My quote was "a non-white male would be infinitely more interesting based on the fact that they're not a white male ALONE"...
I'm interested to know why you would think responding to that "from a writing perspective" would make any sense...
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
"Yet Another Generic White Dude" - A legitimate discussion on criticism regarding character design diversity
- Thread starter Veelk
- Start date
I'm interested to know why you would think responding to that "from a writing perspective" would make any sense...
And another point is that a character being a white male does not necessarily take away the chance to have a good character, which is what some are claiming in this and other threads.
Not great, but more appealing to different groups of people by virtue of not being 'the default' of the medium.
About the bolded:
Nobody is passing judgement on the writing of the character just yet. The character being well-written wouldn't make this any less of a missed opportunity in terms of representation though.
Because I disagree with that in regards to writing?
Unless you are talking in a cultural/societal context ie what effect the game has on society instead of the actual games story and plot content in which case I would tend to agree with but that doesnt have much to do with whether a character in a game is interesting which is what you stated
Only person I've seen who's said this is you dawg.
At this point, you all are totally sidestepping the topic at hand. Its fucking annoying.
Heroes like Black Panther and Captain Marvel would not exist in the first place if people "didn't see color" or gender. These characters came into being because people saw characters of different ethnicities and genders were being excluded from their respective industries. And there would be no need for people to push for inclusion if so called "color blind" people like yourself didn't always choose to use White (male) protagonist time and time again across all mediums in the US. So no, people who push for inclusion are not "the real racists", especially when "color blind" posters are the ones supporting the system of exclusion with intellectually dishonest drivel like this.
Also in regards to your "kids don't see color" comment, I had something else typed out, but then I remembered this video and saved myself some minutes:
Your ignorance is the only "bigotry" here.
Everyone is trying to misconstrue me as not caring about representation because I disagree that it matters in regards to how interesting any given character is.
Maybe I should have said a character is a character instead of a human is a human.
Regardless I am 100% on board with more diverse characters and I agree this was a good oppourtunity for respawn and EA to introduce a new minority lead. Can still hope for an interesting character regardless.
You're welcome to read the thread and find all of the posts expressing the belief that he is a boring character because of his whiteness. I'm not sidestepping the topic. Like I said, there are multiple discussions happening in this single thread.
You know what takes away the chance to have a good minority character? Not having a minority character in the first place.
That's the point.
It could be a great story but who is gonna know it if they are already just put off by it and don't bother playing it? People aren't gonna bother if right off the bat if the perception is "I've seen/played this story a million times by now", and there's good reason for people to feel that way. It's been done to death not only in games and all other media but even in Star Wars itself.
Yes, obviously. Do you think that all games deserve criticism if their main character isn't a minority (in America)?
I think we are absolutely allowed to criticize the choice of a white protagonist when there is a disproportionate amount of white protagonists compared to protagonists of minority groups, if that's what you're asking
Oh stop it you
simple. direct. to the goddamn point.
Are we having an asinine trash take contest that I wasn't aware of? Because this is clearly the winner.
Because you don't seem to understand that characters aren't universally appealing. Characters aren't interesting by themselves, they're interesting to the audience. By having broader representation, you avoid the standard, make it easier for disenfranchised people to see themselves in media and even portrait different, potentially more interesting viewpoints for the whitr majority. Hence, bigger audience. It can be as simple as that, really.
Its at the point now, where if you launch a game with a white male lead, you're going to get criticized.
Geekdom/Nerdom is getting more diverse. Its like you refuse to accept that White Males have had thousands of goddamn games with them as the lead. Don't really see why there is a need to be upset about others getting the opportunity to be represented.
Of course you're allowed to criticize whatever you want. That wasn't in question at all. I obviously disagree, but is it fair to say that you think there should be a moratorium on white male protagonists in video games for a good long time?
I do not think that a game deserves criticism simply for featuring a white male protagonist. That's one view I hold while simultaneously being in favor of more representation. I listed a bunch of games I've played in recent years earlier in this thread with protagonists that were not both white and male. I enjoyed playing all of those games and hope to see more interesting characters that don't get represented as often as they have in the past. I'm certainly not getting upset about others getting the opportunity to be represented.
Please go back and read my original comment until you understand why your response makes no sense...
I'm not gonna sit here and actually explain to you why replying to a comment about aesthetics alone "from a writing perspective" is just plain fucking stupid...
wouldn't call that bravely by any stretch of the imagination but it is a stand for diversity..in the end this is an industry and you cast your vote with your wallet
This must include you too, right? Because unless you're telling me if you were to meet me in real life you'd literally see me as the default cube in Blender then I'm calling bullshit.
Kids intrinsically learn about the negative social connotations of dark skin and womanhood at an early age regardless of progressive parents. Kids eventually learn that sometimes they don't get to be the heroes as often as other groups do. Children learn to internalize the descrepancies in media representation as part of a wider context of oppression as they grow older. Kids that are old enough to understand Marvel are already indoctrinated to some degree.
If there no general Star Wars thread, feel free to create it.
Quick reminder for anyone with this idea in their head: you can't separate this entire conversation from the medium of games and from Star Wars as the decades-old centerpiece of nerd fandom. To do so is to miss the point entirely.
Oh, I'm sure SotL could be a great film in its own right had it featured a male lead, but then we wouldn't have a female lead and on goes the scenario. The reason I choice this film in particular was to give an example of a strong female protagonist with a story made from her point of view that speaks to women in general. I haven't read any of the books so I can't say whether or not Starling is a 1-1 portrayal or entirely the doings of Hollywood writers and the excellent acting of Jodie Foster, but there are themes that are addressed that speaks to a feminine POV that goes well beyond her encounters with Dr. Lector and it speaks to an audience that rarely sees that type of portrayal front and center on screen. I'm not entirely sure what your argument is because we seem to be in agreement when it comes to representation, but I'm assuming not when it comes to writing or roles being interchangeable? Or are you suggesting that any role could work with any person if the writer creates it neutrally? Which, I'm not disagreeing couldn't work, but it loses the small touches that makes the character uniquely tailored to a certain demographic. Even taking race and gender out of the equation, Naughty Dog created the character of Bill and it is implied that he is a gay man who learns that his partner was dead. The narrative and writing subtly hinted at his sexuality without making him a caricature or glossing over what his being in the game represents for some gays who play the game. If his lover was changed to let's say his wife then that representation is lost, but the story would still be good.
Games are doing things that other visual mediums can't in where we get to control digital avatars for a time and learn of their stories, their goals and motivations, their love interests and other desires. Maybe it's my projecting, but I believe that representation should try to be more than just cosmetic and while a great story could make the LGTBQs, blacks, the Latinx, the Asians, and women characters on screen excellent characters, it would be a wasted opportunity not to try for more even if just to make the player walk in their shoes. Games like Mass Effect or Elder Scrolls are great, but we could do non-role playing games better, right?
Its going to happen regardless however and that will be entirely based on what releases in the future.
Honestly, this discussion surprised the hell out of me that it popped up over this Star Wars game but its absolutely warranted and clearly there is an appetite for it. People are playing attention and the next big title that gets revealed clearly will have people judging the construct of the protagonist.
This dialogue didn't happen over Borderlands 3 because Gearbox did a great job offering options and diverse designs not just for the PCs but for the villains also!
I highly anticipate Ubisoft is going to have big eyes on it when they unveil Watch Dogs 3. Marcus was a cool proagonist and a good look so people are def going to expect them to continue switching it up. Maybe a woman this time? Asian? Arabic? Something visually distinct.
Its obviously too late for the upcoming E3 titles waiting to be revealed, but for any dev in pre-production working on next generation titles, its in their best interest in switching it up. Hell, makes the product even more distinct on the market.
At the end of the day, your gritty FPS has no real reason to have a white male lead, even if you want to, its been done to hell and back.
A Black Woman as your FPS lead gets you way more buzz on your game right off the bat. I don't think its even even been done yet which is incredibly sad for how straight up simple that is. (Far Cry New Dawn were villians, you didn't play as them right?)
No but 5's avatars are customizable so you can make your own Black Woman lead.
Its really not, but I can see what you mean now if you mean you would have been more interested in the game if it had a minority protagonist.
I feel the same more or less.
I was refering to the characters themselves not on my feelings or any larger context.
And thats something I def plant to do. CharCreators have had their own specific issues at times in regards to terrible skin tone/hair options. Especially for black people, thats another convo however.
But this discussion is def based on linear style games with preset character depictions. Def gotta switch it up.
That is true of characters with good writing but personally i feel representation and writing are seperate, you can write well and represent badly like say blade runner 2049 and you can represent well but write badly like in so many b scu fi movies.
The best option for any medium is to have both facets good, of course
Just to add-
Strictly speaking of the world building of SW, diagetically speaking it makes not a lick of difference whether one human character is white or not (because it does not share the same struggles as part of their origin stories as the real human species on earth). Every other aspect however comes down what the writers want to do with that character. However, non-diagetically, inclusivity is a metric for gauging where we, as a global society, can relate to the groups of people who were previously deprived of the same opportunities as their straight white male peers, at least when neatly packaged within a fictitious context.
In fiction, the aforementioned dominant group have never needed a justification to exist and be portrayed in any role within fiction in western media. In this thread alone, a discussion relating to sci-fi setting that do not share our past, some people are still asking for a rationale behind portraying anyone who does not fit the aforementioned category.
Strictly speaking of the world building of SW, diagetically speaking it makes not a lick of difference whether one human character is white or not (because it does not share the same struggles as part of their origin stories as the real human species on earth). Every other aspect however comes down what the writers want to do with that character. However, non-diagetically, inclusivity is a metric for gauging where we, as a global society, can relate to the groups of people who were previously deprived of the same opportunities as their straight white male peers, at least when neatly packaged within a fictitious context.
In fiction, the aforementioned dominant group have never needed a justification to exist and be portrayed in any role within fiction in western media. In this thread alone, a discussion relating to sci-fi setting that do not share our past, some people are still asking for a rationale behind portraying anyone who does not fit the aforementioned category.
They're not. 'Good writing' is culturally and socially conditioned. People can't step out of their own experience to judge characters in a vacuum piece-by-piece.
There is no such a thing as a value judgement of a character that doesn't factor in the ethnicity a character is percieved as, and that perspective is in turn informed by the ethnicity viewers perceive themselves as. Criticism is holistic and 'intersectionally' biased, always.
This doesn't mean you can't focus a conversation about a film on the writing of the characters or the representation of minorities, but those conversations are never (can't be) divorced from one another because that's just not how human perception works.
I disagree with this generally although I can see where you are coming from.
But Id say there is no culture where tdk joker is not an interesting villain, and no culture where spartan locke is an interesting hero...
Uh, no? Just make less white protagonists.
Why do people who ask these questions think minority representation should go to the absolute extreme? "No white protagonists for at least a year!" Nobody is asking for that and it's blatantly clear that nobody is saying that, but yet you still think that's a point worth making? I haven't read every single post in this thread, true, but it's obvious that on the last few pages at least, nobody has said to "put a moratorium on white male protagonists in video games for a good long time" in any sense.
It's such a mind-boggling leap of logic.
Haha, no problem! To be fair, though, DigitalOp said it first:
Better than I did, I would say.
So Far only mobile canon game Uprising that let player choose species and gender.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Smuggler
the canon race is human and from story in the game
.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Smuggler
the canon race is human and from story in the game
s/he is force sensitive
Having a different ethnicity would possibly make the character more relatable and interesting for some people. I don't think that's even controversial. Should the character have been a different ethnicity? No. That's a decision for the developers. In any case, it wouldn't make a difference to me.
It's not a leap of logic if you read your very first sentence in this post and some of your other posts on this page. I get the impression that you see this as a zero sum game in which the priority must be placed first and foremost on reducing the number of white male characters in gaming. I'm not going to go through your post history, but I get the feeling you are more interested in attacking media that dare feature a white male than you are in propping up and celebrating games that feature women and minorities.
So when is the criticism about the lack of representation allowed then? If we can't say anything when a straight white male main character is introduced (because, let's get real, we don't have the story details yet, but thanks to historic precedent, we can be 99% guaranteed he's straight) and developers keep introducing straight white male protagonists to the exclusion of others, as they have done for decades, by your statement, so long as the character is interesting, it should be immune from criticism about lack of diverse representation. So when can such criticism be given, if not during an example of the problem itself?
As I've said before, I can count how many positive representations of LGBTQ people there have been in video games on my hands, to say nothing about how many of them aren't main protagonists. Meanwhile, I can't even count the number of positive representations of straight protagonists, I'd need a spreadsheet to catalog them. Racial minorities have a similar issue to my own, and while the situation has improved for women in recent years, there's still a pretty wide gulf there. And, as a minority, the straight white male has become banal. Repeated over-exposure of ANYTHING has that effect on people, so you can't expect this to be any different. You can not like that fact, but it is what it is. If the worst thing you have to worry about is people finding straight white male protagonists played out and boring? Call me when it's 2019 and you're still contending with offensive and damaging stereotypes in what little representation you get; having a problem with people seeing the straight white male as "boring" comes off as small potatoes compared to what others contend with.
Until that disproportionality is resolved to make it seem like minority characters are less like tokenism or a fluke, the criticism needs to be voiced. But apparently, another example of that disproportionate representation isn't the time to discuss it, so....... when? When no one is paying attention?
I love how we're now qualifying it to just Disney Star Wars. Never mind we have dozens, maybe even a hundred, Star Wars games
Counterpoint: yes, for the reasons you stated.
Well, yes. It's because they're developers why it's their decision, and it's their decision because they're the developers. It literally isn't a decision for anyone else to make. No matter how many times this gets repeated, no matter what topic, it still doesn't really mean anything.
Tautologies aside, being the sole arbiter of a choice (if that's truly the case, even) doesn't make one's pick beyond criticism.
Sorry, maybe this wasn't the best place to ask because of the baggage. I was just asking out of pure curiosity, the fact that JFO is going to have a white guy protag is pretty shocking to me, since Battlefront 2, Rogue One and the new trilogy are all white women
I don't think you understand what a "zero sum game" is, considering nobody is asking for complete eradication of white people from video games, just to move them over to give minorities the opportunity to star in video games.
Considering how this thread is about protagonists and minority representation, I don't understand why on Earth we would be talking about anything else besides minorities being underrepresented in video games, that seems very much the "priority" of the topic.
If want to dig through my post history and find me "attacking media that dare feature a white male," by all means, post it here, or even PM me if you think I'm posting in bad faith. I recommend starting with The Witcher 3 thread where I said that a white character could be black in the Netflix adaptation of her character, but I'm sure you can find a better example.
I'm not trying to police what kind of criticism is allowed. I certainly don't agree with the criticism or think a game deserves to be criticized simply for having a white protagonist, but I'm not saying people's criticism should be stifled or banned in any way. I feel like the criticism is completely justified in situations of white washing or white savior-ism, or even when a specific publisher or developer is going back to the white dude-well far too many times, but I'm not down with immediate rejection of a character simply based on their apparent sex and skin color based on their visual design.
Yeah, it's shocking to a lot of us. They had a clear cut chance to take further steps and be more progressive, but they decided not to.
Nothing against Cameron Monaghan. He's the best thing that's ever happened to Gotham, and I'm sure he'll be great in this. He just didn't need to be the player character, because I've already played that game. A lot.
Eh. Not every game needs to be progressive, and just because the PC is white it doesn't mean there can't be progressive elements elsewhere.