86 réponses à ce sujet

[Sleekshinobi]

I am not entirely sure this is the right place to post this, but I thought it was good a read and wanted to share. The author talks about several issues that the new lead Writer Patrick Weekes also talked about in the recent interview. She makes very good points. Here are a couple of excerpts. 

 

"Race and sexuality are also important in the game. I like how Bioware deals with it in its games, letting players choose their own race and sexuality, with the consequences that this may bring."

 

"Despite receiving a ton of praise for storytelling and game design, The Witcher 3 is now coming under fire for its lack of characters of colour. It’s argued that the whole game is filled with white characters and the fact that we aren’t even criticising this is indicative of the state of the gaming industry."

 

"In Sleeping Dogs, an excellent game taking place in Hong Kong, all the characters the player encounters are Chinese. Could there be white characters in Hong Kong? Of course, but this game didn’t include them just for the sake of having some white characters. In that same vein, it feels contrived to include various races just to avoid making people feel left out. If there were a compelling reason to include a person of visually different origin (a trader from afar who Geralt needs to probe for information, a foreign soldier he needs to help), that could work. However, to insist that every game has playable, women, LGBTQ and ethnically different characters makes the whole thing feel contrived. Shouldn’t we be focusing on pushing studios towards making better games with more varied characters and deeper storytelling? If we make it simply about a diversity checklist, that doesn’t make for better gaming, or improved representation. In fact, it leads to a much more distressing form of Tokenism."

 

http://www.lazygamer...sk-of-tokenism/

[Al Foley]

I am not entirely sure this is the right place to post this, but I thought it was good a read and wanted to share. The author talks about several issues that the new lead Writer Patrick Weekes also talked about in the recent interview. She makes very good points. Here are a couple of excerpts. 

 

"Race and sexuality are also important in the game. I like how Bioware deals with it in its games, letting players choose their own race and sexuality, with the consequences that this may bring."

 

"Despite receiving a ton of praise for storytelling and game design, The Witcher 3 is now coming under fire for its lack of characters of colour. It’s argued that the whole game is filled with white characters and the fact that we aren’t even criticising this is indicative of the state of the gaming industry."

 

"In Sleeping Dogs, an excellent game taking place in Hong Kong, all the characters the player encounters are Chinese. Could there be white characters in Hong Kong? Of course, but this game didn’t include them just for the sake of having some white characters. In that same vein, it feels contrived to include various races just to avoid making people feel left out. If there were a compelling reason to include a person of visually different origin (a trader from afar who Geralt needs to probe for information, a foreign soldier he needs to help), that could work. However, to insist that every game has playable, women, LGBTQ and ethnically different characters makes the whole thing feel contrived. Shouldn’t we be focusing on pushing studios towards making better games with more varied characters and deeper storytelling? If we make it simply about a diversity checklist, that doesn’t make for better gaming, or improved representation. In fact, it leads to a much more distressing form of Tokenism."

 

http://www.lazygamer...sk-of-tokenism/

Exactly who gives a care, honestly, what color or gender any representative state of characters are?  All I care about is whether they are good or bad characters, and even then if there execution is good or bad.  having 12 white guys in a single room you could have a group of more diverse 'characters' then having 12 characters of different ethnic or gender backgrounds.  

[Ashaantha]

I only care about the effort put into a named character's story, and their reason for being in the game and named. Ben, Rory, Jillian and Frank could all be blonde haired Caucasians in some random game, but their stories, backgrounds and personalities in the game they are in could be so widely varied and noticeable it wouldn't matter to me what they look like. Then again they could all be different ethnicity and be so bland to be the worst thing in the game.

 

The effort put into how a character is written beats what the character looks like, for me anyway.

 

Thanks for sharing that article OP , it was an interesting short read.

[Sir Froggie]

But there are white people in Sleeping Dogs. That's a bad example, lol.

[Andraste_Reborn]

The solution to tokenism is more diversity, not less. When there are more female characters/characters of colour/LGBT characters etc. etc. in games then people won't see them as tokens. That doesn't mean every game has to pack every kind of diversity in, but games as a whole need to do better at this stuff.

[L. Han]

I agree. Writers are often taught to 'write what they know'. If they happen to be a Caucasian living in a Caucasian society, guess what happens? Especially for the Witcher 3 which is based on medieval Poland, which at the time, had almost no ethnic diversity. Not even today. Combined with Polish mythology and a Polish team, you can't really expect them to 'represent' everyone.

[L. Han]

But there are white people in Sleeping Dogs. That's a bad example, lol.

 

Very few. There was a British Superintendent and 2 white girlfriends you can get.

[Krypplingz]

2 white characters. A British cop and an American woman.

Amanda Cartwright (American), Thomas Pendrew (British), Ilyana, Katushka (Russian). So atleast 4 white characters with specific lines of dialog connected in someway to the plot.

King is an african american, he's also part of the main story. 

BUT, they all have decent reasons to be in Hong Kong and do not feel like they've been shoved in just to have their nationality represented. 

 

But as for the original topic. yes diversity is great if it comes naturally. If that soldier that helps you happens to be a woman or if that farmer you have to save happens to be missing an arm, then that's great. But it would be silly if the soldier helped you only because she was a woman and the farmer had to be saved just because he was missing an arm. 

It's a good article. 

[The Antagonist]

But there are white people in Sleeping Dogs. That's a bad example, lol.

Lol I was about to post the same thing

[Gervaise]

The important thing is that the characters are well written and true to the world in which they are located.    The diversity in ethnic origin needs to make sense.   I must admit I do wonder sometimes how certain characters came to be a certain ethnic type.     Ferelden is meant to be largely based on northern Europe, in particularly England given the accents.     However, is that feudal northern Europe or 21st century northern Europe in terms of the mix of ethnicity present?   When humans first came the Thedas mainland were they already a diverse mix of ethnicity?     If so, how come people like the Avaar have such limited ethnicity?    Since their customs and culture seem to date back to the earliest human settlements, this would suggest that the earliest southern settlers were not diverse.    In which case where did the diversity come from?

 

Originally it seemed to me that in DAO the sexuality of an individual was not considered a big deal anywhere in Thedas.      I thought this would allow you to play the game without feeling excluded because there is no prejudice but now the trend is to specifically include characters of a certain sexuality so that people feel represented and wanting to flag it up as such, then give them a back story in which they have suffered prejudice because of it.    I still await a male gay/bisexual character who hasn't spent their life sleeping around (for whatever reason) and/or is emotionally damaged.    That would be truly representative.

[Cheviot]

All fantasy games run the risk of this.  It's just the reality of how influential the Lord of the Rings books are on the genre.

 

Spoiler

[Toasted Llama]

I completely understand that there's not a lot of people from a race in an area because the human races are a result of adaptations to better fit and survive the local environment and when means of travel are very primitive or not usable for the common folk, most people are going to be stuck in the environment they're best adapted to.


However, LGBT folk and women are everywhere. There's no excuse to have very few women when they're slightly more than 50% of the total human population or no LGBT people at all, while LGBT people aren't as common as 50%, especially not the invididual parts, for example homosexuality was somewhere around 1-10%ish percentage (I think? differs per country/city/state a lot), but all of the people that are a part of the LGBT I think easily make up 10-20% of the human population, aka 1 in 10 characters or 1 in 5 can easily be part of LGBT.

[DuskWanderer]

The problem comes that no one really knows how to do it correctly. BioWARE, it seems, throws it in for the sake of throwing it in. They seem to think that it passes for writing good characters. Weekes has already admitted that Krem was a "boring" character simply called Red shirt, and they threw in the trans thing. 

 

That's tokenism, but more unforgivable, that's just bad writing.

[The Elder King]

The problem comes that no one really knows how to do it correctly. BioWARE, it seems, throws it in for the sake of throwing it in. They seem to think that it passes for writing good characters. Weekes has already admitted that Krem was a "boring" character simply called Red shirt, and they threw in the trans thing. 
 
That's tokenism, but more unforgivable, that's just bad writing.

What is bad writing, creating a Boring character or adding to said Boring character Being transsexual?

[Cheviot]

The problem comes that no one really knows how to do it correctly. BioWARE, it seems, throws it in for the sake of throwing it in. They seem to think that it passes for writing good characters. Weekes has already admitted that Krem was a "boring" character simply called Red shirt, and they threw in the trans thing. 

 

That's tokenism, but more unforgivable, that's just bad writing.

That's not tokenism.  Tokenism would be having a one-line NPC who was a trans character, then making a large part of the advertising being about how trans-friendly you are. 

 

And making a boring character interesting is not bad writing.  It's writing.

[daveliam]

Andraste_Reborn has the right idea.  The answer to this is more diversity, not less.  If people lose their minds over the mere presence of one gay man or one transgender man in a game, that flies in the face of 'no tokenism' requests.  If Bioware gets criticized for including even one person from a minority group and accused of 'forcing agendas down people's throats", it leads to this perceived 'tokenism'.  It's a case where they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

 

If they add no characters from these groups, they are accused of excluding groups (plus it goes against their stance as developers).

 

If the add only one or two characters from these groups, they are accused of tokenism and 'sloppy writing'.

 

If they add multiple characters from these groups, they are accused of 'forcing their agenda down players' throats' and alienating majority groups.

 

I just don't' see how they can win, so I just want them to do what they want to do and ignore these critiques.  Although, that's easy for me to say because what they want to do is what I want them to (finally), so I'm comfortable with their current stance.

[DuskWanderer]

What is bad writing, creating a Boring character or adding to said Boring character Being transsexual?

 

Making a boring character is bad writing. Trying to make said boring character interesting by making him transsexual does not turn it into good writing. It's more telling

[DuskWanderer]

That's not tokenism.  Tokenism would be having a one-line NPC who was a trans character, then making a large part of the advertising being about how trans-friendly you are. 

 

And making a boring character interesting is not bad writing.  It's writing.

 

Making a boring character interesting is good writing. But Krem was not made interesting. The fact that BioWARE seemed to think being trans is "interesting" is very telling.

[The Elder King]

Making a boring character is bad writing. Trying to make said boring character interesting by making him transsexual does not turn it into good writing. It's more telling

First, it's impossible to not create characters that Are Boring/less interesting, as well as plots. Nobody is perfect and can write 100% interesting characters and plots.
Second, did Patrick said he Made Krem transsexual to make the character more interesting?

[Cheviot]

Making a boring character interesting is good writing. But Krem was not made interesting. The fact that BioWARE seemed to think being trans is "interesting" is very telling.

Like any charater trait, what is interesting is not the trait itself, but the consequences of that trait in how the narrative plays out. Bioware, having writers on their staff, are aware of this. 

[DuskWanderer]

First, it's impossible to not create characters that Are Boring/less interesting, as well as plots. Nobody is perfect and can write 100% interesting characters and plots.
Second, did Patrick said he Made Krem transsexual to make the character more interesting?

 

I'm not asking for perfection. I'm asking for interesting plots. Krem's War Table missions actually were somewhat interesting, and there was potential elsewhere (Krem is literally the first non-mage from Tevinter). The problem was that they seemed to think being trans was more interesting than actually doing the plot related things. 

[DuskWanderer]

Like any charater trait, what is interesting is not the trait itself, but the consequences of that trait in how the narrative plays out. Bioware, having writers on their staff, are aware of this. 

 

And look what happened: They made a boring character a total token and now there's interview after interview with Weekes and Gaider about "diversity!" like it should be more important than writing rich, deep characters

[Hanako Ikezawa]

I'm not asking for perfection. I'm asking for interesting plots. Krem's War Table missions actually were somewhat interesting, and there was potential elsewhere (Krem is literally the first non-mage from Tevinter). The problem was that they seemed to think being trans was more interesting than actually doing the plot related things. 

Fenris is from Tevinter, and he is a Warrior. 

 

There are also several NPCs in DAO and DA2 who are non-mage Tevinters. 

[DuskWanderer]

Fenris is from Tevinter, and he is a Warrior. 

Ah, I forgot about Fenris. That's a different matter entirely. 

[Jaison1986]

What is bad writing, creating a Boring character or adding to said Boring character Being transsexual?

 

I think it's bad writing when you make a boring character, make them trans, and then expect everyone to like them for the very virtue of being trans, even though we know sexuality is not what makes an person interesting.