. There might be deeper problems, probably worsened by the recent resurgence of fascism. I thought it was worth mentioning the lack of ethnic diversity as I suspect most posters are either from the UK or the US, which are both very diverse.
You do not understand censorship or anything people are discussing in this thread. Creative types aren't above criticism and nothing of the level of Witcher games is made in a vacuum, devoid of any political/outside influence. There are plenty of politics that go into creating games and it's better we encourage creators to make those progressive ones rather than conservative, bigoted ones.
And who are the Poles in this game? The Elves? The people from Skellige? The human majority putting these other races under the bootheels?
This whole thing falls apart really quickly, because it's a fantasy world.
I think you reap what you sow. Claiming yoru game to be white and proud attracts these garbage people.
This feels like a troll thread.
This is exactly right. Besides that, representation becomes an issue when a culture/population is very ethnically and culturally diverse, but the portrayals of that culture doesnt accurately reflect that diveristy, instead narrowly focusing only on certain points of view, which obviously is a big problem in many places. However, this simply isnt an issue that is applicable to Poland or Sapkowskis novels, which basically are based on a medieval northern Europe with Poland in focus. Just because a few idiots are whining about the diversity of the writing staff doesnt mean that there is a real issue here, nor that there are some "alt-right" undertones to CDPR, thats just a crazy leap to make.
This is exactly right. Besides that, representation becomes an issue when a culture/population is very ethnically and culturally diverse, but the portrayals of that culture doesnt accurately reflect that diveristy, instead narrowly focusing only on certain points of view, which obviously is a big problem in many places. However, this simply isnt an issue that is applicable to Poland or Sapkowskis novels, which basically are based on a medieval northern Europe with Poland in focus. Just because a few idiots are whining about the diversity of the writing staff doesnt mean that there is a real issue here, nor that there are some "alt-right" undertones to CDPR, thats just a crazy leap to make.
Thank you for this post, I fully agree with you.
Well America is not the whole fucking world, maybe....just fucking maybe....fix your own shit before you call out another country.
Most of the UK isn't diverse, you go out of the city centres and you are talking over 90+% white British (non-imigrant origin). Ironically enough in my area of the UK (Northern Ireland) the biggest minority is Polish which is still white. I live in a racially homogeneous society and yet I know that racism is a serious problem, I know there are people around me that are racist, sus I've heard them say racist things. They should know better. I don't know the situation in Poland enough to know if they have a serious problem or not, but a homogenous population is not an excuse for my country to be ignorant, and it wouldn't be a reasonable excuse for them either.
Honestly, Europe is quite diverse too, just not racially. Ie, where I live, we've got different racist insults towards literally half the neighbouring countries, and those insults aren't meant in a funny way, they're as serious and nasty as US-American insults towards Mexicans.
Poland is a special case: The current leading party is notoriously racist, yet at the same time ensures concentration camps keep being remembered.
....At least as things that paint Germans in a bad light. See, they just made a law that makes it illegal to point out polish accomplices in the holocaust. That law is both to strenghten polish national pride, and to clamp down on critics, particularly jewish critics.
Europe is weird and doesn't quite follow the American pattern in many ways, which makes it easy to be confused. A can be racist towards B, who hates C, who thinks A is subhuman. And all three will agree that D is lazy scum. [And A,B,C and D are all idiots for these opinions. Obviously]
Our continent was a hotbed for wars for so long for a reason.
This is an international forum my guy, I am not american. I also think a product aimed at international markets need to take into account realities of different markets, especially in our globalized society.
Racism was less and less of a theme with each game and goes nearly unmentioned in TW3.
Communism really fucked up Eastern Europe's political landscape, basically. Real leftism in the sense that exists in southern and western Europe and the U.S. doesn't exist in former Bolshevik countries, because the left still has ties to the old Communists and has absorbed the social conservatism that came to be with Marx-Leninism, while the Right is split into basically Fascists and Corporatists who vie for power. The best bet politically in Eastern Europe right now are the corporatists who may be socially liberal in some cases, but are also hardcore pro-capitalists. Those would be the kind of people who get into STEM now,
Central/Eastern Europe prior to the end of WW2 was much more stratified than it is today. I've always sort of viewed the Witcher universe as an allegory for the Austrian Empire, where you had one (or two, depending on the era) dominant political ethnic groups over others.
The entire idea of "who are the Poles?" is thus a little redundant, because prior to the end of WW1 and brought to it's ultimate conclusion at the end of 2 via the ethnic cleansing by both Hitler, Stalin, and localized Facist movements like the UPA in Ukraine the area of central/eastern Europe was very ethnically diverse with poles intermixed with ruthenians mixed with Czech with Germans with Jews with magyars etc etc
Apparently everything offends people now ffs.
AFAIK he sold the whole thing so why the fuck is he crying about it every now and then? Fuck Andrzej Sapkowski he's getting on my nerves. O
Sorry to call you American. But why may I ask? How the game can change the reality which is happening in USA, I would like to hear it, what is your solution to less gun shooting. I am absolutely against having a firearm, here police barely have them and if you as a Police (wo)man shoot somebody, you need to count on repercussions, since we have the law, that you "have the right to be alive" lousy translated.
Again, sorry for my pre-emptive judgement, but I really don't see how some totally different culture, which have problems on their own should prevent this sort of thing. I think that's fairly impossible.
These are a lot of takes based on a whole lot of nothing, well done OP. Have some advice from a friend of mine.
In all seriousness: in Sapkowski's books race generally isn't described unless they are non-white. There is a lot of diversity but if you're only talking about colour then the books are mostly white. Not sure why you're rallying behind Sapkowski as the champion of virtue and diversity and portraying CDPR as some sort of racist company.
What?
Cdpr never claimed that and it's not like other franchises don't get constantly attacked for diversity as well
This is one of the dumbest things i've ever read. Now the absence of a discussion is itself is proof of racism, you literally cannot engage an argument like that, its completely circular. Its apparently no longer required to actually engage in a specific topic for others to judge you on it.
Exactly.
I adore, but don't demand, diversity in my games and media. After all, these are independent arts. Much like I can follow Childish Gambino on my playlist with Chino XL or Johnny Cash. As long as it's written well, I'm all about it.
I don't want to derail this thread aftr poting an observation about how quickly it was derailed.
But I accept your excuses for assuming I was american :P
Long time ago in one interview he went overboard and came out as a rasist and even praised pedophilia. Guy is a total ass.
He actually kind of looked like black Geralt in Ragnarok.
Wow... that would actually be perfect. He even has a good voice for Geralt too.
The tensions between the humans and scoi'atael which were dominating in the first two games, are indeed completely gone in the third game. That's not to say there isn't any racism, but it's definitely less on the foreground of the plot.You sure?
What? Did you miss the entire subplot with King Radovid where non-humans are being purged from Novigrad and other territories under Redanian control?
Entertain us with some actually proof, thanks in advance...
So throw me a PM if you want to discuss stuff, I am open to ideas from other people : ) And sorry again, it was terrible judgement on my part....
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