BioWare developer wants to augment your virtual diversity (still)

@GravyWeasel You must be white.

@GravyWeasel Does that mean everyone dies first?

@Tommy758

The horror movie part of me in lol'ing heartily while the rest of me is judging that part heartily.

@GravyWeasel
They are badass!! Haters gonna hate.

@Tommy758
even the spam bots are making fun of him.

@GravyWeasel

Yeah, that's why they let themselves be enslaved and never bothered to rise up.

@(Unverified) are you trying to be sarcastic.

@(Unverified)

Looks like someone just saw the new Planet of the Apes movie......

Or their just slightly racist.

@GravyWeasel

Don't worry, I got it.

@(Unverified) Yeah, they definitely "let" themselves be enslaved. And the whole Nat Turner thing never happened. Harriet Tubman never happened. The marches and riots later on never happened. The NAACP never existed and several human/civil rights leaders never did anything to fight back.

Either that, or you've no idea what you are talking about.

@SilentSoul

I didn't understand this comment. Making games with mostly white protagonists is "ghettoizing" it?

Wha?

@Jenks

No I think he's saying he wants to see developers include not only more diverse characters, but to challenge racial stereotypes at the same time. It's cool making the main character black, but that doesn't mean he has to be a gangster, or act like one, like so many people seem to expect.

And actually, related to Mass Effect, I think Jacob was a pretty good example of it.

@Jenks

I mean using the same assets when creating heroes or the main protagonist and Villains akin to many other games; want something to shake things up. A breathe of fresh air was when we did battle with Sexually ambiguous Volgin from MGS3. I trying to say how characters are presented to us and how we perceive them and needed to be structured differently from the norm. you may saw "white" in my comment but I meant "human, Krogan, Dark elves, Cookie monster".

@Jenks

Also what Mr, WiredKnight said also.

@SilentSoul

I meant I didn't understand the original quote in the article, that you quoted.

@Jenks

Oh ok good sir, the problem with the Word Ghettoized , its a term that can used very loosely depending on the situation and its a long time since I heard that word used . In the article, said person is trying to express that no matter what genre the game is in. all characters follow the same stereotype and within the digital realm, reality is what you make it but everyone is still doing the same thing. Wants the industry to stop doing A,B,C and starting doing D.

@Jenks You are misunderstanding the historical meaning of ghetto. The ghetto is NOT a place where black people live, it is a place where a minority is segregated from the larger populace, either implictly (through socio-economic factors--which is why poor, isolated, depreciated areas are called ghettos) or explicitly (such as the Jewish Ghettos enforced by the Nazis).

In other words, because videogames mostly represent power fantasies of white, heterosexual men in a society that is increasingly multi-racial, multi-cultural and encompassing people of all genders and sexualities, videogames are increasingly out of touch. As such, people understand a videogame to not be a helpful or interesting piece of society and continues to be isolated from other forms of media as unimportant pulp. To get out of the ghetto, in this case, would be to gain more credibility and wider acceptence, not only in people playing games, but in academic and social import.

@WiredKnight Let's not forget about Captain Anderson too. Very strong character.

@dragonfliet

So, I'm not the only one confused. You and wiredknight came up with 2 completely different answers.

Wiredknight says he wants gaming to diversify, but not become "gangster."

You say he means having gaming dominated by 1 group makes it out of touch.

I don't see anything in your response that has to do with "ghettoizing." I know exactly what a ghetto is, and I know it doesn't have to only be black people. However, it does have to be a slum, and filled with the poor.

I like what you have to say, but as far as answering my original question, I'll take wiredknight's response.

@WiredKnight

Thanks WK

@Jenks
These days a 'ghetto', when used metaphorically instead of referring to an area in a city, can be used to refer to any niche group. Most certainly the main 'gamer' culture can be described as a ghetto, at least by those outside looking down on it.

In order to appeal to people outside that 'core gamer' culture it might be helpful to have a wider range of characters (older characters, heroes who aren't white/male/straight, etc).

Personally I'm all in favour of this. And systems that let you actually choose your character type are neat too but voice acting is a bit of a problem there; if you let people choose race (even if it's only 'black' or 'white') and sex then that'd be four times as much voice to record, since even without going into stereotypes, black people and white people typically sound a little different too.

(Unless of course they're teenagers, you get me. Standard.)

So maybe not too much room for choice on that level in most games. But it would still be good to have even 'fixed' characters of a variety of ages and races, both genders, etc.

@Jenks Strangely dragonfliet's answer is probably the more appropriate one. We've already seen several widely popular mass medias that never grew beyond what they were become marginalized on society's borders (which is where the ghetto comes into play here), comics being a pretty obvious one.

As dragonfliet says about videogames, comics also only rarely ever grew out of adolescent male power fantasies (and due to demographics typically white, heterosexual ones at that) and now an industry that used to sell millions per issue keeps ones that barely sells tens of thousands on the stands. Look at how often videogames are demonized when it's convenient.

@xiLeShadow

Anyways, as a sociology and economics major, I welcome this change.

I love studying diversity and it be super cool if more people, by any means, became more educated on different views, opinions, cultures, different people.

Multiculturalism is a good thing. We just need an educated population.

@xiLeShadow It's not "education" that changes people's attitudes, but experience. Trying to educate people into support for multiculturalism (or any other social agenda) almost immediately devolves into mere propagandism or indoctrination. What people need is authentic positive experiences.

That said, I think what most people mean by "multiculturalism" is actually "multiracialism" (ie a diversity of ethnic heritage) and in my home country at least this is already very widely accepted.

@Samus Shepard

I'm pretty sure he does mean "multiculturalism." Bringing together many cultures, regardless of race. Both are good.

And for the record, sure, personal experience is important, but how is anyone supposed to promote that on a wide scale? Education has a lot to do with it too. People of lesser intelligence are less likely to accept new and different people/ideas.

@xiLeShadow

Wow. I am not a conservative who watches Fox News or anything but your unreality of what is actually on Fox News is of someone who believes all that crap that Huffington Post commentators post.

Fox News is only against multiculturism when the government does it. EA is a multi-billion dollar corporation who Fox News spends most of their airtime time supporting.

@xiLeShadow

"I've got a Degree in Sociology"

"You've got a Degree in Bologna"

http://youtu.be/i3u2mBVFEHc

@Samus Shepard
First off, multiculturalism isn't about "race" - its about "cultures" which transcend races. The trouble with multiculturalism is that it tolerates the unsavory activities and practices of different cultures and uses moral-equivalency to put all cultures on the same moral playing field proclaiming that no one culture is better than another, which objectively speaking is pure nonsense. There are good and bad aspects to every culture, but you cannot objectively say that all cultures are the same morally. The problem with multiculturalism is that one could argue that white-supremacist Nazi Germany in 1939 was morally equivalent to the Allied Forces. Multiculturalism is moral relativism -i.e. "there is no right or wrong", "who are we to say that one culture is better than another". Multiculturalism is also political correctness. Multiculturalism as it exists today is dangerous to society because it glosses over the bad parts of certain cultures in an attempt to portray them as something they really aren't, which can blind society to the destructive activities that certain cultures exhibit.

I'm all for learning about other cultures, races, etc., and as far as Mass Effect goes, I enjoyed the non-white characters, like Jacob and Captain Anderson. I'm a white guy, and I made my Shepard a black guy. Why? Because I wanted something different. I understand why people want multiculturalism because they want to end stereotypes, racism, and bigotry. But promoting only the good parts and marginalizing all the bad parts of a culture is a disservice to the culture itself and a danger to society.

@Fermie Prime
Not sure where you get that multiculturalism "tolerates the unsavory activities and practices of different cultures." It's simply an acceptance and acknowledgement of multiple cultures. Seeing that there may be things of value in different cultures does not mean anyone is trying to rank cultures on some morality scale. That's just absurd. Your extreme example of someone arguing the moral equivalency of nazis and allied forces is also absurd. No one is doing this, certainly not multicultural advocates. Multiculturalism is NOT moral relativism. Just because you say so doesn't mean it's true. Perhaps you've been unduly influenced by the people trying to make multiculturalism a dirty word.
An example: amongst people who are promoters of South Asian, Indian cultures, can you find lots of advocates of the historically rigid and unjust caste system? I bet not. In fact, multicultural advocates are often trying to IMPROVE situations like this through social change.

The problem is people seeing multiculturalism as a zero-sum game, that by lifting some cultures up, you put down and denigrate others.

@damnreds

You're not wrong, but those traits were assigned to them by the game designers, who may or may not know how it plays against racial lines.

Do you find it just mere coincidence, taking history into account, that the dark skinned people were given the all these despicable traits?

@Draugdraugr I don't think that's based on racism. They were dark skinned because they lived in dark places, practiced dark arts, and were in generally of dark disposition. Dark and darkness are often associated with evil because of our natural fear of the dark, and so when it comes time to create "evil races" darkness is often a theme. Or did you want Drow elves to "glow with the brightness of the noon sun"?

@Draugdraugr

Strangly, I actually found his comparison to the drow being the "black people of fantasy" as, ironically, incredibly racist.

It was as if he said:
"Even though these two people and cultures have nothing in common, people don't like them and they have dark skin tones so they are very much alike."

I mean, would it have been culturally acceptable if he had said:
"People hate the Drow are the Jews of fantasy; both are despised and have plans of world domination."

I'm not sure in what world he lives in that what he said wasn't a completely racist thing to say.

@Draugdraugr

Strangly, I actually found his comparison to the drow being the "black people of fantasy" as, ironically, incredibly racist.

It was as if he said:
"Even though these two people and cultures have nothing in common, people don't like them and they have dark skin tones so they are very much alike."

I mean, would it have been culturally acceptable if he had said:
"The Drow are the Jews of fantasy; both are despised and have plans of world domination."

I'm not sure in what world he lives in that what he said wasn't a completely racist thing to say.

@akeso I think you're seeing it the opposite of how it was intended. If I understand it right, he's basically asking why is it okay to have characters symbolic of black people, but not okay to actually have black people? Why do you have to use substitutes instead of the real thing?

Alternatively, he could be trying to ask why it is frowned upon to depict negative treatments of black people, vicariously or otherwise, when that sort of thing really is happens or happened.

@2late2die

Creatures that live in dark places don't have melanin because it useless. This makes them all albino. It gets bred out.
I don't think Drow being dark has anything to do with people's fear of the dark, And I will agree with you that they say the have dark skin because they did evil deeds.

Like I said, I don't necessarily think it is intentional, but it's there.

@2late2die

Did none of you play Everquest? jesus christ...

The Euridites, were black. And they were not only liked, but they were the smartest race in Norrath. They even had their own continent far away from the other continents.

And how the hell does a dark person become dark from living in a dark place. I have never seen a tanned vampire.

I hate to say it, but herp derp?

@TheDarkWayne

That may be true with a some very liberal interpreting of his meaning, but taken directly as he says it:
"games where if you were the dark elves, you know, the Drow, were always looked upon... They were the black people of the fantasy world, right? And if you played the dark elves, you were treated like garbage by many of the townspeople,"

He seems to be saying that the Drow were treated like crap, and the African Americans were treated like crap and therefore they are one and the same.

He seems to have this idea of the Drow being a minority and that being a minority is all about being treated like garbage by the majority.
This is a very shallow view and one that you see in lots of middle class white mindsets (I say this as one).
However, being a minority is so much deeper than simple hatred.
In the end he's simply trivialized the entire ethnic tension structure to simple bigotry then it isn't the same thing.

I still stand btw that if he had made the same comment about the Jewish people it would have made a lot more outrage; to me it still seems very racist to make the connections he did.

@2late2die

You know a lot of dark skinned goth kids? Cause to me that's exactly what you just described lol.

@akeso

I don't know what fantasy literature Manveer Heir has been reading, but any time I've read about "Drow" they were sadistic and evil... not a mistreated minority.

@Samus Shepard

Totally agree. You've reminded me of all those photographs from grade-school textbooks that would always show a white kid, a black kid, an asian kid, and a hispanic kid, half of which were female, and one would be in a wheelchair. I remember even at a young age seeing things like that and just thinking how artificial it all was.

I'm all for diversity, I can get along with pretty much anyone. But diversity merely for the sake of diversity doesn't make sense.

@Samus Shepard

On the flip side, just because their is a gay character in the game doesn't mean its forced/false diversity, it can just be a character.

Sure, it's silly when people need to make sure they have a big rainbow, and it's always obvious when that's the case, but just because there is some minority represented wouldn't make it forced, unless it was in the comical fashion I was referring to.
I mean, just because there is a gay person(for example) in a story, and it makes up 1/4 of the characters, doesn't mean that its over-represented, as there are a billion other pieces of media without gay people in them, so clearly that isn't the case.