270 réponses à ce sujet

[animedreamer]

Every form of fiction needs to connect to its audience somehow. So, every form of fiction needs to parallel -- to whatever degree it sees fit -- some elements  of the lives, people, culture, societal issues, guilty pleasures, fluffy kittens, whatever, of its intended consumers. If it didn't, who would play it? Who would care?

 

Game of Thrones is 100x more popular and well known than Dragon Age and im speaking about it in it's written form. Yet I can't help but think of how when the books were eventually televised they seemed to me to be directed to a caucasian audience yet i don't see people demanding to have more dark skinned people, or "Asian" people added to that series.

 

This isn't like say them doing Dragon Age in a Eastern real world setting and using nothing but Caucasian looking characters throughout the game despite the characters having Asian names, cultural mannerisms, and in every way claiming to be Asian but appearance.

[snackrat]

TBH, it seemed to me that the elves would have carried that aesthetic well.

They want them to be distinctive from humans without looking eerie. They're supposed to be exotic, beautiful, and petite, almost delicate. If the elves appearance leaned more towards east asian (compared to the human's typical west european) it would create constrast without the uncanny valley.

 

To late for that now though, and it also would mean people who want to play white/black/etc elves would be outta luck (all elves are pure elven, so human features from Fereldans/Antivans/etc could never be introduced).

 

Maybe if we ever see the Chasind, it'll be present there instead. That's a really tiny group though, especially since during the Blight (DAO's) they wouldn't have been able to retreat to Fereldan cities.

[Aimi]

Maybe if we ever see the Chasind, it'll be present there instead. That's a really tiny group though, especially since during the Blight (DAO's) they wouldn't have been able to retreat to Fereldan cities.

There are a few Chasind in Lothering in Origins. Cahir, Prosper de Montfort's enforcer, is also Chasind. They don't look Asian.

In the Dragon Age tabletop RPG, Chasind tend to have Slavic-looking names.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

There is always the Fex. It is a race we know exists in the lore. 

[SnakeCode]

Game of Thrones is 100x more popular and well known than Dragon Age and im speaking about it in it's written form. Yet I can't help but think of how when the books were eventually televised they seemed to me to be directed to a caucasian audience yet i don't see people demanding to have more dark skinned people, or "Asian" people added to that series.

 

This isn't like say them doing Dragon Age in a Eastern real world setting and using nothing but Caucasian looking characters throughout the game despite the characters having Asian names, cultural mannerisms, and in every way claiming to be Asian but appearance.

Well, I wouldn't say GoT is exactly lacking when it comes to non-white characters.

 

It's an argument that you usually hear in conversations about video games. Possibly because unlike TV shows and films you are usually actively playing a character and some people cant imagine (or don't want to be) playing something other than an avatar of themselves.

 

It's also generally something you only see when games are set in a world based on, or influenced by medievil Europe, where the vast majority of people would be white. Such as the recent Medievil game set in medievil Bohemia, where there was a huge outcry because you can only play as white people.

 

Why aren't these people shouting from the rooftops about the lack of diversity whenever a new samurai game is released?

[Vanth]

Did Jade Empire have any white people in it? (This is a genuine question - I can't remember.)

[saladinbob]

There's always someone. 

 

Define 'Asian'. Turkic? Indo-Iranian? Mongol? Han? Yamato? Korean? Tibetan? Uyghur? Kazakh? Manchu? Bruyats? Evenks? Yakuts? Uralic? Paleosiberian? East Slavic? Arab?

 

There's plenty more. You can't pick them all, some ethnic group is always going to loose out. If you include one for political correctness, which is all you're suggesting Bioware do, why should others be left out and this is just the Asian continent. What about native American (North and South) ethnic groups? What about African ethnic groups? European ethnic groups? Where does it end?

 

Stop moaning that characters aren't from a particular racial group and just enjoy the characters for who they are.

[Gileadan]

Did Jade Empire have any white people in it? (This is a genuine question - I can't remember.)

Yes, it had one single white character, named Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard. He came from across the sea and crashed his ship or something. Every demographic should have an awesome representation like that.

[Nethalf]

Even if there is another continent with unknown peeps, I don't want them to be Asians. Or humans.

 

In fact, I want orcs and dwarven cousins, gnomes. Maybe dark elves, too.

[Aov]

When one makes the argument about "would a single white guy in an Asian setting feel discriminated against because he is white" -- I want to explore this kind of a concept further.

Again, let me explain that I am coming from the United States, and so that, unfortunately, is the only perspective I can speak from. I don't know about other countries because I don't live in them.

Traveling as a tourist myself may give me a sip of empathy for being someone other than I am. (I'm from the United States.) But travel will never ever give me a full drink of being someone else, and certainly not a bottle of wine a day.

I would highly highly discourage the idea that travel alone makes a person well-rounded and more educated about the world. Because you have to think about who has the wealth to travel, and what kind of an experience one is going to have as a tourist. Even if a tourist is 'slumming it' as much as possible, that tourist is nevertheless an onlooker.

Now, there are some people who, despite all their privilege in the world, can truly understand the devastation of living in the slums. But I would argue that travel is not really what got them to that point of empathy. I would argue that a truly understanding person would be able to glean a similar experience no matter what it is they did, whether they visited the slums themselves, or read a book about slums from the comfort of their living room.

Or, for sake of relevance, played a video game about slums from the comfort of their living room.

There are Elven Alienages that speak quite profoundly about disadvantage and persecution, and that's certainly not an accident.

The problem with an argument about a white guy transplanted into Asia is this - how did that white guy get to Asia? Did he have means? Is he richer than most of the Asian people around him? Is he richer than most of his white friends back home?

More importantly - is he the kind of person who needs to be surrounded by Asian-looking people to understand that he looks white? Or does he recognize his light shade of skin (varying degree of light, but nevertheless always light) and blue/brown/gray/green/whatever eyes when he gets up in the morning and washes his face in his own bathroom mirror?

(By the way, for any doubters out there, yes, white people do exist who are aware that they're white, and how they benefit greatly because of it. I've met them at conventions, and I've met them here in this forum thread. It makes me profoundly upset when white people have the courage to speak up in support of racial minorities, and then other people will shoot them down for being "posers" or sympathizers or "getting angry about something that doesn't affect them." What is empathy, if not trying to love and support another person, even if you will never be that person?)

But the most important question of all is this -

Why is it that among fantasy series, like Dragon Age, like Lord of the Rings, like Game of Thrones, like Dungeons & Dragons, like Baldur's Gate .... why are there hundreds of franchises that exist in white-dominant or European-based settings, where it is in fact people like Vivienne and Dorian and Josephine who seem somewhat out of the ordinary? Why is there really only one title in the Bioware library like Jade Empire, in which the situation is reversed, in which a white person is the one who seems like an outsider?

And I don't believe there are any RPGs set in Africa or South America in which the protagonist is actually African or South American. Certainly no AAA titles with a big budget and a huge press release.

That is a travesty. That is a disappointment beyond belief. That is something I find absolutely unbearable.

[animedreamer]

Even if there is another continent with unknown peeps, I don't want them to be Asians. Or humans.

 

In fact, I want orcs and dwarven cousins, gnomes. Maybe dark elves, too.

Come on, support the Ermine Empire!

[AlexMBrennan]

I guess you don't remember how universally happy the community was when Bioware added the Kensai and katanas to Faerun...

[Nethalf]

Let me give an example. Cosplay has become a phenomenon at local gaming conventions - and yes, I understand it's a global phenomenon, but again, I can't speak to that, because I don't live in other countries. I'm talking from my perspective as someone who lives the United States.
 
What I notice in North American gaming conventions is that cosplayers tend to dress up as their favorite characters from their favorite franchises. Now, certainly not every cosplayer dresses up for the same reasons. Some people may choose a costume because they only like the character design, and they've never even played the game the character comes from. Or maybe they hate the character and want to dress up like them as a joke.
 
The majority of the time, however, I think cosplayers dress up as the characters they love. Because they have some sort of connection to the character.
 
Now anime is a different beast altogether - because anime comes primarily from a Japanese (and Korean) motion picture industry outside of the United States. Even though, yes, I realize Tezuka, the "father" of anime was inspired by what he saw in Walt Disney's Snow White. But Walt Disney was inspired by the Brothers Grimm, and so on and so forth - we all gain inspiration from what came before us.
 
But in the confines of a North American gaming convention, here's what I tend to notice - Dragon Age Inquisition cosplayers, like cosplayers of any other video game, have a limited amount of characters to choose from. The Dragon Age roster is limited, as all rosters are, due to time and money and space. That's reasonable. 
 
Here's where it becomes problematic - If you're African-American and you happen to be the kind of African-American with a darker skin tone (I realize there are many African-American skin tones) - anyway, you really have one option for Dragon Age Inquisition cosplay. You can dress up as Vivienne. (Or you can dress as the Inquisitor, but literally anyone can dress as the Inquisitor because the Inquisitor has such racial flexibility, so I'm not counting the Inquisitor.) 
 
Now, what if for some odd reason, you don't happen to like Vivienne? Maybe her style of dress isn't for you, or maybe her views on mage-templar politics aren't for you. Well, okay, now what? You could dress up as Dorian - even if he is Indo-European, he's at least close, because he has a darker skin tone. Or Josephine - she's also close. Or you can dress as a Qunari. But as far as human characters, you have no other choices.
 
In a similar vein, there are no human characters in Dragon Age Inquisition for an Asian person (light-skinned Chinese, for example) to cosplay.
 
As a white cosplayer, there are quite a few possibilities: Morrigan, Cassandra, Cole, Blackwall, Sera, Varric, Cullen, Iron Bull, Leliana, Solas, and that's just counting the companions and the inner circle. If I don't happen to like Morrigan, I have the flexibility of being able to choose Cassandra instead. Or Sera. Or Solas.

You say in one and the same post that a person may not like a character with his/her skincolor-- and still has to act as if he/she has no choice but cosplaying only characters with the same skincolor. Don't you see a contradiction here?
 
Black or asian people might love Leliana or Morrigan and portray them. People tend to like different characters and cosplay different persons. Fat people cosplay supermodel-looking females from games and movies. Skinnies cosplay muscleheads. People of all skincolors and bodytypes cosplay Batman. I see no problem here.

Here's one of the best Jack (this is on of the Mass Effect 2 teammates) cosplays ever:

 

Spoiler

 

Maybe she's not even an asian but she definitely looks like one-- and still, it's a great cosplay.

 

 

 

 

A lack of positive representation and frequent representation of minorities is not specific to just Dragon Age.

Dragon Age doesn't lack of minorities representation, there's a whole bunch of them. BioWare just can't put all the minorities of the world in one franchise.

 

[animedreamer]

I guess you don't remember how universally happy the community was when Bioware added the Kensai and katanas to Faerun...

 

The thing is they exist in Faerun, and have long existed before BioWare decided to make video games. Their lore consist of a East Asia influence,  I forget the actual name of the region of that world that they inhabit (Kara-Tur), but its influence has spread across the world thanks in part to traveling being so easy do to magic and technology.

 

In other words BioWare might have decided to put it in their game, but the grounds behind would it or should it exist in NWN was already their before they even created the game.

[ELDERGOD]

Good Idea.. I hope we will see some beautiful/handsome asians in next DA

[Captain Wiseass]

Game of Thrones is 100x more popular and well known than Dragon Age and im speaking about it in it's written form. Yet I can't help but think of how when the books were eventually televised they seemed to me to be directed to a caucasian audience yet i don't see people demanding to have more dark skinned people, or "Asian" people added to that series.

 

Then you haven't been looking in the right places. It's one of the most common criticisms of the series.

[animedreamer]

Then you haven't been looking in the right places. It's one of the most common criticisms of the series.

 

well i stand corrected, out freaking standing, i still have a hard time seeing why this is so important. lets face it, right or wrong in media white is the default but if the complaint is you can't enjoy something simply because the people in it dont look like you, then what you are saying as a society is that we are close minded or unaccepting of things that do not relate to us directly, or thats how im interpreting this,

[Captain Wiseass]

*shrugs* It's been explained multiple times. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

[Karolis]

There's always someone. 

 

Define 'Asian'. Turkic? Indo-Iranian? Mongol? Han? Yamato? Korean? Tibetan? Uyghur? Kazakh? Manchu? Bruyats? Evenks? Yakuts? Uralic? Paleosiberian? East Slavic? Arab?

 

There's plenty more. You can't pick them all, some ethnic group is always going to loose out. If you include one for political correctness, which is all you're suggesting Bioware do, why should others be left out and this is just the Asian continent. What about native American (North and South) ethnic groups? What about African ethnic groups? European ethnic groups? Where does it end?

 

Stop moaning that characters aren't from a particular racial group and just enjoy the characters for who they are.

 

It "ends" when no member of the larger gaming audience -- not just Bioware's -- feels invisible.

 

So, yes, we should include those other groups you mentioned as well. And if that means it doesn't "end"? Well, why is that a problem? Creative media evolves. Constantly. So does society. Put the two together, like video games do, and -- why would you want it to end?

[Karolis]

Yay, I'm thinking someone has read the Freakonomics chapter called "A Roshanda by Any Other Name." Might it be you, Karolis?

 

Regardless, Freakonomics is hardly necessary to explain what's going on here.

 

A lack of positive representation and frequent representation of minorities is not specific to just Dragon Age. Rather, it affects all games in the roleplaying genre. It affects all video games in general. It affects the entertainment and media industry in general.

 

It affects life in general.

 

The thing is, how do you solve a problem so big? How do you solve something that plagues not just one story, or one game, or one activity, but has permeated into the very fabric of our society?

 

How do you change society?

 

[...]

 

Please, if the plot of Dragon Age can teach you anything -- yes, you, person reading this post of mine, as you are and can and should be anyone of any race or sex or sexuality or social class -- please let it teach you that something big and powerful and oppressive can be defeated, undone, and unmade. That no matter how many people try to tell you the world can only exist as it was and as it is, you can still fight to achieve something glorious and new. There are a lot of people who will want to resist, because change is scary, as it always is. But with change comes a chance for peace. And love. Love, too.

 

Or maybe, love always.

 

Cheers for Freakonomics! 

 

Things like DA -- by which I guess I mean, a series of works by a single company open to audience feedback -- have a kind of double role in relation to their society:

 

1) They're a symptom of the cultural attitudes when they were made

but also

2) They perpetuate and reinforce those attitudes, often at a subconscious level, in their players.

 

Added to that, video games in particular are in a weird world-shift of their own, right? "Gamers" used to be a small, tight subculture with a well-defined identity; now that culture is being pulled (dragged? kicking? screaming?) into a more mainstream role. And there's a backlash. Gamers don't want to lose what makes them them. I'm guessing Bioware games in particular fall into that fight, because the character-driven worlds attract even more new people.

 

So I guess I'm saying, battles on all sides, darkspawn, Loghain, light the damn beacon...um. Nah. Just, yes, there's all kinds of inertia in the way. Yes, society is a giant complicated tapestry thing (on a big stone castle wall that also is hiding a secret passage with a dragon in it, and spiders). But hell yes, it can be changed, and it's sure worth trying. 

[Saphiron123]

It "ends" when no member of the larger gaming audience -- not just Bioware's -- feels invisible.

 

So, yes, we should include those other groups you mentioned as well. And if that means it doesn't "end"? Well, why is that a problem? Creative media evolves. Constantly. So does society. Put the two together, like video games do, and -- why would you want it to end?

So you want the next dragon age game, about the medieval society without air travel, to incorporate every races and type of person on the planet into a single setting. How about we let them tell a great story, and when other lands are involved, cool... it is literally impossible to satisfy everyone on earth.

My race is not featured in DAI. I'd rather see a great story then a completely forgettable story with people all over the earth represented. Honestly, who really cares? If I want stories about my own culture, I have a culture. I'm proud of that culture, I also don't feel they need to create a new race and cram it into the game just because.

The actual middle ages in Europe didn't incorporate every culture because they hadn't met half of them yet. The romans had no idea my culture even existed, neither did the saxons, or the egyptions.

I hardly think DA4 needs a hawaiian or native american cameo to be inclusive. Bioware is the most progressive game company out there, and no game will ever be of sufficient scope to include everyone from every culture. It is impossible, and it also wouldn't make any sense. "hey ferelden court whose never seen an asian man from across the globe, meet 57 new cultures who just happened to develop international travel at the same time".

 

Well, I wouldn't say GoT is exactly lacking when it comes to non-white characters.

 

It's an argument that you usually hear in conversations about video games. Possibly because unlike TV shows and films you are usually actively playing a character and some people cant imagine (or don't want to be) playing something other than an avatar of themselves.

 

It's also generally something you only see when games are set in a world based on, or influenced by medievil Europe, where the vast majority of people would be white. Such as the recent Medievil game set in medievil Bohemia, where there was a huge outcry because you can only play as white people.

 

Why aren't these people shouting from the rooftops about the lack of diversity whenever a new samurai game is released?

Exactly. A samurai game is based off of Japan. Even a samurai game that takes place in another world.

If a game is in europe, or based off europe, i expect the majority of characters to be european because... europe.

I also don't expect the next dragon age to cover 10,000 square miles and incorporate cultures from russian to saudi arabian. 

[SotiCoto]

So before I start what is going to be a controversial topic, let me just say that I have been a Bioware fan for years. My first game (and probably the one I have the most nostalgia for) was Neverwinter Nights. I played the expansion packs Shadows and Hordes, played Knights of the Old Republic (which seemed in my view to be Neverwinter in disguise), and am now playing Dragon Age, which is my favorite franchise to date.

 

I love fantasy (moreso than sci-fi, and that's the only reason why I haven't yet played Mass Effect). I love Bioware because they do a special brand of fantasy. Where other developers will create a world for the moment you're playing in it, Bioware will create a multi-century world history full of culture and politics and war. Where other developers will create race factions for the sake of competition, Bioware will create an entire socio-economic web of privilege and oppression. Where other developers will make an entertaining video game, Bioware will make an complex, thought-provoking experience that just happens to be a video game. As anyone on this forum can probably attest to, Bioware is definitely something special.

 

What I want to address is the representation of Asian identity in Dragon Age Inquisition. It worries me that out of all the possible party members and friends of the Inquisition, I don't see many Asian faces or Asian names. I don't see any of the main followers as Asian. I don't see any of the enemies as Asian.

 

So? 

There are no Asians in my bedroom either.
My bedroom clearly needs more racial diversity. 


Volunteers?

 

[Saphiron123]

 

I think I see it as a problem because it's not just an isolated game thing; it's everywhere, and it contributes to making life needlessly and unfairly difficult for the people involved.

 

Far as I can tell, it goes something like this: I don't see anybody like me in games/books/movies/anywhere. So my default view of the world becomes "only white people go around being heroes, or flying starships, or being scientists, or, actually, doing anything important". I get to believing (unconsciously) that I'm simply incapable of doing these things, so I never try, nor do any of the others who look like me. We end up sitting around in our neat little racial pigeonhole of whatever the current stereotype is. We run the streets/form gangs/run drugs because we're supposed to. It's what we've been told all our lives that people like us do, and then everyone's like KID'S GOTTA GUN and we get shot, oops.

 

Yes, that's something of hyperbole. No, I personally am not playing DA:I in between my drug mule runs. But it's the kind of thing that happens.

 

Okay, new example. You're a white dude (in this example; I don't actually know you). Everyone you see in media looks like you, though sometimes they might be female. Your view of the world is "white people save everything!" You're all hot ****, check you out, blah blah.   Some years later you're the big boss of some company, all set to hire some sweet new underlings. Here's a big pile of applications! But this one has an East Asian sounding name, and subconsciously you're like, wtf those guys are foreigners, can I really trust them? Only white people are world-savers...nah let's go with Sir White Dude over here.

 

That one's for real, no hyperbole. There are some cool (in a depressing way) studies of bosses given resumes with and without names attached. It's fascinating stuff, actually. In a gross and morbid 5-car-pileup kind of way.

You do realize that cultures across the world have home countries where the opposite is true? And most of those countries don't welcome people of other cultures at all? Do you know progressive Canada actually is? It's amazing.

Honestly, if you're an outsider to a majority culture, there's a minority effect. There are stereotypes and, sorry to say it, a lot of those stereotypes exist because people play into them... I mean look at rap culture, video after video of black people singing about killing police and dealing drugs... well, it is really a shock that an upper middle class white person who sees that crap daily and it's 90% of what they see about the culture then thinks "okay, maybe they deal drugs and run in gangs?".

I mean how many guys like Dr. Dre get filthy rich off that image? Love his music, love his headphones, serious doubts about how beneficial he's been to black culture in general. And then some well meaning hard working black kid applies for a job in that white person's office against 5 well meaning hard working white guys, whose that upper middle class white person going to hire based on a 10 minute interview? I mean forget America, what kind of message are guys like Dr Dre sending to the entire world?

And honestly, none of the characters in dragon age would be more engaging if they looked a bit more like I do or had different voice actors. They're great characters, and game of thrones has great characters (and I know for a fact my culture will never appear in that either... and it doesn't matter, because it's another culture's story). People should just let a writer share his or her vision, and judge it based on quality.

[theluc76]

Asian looking NPC that would be a nice addition indeed

[Karolis]

So you want the next dragon age game, about the medieval society without air travel, to incorporate every races and type of person on the planet into a single setting. How about we let them tell a great story, and when other lands are involved, cool... it is literally impossible to satisfy everyone on earth.

My race is not featured in DAI. I'd rather see a great story then a completely forgettable story with people all over the earth represented. Honestly, who really cares? If I want stories about my own culture, I have a culture. I'm proud of that culture, I also don't feel they need to create a new race and cram it into the game just because.

The actual middle ages in Europe didn't incorporate every culture because they hadn't met half of them yet. The romans had no idea my culture even existed, neither did the saxons, or the egyptions.

I hardly think DA4 needs a hawaiian or native american cameo to be inclusive. Bioware is the most progressive game company out there, and no game will ever be of sufficient scope to include everyone from every culture. It is impossible, and it also wouldn't make any sense. "hey ferelden court whose never seen an asian man from across the globe, meet 57 new cultures who just happened to develop international travel at the same time".

 

1) DA4, no. Entertainment, especially video games, in the future? Yes. Change takes time, I know, but it has to start somewhere.

 

2) If you don't particularly care about what races appear...okay? That's perfectly fine. I'm not going to beat you with a stick. And nothing says racial diversity and good storytelling are mutually exclusive. Changes like these mean using resources differently, not using more of them.

 

3) Okay, two points regarding "the actual middle ages in Europe".

 

First: DA does, in fact, involve things that weren't around in Medieval Europe. Magic, for one. Dragons. Cranky gods. Demons.

 

And second: actual Medieval Europe was no stranger to people from the Middle East, Africa, India, China, etc. People move, trade routes are established, everybody pokes the other guy with swords, throws tomatoes, barter, become friends... I can give you sources if you'd like, but I'm no historian, so you'd do just as well with a google search yourself. Medieval art is a decent marker, though, as are comparisons of craft-style development across continents.

 

Whether or not your particular culture was known, I obviously can't say. Does it matter? Why is it that demographic accuracy totally necessary, but other kinds of historical inaccuracy are fine?

 

4) I'm aiming these issues at Bioware precisely because it's a progressive game company. It has a history of thinking critically about the content of its games vs the content of its audience vs society. But "the current best" is not the same as "good as can be".