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'Zelda,' 'Overwatch' and a failure to represent ME and South Asian identity in games

P

Poetic.Injustice

Member
Video games often blur the lines between Middle Eastern and South Asian countries until characters are nothing but vague brown stereotypes. It's a real issue, not just because it does a disservice to the complex people and stories from this part of the world, but because it reinforces a simplistic understanding of their cultures, which can create real-life problems.

Representation in video games is, slowly, improving, but the industry still seems to have a particularly tough time with Middle Eastern and South Asian countries. Even Overwatch, which features one of the most diverse roster lineups in gaming history, struggles when it comes to Symmetra, an Indian hero who, oddly, never speaks what should be her native language.

But Overwatch is far from the worst offender, so let's break down the issue with a few more examples.

Perhaps the most recent example of this type of orientalism — a term coined by Edward Said to describe how art and media portray non-Western cultures as exotic, or as an "other" — can be found in the latest entry of the Legend of Zelda series.

Released in March 2017, Breath of the Wild continues Nintendo's long and questionable portrayal of the fictional Gerudo people, a race of warrior women that lives in the desert and first appeared in Ocarina of Time back in 1998

One of the main story objectives in Breath of the Wild is to get into Gerudo Town, the all-female community that serves as the main hub for the Gerudo women.

To enter the village, you need to dress up as a woman and walk through the front gate. A lot of insightful pieces have been written about the fact that the resolution of the quest is to dress up as a woman and enter the city under cover — but nothing has really been said about the orientalism at play during this entire plot segment.

The Gerudo draw from variety of orientalist tropes. They're a secretive people with the only foreign language in the game, they wield scimitars (a sword from the Middle East) and they live in a forbidden desert town.

As if that weren't enough, the main dungeon for this section of the game is a giant mechanical camel. (Get it? Because camels live in the Middle East.)
Click to expand...

https://m.mic.com/articles/179466/z...nd-south-asian-identities-in-games#.7Otew01vF
 
N

Neptonic

Member
I'm probably dumb but if you are going to have a culture set in a desert, isn't it going to be similar to other desert cultures? And camels live in the desert right? The mechanical beasts are made fore their environment so it would fit to make it one.
 
M

Meffer

Member
So I guess taking inspiration from a variety of different cultures and mixing them together to make something else in a fantasy setting in a creative way will upset someone in some way or form.

People will get their underwear twisted in the most stupid of ways.
 
T

TheOGB

Banned
Just skimmed through and was not expecting to find Sonic and the Secret Rings in this article, but I am kinda glad they called it out.

Thanks for linking OP, gonna read this when it's not 2 in the morning
 
L

lvl99 Pixel

Member
Meffer said:
So I guess taking inspiration from a variety of different cultures and mixing them together to make something else in a fantasy setting will upset someone in some way or form.
Click to expand...

I dont like the way Moogles are represented in Final Fantasy these days
 
Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
Toni Codrea said:
It's a giant mechanical camel because camels live in the desert, not exclusively to the middle east. They're not the only ones with a fictional language of their own, they're the only ones that use that fictional language. There's also Sheikah and Hylian in the game. Is it racist that the bird people dungeon is a bird?
Click to expand...

I was unaware that camels were native to the deserts of the USA.
 
H

HolyCheck

I want a tag give me a tag
Toni Codrea said:
It's a giant mechanical camel because camels live in the desert, not exclusively to the middle east. They're not the only ones with a fictional language of their own, they're the only ones that use that fictional language. There's also Sheikah and Hylian in the game. Is it racist that the bird people dungeon is a bird?
Click to expand...

Largest herd of wild camels in the world is in australia anyway!
 
P

Poor GRIMES

Banned
Meffer said:
So I guess taking inspiration from a variety of different cultures and mixing them together to make something else in a fantasy setting in a creative way will upset someone in some way or form.

People will get their underwear twisted in the most stupid of ways.
Click to expand...
Did you even read the article or? Cherrypicking the cool stuff from each individual culture and not giving it the nuance it deserves leads to bastardized forms of "diversity." The most egregious is the MW2 example where the devs completely got Pakistan's language wrong
 
H

HMD

Member
I'm not Indian but isn't English a very widely spoken language in India and Indians use it to speak to other Indians that don't speak the same language?
 
P

Poor GRIMES

Banned
HMD said:
I'm not Indian but isn't English a very widely spoken language in India and Indians use it to speak to other Indians that don't speak the same language?
Click to expand...
Mei speaks Mandarin and Ana speaks Arabic. Why not allow Symmetra to speak Hindi? Or any of the other major languages in India?
 
P

Plum

Member
Fantasy franchises have always been about taking vague amalgamations of real-world cultures and making a "new" one from it. Hell, even in BotW you have the distinctly east-Asian Shiekah tribe, the Hawaian (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) inspired Lurelin Village and the very much Anglo-Saxon inspired Hylians, the races that don't have a direct real-life inspiration are fish, birds, and rocks. I won't go as far as saying it isn't an issue because as a British White guy I'm not exactly qualified, but I would say that positive, imperfect representation is better than none.
 
M

Meffer

Member
Poor GRIMES said:
Did you even read the article or? Cherrypicking the cool stuff from each individual culture and not giving it the nuance it deserves leads to bastardized forms of "diversity." The most egregious is the MW2 example where the devs completely got Pakistan's language wrong
Click to expand...

I see no problem in it. Choosing cool stuff in culture is what gets people interested in different culture. Whether or not people decide to study or look into the culture themselves is dependent on the individual.
Also BotW is a video game which is inspired by a mixture of various real cultures and used what the creators like or was interested in to create a made up culture. I'm sad people get offended by this.
 
E

ElBoxyBrown

Banned
Think about this: What if Naboris was a sand-seal? It perfectly fits with the Gerudo culture and doesn't callback to any potential stereotypes.
 
Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
Toni Codrea said:
AFAIK Camels inhabit some of Africa, the Middle East and some of Asia. So they're not exclusive to the Middle East.
Click to expand...

Correct, but in the BoW example, the area being set or located in a desert, along with the Gerudo's MESA inspirations, they went with a camel.
 
E

E-flux

Member
Is it really a common perception that camels = middle east? And like when you have a bunch of giant animal robots, what other animal would you put there that instantly fits there.
 
C

Clefargle

Member
I'm confused, is this an issue because:

they are depicted negatively

They are depicted homogenously

They observe strict (reversed) gender roles

They resemble a real world underrepresented group

?
 
A

Alex_Mexico

Member
The Gerudo take some inspiration from a handful of cultures but they're not meant to represent one specific. The game is set in a fantasy setting! People will complain and be offended over anything!

Symmetra other than not speaking her language is that really a reason to call her a bad portrayal? Doesn't India have a big English speaking population?
 
P

Poor GRIMES

Banned
Meffer said:
I see no problem in it. Choosing cool stuff in culture is what gets people interested in different culture. Whether or not people decide to study or look into the culture themselves is dependent on the individual.
Click to expand...
The thing is that there isn't an even platform when it comes to cultural exportation. The West and certain parts of East Asia dominate global media when it comes to representation and "getting people interested in their culture."

Thus, there is a more encompassing and nigh complete look into those specific Western and East Asian cultures. The Philippinnes, India, Iran, Iraq, etc. do not have that same cultural mindshare.

Because of this, people tend to blur the lines between each culture thinking they're the same, when, in reality, they aren't. Like the article says, it's important to highlight the differences in each of these Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures and treat it respectfully, rather than bastardizing an element that the developers find "cool."
 
M

Marmaladefire

Member
I see how Orientalism/fetishization + a "checkbox" approach to diversity (either the "gotta catch em all!" or the "just do something to shut the people up" type) could feel like this . Much like saying "PoC" instead of actually addressing a community, nothing but "brownness" and some vague elements of a mush of cultural identities can work as inspiration, but it doesn't always translate to real representation.
 
Glass Rebel

Glass Rebel

Member
Meffer said:
So I guess taking inspiration from a variety of different cultures and mixing them together to make something else in a fantasy setting in a creative way will upset someone in some way or form.

People will get their underwear twisted in the most stupid of ways.
Click to expand...

Can we not do this shit in every single thread pointing out how simplistic and stereotypical the representation and appropriation of non-white cultures in media is?
 
P

Paz

Member
I'm usually on board with the simple idea that media of all types tends to deal badly with the cultures not common to the creators but this Zelda stuff seems like a huuuuuuuuuuge reach.
 
P

Poor GRIMES

Banned
HMD said:
I'm totally not against that, but I guess what I was trying to say is that it could be explained or it could be "excusable" in Symmetra's case.
Click to expand...
Everyone on Earth learns English as their second language. I just find it interesting how Symmetra is one of the only ones in Overwatch to never speak her cultural tongue.
wandering said:
Mei speaks Mandarin.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Made the correction.
 
M

Meffer

Member
Poor GRIMES said:
The thing is that there isn't an even platform when it comes to cultural exportation. The West and certain parts of East Asia dominate global media when it comes to representation and "getting people interested in their culture."

Thus, there is a more encompassing and nigh complete look into those specific Western and East Asian cultures. The Philippinnes, India, Iran, Iraq, etc. do not have that same cultural mindshare.

Because of this, people tend to blur the lines between each culture thinking they're the same, when, in reality, they aren't. Like the article says, it's important to highlight the differences in each of these Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures and treat it respectfully, rather than bastardizing an element that the developers find "cool."
Click to expand...

They choose what elements they wanted to worked better for the game. What was fun and what was interesting for the game's design. If they who wrote the article or you want what you describe, either play a game that has that or make your own.
 
B

Banzai

Member
Symmetra not having any voice lines in a different language is too bad, I'll give them that. There are a couple of characters that could stand to have some lines in another language: Lucio, Torbjörn. Let Zenyatta speak some Assembler or something.

Still wouldn't call that failing to represent their identities, but what do I know.
 
J

jrcbandit

Member
This whole take is ridiculous when it comes to Zelda. They want realistic ME representation in a fantasy world with talking bird and fish people, robots with lasers, etc? Oh and camels in a desert area, how shocking and racist.....
 
S

Scrooge McDuck

Member
Come on, people, that article is very mild and is not even a warm take. There is no racism accusation thrown around, and I don't even read any hint of "people getting offended by this" as some posters here weirdly put it.

Maybe stop being so defensive at the slightest criticism of your beloved game, yeah?
 
M

MotionBlue

Member
non-Western cultures as exotic
Click to expand...

Wait, so we can't call exotic cultures exotic now? I'm not sure what this is trying to argue? Zelda was developed in Japan, I'm sure they know about Asian culture.
 
W

wandering

Banned
It did feel kinda weird how the Gerudo are put on level with the Zora, Rito, and Gorons as "fantastical exotic guardian races."

Like you got the fish people, the bird people, the rock people, and... the brown desert folks.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
ElBoxyBrown said:
A lizard. Specifically a Horned Lizard. A camel is so cliche.
Click to expand...

It already has a lizard.

zelda_botw_guide_rudaniaprep5.jpg
 
M

mavo

Banned
Maybe is because im also confusing them but can someone pinpoint anything about the gerudo that is south asian? Everything seems arabic to me, and in my ignorance i must say that it always seemed like morocco influenced to me.
 
P

Poor GRIMES

Banned
Meffer said:
They choose what elements they wanted to worked better for the game. What was fun and what was interesting for the game's design. If they who wrote the article or you want what you describe, either play a game that has that or make your own.
Click to expand...
Well first off, elucidating stereotypical representations of cultures that appropriate from Middle Eastern and South Asian groupsnis the entire purpose of that article. Giving specific instances where this happens is not an attack on the entire game itself; it's that it falls victim into the same traps of shoddy cultural representations.

Like, of course, the Middle East and South Asia's cultural exports are found in the desert region! They couldn't place those inspirations elsewhere? Brown people always have to be in the desert kicking back with camels for some reason...

And telling me to make my own game or play ones that have the types of representations I want is avoiding the larger dialogue that the article is opening up.
 
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