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[Ysiadmihi]

When used as an obvious slur, and with the intent of belittling somebody or their arguments, it makes its user a lot less endearing to me - just the same as if they had used a racial or gender-based pejorative. Am I not allowed to choose whose ideas I digest based on personal preference?

Of course you are. But your argument is that people who use the term are hateful, and as I already pointed out, it means different things to different people. You're assuming you know what he means by it and using that assumption to belittle HIS argument. From my perspective, it sounds like an excuse to not read something you disagree with, but I don't want to make assumptions~

 

[Reebot]

"Diversity for its own sake" doesn't damage anything. We need to stop "justifying" the existence of minorities in video games.

Yes, it does. How could a game convince me its people are violent racists when diversity surrounds them? It goes directly against the in-game world.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Some of the monsters in the games are literally taken from a Slavic book on monster mythology.

from the Bestiariusz Słowiańsk, you might recognize it as a Fiend which is in the game.

There you go. Lukes argument might've been better if he siad there wasn't ENOUGH slavic culture, but.....the way he worded his argument and then continued using that line of logic to form the basis of his argument makes his argument laughable. The message is fine, but choosing to fight on the hill that is Witcher 3 is laughable.

 

[Shaanyboi]

That's not an innately good thing nor its it an ideal to which all should strive.

CDPR created a fully realized Witcher world at the expense of some widestream appeal. That's there choice; no one has to agree with it, of course, but they don't deserve the hatred and insults slung at them in the initial article.

Racial diversity would have been an interesting avenue to explore in this world, but for whatever consideration - likely time and money - CDPR chose not to. This was a good call; diversity for its own sake can harm a product.

Please explain how having non-white people in this videogame would've harmed the product? And the idea that diversity should need to justify itself is inherently poisonous.

 

[Easy_D]

I find it kind of weird how people call them out by saying you can't show actual racism if everyone has the same skin colour. There is plenty of white on white racism.

 

[superseohyun]

Have... you played a Yakuza game?

I mean, granted, I've only played Yakuza 3.

But I'm pretty sure Yakuza 3 has more diversity then TW3.

Like, it's in Japan and all. But there's black people in the game. I know. A surprise.

Its modern Japan for gods sake... you can see lots of black people on japanese television right now....

 

[KHlover]

Some of the monsters in the games are literally taken from a Slavic book on monster mythology.

from the Bestiariusz Słowiańsk, you might recognize it as a Fiend which is in the game.

Seriously loving all the references to European folklore in the game.

 

[Sanctuary]

"Diversity for its own sake" doesn't damage anything. We need to stop "justifying" the existence of minorities in video games.

It doesn't actually add anything of value either, if it's painfully obvious. This doesn't even have to apply to minorities at all either, and simply another issue from more of the younger "me too" entitlement crowd.
Are you seriously suggesting that you wouldn't care if someone was carelessly represented, as long as they had representation? Because that's all I'm seeing with what you've been writing.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Yes, it does. How could a game convince me its people are violent racists when diversity surrounds them? It goes directly against the in-game world.

Maybe not bother dealing with racism unless you have something to say about it? It's similar to a different criticism people levelled at TW3 - the world is misogynistic but doesn't say anything new or interesting or even attempt to combat misogyny in any meaningful way. Wow, misogyny is bad. News flash.

It doesn't add anything to the world and it just ostracises female players, the majority of whom are likely to have directly experienced misogyny in one form or another. If you don't have anything interesting or useful to contribute, then don't use it. It's lazy. It's like the jump scare - a cheap tactic used to convey something but that doesn't really add anything other than shock value.

 

[His Majesty]

"Diversity for its own sake" doesn't damage anything. We need to stop "justifying" the existence of minorities in video games.

It does. Of course we must justify the existence of a specific minority in a game based on medieval Poland where racism is strife. Why are they a minority in the game, what is their role, are they racially being persecuted? It's not just as simple as adding a few people of colour and ignoring all the context surrounding it. Internal consistency is very important in fantasy games. You need to create an authentic and believable world where everything from geography to demographics makes sense. Just adding in a few minorities for the sake of diversity is a sign of very bad worldbuilding.

 

[tuxfool]

Please explain how having non-white people in this videogame would've harmed the product? And the idea that diversity should need to justify itself is inherently poisonous.

Because they would not fit the internal consistency of the world. Adding humans of colour would just open them up to accusations of tokenism. It shouldn't have to justify itself when contextually the world is indeed attempting to accurately model said diversity after the real world.

Come back when Cyberpunk fails to represent LA culture and diversity.

 

[ZoddGutts]

As a non white person I find this dumb. Not really an issue for me. Wish white people would stop trying to tell us non white folks as to what we should take offense at, shit like this makes me roll my eyes.

 

[Hulud]

I wouldn't trust 95% of "gaming journalists" evaluations of artistic works. Most of these people have neither the journalistic skill-set, nor the education of the arts necessary to make any worthwhile assessments when it comes to a topic as sensitive as racial diversity in modern art forms. Obviously, they are entitled to their opinion, but it should be treated as just that, nothing more.

 

[lefantome]

this is a good counter argument, from an international film student

http://thegonzologist.tumblr.com/post/120655612895/the-one-where-i-talk-about-diversity

basically, telling Poland how to make their entertainment/art products is cultural imperialism. It's akin to hating on Japan for not making black-people games

Agreed. I'm really enjoying the fact that I'm playing a game set in a world based on central european history and polish/slavic folklore, it's something fresh and new.

If we care about diversity we should want diverse games with diverse inspirations, not games based on a globalized version of the world which is mostly american centric.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

It doesn't actually add anything of value either, if it's painfully obvious. This doesn't even have to apply to minorities at all either, and simply another issue from more of the younger "me too" entitlement crowd.

Painfully obvious as in... Minorities exist? Life must be hard for you.

There's nothing "me too" about wanting minority representation in video games and media. When white straight cis men make up the majority of video games yet people ask others to justify why they should deviate from that standard you know there's a problem.

 

[Riposte]

Disagree with a couple of your innate premises here. Firstly, art affecting one's worldview is not innately propaganda - a word signifying material made entirely for that purpose. Movies, music, books, etc. can change us without their creator intending to have such an effect. There's a clear distinction between The Life Aquatic and Triumph of the Will.

Second, I don't think the discussion is one of art's role but rather of the author's relationship to the art as well as their audience. In this scenario, we have the audience berating the artist for not making the piece the former wanted, for reasons I believe are disingenuous or at best severely misguided. That's my problem with the article and much of the discussion surrounding this particular issue at large.

The author's intention, or the author in general, is mostly irrelevant to this. Perhaps you can spare some sort of judgment on the authors themselves with this reasoning, but if one is mainly concerned with the actual effects of something, then intentional or unintentional are virtually the same. "How does this affect the world?" is the question. Since every piece of art affects the world by coloring our understanding and expectations of it, it serves as propaganda. On the other hand, every piece of art is also fictitious in at least some way and has us focus our attention away from the present and onto an imaginary "smaller world" in the confines of the canvas (starting with the process of representation and possibility eventually leading to scenarios of little similarity in reality).

I may have gone over this better in the posts I previously linked, but the reason this sort of battle is unavoidable is because we have the idea that I describe above where we consider the effects of art on the outside world. Consider that there are several fields of study or belief systems which intersect with media in a way that can be simplified as "how does this affect people" (negatively or positively, ultimately). With that lens, your focus (with the definition of art, or what is "important") falls outside of the "smaller world". Like I said, this is how everything can be some propaganda in the first place and the battle moves on to having positive/helpful propaganda win over the negative/harmful. A lot of people talking about "political correctness" or similar are poorly vocalizing their dissent against the propaganda angle itself.

I think you being are a little too defensive to understand my point, perhaps it would relieve you to hear that I'm very much on the side of escapism (while understanding the propaganda aspects are unavoidable). Art is completely about the experience (the lie) and to see it as a tool gets in the way of that. The reason I can think this way has a lot to do with my beliefs outside the field of art, my priorities in life, naturally; there's an alternative personal motive behind taking up the lens I describe above and the need of "usefulness".

 

[Ashe Nei]

Oh there's plenty of those. There's exactly two humans who don't have white skin.

Oh, i know.

What i was trying to ask is, why what really matters is the condition of "human being" and not what those exemples dismissed for "being not humans" symbolize within the context and "limitations" of the source 'in which the games are based on. Why what really matters it's the colour of skin and not the suffering for being something else, being different?

 

[szaromir]

Sorry for missing this post. Will check out Ballads and Romances. EDIT: Oh crap, I should have guessed a good source on Polish folk tales wouldn't be in English.

I'm finding this interesting because it's the sort of thing that doesn't translate well to monsters to slay. Most of it is about normal household stuff and how people tried to rationalize the world around them.

Sorry for recommending something not available in English, I thought someone would have translated it in the 200 years that have passed since its release. That's pretty mindblowing to me actually, it's like not translating Goethe or Hugo or Pushkin. No wonder people are completely clueless about Polish culture.

And Ballads and Romances deserves a proper translation, reading it was a pretty magical experience for me.

 

[danm999]

Maybe not bother dealing with racism unless you have something to say about it? It's similar to a different criticism people levelled at TW3 - the world is misogynistic but doesn't say anything new or interesting or even attempt to combat misogyny in any meaningful way. Wow, misogyny is bad. News flash.

It doesn't add anything to the world and it just ostracises female players, the majority of whom are likely to have directly experienced misogyny in one form or another. If you don't have anything interesting or useful to contribute, then don't use it. It's lazy. It's like the jump scare - a cheap tactic used to convey something but that doesn't really add anything other than shock value.

I dunno, I think re enforcing negative depictions of misogyny, homophobia and racism is meritorious in and of itself, I don't necessarily think each piece of media needs to come up with a new reason as to why it's wrong.

 

[Kinyou]

Maybe not bother dealing with racism unless you have something to say about it? It's similar to a different criticism people levelled at TW3 - the world is misogynistic but doesn't say anything new or interesting or even attempt to combat misogyny in any meaningful way. Wow, misogyny is bad. News flash.

Racism is crucial to the game's world. It plays huge parts in the books and the first two games. It's not something you can just remove and still have a witcher game

 

[truestatic]

"Diversity for its own sake" doesn't damage anything. We need to stop "justifying" the existence of minorities in video games.

So it's best to just ignore that racial diversity arose from geographic diversity and isolation, and that through most of history, and in many places even until this day, that isolation kept most regions largely homogenous in race? To make every fictional world an idealized reflection of the most multiracial places today?

 

[Toxi]

Some of the monsters in the games are literally taken from a Slavic book on monster mythology.

from the Bestiariusz Słowiańsk, you might recognize it as a Fiend which is in the game.

Yep. There are also rusalka in the original Witcher books, though not in the games.

Sorry for recommending something not available in English, I thought someone would have translated it in the 200 years that have passed since its release. That's pretty mindblowing to me actually, it's like not translating Goethe or Hugo or Pushkin. No wonder people are completely clueless about Polish culture.

And Ballads and Romances deserves a proper translation, reading it was a pretty magical experience for me.

Sucks. Thanks for the recommendation though.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

Painfully obvious as in... Minorities exist? Life must be hard for you.

There's nothing "me too" about wanting minority representation in video games and media. When white straight cis men make up the majority of video games yet people ask others to justify why they should deviate from that standard you know there's a problem.

This is a game set around European folklore from hundreds of years ago. Do you have an issue with Okami being set in Japanese folklore only having Japanese representation and no people of color?

 

[Garrett Hawke]

I dunno, I think re enforcing negative depictions of misogyny, homophobia and racism is meritorious in and of itself, I don't necessarily think each piece of media needs to come up with a new reason as to why it's wrong.

But it's so same-y now to the point where people argue that it's standard and criticise those that say it shouldn't be there. It shouldn't be there. It rarely if ever adds anything to the narrative or medium unless the story is specifically focused on that issue. It's like having great water simulation in a game where you see a square patch of water once. It's pointless as it's just backdrop filler, and the fact that it's become standard fantasy fare (see GoT, TW) is downright sad.

 

[Led_Zeppelin]

Absolutely on fucking point as far as I'm concerned. It's why, even though I still play and enjoy them, I'd prefer not having the usual "dwarves, humans, elves" triangle things (inb4 avatar quote). Instead of using all the biggest clichés of the RPG genre, why not try and be a little more creative and look closer at home? There are so many wonderful and diverse races in our own backyard, yet I rarely see it fleshed out well. I understand it's just fiction and stuff, but I'm getting a little tired of the usual humans, dwarves and elves as NPCs and trolls, dragons, big ass spiders and whatnot as enemies.

My two cents.

Poland doesn't seem to be YOUR backyard or my backyard. The author of the OP piece even make this really clear, that Poland is not a really diverse ethnic country. And as someone from a country with not a really diverse ethnicity I understand CDPR, all this issue is completely overblown, is like arguing why there aren't (US) minorities into games set in ancient china or feudal Japan. It seems to be an issue born from people thinking that the history of their country is the history of all countries on Earth.

 

[zpiders]

As a non white person I find this dumb. Not really an issue for me. Wish white people would stop trying to tell us non white folks as to what we should take offense at, shit like this makes me roll my eyes.

I agree holehartdly with you. As a non-white person, sick and tired of all this politcal-correctdness being stuffed down our throats.

Whitcher 3 is probably the best game I played in the last decade or so and I take zero offense that there's no coloured person in it.

 

[KorrZ]

Please explain how having non-white people in this videogame would've harmed the product? And the idea that diversity should need to justify itself is inherently poisonous.

It doesn't need to be justified but a certain sub section of the internet these days seems to think that diversity is the objectively correct way to create a work of fiction, and if you don't include it then you're either racist or just doing things wrong. No matter the reason or background behind the lack of diversity. Which I don't think is necessarily any better.

I'm going to quote Adrian here:

If not… What is the minimum, how much is not enough? What is the quota? Is there a template that creators should use? And if the rules and guidelines exist, does it mean that forever and ever any homogenous culture loses the right to present itself to the world, even if through the sword and sorcery fiction?

What if a game only represents black people, but no Asian people? Is that okay? Why? How many ethnic groups — out of over fifty thousand that exist in the world — does a game need to represent? How do we choose one over another, what’s the criteria?

And why focus on race only? Do you think people feel under-represented only from the race point of view? How about disabled people, for example? And if someone does not obey the rules and creates a fictional world that does not represent everything and everyone, should they be punished? How?

 

[Perun]

Please explain how having non-white people in this videogame would've harmed the product? And the idea that diversity should need to justify itself is inherently poisonous.

Diversity for diversity's sake would harm the product as it would be there just to appease the overly sensitive (so to speak) crowd, it would be tokenism at best. It would also be inconsistent with the Witcher universe. Non-white people weren't common in Northern Kingdoms, you didn't get to hear about them in the books either, especially at the time of war. This is totally a non-issue.

I knew it's a matter of time until this aspect is going to be criticized by (ahem) some people, but good for CDPR for not compromising the game just to appease this crowd.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Poland doesn't seem to be YOUR backyard or my backyard. The author of the OP piece even make this really clear, that Poland is not a really diverse ethnic country. And as someone from a country with not a really diverse ethnicity I understand CDPR, all this issue is completely overblown, is like arguing why there aren't (US) minorities into games set in ancient china or feudal Japan. It seems to be an issue born from people thinking that the history of their country is the history of all countries on Earth.

Last time I checked, dragons and succubi weren't part of the History of Poland. :/

Nobody is saying that it should be diverse because American history is diverse. They're saying it should be diverse because there's no reason for it not to be, seeing as there are dragons and witches and shit flying about. Would it really break your immersion to see -gasp- a black person? In my videogames?

 

[Toxi]

Would this contain the poems from Ballads and Romances? If so, I'll give it a go.

Table of poems

At This Tadeusz - Eagerly Came Near: by Adam Mickiewicz
'before We Plight Our Troth And Give The Ring by Adam Mickiewicz
Conversation by Adam Mickiewicz
Danaids by Adam Mickiewicz
Good Evening by Adam Mickiewicz
Good Morning by Adam Mickiewicz
Good Night! by Adam Mickiewicz
'how Easy To Blight Another's Happiness by Adam Mickiewicz
I Speak To Myself by Adam Mickiewicz
I Would Rule By The Feeling That Is In Me by Adam Mickiewicz
The Image Of That Parting Stands In My Memory Still by Adam Mickiewicz
Listen, I'll Tell You More. I Was In The Garden by Adam Mickiewicz
Morning And Evening by Adam Mickiewicz
Mow My Soul Is Incarnate In My Land by Adam Mickiewicz
My Corpse by Adam Mickiewicz
The Nixie by Adam Mickiewicz
O Lithuania, My Country, Thou by Adam Mickiewicz
O Thou, Of Whom They Say That Thou Dost Feel On High! by Adam Mickiewicz
The Pilgrim by Adam Mickiewicz
The Prodigal's Lament by Adam Mickiewicz
The Romantic by Adam Mickiewicz
Silent? Yet Satan's Self Thou Hast Withstood? by Adam Mickiewicz
Spin Love by Adam Mickiewicz
To *** by Adam Mickiewicz
To D. D. by Adam Mickiewicz
To M*** by Adam Mickiewicz
To My Cicerone by Adam Mickiewicz
To The Niemen by Adam Mickiewicz
Uncertainty by Adam Mickiewicz
While At The Table Ends This Talk Went On by Adam Mickiewicz
Woman, Thou Worthless Fluff, Creature Of Air! by Adam Mickiewicz
--Table of Poems

EDIT: Fuck it, I'm buying this.

 

[Tacitus_]

Oh, i know.

What i was trying to ask is, why what really matters is the condition of "human being" and not what those exemples dismissed for "being not humans" symbolize within the context and "limitations" of the source 'in which the games are based on. Why what really matters it's the colour of skin
Dond not the suffering for being something else, being different?

Don't ask me, I've sided with the "monsters" so many times in these games because they tended to just be minding their business until humans arrived. Humans tend to be the real monsters anyway, since the majority of monsters aren't sentient and thus don't know better. Humans though will act like monsters and feel good about themselves.

 

[KHlover]

Painfully obvious as in... Minorities exist? Life must be hard for you.

There's nothing "me too" about wanting minority representation in video games and media. When white straight cis men make up the majority of video games yet people ask others to justify why they should deviate from that standard you know there's a problem.

Yes, this problem exists in AAA gaming. No, Witcher 3 isn't a part of it. Out of the probably hundreds games in past few years where minorities are underrepresented you picked out the one game where a real world precedent as well as an in-world justification for lack of minorities in the game exists.

 

[Reebot]

Please explain how having non-white people in this videogame would've harmed the product? And the idea that diversity should need to justify itself is inherently poisonous.

I did, several times. I'm tired of implied personal insults, calling my words "poisonous," and won't bother responding to posters who don't even read my thoughts.

Maybe not bother dealing with racism unless you have something to say about it? It's similar to a different criticism people levelled at TW3 - the world is misogynistic but doesn't say anything new or interesting or even attempt to combat misogyny in any meaningful way. Wow, misogyny is bad. News flash.

What ridiculous belittlement. For one thing, what possible thing could you say about racism and misogyny other than its wrong? I don't have an interest in apologist media and neither do you; I don't think you fully thought out that point.

On the other hand, I have a great deal of interest in stories that reflect on themes relevant to the real world. Themes like racism and hatred, even if all they can say is "its bad." Because it is bad. I don't care if its a news flash.

It doesn't add anything to the world[/B] and it just ostracises female players, the majority of whom are likely to have directly experienced misogyny in one form or another. If you don't have anything interesting or useful to contribute, then don't use it. It's lazy. It's like the jump scare - a cheap tactic used to convey something but that doesn't really add anything other than shock value.

False. Really, just false, it adds quite a deal.

You don't have to like it, that's really perfectly ok. But many people have an interest in worlds that are deeply flawed, worlds that contain real systemic problems because it leads to interesting stories. The power dynamic of the Lodge, as a story telling element, directly builds off the otherwise complete disenfranchisement of women in the Witcher. Similarly, the Bloody Barron questline relies on a world of sexual inequality.

You keep coming back to the point that this style of storytelling puts off groups of people. Not every story is for everyone, nor should it be. CDPR, and artists generally, are better served by creating the art they want to create and not chasing total wide appeal.

 

[Sanctuary]

Painfully obvious as in... Minorities exist? Life must be hard for you.

The fuck? You're trying way too hard to get offended.

There's nothing "me too" about wanting minority representation in video games and media.

There's also nothing wrong with not adding them for no other reason than to add them. It wholly depends on the setting. If it was a game based around modern society then people would have every right to question a lack of diversity, but it's not. And why is it that this is only ever an issue in games that are predominantly, or only caucasian but it's not a problem if it's predominantly non white? That's not about "fair representation".

 

[Entryhazard]

https://medium.com/@adrianchm/on-the-witcher-3-and-racial-quotas-in-art-e6a9f594439

Nice rebuttal, but I guess a lot are too arrogant to get past the term SJW.

The negation of Slavic folklore is so glaring

 

[truestatic]

Last time I checked, dragons and succubi weren't part of the History of Poland. :/

Nobody is saying that it should be diverse because American history is diverse. They're saying it should be diverse because there's no reason for it not to be, seeing as there are dragons and witches and shit flying about. Would it really break your immersion to see -gasp- a black person? In my videogames?

Naw it was cool in Dragon Age. It might be weird to see that sort of diversity in a Jade Empire 2, though.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Its modern Japan for gods sake... you can see lots of black people on japanese television right now....

Modern Japan is still overwhelmingly Japanese. It's 98% Japanese. I think Korean's are the next largest group in Japan, and they only make up 0.5% of the country. But Primethius is right, the Yakuza series does feature other races. Although they're few and far between as you'd expect. Shenmue also had minority characters.

 

[Chariot]

Well, I looked at Adrian's twitter and found a new word:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americentrism
It's definitely a thing in here. I find it a bit hard to relate to many posts I read in here. And that's understandable, because this is an american website. But you are criticizing somebody who lives in a very different place than you do.

Yap. I said it in some other thread about the topic and I say it again. Americans forgot their roots and have trouble to understand that different ethnics don't just equal different skin colors. Actually they are not doing that to just white people of Europe, but to black people as well. In a lot of topics all people of colour get mushed into a big african being, into some united "african culture", ignoring that africa is made of hundreds, thousands of different cultures. US culture needs to learn that there is more than skin colour to diversity.

 

[Alucrid]

This really cannot be stressed enough.

It might sound bizarre as hell for many Americans, but there are still many places in Europe where the locals never even faced someone non-white in person.

Just think about that.

so witcher 3 is the black pete of video games?

 

[kingkaiser]

I find it kind of weird how people call them out by saying you can't show actual racism if everyone has the same skin colour. There is plenty of white on white racism.

It's ironic and somewhat sad.

It's like people forgot how World War 2 actually started. White people thinking they were a superior race to other white people and murderd millions of them in the process.

I blame the subpar education system in the US for this.

 

[Linkyn]

I think the problem is not so much with The Witcher 3 or other games being predominantly (or exclusively) white, but the lack of games that focus on other ethnicities or races. If such a game was well-made, it could give you some valuable perspective on other people's lives, which I find incredibly intriguing.

Edit: I now realise what I've stumbled into.

 

[thefit]

This was something said to me a few years ago. A white lady asked me what kind of Mexican I was.

And you decided to repeat that racist comment because you also find it funny? Oh, it was in jest so it's ok? Well no its no.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

my copy is still downloading

I understand why I will not find a black person in this game

I wish someone would make me an epic Shaka Zulu RPG pretty please

 

[G.ZZZ]

This quote is just so true:

Devaluing someone’s culture because of their skin color is racism. Saying to the oppressed that they must change their work because your oppression is more meaningful by virtue of your skin color is, by most definitions, racism.
I think people have gotten in a bad habit of assuming that the color of a person’s skin alone means that their cultural needs are fulfilled, that all anyone needs to appreciate art is to see people who look like them. And that’s absurd. Absolutely, completely, totally absurd.

http://thegonzologist.tumblr.com/post/120655612895/the-one-where-i-talk-about-diversity

This resound so true. There are literally thousands of pieces of american medias that are offensive and not inclusive, The Witcher 3 is NOT one of them full stop. Stop assuming some media is offensive because an underrepresented culture is in it and it happen to be white skinned.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

The fuck? You're trying way too hard to get offended.



There's also nothing wrong with not adding them for no other reason than to add them. It wholly depends on the setting. If it was a game based around modern society then people would have every right to question a lack of diversity, but it's not. And why is it that this is only ever an issue in games that are predominantly, or only caucasian but it's not a problem if it's predominantly non white? That's not about "fair representation".

It is about "fair representation". If a box is full of 98 white balls, a grey ball and a black ball, then swapping out some of the white balls doesn't make you "anti-white". You just want more of the grey and black balls because variety is important.

That's what people are asking for. When 99% of games have either no minorities or terrible representation of them, it's not "reverse-racist" or whatever to ask people to create more games featuring minorities.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

He open by saying that Slavic Mythology isn't a real thing.

So he opens his article with a crock of shit. Cool. So why are you trying to give him attention? What a shitty article. Slavic mythology exists and we know it exists. For goodness sakes, we've talked about it in the OT. We were talking about all the other regional mythologies we'd like to see explored in games.

Given the existence of Zerrikania, there are potentially very decent ways to have this conversation with very good arguments on the side of the game needing more color. I probably would still argue that given the racial tension against Slavs throughout history, I don't really care and I think the game adds more to diversity just by the mere fact of its existence, but still. This was a poor way to have this conversation.

 

[creatchee]

Of course you are. But your argument is that people who use the term are hateful, and as I already pointed out, it means different things to different people. You're assuming you know what he means by it and using that assumption to belittle HIS argument. From my perspective, it sounds like an excuse to not read something you disagree with, but I don't want to make assumptions~

The actual sentence:

"One thing that impresses me about Social Justice Warriors is how they lie openly, even if the proof of their lies is literally a Google search away."

Okay, now Google "Social Justice Warrior". The first hit is from Urban Dictionary:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social+justice+warrior

The second is from Know Your Meme:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/social-justice-warrior

Then there is a bunch of hits which make fun of people deemed SJWs, which should be telling in and of itself. There isn't a Wikipedia article, but it does show up in a search as part of a larger article:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#Social_justice_warrior

"The term "social justice warrior" has been used to describe people who pursue social justice by attacking existing social norms and programs, in order to achieve social goals not accepted by the general public.

In Internet culture, the term has been used as a pejorative for someone campaigning against things they perceive to be instances of racism, sexism, homophobia, or other social injustice. Frequently initialized as "SJW", it is used to accuse opponents of sanctimony, to insinuate pretense, as a pejorative, and as a general shorthand for a person believed to be overreacting to social issues."

Now are you REALLY going to try and pretend the author was being nice and simply describing a group of people with his usage, or are you going to stop bullshitting?

 

[RedSwirl]

Witcher 3 probably isn't the best game to skewer about this. At least, you can't talk about it without talking about the books and their total whiteness. I think CDPR, whatever its intentions, was somewhat limited by how little Sapkowski's works describe Zerrikania at all, or any place outside the Northern Kingdoms and Nilfgaard. All the stories are very localized. Maybe if that wasn't so they'd be able to put more traders, travelers, and other characters in the game (primarily in a port city or something), but I don't think CDPR could have without inventing A LOT of new detail not described at all in the books.

As for fantasy games in general, the problem is that most of them are pretty much stuck on Europe and European mythology. I'd like to see them expand a bit when inventing new fantasy universes.

Oh, and I can't wait to see how CDPR visualizes things in Cyberpunk 2077, a very different setting from a very different creator.

 

[Tacitus_]

Last time I checked, dragons and succubi weren't part of the History of Poland. :/

Nobody is saying that it should be diverse because American history is diverse. They're saying it should be diverse because there's no reason for it not to be, seeing as there are dragons and witches and shit flying about. Would it really break your immersion to see -gasp- a black person? In my videogames?

I wonder if you would be crusading this hard to have black people in a game about monster slayers in feudal Japan. Personally I'd expect that to contain only Japanese people in it.

 

[Hopeford]

I agree holehartdly with you. As a non-white person, sick and tired of all this politcal-correctdness being stuffed down our throats.

Whitcher 3 is probably the best game I played in the last decade or so and I take zero offense that there's no coloured person in it.

If I make one side comment about "Well intentioned, slightly offensive" statements people make sometimes, I have a minor story to share. One time this girl I know started ranting about how Metal Gear Rising was racist for having Sam be portrayed as a white dude despite being from Brazil, which she thought was a pretty malicious move to Brazilians.

It was incredibly awkward because I look pretty white but I was born in Brazil(moved to Canada when I was young). She didn't know that, think she thought I was born in Canada. I had no idea what to say to her, like "Oh geez, she has good intentions but anything I say here is going to make this so awkward. Uh. Uhhhhhh." Had to tiptoe around letting her know that a good percentage of Brazil looked pretty white because the poor girl seriously had good intentions and I knew she was gonna be super harsh on herself once she found out. Like, gosh that was awkward.

Don't usually have people getting offended on my behalf(most I get is the usual "...You can speak another language? Huuuuuuh" look) but man, THAT WAS AWKWARD.