Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[Leress]

Ah shit, it's on the wizards board too.

[Voss]

Well, at least they took it apart for him, rather than just blowing him like the Enworld folks did.

[NineInchNall]

Yet another fighter thread ...

When will they end?

[Crissa]

I just asked, 'It's not particularly racist, no. But, uh, where's the black hero?' *chirpchirp*

It's just something that should've been thought about a bit more before the game got this far. Why are we in this day and age that computer games are made with one white guy as the only player/hero? That's racist and sexist.

-Crissa

[CalibronXXX]

1188188822[/unixtime]]I just asked, 'It's not particularly racist, no. But, uh, where's the black hero?' *chirpchirp*

It's just something that should've been thought about a bit more before the game got this far. Why are we in this day and age that computer games are made with one white guy as the only player/hero? That's racist and sexist.

-Crissa

What about the Latino hero(ine), east Asian hero(ine), middle eastern hero(ine)? And what of the transgendered individuals, why aren't they represented? Every single race, sex, sexual orientation, age group, creed, and ARBITRARY SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP MUST BE FULLY AND EQUALLY REPRESENTED OR SOCIETY WILL COLLAPSE!

Oh neat, I didn't realize I hit capslock, but that just makes it better.

[Manxome]

Yeah, lots of single-player games (and stories in general) tend to be suited to having a single protagonist, or one that's clearly more important than the others, and that single protagonist must have some particular ethnicity and gender. Is Metroid sexist because one girl is the only player/hero?

I don't even think it's particularly unreasonable for the protagonist to most frequently resemble the most common ethnicity in the segment of the population that typically buys the games. If people who identify with your protagonist are more likely to buy the game, you have a financial incentive to make it easy for them to identify. That kind of sucks if you want to play the game but you're a minority, but I think calling it racist or sexist is going a bit far.

"It's like they have that monk class ability that lets you jump as far as you want, only for them, it applies to conclusions."

Not that I know much of anything about the game in question. Maybe it's racist. But I don't think it's remotely reasonable to categorically argue that any game where the protagonists and antagonists are different races is inherently racist. Especially if it's a serial adventure and the same protagonist fought members of his own ethnicity in an earlier episode.

[Draco_Argentum]

Crissa forgot the link, without that there no way to tell if shes right or just ranting.

I'd probably call a game like WoW where you build your own character racist if you couldn't be black. It'd be hard to explain why all humans in a world are white without explicit or implicit racism.

Why are all the heroes guys? Because most players are guys. Why are most players guys? I doubt its the whole reason but all the heroes being guys sure doesn't help.

[Manxome]

If it's a reference back to earlier in this thread, then the game under discussion was a Resident Evil game, which is a single-player horror game with, AFAIK, no character customization.

Also, I totally fail to see how having a fantasy setting with no blacks is inherently racist (as an MMO or not). If it's a fantasy setting, there's no reason that ethnicities in the game should correspond to real-life ethnicities or even cover a similar range. Maybe it's an ice world and dark skin doesn't make biological sense. Heck, maybe it's an earth-like planet and there are tons of dark-skinned people closer to the equator but the story doesn't take place there and the civilization in question hasn't made contact with them. Or maybe there are fairies and demons running around changing the color of humans' skin because they're bored. Maybe there aren't even humans at all.

What the heck would any of that have to do with racism?

[MrWaeseL]

Oh for fuck's sake stop going along with Crissa's weak trolling attempt. Just ignore her and the bad posts will go away.

[Crissa]

Someone should ask themselves why they assume the majority of gamers are white and male...

Sheesh. And 'prior in the thread' was like a handful of posts ago.

-Crissa

[Koumei]

I would have thought your average straight male would want (in a 3rd person game) the main character to be female...

[shirak]

1188212985[/unixtime]]I would have thought your average straight male would want (in a 3rd person game) the main character to be female...

In the immortal words of a WoW player, "If I'm staring on an ass all day, I want it to be an attractive ass"

[Koumei]

Precisely! After all, the main person I know who wants male protagonists is a straight female, and it's simply to stare at their arse/prettyboy hair all day.

[shirak]

1188213819[/unixtime]]Precisely! After all, the main person I know who wants male protagonists is a straight female, and it's simply to stare at their arse/prettyboy hair all day.

OTOH, it's way more easy to identify with a macho guy than with a girl. So the average guy buys games featuring guys so he can dream of being the hero. I mean, I'd dream of being Blade but not Bloodrayne, you know what I mean?

And I think escapism is just as important to the average geek as sexual desire.

[Koumei]

It's really handy for me, in that case. I drool over the exact same characters I want to be like. Yet despite that, I still play only as the men in Dynasty Warriors. But for the most part, makes it easy, and makes the entire male cast superfluous for me.

But I do see where you're coming from. Many would rather be the bad-ass hero who saves the day, gets the fame, the money AND the girls, as well as a cool catchphrase. I'm looking at you, Duke Nukem.

Wow, nothing particularly annoying on the boards today. I guess they're still asking "Will ___ be in 4Ed?"

[Fuzzy_logic]

I'm assuming that Crissa's talking about Resident Evil 5 here. And, I freely admit, that game make sme a little uncomfortable.

You play a white man in afirca killing black zombies. Tht is not, in itself, necessarily racist, but it is touchy. Especially given that RE ahs switched over from the sluggish, "brains" zombies to speed zombies who are both mroe aggressive and more human.

Anyway, more people were complaining about the trailer than the game itself. The trailer seems to portray the africans as creepy and ominous even before they get zombified, and to be honest, even as zombies, they *look* a lot of living black people.

So yes, I think it's totally reasonable to be uncomfortable.

[Fuzzy_logic]

Manxome --

I agree that, in principle, not every fantasy world need sto include every color of human skin or represent every ethnicity. PLus, many of them include skin colors that we don't have here on earth.

So the existence fo a single game with a white-only cast fo characters is not, in itself, racist.

However, even in a setting dominated by one skin tone, there's no reason the one included should be white. There have been a handful of games where all or most fo the characters are asian, and very very few where the cast is predominately african.

When whites are a dominant majority in the game worlds time and time again, you have to wonder why the developers assume that the default person is white. This si fantasy, so they don't even have verisimilitude as an excuse. Plus, I expect "whites" are both more numerous and more dominant in games than in real life anyway.

[Crissa]

Exactly, Fuzzy.

The Resident Evil thing just struck me as lazy and full of racial privilege.

At this point, young white males are not the majority of the game buying public. Add to that we have systems with tons of memory and graphics and there's no reason for the main character not to be somewhat customizable except for pure laziness on the part of developers.

Perhaps we merely give too much money to white male developers who haven't matured past adolescence...

-Crissa

[CalibronXXX]

1188241423[/unixtime]]Exactly, Fuzzy.

The Resident Evil thing just struck me as lazy and full of racial privilege.

At this point, young white males are not the majority of the game buying public. Add to that we have systems with tons of memory and graphics and there's no reason for the main character not to be somewhat customizable except for pure laziness on the part of developers.

Perhaps we merely give too much money to white male developers who haven't matured past adolescence...

-Crissa

In most, or at least many, cases you perfectly correct, but there are times when the identity of the protagonist, or other characters, does actually matter in the overall story of the game; and customizability of the character or characters would weaken or cheapen the overall game experience in those instances. I have no knowledge as to whether or not this is the case with RE5, but I wouldn't count on it.

Additionally, all that extra art and that little bit of extra programming costs money, and a lot of games are on a budget. Also, the Wii, which is the only next gen console I have any interest in, and hand held systems don't have tons of memory to spare and its possible there just isn't room on such systems.

[Manxome]

1188241423[/unixtime]]At this point, young white males are not the majority of the game buying public.

And we all know how quick large corporations are to make radical changes in policy and corporate culture when the market changes.

1188241423[/unixtime]]Add to that we have systems with tons of memory and graphics and there's no reason for the main character not to be somewhat customizable except for pure laziness on the part of developers.

Clearly the limiting factor on the number of different character representations that can be shown in the game (one at a time) is the computational resources available, and not the development cost.

Yes, the main character in every single game should actually be several possible characters, each with different models, skins, animations, voice acting, and story (because you know those cutscenes and that romantic subplot doesn't need to change at all just because the main character's gender has been changed) created specifically for them, because any developer who doesn't want to go to all that effort in order to gratuitously prove that they aren't racist or sexist is not trying to make efficient use of development resources, but is just lazy.

Look, I sympathize with the desire for more equal representation, but it's perfectly ludicrous to claim that any individual game is racist or sexist simply because it only has one protagonist.

Again, I don't know any details of Resident Evil 5 and don't care to speculate on that game in particular.

[Bigode]

At this point, young white males are not the majority of the game buying public.

Who is the majority then?

[Leress]

1188244138[/unixtime]]

At this point, young white males are not the majority of the game buying public.

Who is the majority then?

Older males (33-38)

http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php

[Bigode]

Thanks, Leress. And that was sort of what I expected, but doesn't push anything very far from the "white males" group (white in the U.S., of course).

[RandomCasualty]

1188245842[/unixtime]]
Older males (33-38)

I find that hard to believe... that stat doesn't really sound especially likely, unless they just play games that I don't. The majority of people I've met playing online games have been like 14-22. There have been a few who were older, but not many.

I'm not even sure how you would survey the average game player anyway, so the whole thing is suspect.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1188210704[/unixtime]]Someone should ask themselves why they assume the majority of gamers are white and male...

I asked that to myself, and the answer turned up that of all the gamers I have ever gamed with, one was an asian male, one was a hispanic male, one was a white female, and the dozens that remained were white males.