Silfren wrote...
Boiny Bunny wrote...
Plaintiff wrote...
DaerogTheDhampir wrote...
I've just skimmed some posts here and there. All I can think of is "Was there this much complaining and criticism when Jade Empire was released? Or is it just because this setting of Caucasian Europeans is used a lot and people are bored of it and want to change things by getting on a soap box?"
Different fantasy settings with influences of different cultures is great, and adding different visuals of people is also great. It's not necessary to have every possible culture or appearance of people represented, as the goal is to tell a story, not to throw in a bunch of token cultures and characters just for the sake of having them, which happens way too much anyway.
Just my quick opinion on the matter. If the story calls for it, or if it is added to bring some more depth (viewpoints, drama, commentary, give culture shock to characters) to the world, then go for it, adding it just to add it would be borderline insulting. I'm just talking about the world, though, Character Creator can do whatever it wants, it could allow characters to have demon wings, viper tails, and two heads, as that is all about the player.
My opinion could change later, this is just my current thought.
So basically, if you want to have minority characters, you must have racial politics or be making some other sort of race-related point? You can't just have them because you want them?
I believe he is attempting to say that adding a particular race/culture to the game for only real-world political reasons is not a good thing. If that particular race/culture happens to fit nicely into the already established mythology of the game world, and there is a rather good idea on what to do with that race/culture should it be added, then fantastic - add them.
European culture is technically a canonical (albeit minor) part of the Jade Empire universe (referenced through a brief encounter with a single character), but the game avoids using it beyond a quick joke, because it would only weaken the strong vision and style of that IP.
Claiming that the introduction of non-white characters would and could ONLY be a political agenda is a very
common complaint by the people who are against it.
I sincerely hope that you aren't directly responding to my post with this statement - if so, please go back and re-read it. I am advocating the idea that no plot device should be added to any video game unless there is a good creative reason for doing so. A real-world political reason is not equal to a good creative reason.
If the writers at Bioware have a great idea about how they could add an Asian inspired culture to the world of Dragon Age, in such a way that it wouldn't clash with already established lore, and come up with a good plot arc that justifies the addition - I don't think anybody should have cause for complaint.
If on the other hand, somebody at Bioware decides that they should include an Asian inspired culture simply because there isn't one at present and they don't want to be perceived as being racist, so they force the writers to make such an addition, even where it makes little creative sense, the outcome is likely to be poor.
How are two (or more) cultures related to one another? Is there a dominant culture? Which are the more primative? Crude? Less able to conduct or less interested in war and conquest? Do they share religions, or have their own? What do their religions demand of them? What do their leaders demand of them? Any they depicted in an unfavourable, even if historically accurate, light? Are any of them oppressive of a particular social sub-group within their own culture?
The
thoughtless introduction of multiple cultures into any fictional medium is far more likely to offend than their exclusion - a great deal of cultural assumptions and social politics are fundamentally required to successfully pull this off.
The very fact that Thedas is largely white, suffering from yet another case of privileged colorblindness on the part of its Devs (and that's me being nice, assuming that it resulted from unconscious privilege, rather than being be design, which is NOT what how I'd prefer to think of Gaider et al) , is a social agenda. It can't NOT be, because any time you portray an all-white, or a nearly-all white + token individuals, you are sending an obvious message to the consumers of the product, if an unvoiced one.
Correct me if you believe that I'm wrong - but as I understand it, Thedas is entirely based off the most influential countries of medieval Europe, which were predominantly white (in particular, Ferelden is based off medieval England). In order to be authentic to that setting, the cast of characters in DA are predominantly white.
Similarly, Jade Empire was based on medieval Asian culture and mythology - unsurprisingly, the entire cast of that game are Asian. Whatever 'privileged colourblindness' you may think exists in DA, you must acknowledge is even more prevalent in Jade Empire, where there are
literally no characters from other races/ethnicities. The single exception - a white male implied to be from a medieval European culture - is depicted as an arrogant fool who must be cast down, his Western/European beliefs broken, and laughed at.
Can you imagine the public outrage had the situation been reversed? A single Asian character in all of Thedas, depicted as a backwards fool which the game encourages you to humiliate, break their traditional beliefs, and laugh at? I believe that by your own logic, Jade Empire was sending a far more obvious negative political message to the consumers of the product than Dragon Age has ever come close to.
Alternatively...it could just be that Bioware picked an interesting culture and time to take inspiration for their game setting. They did it with Jade Empire - and they did it again in DA. There are no Asian characters (yet) in DA for the same reason that there is no caucasian (or any other racial) representation in Jade Empire. You can't acknowledge one as sending out a political message (by focusing on one ethnicity) without also recognising the other as doing the same thing.
It's mind-boggling that people can claim that introducing PoC characters into a game would be political statement and yet not understand that a statement JUST as political is being made by refusing to do so.
I'm not stating nor implying that introducing 'PoC' characters into a game would be a political statement in of itself. I am advocating the idea that if they are introduced
only for the reason of making a real world political statement, with little thought given to the creative reason for their existance within the game world, the outcome and depiction is likely to turn out worse than had they not been included.
And why, exactly, would it be so terrible to make a political statement by introducing more than just the occasional token PoC character? Something tells me that the political statement itself isn't what causes offense, but the nature of the statement being made...
You're essentially asking whether or not video games are an appropriate medium to make deliberate political statements - which is another debate entirely. Personally, I don't have a problem with developers making political statements via things like the inclusion of 'PoC' characters if they want to - on the condition that their creative process hasn't been hampered.
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