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CoD: Black Ops 3's campaign doesn't allow you to change race

L

Lime

Member
Update:

beefyreef said:
Hey everyone, this is Shareef Jackson, creator of the video that the OP linked to. Feel free to check out my other videos at gaminglooksgood.com, or @gaminglooksgood on Twitter. The video speaks for itself so I'm not gonna reiterate each and every part, but I don't want to address two points (believe or not, I read all of the comments ).

1) We need to hold media companies accountable, whether it's games, books, tv, etc. Media is a powerful force and can influence society. We consume this media and have that right to give constructive criticism. The world is diverse, and thus the gamer space is diverse. Having games where the heroes don't reflect that diversity is a huge disservice to the industry, and makes it look out of touch. This doesn't mean that I hate every game with a white character (can't believe I even have to say that, but I do based on some comments), but it does mean that I'm disappointed that I rarely see myself in the big AAA releases.

2) Activision has mega bucks, and Call of Duty makes mega bucks. There is absolutely no reason that they could not afford to provide more options for diverse characters, whether something as simple as skin shaders or complex as additional mocap. The issue is that most of this requires FORESIGHT. They would have to actually THINK about this early on and allocate the resources needed. If you try to shoehorn this stuff in the middle of the process, I can see it getting dropped from the table whether devs want it in or not (I've heard some involved devs that it was brought up at some point, but didn't make it).
Click to expand...


Shareef Jackson from the excellent GamingLooksGood did a video about this. The character creation starts at 2:14.

You can play as a woman, but you can only be white. Not only that, the main authority figures are also white. The support characters are well balanced diversity-wise, but they don't call the shots. This is unacceptable, especially since the multiplayer game has many diverse character models. One step forward and 500 steps back.
Click to expand...


EDIT:
Kreed said:
It's clear that Shareef Jackson is discussing why the diverse MP characters aren't available in the campaign mode vs just the two white characters, but the OP "seems" to have interpreted this/or at least has directed the discussion towards the create a character not being diverse enough, which has caused the topic to diverge into two different discussions.

Regardless, while you're right that money and development time was likely the cause for why you can only play as the two characters in SP, it is worth discussing why the developer felt it wasn't worth the effort to get more characters into the SP as opposed to MP and/or why the developer thought those two characters were acceptable enough for the SP campaign and not the others.
Click to expand...

Original post:
It was already touched upon in the other thread by various posters. Black Ops 3 have been priding itself that it allows the player to choose their own gender for the singleplayer campaign. But unfortunately the 18 different characters (9 male, 9 female) all are different versions of White. There are hundreds of people working on this with millions of dollars in all aspects of the game, but the decision-makers at the developer never considered having different racial representation for their character options. This is a step back from Advanced Warfare, which according to some did allow for some different options for character customization. What is also weird is that as far as I know, almost no review has mentioned this in their assessment of the game.

What's funny is that Activision has taken two steps forward and one step back, which is evident since you can change your gender but are unable to choose a different skin tone. The game is set in a modern real-world setting so it doesn't make sense why you can't choose another skin colour besides the default white skin tone which the game locks your avatar with. What's pretty strange about all this is that you can actually play as poc characters in the online multiplayer's portion of the game, so the real question is why is this not an option in the single player mode?
Click to expand...

http://www.thezonegamer.com/2015/11/cod-black-ops-3s-campaign-doesnt-allow.html

I think it's an important point to highlight, because developers shouldn't just think that they have to check some diversity box by putting in some (white) women only and then leave it at that. And I think reviewers should be more aware and conscious about this when reviewing the game.

Here you can see it:

750x422


bspofNy.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Z

Z3M0G

Member
True... they offer a variety of looks for a specific male character, and a specific female character, but they don't allow a simple change of skin tone in case you want it...

But like I said, you are a SPECIFIC character, either way...
 
S

shinobi602

Member
Hmm, it looks like you're a specific character, just with different hair/facial hair presets? The face models are all the same.
 
D

DrArchon

Member
Yeah, when I saw the character select screen for the campaign I did a bit of a double-take. The only reason I can come up with is that they got VAs that "sound white" and they didn't want to have to record more lines so that the characters "sound black/Hispanic/Asian/etc".

Really does seem like one step forward two steps back like article says.
 
B

Bad_Boy

time to take my meds
it's all the same guy and all the same girl, just different hair/hair colors/scars.

now if it were multiple white males/females, i could see this being a thing.
 
T

Toa TAK

Banned
People are right, though. It IS a specific character just with different facial and gender options. They're not player avatars a la Soap in COD4.

diamount said:
You'd then get people saying the voice doesn't match.
Click to expand...

I don't think that one has been a problem in Mass Effect or Fallout, right?
 
P

Palette Swap

Member
Yeah, that selection screen made me laugh. That's really "how tan are you and what's your haircut?"

But hey, at least there's a female character. Baby steps.
 
R

Razgriz-Specter

Member
DrArchon said:
Yeah, when I saw the character select screen for the campaign I did a bit of a double-take. The only reason I can come up with is that they got VAs that "sound white" and they didn't want to have to record more lines so that the characters "sound black/Hispanic/Asian/etc".

Really does seem like one step forward two steps back like article says.
Click to expand...

Hey we actually got a player character(who can be female) that shows up in cutscenes and is fully voiced both in gameplay and cutscenes.
I'd say two forward and one back.
 
O

orava

Member
Really dumb thing to get somehow offended by this. It's clearly just two characters with different styles for each.
 
K

Kralamoonard

Member
IMO I don't see it that much of an issue; if that is what the developer intended the model to look like, then let them be (and this is coming from a person who is also not white).
 
W

What A Time To Be Alive

Member
Eh, seems like a reach.

Pretty obvious it was meant to be one character they were going for but they let you change little things on your character. It's not true character customization.
 
M

Metfanant

Member
asinine argument...its different variations of 2 character models...the main character of the game happens to be a white person. This is a non issue, someone making a racial argument just for the sake of causing trouble.
 
L

Lime

Member
Palette Swap said:
Yeah, that selection screen made me laugh. That's really "how tan are you and what's your haircut?"

But hey, at least there's a female character. Baby steps.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's just sad to see another instance of "diversity = white women" when the multiplayer portion actually provides better and more options
 
M

Madness

Member
Seems they facial captured, motion captured just one woman and one man, who happened to be white and just decided that giving them slightly different shades of skin was doable, but not doing the same for several different/races ethnicities. How often are the faces used in cinematics or cutscenes? Because this is something that could add tons of cost and time to resources.

Campaign assets are much different than multi-player assets. I think ultimately it comes down to time and resources vs benefit. I don't know, seems like the customization is well done, I can see if people want to play as a different skin color or ethnicity, but we've resigned ourselves to being the white guy pretty much as it is. Guarantee white people will care more about this than people of colour, especially if we can pick different genders and ethnicities for multiplayer, where we'll spend most of the time as is.
 
T

TheOfficeMut

Unconfirmed Member
Probably realized that black people get shot too often in real life and wanted to at least prevent it from happening in the game.
 
N

Nakkilokki

Banned
Magical Sound Shower said:
Seems like I won't be touching the single player mode then.
Click to expand...

Why? Were you promised you could play as a character of any race? Do you only play campaigns where you can choose your race?

The protagonist is simply "the Player", and Treyarch decided he or she is white. Get over it. Not every character has to be customizable.

This is once again a case of over reacting. I'm white though, so I guess my opinion could be skewed (it's not).
 
C

Camjo-Z

Member
Isn't COD a first-person shooter? Why would it matter what your character looks like in the first place? I can understand in multiplayer, but how often do you see yourself in single-player?
 
D

dose

Member
This is unacceptable
Click to expand...
Not it's not, that's how they've designed it. Where do you stop if you put black characters in? Asians too? etc etc... The dev time would have increased having to cater for shitloads of variations. Seriously, mountain out of a molehill.
 
LQX

LQX

Member
It was odd if not funny that they gave you the option for different shades of white. They should have left the option out as I cant imagine a person of darker color seeing eight shades of white and none close to brown or darker.

Also, maybe they felt having different races would require too much addition voice work?
 
R

Razgriz-Specter

Member
Camjo-Z said:
Isn't COD a first-person shooter? Why would it matter what your character looks like in the first place? I can understand in multiplayer, but how often do you see yourself in single-player?
Click to expand...

In this? A lot
Your character ain't Ramirez, Frost, Roach, Logan etc anymore.
 
S

shiftplusone

Member
Lime said:
Yeah, it's just sad to see another instance of "diversity = white women" when the multiplayer portion actually provides better and more options
Click to expand...

I dont understand what the argument is then, considering that they obviously had a level of awareness to do this for the multiplayer.

The campaign is a specific character (named player but I digress) with some variables but not a wholesale create a character option.

"Black Ops allows a gender choice for the main character in the campaign but its only white woman and white guy. This is not diverse"

"The multiplayer at least has many diverse character options"

"Agreed"

???
 
V

VeryGooster

Banned
Representation in games is worth a discussion but that's the least of the BO3 campaign's problems really. Might be the worst in the franchise.
 
T

TheBlackMarvel

Member
LQX said:
It was odd if not funny that they gave you the option for different shades of white. They should have left the option out as I cant imagine a person of darker color seeing eight shades of white and none close to brown or darker.

Also, maybe they felt having different races would require too much addition voice work?
Click to expand...

Why would it require any additional voice work?
 
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