I think one of the best in-game conversations ever to touch on the subject of race was in Mass Effect 3. Garrus and Joker are telling racist (specist?) jokes back and forth and the ship AI, EDI, doesn't get the humor. Joker ends up having to explain it, and talks about how racial humor might be intended to belittle, but can also be used to defuse social tensions. It was a really thought provoking interaction, and I was impressed Bioware had the balls to put it in their game.
I'm black, but my race itself would be meaningless if it wasn't for the unique genetics and cultural diversity that it brings, I believe that games need more cultural understanding rather than the race of the characters
Exactly. Some article was critisicing Witcher 3 for not having black characters...the game pretty much takes place in a version of Europe. Uniting aspects and creatures from different european folklore. Having black people there would just be for the sake of having black people there.
Kondos Eng then why is it an option to choose when I fill out a job application? You seem to miss the point, black can be considered a race or as a distinction for a race, African-American is not an actual race as Africans have there own culture separate from American culture, it was created as a way to describe blacks in America, who are not all of African decent btw.
Not being able to tell if they're lying is actually realistic. When talking to a relative stranger, most people, even most police officers and others whose jobs involve detecting lies, are only about 50% accurate. In other words, our fancy emotion-reading abilities are no better than simply flipping a coin.
As a writer, I can provide some insight here. They say, "write what you know." Naturally, if you are a person of colour, you can write yourself as a character and make that character as unique, deep, and individual as you are. So, what do you do if you are not that character? Just look around you. Look to your friends and colleagues. Look at your historical idols and even your fantasy heroes. Take elements from these people - preferably merging traits from several people - and your character will be unique, deep, and most importantly, believable. But make sure that you base your character on people you know very well. It's not enough to just give them a personality trait - you need to know why they have that trait.
A couple more tips: 1) Your character - particularly your main character - should not have just one personality. Characters are far more interesting when they evolve. Maybe your person is obsessed with logic and gets driven to the brink of madness by things that don't add up. Maybe your character is a villain who hurts someone close to them and has to rethink their entire life. 2) Personality is not enough. Real people are not just walking personas. Real people have hobbies, back-stories, families, and jobs. How do these external things affect your character? Who does your character idolize? What does your character do when they're not present in the story? Before the story? After the story? A character alone is not enough. Your character needs some outside context, to show us why they have this personality.
In games like mass effect and SW KOTOR I found myself as the character crushing and stomping out racism when encountered. Chastising NPCs and companions who engaged in racist behavior. Especially in regards to mass effects "humanity first" movement. But on the same note, in games like World of Warcraft and elder scrolls I find myself saying things like "ugh filthy goblins" and "I hate gnomes, just wanna kick em." Or being disgusted when speaking with bosmer and other elvish races excluding dark elves. And I've always wondered about that. How in certain games I feel compelled to behave the way I do in life, while in others I take joy out of playing the bad guy. The warlock, the death knight, the king who conquers the world through blood and sword.
Spud Bud I totally understand that. In most of the Dragon Age games and Elder scroll. I would say something similar about most Humans races or people with certain roles in the games since I'm usually Elfen. Yet in other games I would immediately try to be equal with everyone, stomp out most racism, sexism and all the other ism. Religion in games I either follow one or none. I wonder if it's because we're so into the game's word and roleplay that we act the best part that "we" (the character) are supposed in the world.
Interesting point. I think Neko touched on it. When the game gives you an option to be whatever race you want by creating a totally new character, I think the human psyche allows more freedom with any particular instance of gameplay -since you could always make a new one. On the other hand, a game like Mass Effect allows you to customize the physical appearance of your character a bit, but when given a clear narrative and an option between good and evil, most story tellers lean on the fact that darkness -even though it may always exist alongside it, can never overtake light. That as well as being a human sets the tone of the empathetic and compassionate steward, our brother's keepers if you will. This archetype weighs heavily on the moral choice you make in such a story like Mass Effect. Shepard isn't just a character, he is meant to be a hero. Heroes of humanity don't stand for hate. We stand for peace and love bro. The less human a character is or the more removed from our world they are, the more depraved we may become.
youtoober2013 I think Legion is a good example in Mass Effect. In the first game all geth were bad (the enemy) so we felt justified in taking them down. Legion became a team mate and ally but the vorcha took the place of the geth in the second game. It's just our sight of good and bad and how we are directed in games to see that game world.
Race is weird. Even though I'm black, whenever I see a minority in media, my first thought is that person was included to satisfy a demographic (because somehow "by default", that person was "supposed" to be a WASP). But now I'm the worse one of all - I can't see the character for who they really are, I'm judging them based on his/her race/gender/etc! Imo, a lack of diversity in our lives makes diversity in games so difficult. Being the only minority in a majority of my academic life, I still see minority characters as an exception to the rule.
I feel your struggle. Half korean, quarter black quarter white. It's not your fault and it's not bad to be skeptic of half-hearted attempts to fill quotas, it's the world we live in that's constructed this fear.
Rockstar is amazing at this for example in read dead redemption 2 all the characters are throwing around racial slurs cause that was the norm back then except for alot of Arthur's gang. They see the American Indians as right and help them they have minorities in there gang. Also in the world that minority character is seen as worse in the eyes of others outside of the gang.
i find this channel to be an invaluable source in educating myself in an art form that you usually don't receive a formal education for. Does anyone else know if there are channels similar to this one for other mediums like film or writing?
Though it's not set up the same for education on a particular subject, if you like channels that make you really THINK about what you're consuming, I highly recommend PBS Idea Channel.
I don't know if this is what your looking for, but there's a show called Jimquisition. He talks about what's going on in the game industry, normally how it's wrong and can only hurt the industry, and how game devs and gamers can change it. Again, I don't know if it's what you want, but I think you should check him out. I would even recommend taking a look at a show on the same channel called Zero Punctuation. He's a game reviewer, and he talks fast, so you'll have to listen closely. Watching the video more then once helps, too. He has a habit of picking apart every slightest flaw in a game. He doesn't seem to like many games, but he will certainly tell you what not to do as a game designer. If you're really into the idea of joining the game industry, these two are almost invaluable. You should also check out a site called Khan Academy to learn how to code, and download a free software called Game Maker Studio to get started.
AKArainkit Jim Sterling is alright, I don't like that revolutionary leader persona he's got going on, but he does have some point. I don't like Zero Punctuation very much, he's so visceral and apparentely unforgiving. You leave his videos hating yourself for having enjoyed a certain game. Hell, he bashed Ni no Kuni so hard, if I remember correctly, and the game doesn't derserve it in my opininion. He also seems to hate saying good things about certain games, kind of like TotalBiscuit. I learned some thing from them, but I prefer a more relaxed video so that I can think things over.
TheMichaelRock +TheMichaelRock He says he does that so the developer will learn, "It's like Chinese parenting, but less nightmarish," As he said. It's just one of those things that you have to sit back and have a laugh about and not take to seriously, though he usually has some valid points in there. He also avoids stating good points since his fans quickly turned on him during the Psychonauts review. Apparently his fans didn't like a positive review.
Developers could essentially take a lead character from any game, change the color of their skin, and everything would be fine. For example, if Naughty Dog made Nathan Drake a black guy, the character would be just a memorable.
That was AMAZING insight into LA Noire and the way it presented Cole's character. I'm sure that if I played the game, I might pick up on WHAT was presented, but I wouldn't realize just HOW it was presented, and how skillfully it was done.
I'm sure a lot of people pick up on it, but they don't know what they picked up. Their feelings and perceptions are altered, but they can't say why. That's why you can see a shitty written character and be like "eh.." and then see another bad guy, just well written and be like "He's interesting." You don't know EXACTLY why on the go, but you feel it.
Maybe my history's awful, but I didn't pick up on the Jew/anti-Jew stuff until I saw it laid out in this video. I certainly picked up on the fact that it was there, but I didn't have an understanding of the historical context and wasn't aware that Cole's impassiveness to it was symbolic in and of itself. I thought it was just him being professional. I'd love to see a bigger commentary on the subtleties on the context behind each case as honestly, I feel like I've possibly missed out on a lot by not being a history buff. >.
I love this channel. They share many of my thoughts on socio-political issues, art and psychology in the context of gaming in an intelligent and concise manner. I'm mostly reaffirming my own beliefs but it is incredibly satisfying and good to know the knowledge is being spread. Video games are a much deeper medium than simply mindless fun.
I love extra credit videos but because I'm only getting into them now, I would love a bunch of these videos to be remade with more modern games in mind. For example, now that it's seven years later, this topic would be interesting to discuss while referencing 'Detroit: Become Human' which is another game that handles race (albeit, in a more allegorical manner). I just came from watching the video about how Call of Juarez: The Cartel handles it's subject matter terribly and a retrospective around the respect games handle their subject matter with would be interesting to me to see how video games have progressed since making that video. That's just a personal suggestion, I hope I'm making sense. Either way. Love the videos!
At one point in one case Cole discusses with his partner that he believes people should be treated equally by society and by the law regardless of their race and his partner calls it communism because Cole believes in equality.
LA Noire was an experiment, a succesful one, and should be praised for the effort. Well written story and characters, nailed the atmosphere and the represention of the era. The gameplay was the most experimental part and wasn't that bad, cases needed an accessible difficulty for everyone to enjoy the flow of looking for clues and figuring out questions, getting familiar with the new system. It had problems because it was new, very innovative, and it wasn't clear at all how to pull it off. As for the moves, shooting, etc, I think all of it was on purpose, to force a slower pace, far away from action games. I think it was a good choice of priorities from developers. New approach on gameplay, genre and narrative, it had most of what a lot of people would like to play more, I really wish they polished that idea on new games, and someone probably will eventually and it will be regarded as a pioneer.
You might have covered this sometime later but I just picked up something from this video: Actions define character but reactions define strengths and weaknesses. Thank you for this piece of insight! :)
...I realize this is a very old video, and so this complaint will pretty certainly fall on deaf ears... But, I really wish you had gone into the spoilers here, and analyzed this game to it's fullest. Because, I very much enjoyed L.A. Noire, and I would love to dig further into the philosophical implications of it. I can see just from your brief overview that there's many things I missed, things I didn't think about in the middle of solving a case or whatnot. Maybe an idea for a future episode? Start going back to older games and doing a full, spoiler-heavy, analysis? I would actually even love to see that become it's own channel, as it's a fairly distinct concept from the main Extra Credits series. "Extra Analysis" perhaps? Just a thought. I'd love to replay that game, but... It was *very* long, and I don't really have that kind of time to invest these days.
The game was out for less than 2 months at the time this video came out (check the original air date in description, they didn't have youtube yet at the time), so it's understandable why they wouldn't want to spoil much.
Im not sure how to feel about this video. At first i completely agreed. That races is just an element to what makes a character a person. How one reacts to diversity tells us much about a character. All that is amazing and very well hit home. The part that i feel lost about is, you discussed Diversity without actually talking about diversity. It seems like you ranted about this one game, without really connecting it to the topic of diversity. What i would expect is something that discusses the lack of diversity in games, how publishing a game with a non-white-hetrosexual-male charcter affects players ability to see diversity, how we sometimes completely shut off from the subject as we feel it's too controversial and perhaps publishers would prefer to stick with what works. Its like almost anytime someone wants to talk about race, we discuss it in a fashion in which we really dont talk about it at all.
I think.. .the best way to sum this episode up is: The best way to make a good minority character doesn't have to be about making the character themselves - it's all about building up the world around them. How the world will act and react to the character, and how that character will react to the world they're in. Take... Legion, for example, when he's around Tali and other Quarians, for that matter. They're afraid of him, and hate him, and want nothing more than to destroy him. But when he's around other species - he may not be liked, but it's nowhere near as strong a reaction.
Often people do define themselves by their race, like literally any not white not male politician, they always emphasize their race and talk about how important their race/gender are, when it should just be that they put hard work in and have merit, but politicians rarely talk about merit.
That's because they'll get votes. That's one of the reasons Obama was elected. Whether you like him or not, a big factor in his election was the fact that he was black. People like to think they are being progressive.
+chasem007ify People like to think that having a minority president would help their minority, like a representative, but that's simply not how it works, and a lot of people were disillusioned by Obama's presidency.
Zadamanim Our system helps people more than a pure democracy would, tyranny of the majority is one of the reasons why we are a federal republic and have institutions such as the electoral college
chasem007ify Well yeah, but having a representitive that happens to belong to a racial minority doesn't mean that the representative will support or defend people that belong to racial minorities. There was a misconception that black people in america were underprivileged because presidents were all white older men, but having a black president that was even worse for minorities made everyone realize this wasn't the case. Most notably, Obama made health care even harder to access, which effects the poor more than anyone else, and most immigrant minorities are poor, partially because of how families can carry-over and grow their wealth through generations.
Hmmmm... as a gamer of color i feel like this video said a whole lot about nothing. Representation matters. This may be the way that people that see themselves in a video game all the time can look at issues but not really accurate for someone like me that only gets 2 or 3 characters a game (if any) that look like them. I'd say the best way to tackle race in a video game right now is to hire writers of said race to be able to articulate the nuance of living in a world where things happen that we might look at differently. Many times, these reactions are just simply put, something someone from another culture has never seen. If poorly executed POC get upset because they feel misrepresented as apposed to unrepresented. If studios are serious about creating well rounded full fledged characters the best solution I feel is to hire either a lead writer or a consulting writer that can shed light on the nuance of cultural differences by providing context through their experiences.
So true as much as I understood and agreed with a few of it's viewpoints. Such as a character shouldn't be totally defined by their race. Which is very true. But it didn't really solve the problem of why there are not that many well fleshed out minority characters in games let alone as the main hero of the game. Yes, a character's reaction to a racist situation can make the character deeper, but the deepness ends at that character's race while in the situation. The L.A. Noire hero did definitely deepen after seeing his reaction to the fellow cop being an ass but he's white so of course the cop would talk to him with some sorta dignity because he was being silent about it. But what if that was a black man in that situation? Who witnessed that and stayed silent? 1. His character would evolve in the players eyes differently due to his race. 2. That cop probably wouldn't have treated him with any respect lol The video was good but it still didn't solve the problem of identifying culture in video games as it applies to well and fleshed out minority characters. Because it sounded like they were saying, "A character's reaction to race acts just as well for another minorities reaction to that same situation." Which would sound like "It's ok that we don't have any minority as a main playable fleshed out character just so long as the character video game writers produce, if white, is in support or indifferent of said minorities." Which is bad. lol Video was still good though. :D
1:25 ... I have *major issues* with the notion that a game can only properly discuss race if it has a playable racial minority character. There are two *absolutely toxic assumptions* behind saying something like this: 1. _"Races other than white can be lumped in together because they are interchangeable."_ 2. _"We can't truly empathize with or be represented by someone of another race."_ I'm sure most 19th century Missouri plantation owners would happily agree with both eh?
You are wrong. Horribly horribly wrong... Thats more of your imagination talking than the speaker of the video. 1. He NEVER mentioned ANYTHING close to "Races are interchangeable". What he IS saying is that playing any minority can reveal new things about the SAME minority. (like a mexican protagonist shows what its like to be to be a mexican and NOT what its like to be a black or asian, etc) 2. "We can´t truly empathize with other races." Well, yes and no. Its always easier to empathize with a character when you play him NO MATTER the race simply because you learn much more about your main character than about side characters, thats why they are the main characters. But of course its harder to empathize with someone who experienced things you NEVER EVER even came close to like being called nigger, being called disgusting because you are gay. I NEVER experienced that so how could I feel with them properly. TLDR dont mix up what you want to hear with whats actually being said.
@@arcanegunther5511 Go to the timestamp I posted, I'm talking about what James' friends were saying. The speaker (and so by extension James, the writer) also disagrees with what was said there. This should clear up your first point. As to the second one, you have a point there somewhat: People are only ever themselves and can only ever approximate what others are feeling. That's what empathy is. What I have a problem with is that the presence of a playable minority character is demanded as a hard-line _prerequisite_ for talking about race meaningfully _at all_.
This is one of the most satisfying channels I've run across in my years on UA-cam. I want to make my own Indie title and I thought I had a good grasp on development decisions, but this channel has thoroughly broadened my horizons, and years from now when my game is complete it will be better for it.
Personally, I'm glad you took this approach to it. I get tires off, we need x minority characters more or whatever. We should think more about other aspects and as Morgan freeman said, stop talking about race, It doesn't mean crap.
don't get why we can't treat the gender issue the same way. Honestly I feel like they just danced around the topic and didn't give a straight answer politician status and it sounds like they don't really care about adding minority characters
a) They stated at the beginning that they already did videos on sexual diversity and female diversity, and felt that they did race like those videos, they would just be repeating themselves (they wanted to broaden the discussion). b) 5:52 c) Watch their video on 'Call of Jaurez,' where they utterly demolish the game for its poor handling of sensitive issues. Its quite a sight.
I have a background in music, and during theory classes we were often reminded that breaks, the short moments where no music is played, are crucial building blocks for musical pieces. During practice, we'd get feedback for not 'playing' those breaks. This is correct, as a musician you're meant to inflect on those moments you're not actually producing any sound, because that's how crucial not doing anything is. By saying EC attribute a lot of meaning to inaction, I think you're underestimating how valuable inaction really is. Also, from my background in psychology, I can confirm that what this video says about what that cutscene is meant to convey, is actualy common behavior in people; there's a reason that social anxiety is a relevant topic, and in this specific case it's combined with our ingrained Fight, Flight, and Freeze responses. Not to mention that Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Jainism, and many other religions, have a lot to say about both the meaning and value of inaction.
I think it's intersting how some of yor opinions also work for books and movies, however some other points don't fit at all, yet somehow there often is a similar topic with similar opinions but yet totally different, because its firstly no interactive storytelling and secondly the market differs.
I find myself looking at this and thinking about different ways to go about races in games. But the problem is a great deal of the fact is what makes a person who they are is like they say, how they react to Racial issues + their other experiences. Biologically, speaking there are only a few small evolutionary difference amongst the races of humans, otherwise as another commenter put it somewhere below, it's all about palette swaps. Personally, I think I wouldn't mind seeing a few games that take the same principles with other species like elves, dwarves, orcs, and my personal favorite lizard folk. Cause though most fantasy calls them races, they are different species and probably have differences in their cultures which drives issues as well....besides Light vs Dark elves. From one of my experiences, I made a Argonian in oblivion that was so pale that it out sparkled Edward Cullens and no one batted an eyelash at him.
It took me forever to find these, ever since they went off from Escapist without warning (at least to me). Thank you for uploading. the funny thing is that I found this from watching Weird Al's "Polka Face" X)
I agree. I was a bit dissatisfied with how this issue was discussed. It didn't really talk about the racism that people of color face in the gaming community and how games perpetuate racial stereotypes and what can be done so that future game designers can prevent that. The key is to be aware of every possible stereotype and trope of various racial minorities in order to prevent you from writing these characters a certain way.
Bioware does an interesting take on race, but only certain circumstances, in SWTOR. I just started playing an Twi'lek Sith Sorcerer and damn do I feel a racial divide in the Sith Empire. After getting to Dromund Kass with that Character I started a Cathar Imperial Agent and encountered no such divisiveness. This speaks to a weird sort of racism in the empire since the force sensitive Sith rule the empire, and will tolerate aliens except in the ruling party's ranks.
i love your channel, you talk on so many subjects I am curious on or talk about and you have given me so much advice, help and ideas being a game design student at college, keep doing good it helps me so much :) thank you again
One thing with race though that is kind of a reason it's not often used is that it's highly cultural. The strong stereotypes of blacks for example is not really present in Europe or Asia and so using that won't get the same reaction. That means that if you rely on it then your game can only release in the US.
the way to create a good character is the way to create a good character. It doesn't change because it's a girl or it's a black person. If that is what you're focusing on it's going to be a faulty stereotypical character no matter how hard you try for the character not to be. We can even test this, let's create a character. Let's say it's a middle aged recently divorced (like a month removed) cop who's a white male. You can add the rest of the details. Now, make the cop a black woman. Now, does the character still make sense? I'm willing to bet, with little to no other changes, she does.
4:56 Or... maybe he didn't do anything because this was just the 'norm' at the time. We know it's wrong today, but back then this was just expected behavior...
Whenever I consider to make a character for a Story or game Idea, I always try to make them memorable...Aka, not white, American, browned haired, action man. Races do change characters, but not cause of their actions, but because of their representation. I'm just sharing my thoughts, if you disagree, please respond.
Recently did a report for college on Race in games and used L.A. Noire(same examples used in the video too) and Mass Effect. I wish I would've known about this video back then to really drive it all home. Still got an "A" on the report but I know we only touched the surface of a huge topic and I only hope the audience was listening cause I feel like we are starting to see similar patterns in our video games as we have in the past with our movies and television shows.
You guys are so great and so intelligent, I love listening to these, it's like talking to great friends about meaningful things without having to be social or make friends.
When I say that I'd like to see more protagonists who are women, gay, or people of color. I mean well-rounded characters. __ALL__ protagonists should be well-rounded characters! When I play as an exorcist who's Catholic priest, as long as he's well-written, there is absolutely no reason why he couldn't be a gay Latino, but how often is the player given that opportunity? (I believe that it goes without saying that I don't mean stereotypically gay or Latin.) As for the writer who says that he or she is afraid to use a character of a different ethnicity out of fear of misrepresentation, I have two pieces of advice: 1. Simply write an entertaining, admirable hero who manages to confront and overcome conflict. Take Luke Skywalker for example. Does any aspect of Luke's race or gender come to the fore during his hero's journey? No. What was important was that he made the transformation from whiny, restless farm boy to calm and confident Jedi knight. 2. If you're worried about misrepresenting a character whose race, gender, or sexuality is different from yours, the problem might be that you feel that all people from a certain race, gender, or sexuality are all alike. A black Army Ranger has more in common with other Army Rangers, than he does with a black Anthropology professor.
bjmccann1 I'd agree with you for some part, but Luke truely is a bad example, as you do not have to care that much about this sort of thing in games /books/movies not set in a period or place close to our real world. One might concieve of a world where race doesn't matter. But that world is not our world, and in storys set in our real world in places and situations we might know and getting obvious things wrong breaks emersion. A historical game set in the Jim Crow south with a Black main charackter would be wierd if the race of the main charakter and how it forms the person was never addressed.
Minor Rex Au contraire! There are lots of priests who are gay, just not lots of priests who are gay and also out of the closet. I've known priests all my life, but I couldn't tell you what their sexual orientation was, because they were all celibate. On the other hand, you do have a point. The Church doesn't knowingly ordain gay men.
I know this comment comes about four years late but... to create a "meaningful minority character" in any storytelling medium you need to get the minority out of your head for the most part of the creation process. A well written minority character is not a minority character but a character that just so happens to belong to a minority group.
It seems a missed opportunity to ignore any one part of a person's personality. One time I wrote a character where I thought "She's a woman in America who is Japanese... like, actually FROM Japan; but she speaks and acts just like an American" so from there I thought of an entire backstory where the character was born in Japan but was forcefully moved to America; further, her personality is such that she actually suits the American lifestyle far better than she did the Japanese lifestyle. Further, her sudden change of language upon moving gave her a sense of dependence on her foster parent figure who managed her English language education. The compound all of this, she's also a woman in a male-centric society which reenforces her sense of being an indebted subordinate to her peers, which clashes with her innate aggressive personality, which leaves her with a constant sense of unrequited aggressive energy battling against her sense of duty to her peers. So, most of the foundations of her character were laid by simply extrapolating 3 variables: Race, Sex, and Setting. If I had made her white or male at the start of the process, she would have been exactly one third as interesting a character.
Sam Wallace... what if it was a white male trying to rise to the top of the knitting scene in Japan? You see how it's not the race, sex and setting that define a character, but their reaction to it? Both these characters are complete opposites (diverse), but undergo a shared experience. They would be able to relate to each other as people on very differing levels. They're equally as interesting. That's the beauty of diversity. I wanted everyone to read this article... A new movie coming out based on a book watered down the social issues therein because of the medium. They couldn't really release a trailer without revealing the race of the main character already. Spoiler alert: You see, it's about a professional e-sport where you create a 3D avatar and play in a virtual world. The main character in the book is the best in the world and his avatar is a white male. Later on in the book it is revealed in a shocking twist that the real character is a black female. A young girl actually who plays this game online as a middle-aged white male which everyone respects. When her best friend in game discovers this fact not only is her character revealed, but her friend's as well. What we learn the most, is that people's true identity has almost nothing to do with superficialities. Unfortunately like I said, the movie couldn't use this trick with a black actress' name in the credits. So they made the avatar some huge orc thing. It loses a LOT of the impact. Anyways, the article does a good job explaining. I just thought the premise of the book would be something worth exploring here. fandom.wikia.com/articles/ready-player-one-glossing-gender-issues?li_source=LI&li_medium=wikia-rail
The Mysterious Mr Enter put it excellently in his review of The Loud House’s “One Of The Boys”: “Why isn’t Kim Possible annoying? Because she was written as a character before she was written as a girl. Why isn’t Todd from Bojack Horseman annoying? Because he was written as a character before he was written as asexual. Why are the Loud brothers annoying? Because they were written as boys before they were written as characters!”
Or to explain it another way, the point is that trying to make them a "good minority character" is still focusing on trying to make them a specific race rather than just a character who happens to be a minority.
I don't like the use of "minority" to refer to non-white characters. Because the only place they're the minority is in Europe, north-america and Australia. When looking at the whole world it would be about 25% white 25% black and 50% asian. It's said that every fifth child born is Chinese, and that's pretty true. so Chinese people would be the actual majority.
I would agree, except games are a form of literature. Literature has cultural context. If you read about Japanese Samuri's committing suicide without the understanding of how that culture operates differently than modern, western culture, you will read all the wrong implications. Similarly, race and racial relations are context specific. You can't make a discussion about how to treat race globally because racial issues aren't internationally uniform. This video is talking about race in America and other countries with histories of imperialism.
Sorenmine They never specified "Minority" as being "non-white". The even said towards the end that minority and majority applies to your race relative to the socoety you live in.
Well what they consider the minority is in truth the majority on this Planet. In America and everywhere else in the world. Darker skin is the majority of this Planet
They mean in a particular place. If the characters interacted with the whole world I would agree, but obviously it’s confined to a specific location, which, in this case, is dominated by whites.
That short moment when you thought "race" was like in "car race" before remembering about the ethnicity topic promise. *facepalm* Very interesting video, as always.
Does anyone else think The Walking Dead handles race pretty well? There's that part where Kenny expects Lee to be able to pick a lock because he's... "urban." Lee is pretty offended.
Context is friggin adorable... please make a plushie :3 Also, I'd like for devs to make whatever character they already are, but keep varying the color. I feel like that can drive home the point that any human is capable of any action or consequence based on WHO they are, and the sum of their experiences (as long as we have agency in some way shape or form, or lack thereof in key points as you've shown). I think the only real reason the prevalence of caucasians and males is seen as damaging is because they're 95% of what we see, be they heroes, murderers, fixers, escorts, etc. I think we just need to see more people of all colors in all sorts of different roles to subconsciously understand that we can all be just about anything.
I think, a medium handles race the best when it works without any focus on the skin color and just treats everyone the same. Like Avatar/Korra - the people from the water tribe have darker color but they don't feel different at all. In Korra, the main protagonist has a darker skin color. And is bisexual. But it's not shown in an in-your-face way, everything grows so naturally. And she's kickass. That's a great character. Of course, games that want to focus on race will do the opposite, and that's fine, these topics need to be explored, but when it's not the focus of a game, it should just not fall into stereotypes.
Yeah, you have to make a lot of decisions in game design. Whether or not to make an FPS or a Survival Horror game, what themes you try to include, what you're trying to say, whether you include an African or Puerto Rican minority character. All necessary design choices. (To avoid ambiguity, I am parodying the common trend for minorities to be considered as a design choice to satisfy the masses, or make the game appeal to a wider audience, than to consider them as characters that can give depth and complexity to stories and themes.)
All RPGs have races. What's bad is many are stereotyped or can't change faction. Who says trolls are evil or can't be Holy knights? That's racist. Where's the RPGCLU (RPG civil liberties union) or the WAATP (world association for the advancement of troll people)? I have a dream when all races: trolls, humans, elves, and the undead will stand together as brothers and sisters of the world.
Yea I'm tired of people picking on us dark elves, making stereo types and calling us evil spies. We need equality for all races....Sept the argonians, there all dirt, and khajiit are all thieves! And woodelves are all rich snobs!!! And Talos was just a man!!! All praise the daedric Lord's!!!
I feel that the concept of race is wrong.... People are people with hopes and wants. Just because they look diffrent doesn't mean that they aren't less of a human being. What we define as race is more a case of where do you come from... The caucasian skincolor is just a mutation that happened over time to survive in those climates. Same for everyone!!! I only use the term "race" when (Role)playing a fanatsy game.
You're right. As a man who would be identified as black and Latino here in the US, race shouldn't matter because, in and of itself, it doesn't. However, what needs to be understood is that it is those who act like it matters that cause the issues and actually make it matter. It wouldn't matter what someone's skin tone is or from where their ancestry hails if no one was discriminating against others for those reasons. But the problem is that we do have people hating against others and barring others from things due to their "race" or even wishing death upon them for it. In addition to this, we still have societal views of race that may not be apparent to those who are of the majority that the so called minorities can see quite clearly. This is what those of us who are speaking up about racism issues are trying to get rid of. Because when society becomes truly diverse in all it's aspects without discrimination or worse and without inequalities in opportunity and representation, race doesn't matter. Just like it shouldn't.
@1:21 and when interrogating, I think someone on the dev team may have confused "doubt" with "wild accusation" because I'm pretty sure that wasn't what I was going for at all when I picked doubt.
I really wish you guys posted more links to the graphics you use in your vids (I'm thinking of how The Idea Channel does it, for instance), I found one about the different skin toned are dispatched at 6:32 really interesting (in how it seems to correlate with climates)...
I'd rather play a filipino character who respects all races, than to play a black character only for the reason that he's black, and thus has a minority character (who is often portrayed in caricature or stereotype, or worse in a negative light). I'd even settle on a white character who shows by his actions and words that he is not okay with negative racism. The real problem we should have is not so much that there is or is not a certain color of people in a game (why not purple people?) but that the WAY they treat other color of people is in a morally good way instead of in a negative one-color-is-better-than-another way.
Ditto. Heck, a lot more of any minority. It would be nice to see more games where a white/male/heterosexual isn't the *default* choice of main character in games where supposedly ethnicity/gender/sexuality "doesn't matter". Because if it truly doesn't matter then using a random variable generator to decide those factors shouldn't be a problem.
This is one thing I like about Kingdom (the game). Your starting character is randomly male or female and a random skin tone. The towns people are also random race and, I think, gender ambiguous. Nothing to discuss, it's just normal.
Osioxana Akai Kingdom is a great game. It is so beautiful, and it was the first game in a long time that I couldn't stop playing, even well into the early morning hours.
Could you make a video about The games James made. Becuase you always go so deep about how a good game is made i imagain that his games are pretty good.
Lee Everett the perfect example about race in video games. Lee was an amazing character who just happened to be black. Over the course of the 5 episodes you get to see how lee interacts with the other characters and the little girl.
I agree with all of that, but it really tends to tick me off when they idolize minorities in games and antagonize majorities (racial and religious mostly) to gain mainstream support for sales.
SrGurkman Never has. Its just the hipster movement of the internet. You got to take something that's good and turn it around. Like being against racism has been a very unpopular the last 50 years, but its slowly went the other way. Suddenly racism is bad. So people online start to promote anti-racism, but doing so every hipster starts going all "Eugh, I see it everywhere online, so everybody must think it, and they are just white knights trying to get upvotes, so I gotta take it and turn it around, and suddenly now they are just trying to guilt the white man. So now I'm gonna go pro-racism! Saying its BAD to be against racism and shit." The worst part is that they aren't even always aware that this is what they are doing, they just do it because it makes them feel "smart", and as if they "see things others don't", and just never experience the real world, just sit around and get impressions from people online, thinking that's what the entire world thinks.
CinderBlockRecording I've been an avid gamer for years, and to this day I've never come across a game which demonises white, straight or male people to gain mainstream support. One of the reasons for this is because as those three factors form the *main demographic of gamers*, from a business perspective they would be alienating a rather large portion of their target audience. As 'PlayingWithFire' has also said, I feel like you've perhaps made this comment without totally thinking it through. If you have a person with who is of a racial, sexual or gender-based minority - and happens to be the protagonist or a leading support character - it does not automatically mean that the developers are "using" that character to gain more support from said minorities. It could very possibly mean that the story just suited a character of that description, or that the developer wanted to try something different to the usual straight white male character. And that's allowed.
You would definitely have to expand on the notion of "race" being handled well beyond the fact that a character had a prejudice towards another because of their, "race." I haven't played through far enough to know what you are referring to, but it seems 53 others agree. I'm wondering the "race" of those people; ya know, other than human.
I think Betheda set up a good racial situation that was pretty interesting. While playing a Argonian I went into Windhelm, once. Because I was a minority EVERYONE hated me so I ended up hating the Stormcloaks even though they were only fighting for they're personal freedom but because of my experiences with race I saw the Imperials in a better light, and I still do today.
Skooma isn't a hard drug for Khajit. To the other races, it's a destructive stimulant like meth. To Khajit, it's a non-habit-forming harmless casual drug like marajuana. It's also been part of their culture for thousands of years. So… That's not racist.
Philo Wintercoat your confusing it with moon sugar which has a religious purpose in addition to being a drug.. Skooma might not be as bad for a Khajiit but it's still damn bad! for one thing they associate the drug with their pantheons version of Sheogorath... that should tell you something.... If he was carrying moon sugar then that would be perfectly fine... Moon sugar is the drug that like marijuana for khajiit.
What you see nowadays in most fanfictions is that people just throw race and sexuality out the window entirely. They simply treat it as an element of the character and that's it.
I don't know about everyone else, but these labels bug me in general. You should just focus on making good characters. Period. Other traits should feed into being a good character, not the other way around.
I believe they did something similiar in Skyrim as well. When you need to go to Sovngarde and you end up there and when you leave, if you are a Nord they will talk about how you will end up there when you die. Also in Windhelm there will be Nords who discriminate anyone who is Nord, especially Dunmer and Argonians and they treat you depending on what race you are and how you yourself treat the other races.
That's absolutely correct. Lawful Good is by the "Good Book" not the Law Book. A Lawful Good character wouldn't follow the laws in an Evil Nation any more than a Lawful Evil character would follow the laws in a Good one.
I had an idea for race in an mmo type game. Basically, every role is a race. The support role is the oppressed race. There are biased thoughts occassionally tossed at the player from the beginning, but all roles have a major impact in the environment. It's a thought experiment.
I'm sorry, but when you said Madlibs, I immedately went to you saying "Why let ____ get in the way of a good crusade?" More people should check out your Extra History series.
After watching this video, it got me thinking about Racial issues, hate , and discrimination, and how Video games could be used to remedy certain parts of the problem . It seems to me, that racism, and many other conflicts between people are caused by lack of empathy, a distinct lack of understanding about what the other side is feeling. Racism double so in my view , as racism usually amounts to " Those guys do something that I don't because of their race, I don't like understand that , and hate
I genuinely thought this video was going to be about racing games. I was so confused when they started talking about sexual/gender differences in the intro. xD
+redder876543 the problem being that for a lot of people, simply being and creating art or content with people like them feels like 'shoving it down your throat' to you.
I think one of the best in-game conversations ever to touch on the subject of race was in Mass Effect 3. Garrus and Joker are telling racist (specist?) jokes back and forth and the ship AI, EDI, doesn't get the humor. Joker ends up having to explain it, and talks about how racial humor might be intended to belittle, but can also be used to defuse social tensions. It was a really thought provoking interaction, and I was impressed Bioware had the balls to put it in their game.
I'm black, but my race itself would be meaningless if it wasn't for the unique genetics and cultural diversity that it brings, I believe that games need more cultural understanding rather than the race of the characters
Exactly. Some article was critisicing Witcher 3 for not having black characters...the game pretty much takes place in a version of Europe. Uniting aspects and creatures from different european folklore. Having black people there would just be for the sake of having black people there.
Kondos Eng then why is it an option to choose when I fill out a job application? You seem to miss the point, black can be considered a race or as a distinction for a race, African-American is not an actual race as Africans have there own culture separate from American culture, it was created as a way to describe blacks in America, who are not all of African decent btw.
Not being able to tell if they're lying is actually realistic. When talking to a relative stranger, most people, even most police officers and others whose jobs involve detecting lies, are only about 50% accurate. In other words, our fancy emotion-reading abilities are no better than simply flipping a coin.
+Ettina Kitten Well, people not trained in detecting lying would not notice the lie 50% of the time. Probybaly alot less
I really like the beast-like appearance of the raw ideas and emotions you guys use
And we need stuffed toys of many of them! They're all so cute.
As a writer, I can provide some insight here. They say, "write what you know." Naturally, if you are a person of colour, you can write yourself as a character and make that character as unique, deep, and individual as you are. So, what do you do if you are not that character?
Just look around you. Look to your friends and colleagues. Look at your historical idols and even your fantasy heroes. Take elements from these people - preferably merging traits from several people - and your character will be unique, deep, and most importantly, believable. But make sure that you base your character on people you know very well. It's not enough to just give them a personality trait - you need to know why they have that trait.
A couple more tips:
1) Your character - particularly your main character - should not have just one personality. Characters are far more interesting when they evolve. Maybe your person is obsessed with logic and gets driven to the brink of madness by things that don't add up. Maybe your character is a villain who hurts someone close to them and has to rethink their entire life.
2) Personality is not enough. Real people are not just walking personas. Real people have hobbies, back-stories, families, and jobs. How do these external things affect your character? Who does your character idolize? What does your character do when they're not present in the story? Before the story? After the story? A character alone is not enough. Your character needs some outside context, to show us why they have this personality.
So basically, don't write "racially diverse" characters. Write good characters that happen to be racially diverse.
Yep. And that can be applied to other type of diversity as well.
Netflix is a prime example of the above.
In games like mass effect and SW KOTOR I found myself as the character crushing and stomping out racism when encountered. Chastising NPCs and companions who engaged in racist behavior. Especially in regards to mass effects "humanity first" movement.
But on the same note, in games like World of Warcraft and elder scrolls I find myself saying things like "ugh filthy goblins" and "I hate gnomes, just wanna kick em." Or being disgusted when speaking with bosmer and other elvish races excluding dark elves. And I've always wondered about that. How in certain games I feel compelled to behave the way I do in life, while in others I take joy out of playing the bad guy. The warlock, the death knight, the king who conquers the world through blood and sword.
Spud Bud
I totally understand that. In most of the Dragon Age games and Elder scroll. I would say something similar about most Humans races or people with certain roles in the games since I'm usually Elfen. Yet in other games I would immediately try to be equal with everyone, stomp out most racism, sexism and all the other ism. Religion in games I either follow one or none.
I wonder if it's because we're so into the game's word and roleplay that we act the best part that "we" (the character) are supposed in the world.
Interesting point.
I think Neko touched on it.
When the game gives you an option to be whatever race you want by creating a totally new character, I think the human psyche allows more freedom with any particular instance of gameplay -since you could always make a new one. On the other hand, a game like Mass Effect allows you to customize the physical appearance of your character a bit, but when given a clear narrative and an option between good and evil, most story tellers lean on the fact that darkness -even though it may always exist alongside it, can never overtake light. That as well as being a human sets the tone of the empathetic and compassionate steward, our brother's keepers if you will.
This archetype weighs heavily on the moral choice you make in such a story like Mass Effect.
Shepard isn't just a character, he is meant to be a hero.
Heroes of humanity don't stand for hate.
We stand for peace and love bro.
The less human a character is or the more removed from our world they are, the more depraved we may become.
youtoober2013 I think Legion is a good example in Mass Effect. In the first game all geth were bad (the enemy) so we felt justified in taking them down. Legion became a team mate and ally but the vorcha took the place of the geth in the second game. It's just our sight of good and bad and how we are directed in games to see that game world.
Race is weird. Even though I'm black, whenever I see a minority in media, my first thought is that person was included to satisfy a demographic (because somehow "by default", that person was "supposed" to be a WASP). But now I'm the worse one of all - I can't see the character for who they really are, I'm judging them based on his/her race/gender/etc! Imo, a lack of diversity in our lives makes diversity in games so difficult. Being the only minority in a majority of my academic life, I still see minority characters as an exception to the rule.
I feel your struggle. Half korean, quarter black quarter white. It's not your fault and it's not bad to be skeptic of half-hearted attempts to fill quotas, it's the world we live in that's constructed this fear.
When you stare into the void, the void stares back at you.
-Neitzche
Rockstar is amazing at this for example in read dead redemption 2 all the characters are throwing around racial slurs cause that was the norm back then except for alot of Arthur's gang. They see the American Indians as right and help them they have minorities in there gang. Also in the world that minority character is seen as worse in the eyes of others outside of the gang.
i find this channel to be an invaluable source in educating myself in an art form that you usually don't receive a formal education for. Does anyone else know if there are channels similar to this one for other mediums like film or writing?
Though it's not set up the same for education on a particular subject, if you like channels that make you really THINK about what you're consuming, I highly recommend PBS Idea Channel.
i freaking love pbsideachannel!!!
I don't know if this is what your looking for, but there's a show called Jimquisition. He talks about what's going on in the game industry, normally how it's wrong and can only hurt the industry, and how game devs and gamers can change it. Again, I don't know if it's what you want, but I think you should check him out.
I would even recommend taking a look at a show on the same channel called Zero Punctuation. He's a game reviewer, and he talks fast, so you'll have to listen closely. Watching the video more then once helps, too. He has a habit of picking apart every slightest flaw in a game. He doesn't seem to like many games, but he will certainly tell you what not to do as a game designer.
If you're really into the idea of joining the game industry, these two are almost invaluable. You should also check out a site called Khan Academy to learn how to code, and download a free software called Game Maker Studio to get started.
AKArainkit Jim Sterling is alright, I don't like that revolutionary leader persona he's got going on, but he does have some point. I don't like Zero Punctuation very much, he's so visceral and apparentely unforgiving. You leave his videos hating yourself for having enjoyed a certain game. Hell, he bashed Ni no Kuni so hard, if I remember correctly, and the game doesn't derserve it in my opininion. He also seems to hate saying good things about certain games, kind of like TotalBiscuit. I learned some thing from them, but I prefer a more relaxed video so that I can think things over.
TheMichaelRock +TheMichaelRock He says he does that so the developer will learn, "It's like Chinese parenting, but less nightmarish," As he said. It's just one of those things that you have to sit back and have a laugh about and not take to seriously, though he usually has some valid points in there. He also avoids stating good points since his fans quickly turned on him during the Psychonauts review. Apparently his fans didn't like a positive review.
Developers could essentially take a lead character from any game, change the color of their skin, and everything would be fine. For example, if Naughty Dog made Nathan Drake a black guy, the character would be just a memorable.
That was AMAZING insight into LA Noire and the way it presented Cole's character. I'm sure that if I played the game, I might pick up on WHAT was presented, but I wouldn't realize just HOW it was presented, and how skillfully it was done.
I'm sure a lot of people pick up on it, but they don't know what they picked up. Their feelings and perceptions are altered, but they can't say why. That's why you can see a shitty written character and be like "eh.." and then see another bad guy, just well written and be like "He's interesting." You don't know EXACTLY why on the go, but you feel it.
Maybe my history's awful, but I didn't pick up on the Jew/anti-Jew stuff until I saw it laid out in this video. I certainly picked up on the fact that it was there, but I didn't have an understanding of the historical context and wasn't aware that Cole's impassiveness to it was symbolic in and of itself. I thought it was just him being professional. I'd love to see a bigger commentary on the subtleties on the context behind each case as honestly, I feel like I've possibly missed out on a lot by not being a history buff. >.
Cole sounds less Lawful Good and more Lawful Neutral since he values the letter of the law so much.
I love this channel. They share many of my thoughts on socio-political issues, art and psychology in the context of gaming in an intelligent and concise manner. I'm mostly reaffirming my own beliefs but it is incredibly satisfying and good to know the knowledge is being spread. Video games are a much deeper medium than simply mindless fun.
yup, they are an interactive meaningful art form
Couln't agree more on this
Couldn't agree more on this :)
Couldn't agree more on this :)
Yes, this is probably my favorite channel about gaming :) Can't believe I only discovered this yesterday!
I love extra credit videos but because I'm only getting into them now, I would love a bunch of these videos to be remade with more modern games in mind. For example, now that it's seven years later, this topic would be interesting to discuss while referencing 'Detroit: Become Human' which is another game that handles race (albeit, in a more allegorical manner). I just came from watching the video about how Call of Juarez: The Cartel handles it's subject matter terribly and a retrospective around the respect games handle their subject matter with would be interesting to me to see how video games have progressed since making that video. That's just a personal suggestion, I hope I'm making sense.
Either way. Love the videos!
Same
unfortunately nowadays gamers would get very upset about a video on that :/
At one point in one case Cole discusses with his partner that he believes people should be treated equally by society and by the law regardless of their race and his partner calls it communism because Cole believes in equality.
Now people call that racism... people really like slapping labels on anything they disagree with
LA Noire was an experiment, a succesful one, and should be praised for the effort. Well written story and characters, nailed the atmosphere and the represention of the era. The gameplay was the most experimental part and wasn't that bad, cases needed an accessible difficulty for everyone to enjoy the flow of looking for clues and figuring out questions, getting familiar with the new system. It had problems because it was new, very innovative, and it wasn't clear at all how to pull it off. As for the moves, shooting, etc, I think all of it was on purpose, to force a slower pace, far away from action games. I think it was a good choice of priorities from developers. New approach on gameplay, genre and narrative, it had most of what a lot of people would like to play more, I really wish they polished that idea on new games, and someone probably will eventually and it will be regarded as a pioneer.
From the title, I thought this was going to be about elves and dwarves.
From the tile, I thought this was going to be about cars.
That was just a good talk about storytelling in general; almost forgot this was a game-dev channel.
You might have covered this sometime later but I just picked up something from this video: Actions define character but reactions define strengths and weaknesses.
Thank you for this piece of insight! :)
6:31 I feel like the climate played a role here.
...I realize this is a very old video, and so this complaint will pretty certainly fall on deaf ears... But, I really wish you had gone into the spoilers here, and analyzed this game to it's fullest. Because, I very much enjoyed L.A. Noire, and I would love to dig further into the philosophical implications of it. I can see just from your brief overview that there's many things I missed, things I didn't think about in the middle of solving a case or whatnot.
Maybe an idea for a future episode? Start going back to older games and doing a full, spoiler-heavy, analysis? I would actually even love to see that become it's own channel, as it's a fairly distinct concept from the main Extra Credits series. "Extra Analysis" perhaps?
Just a thought. I'd love to replay that game, but... It was *very* long, and I don't really have that kind of time to invest these days.
The game was out for less than 2 months at the time this video came out (check the original air date in description, they didn't have youtube yet at the time), so it's understandable why they wouldn't want to spoil much.
When extra credits staff is raising money to pay for medical bills... you know this is the USA
Im not sure how to feel about this video. At first i completely agreed. That races is just an element to what makes a character a person. How one reacts to diversity tells us much about a character. All that is amazing and very well hit home. The part that i feel lost about is, you discussed Diversity without actually talking about diversity. It seems like you ranted about this one game, without really connecting it to the topic of diversity. What i would expect is something that discusses the lack of diversity in games, how publishing a game with a non-white-hetrosexual-male charcter affects players ability to see diversity, how we sometimes completely shut off from the subject as we feel it's too controversial and perhaps publishers would prefer to stick with what works. Its like almost anytime someone wants to talk about race, we discuss it in a fashion in which we really dont talk about it at all.
I think.. .the best way to sum this episode up is: The best way to make a good minority character doesn't have to be about making the character themselves - it's all about building up the world around them. How the world will act and react to the character, and how that character will react to the world they're in.
Take... Legion, for example, when he's around Tali and other Quarians, for that matter. They're afraid of him, and hate him, and want nothing more than to destroy him. But when he's around other species - he may not be liked, but it's nowhere near as strong a reaction.
Often people do define themselves by their race, like literally any not white not male politician, they always emphasize their race and talk about how important their race/gender are, when it should just be that they put hard work in and have merit, but politicians rarely talk about merit.
That's because they'll get votes. That's one of the reasons Obama was elected. Whether you like him or not, a big factor in his election was the fact that he was black. People like to think they are being progressive.
+chasem007ify People like to think that having a minority president would help their minority, like a representative, but that's simply not how it works, and a lot of people were disillusioned by Obama's presidency.
Zadamanim Our system helps people more than a pure democracy would, tyranny of the majority is one of the reasons why we are a federal republic and have institutions such as the electoral college
chasem007ify Well yeah, but having a representitive that happens to belong to a racial minority doesn't mean that the representative will support or defend people that belong to racial minorities. There was a misconception that black people in america were underprivileged because presidents were all white older men, but having a black president that was even worse for minorities made everyone realize this wasn't the case. Most notably, Obama made health care even harder to access, which effects the poor more than anyone else, and most immigrant minorities are poor, partially because of how families can carry-over and grow their wealth through generations.
Zadamanim He is a demagogue to be sure
Hmmmm... as a gamer of color i feel like this video said a whole lot about nothing. Representation matters. This may be the way that people that see themselves in a video game all the time can look at issues but not really accurate for someone like me that only gets 2 or 3 characters a game (if any) that look like them. I'd say the best way to tackle race in a video game right now is to hire writers of said race to be able to articulate the nuance of living in a world where things happen that we might look at differently. Many times, these reactions are just simply put, something someone from another culture has never seen. If poorly executed POC get upset because they feel misrepresented as apposed to unrepresented. If studios are serious about creating well rounded full fledged characters the best solution I feel is to hire either a lead writer or a consulting writer that can shed light on the nuance of cultural differences by providing context through their experiences.
So true as much as I understood and agreed with a few of it's viewpoints. Such as a character shouldn't be totally defined by their race. Which is very true.
But it didn't really solve the problem of why there are not that many well fleshed out minority characters in games let alone as the main hero of the game.
Yes, a character's reaction to a racist situation can make the character deeper, but the deepness ends at that character's race while in the situation.
The L.A. Noire hero did definitely deepen after seeing his reaction to the fellow cop being an ass but he's white so of course the cop would talk to him with some sorta dignity because he was being silent about it. But what if that was a black man in that situation? Who witnessed that and stayed silent?
1. His character would evolve in the players eyes differently due to his race.
2. That cop probably wouldn't have treated him with any respect lol
The video was good but it still didn't solve the problem of identifying culture in video games as it applies to well and fleshed out minority characters. Because it sounded like they were saying, "A character's reaction to race acts just as well for another minorities reaction to that same situation." Which would sound like "It's ok that we don't have any minority as a main playable fleshed out character just so long as the character video game writers produce, if white, is in support or indifferent of said minorities."
Which is bad. lol
Video was still good though. :D
+Jackson Harris absolutely and the same goes for female, LGBT+, etc. characters as well
+Inkswitch the Unicorn True!
2019, I just discovered this channel around two weeks ago. Allison probably has totally recovered by now... still feel bad for her.
She isn't even on the team anymore
@@placeholder1308 Awww, I liked her videos. I haven't gotten to the videos where she isn't the artist anymore.
Ivar Donado ooh you’re watching from the very beginning?
1:25 ... I have *major issues* with the notion that a game can only properly discuss race if it has a playable racial minority character. There are two *absolutely toxic assumptions* behind saying something like this: 1. _"Races other than white can be lumped in together because they are interchangeable."_ 2. _"We can't truly empathize with or be represented by someone of another race."_
I'm sure most 19th century Missouri plantation owners would happily agree with both eh?
You are wrong. Horribly horribly wrong... Thats more of your imagination talking than the speaker of the video.
1. He NEVER mentioned ANYTHING close to "Races are interchangeable". What he IS saying is that playing any minority can reveal new things about the SAME minority. (like a mexican protagonist shows what its like to be to be a mexican and NOT what its like to be a black or asian, etc)
2. "We can´t truly empathize with other races." Well, yes and no. Its always easier to empathize with a character when you play him NO MATTER the race simply because you learn much more about your main character than about side characters, thats why they are the main characters. But of course its harder to empathize with someone who experienced things you NEVER EVER even came close to like being called nigger, being called disgusting because you are gay. I NEVER experienced that so how could I feel with them properly.
TLDR dont mix up what you want to hear with whats actually being said.
@@arcanegunther5511 Go to the timestamp I posted, I'm talking about what James' friends were saying. The speaker (and so by extension James, the writer) also disagrees with what was said there. This should clear up your first point. As to the second one, you have a point there somewhat: People are only ever themselves and can only ever approximate what others are feeling. That's what empathy is. What I have a problem with is that the presence of a playable minority character is demanded as a hard-line _prerequisite_ for talking about race meaningfully _at all_.
This is one of the most satisfying channels I've run across in my years on UA-cam. I want to make my own Indie title and I thought I had a good grasp on development decisions, but this channel has thoroughly broadened my horizons, and years from now when my game is complete it will be better for it.
Personally, I'm glad you took this approach to it. I get tires off, we need x minority characters more or whatever. We should think more about other aspects and as Morgan freeman said, stop talking about race, It doesn't mean crap.
PKMNtrainer Mann og
I'm glad you got your tires off, good to rotate them every year
Doctor Owl I give them a good scrub each winter. Only use high quality black michelin tires.
Raceing games? I love em!
don't get why we can't treat the gender issue the same way. Honestly I feel like they just danced around the topic and didn't give a straight answer politician status and it sounds like they don't really care about adding minority characters
a) They stated at the beginning that they already did videos on sexual diversity and female diversity, and felt that they did race like those videos, they would just be repeating themselves (they wanted to broaden the discussion).
b) 5:52
c) Watch their video on 'Call of Jaurez,' where they utterly demolish the game for its poor handling of sensitive issues. Its quite a sight.
How to create a meaningful minority character
Step One: Create a meaningful character
Step Two: Make them a minority
I wish I was like you where I could actually talk about games WHILE eating dinner.
Morgan Freeman is defined by his race if "god" counts as a race.
You attributed a lot of meaning to an inaction. Especially if the character doesn't even react. I.e. Does absolutely nothing.
because sometimes not doing smoething can show us just as much as doing something can
I have a background in music, and during theory classes we were often reminded that breaks, the short moments where no music is played, are crucial building blocks for musical pieces. During practice, we'd get feedback for not 'playing' those breaks. This is correct, as a musician you're meant to inflect on those moments you're not actually producing any sound, because that's how crucial not doing anything is. By saying EC attribute a lot of meaning to inaction, I think you're underestimating how valuable inaction really is.
Also, from my background in psychology, I can confirm that what this video says about what that cutscene is meant to convey, is actualy common behavior in people; there's a reason that social anxiety is a relevant topic, and in this specific case it's combined with our ingrained Fight, Flight, and Freeze responses. Not to mention that Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Jainism, and many other religions, have a lot to say about both the meaning and value of inaction.
I think it's intersting how some of yor opinions also work for books and movies, however some other points don't fit at all, yet somehow there often is a similar topic with similar opinions but yet totally different, because its firstly no interactive storytelling and secondly the market differs.
I find myself looking at this and thinking about different ways to go about races in games. But the problem is a great deal of the fact is what makes a person who they are is like they say, how they react to Racial issues + their other experiences. Biologically, speaking there are only a few small evolutionary difference amongst the races of humans, otherwise as another commenter put it somewhere below, it's all about palette swaps. Personally, I think I wouldn't mind seeing a few games that take the same principles with other species like elves, dwarves, orcs, and my personal favorite lizard folk. Cause though most fantasy calls them races, they are different species and probably have differences in their cultures which drives issues as well....besides Light vs Dark elves. From one of my experiences, I made a Argonian in oblivion that was so pale that it out sparkled Edward Cullens and no one batted an eyelash at him.
People's behavior has nothing to do with the color of their skin, it's the culture that they live in.
It took me forever to find these, ever since they went off from Escapist without warning (at least to me). Thank you for uploading. the funny thing is that I found this from watching Weird Al's "Polka Face" X)
I agree. I was a bit dissatisfied with how this issue was discussed. It didn't really talk about the racism that people of color face in the gaming community and how games perpetuate racial stereotypes and what can be done so that future game designers can prevent that. The key is to be aware of every possible stereotype and trope of various racial minorities in order to prevent you from writing these characters a certain way.
Bioware does an interesting take on race, but only certain circumstances, in SWTOR. I just started playing an Twi'lek Sith Sorcerer and damn do I feel a racial divide in the Sith Empire. After getting to Dromund Kass with that Character I started a Cathar Imperial Agent and encountered no such divisiveness. This speaks to a weird sort of racism in the empire since the force sensitive Sith rule the empire, and will tolerate aliens except in the ruling party's ranks.
Damned pointy-eared grayskins. SKYRIM FOR THE NORDS.
***** Milk drinker.
***** medieval jew (?)
+GooPlus Suxarse (Hypnotic) *Nords über alles!*
***** I got the pun!
*****
You're not talking to anything.
i love your channel, you talk on so many subjects I am curious on or talk about and you have given me so much advice, help and ideas being a game design student at college, keep doing good it helps me so much :) thank you again
One thing with race though that is kind of a reason it's not often used is that it's highly cultural. The strong stereotypes of blacks for example is not really present in Europe or Asia and so using that won't get the same reaction. That means that if you rely on it then your game can only release in the US.
the way to create a good character is the way to create a good character. It doesn't change because it's a girl or it's a black person. If that is what you're focusing on it's going to be a faulty stereotypical character no matter how hard you try for the character not to be.
We can even test this, let's create a character. Let's say it's a middle aged recently divorced (like a month removed) cop who's a white male. You can add the rest of the details.
Now, make the cop a black woman. Now, does the character still make sense? I'm willing to bet, with little to no other changes, she does.
But the handling of divorces is biased towards women so the character needs quiet some more changes that if it was just a race swap :Ü™
*Press X to doubt*
4:56
Or... maybe he didn't do anything because this was just the 'norm' at the time. We know it's wrong today, but back then this was just expected behavior...
Also, the cop he chided seems to be way below him in rank while the other case involves a perceived equal.
@E.G.G imagine the bri'ish "people" meme but unironically
Whenever I consider to make a character for a Story or game Idea, I always try to make them memorable...Aka, not white, American, browned haired, action man. Races do change characters, but not cause of their actions, but because of their representation. I'm just sharing my thoughts, if you disagree, please respond.
Recently did a report for college on Race in games and used L.A. Noire(same examples used in the video too) and Mass Effect. I wish I would've known about this video back then to really drive it all home. Still got an "A" on the report but I know we only touched the surface of a huge topic and I only hope the audience was listening cause I feel like we are starting to see similar patterns in our video games as we have in the past with our movies and television shows.
You guys are so great and so intelligent, I love listening to these, it's like talking to great friends about meaningful things without having to be social or make friends.
6:31, thats just a legit interesting graph
Out of curiosity, am I a bad person for thinking that this video was about how to create a race in games? (elf, ork, dwarf)
Malman03
actually I thought so as well xD
but how is that bad ?!
No. But remember that elves are always superior to humans.
Peter Smythe get out knife ears
When I say that I'd like to see more protagonists who are women, gay, or people of color. I mean well-rounded characters. __ALL__ protagonists should be well-rounded characters! When I play as an exorcist who's Catholic priest, as long as he's well-written, there is absolutely no reason why he couldn't be a gay Latino, but how often is the player given that opportunity? (I believe that it goes without saying that I don't mean stereotypically gay or Latin.)
As for the writer who says that he or she is afraid to use a character of a different ethnicity out of fear of misrepresentation, I have two pieces of advice:
1. Simply write an entertaining, admirable hero who manages to confront and overcome conflict. Take Luke Skywalker for example. Does any aspect of Luke's race or gender come to the fore during his hero's journey? No. What was important was that he made the transformation from whiny, restless farm boy to calm and confident Jedi knight.
2. If you're worried about misrepresenting a character whose race, gender, or sexuality is different from yours, the problem might be that you feel that all people from a certain race, gender, or sexuality are all alike. A black Army Ranger has more in common with other Army Rangers, than he does with a black Anthropology professor.
bjmccann1 that makes no sense because Christians are against gayness.
IKEN Studios
Not all Christians are the same. For instance, I'm Catholic, and I don't care what a person's sexual orientation is.
bjmccann1 I'd agree with you for some part, but Luke truely is a bad example, as you do not have to care that much about this sort of thing in games /books/movies not set in a period or place close to our real world. One might concieve of a world where race doesn't matter. But that world is not our world, and in storys set in our real world in places and situations we might know and getting obvious things wrong breaks emersion. A historical game set in the Jim Crow south with a Black main charackter would be wierd if the race of the main charakter and how it forms the person was never addressed.
bjmccann1 well, the catholic church does not endorse homosexuality, so i don't think a gay priest is on the table.
Minor Rex
Au contraire! There are lots of priests who are gay, just not lots of priests who are gay and also out of the closet. I've known priests all my life, but I couldn't tell you what their sexual orientation was, because they were all celibate. On the other hand, you do have a point. The Church doesn't knowingly ordain gay men.
Morrowind did the race issue pretty well if you ask me
filthy n'wah
I know this comment comes about four years late but... to create a "meaningful minority character" in any storytelling medium you need to get the minority out of your head for the most part of the creation process. A well written minority character is not a minority character but a character that just so happens to belong to a minority group.
That doesn't actually make any sense. Every aspect of a character is a decision. How can one “just happen” to be anything?
That's.. Pretty much paraphrasing the last minute of the video.
It seems a missed opportunity to ignore any one part of a person's personality. One time I wrote a character where I thought "She's a woman in America who is Japanese... like, actually FROM Japan; but she speaks and acts just like an American" so from there I thought of an entire backstory where the character was born in Japan but was forcefully moved to America; further, her personality is such that she actually suits the American lifestyle far better than she did the Japanese lifestyle. Further, her sudden change of language upon moving gave her a sense of dependence on her foster parent figure who managed her English language education. The compound all of this, she's also a woman in a male-centric society which reenforces her sense of being an indebted subordinate to her peers, which clashes with her innate aggressive personality, which leaves her with a constant sense of unrequited aggressive energy battling against her sense of duty to her peers. So, most of the foundations of her character were laid by simply extrapolating 3 variables: Race, Sex, and Setting. If I had made her white or male at the start of the process, she would have been exactly one third as interesting a character.
Sam Wallace... what if it was a white male trying to rise to the top of the knitting scene in Japan?
You see how it's not the race, sex and setting that define a character, but their reaction to it?
Both these characters are complete opposites (diverse), but undergo a shared experience.
They would be able to relate to each other as people on very differing levels.
They're equally as interesting. That's the beauty of diversity.
I wanted everyone to read this article...
A new movie coming out based on a book watered down the social issues therein because of the medium.
They couldn't really release a trailer without revealing the race of the main character already.
Spoiler alert:
You see, it's about a professional e-sport where you create a 3D avatar and play in a virtual world.
The main character in the book is the best in the world and his avatar is a white male.
Later on in the book it is revealed in a shocking twist that the real character is a black female.
A young girl actually who plays this game online as a middle-aged white male which everyone respects.
When her best friend in game discovers this fact not only is her character revealed, but her friend's as well.
What we learn the most, is that people's true identity has almost nothing to do with superficialities.
Unfortunately like I said, the movie couldn't use this trick with a black actress' name in the credits.
So they made the avatar some huge orc thing. It loses a LOT of the impact.
Anyways, the article does a good job explaining.
I just thought the premise of the book would be something worth exploring here.
fandom.wikia.com/articles/ready-player-one-glossing-gender-issues?li_source=LI&li_medium=wikia-rail
The Mysterious Mr Enter put it excellently in his review of The Loud House’s “One Of The Boys”: “Why isn’t Kim Possible annoying? Because she was written as a character before she was written as a girl. Why isn’t Todd from Bojack Horseman annoying? Because he was written as a character before he was written as asexual. Why are the Loud brothers annoying? Because they were written as boys before they were written as characters!”
Hmm... Hotter climates have darker skin, while colder climates have lighter skin, that is adaptation right there.
Mass Effect: "All human are racist!"
but that is racist toward human
+Damieon Cormier aka DynastyLobster exactly
elcor hamlet was pretty racist
+Average Joesson Yeah, Mario Kart 8 sucks!
***** yep
I hate racing in games
ECL28E i'm taking that as joke, and i laughed hard, haha
Or to explain it another way, the point is that trying to make them a "good minority character" is still focusing on trying to make them a specific race rather than just a character who happens to be a minority.
Wow, that’s relevant.
I don't like the use of "minority" to refer to non-white characters. Because the only place they're the minority is in Europe, north-america and Australia.
When looking at the whole world it would be about 25% white 25% black and 50% asian.
It's said that every fifth child born is Chinese, and that's pretty true. so Chinese people would be the actual majority.
I would agree, except games are a form of literature. Literature has cultural context. If you read about Japanese Samuri's committing suicide without the understanding of how that culture operates differently than modern, western culture, you will read all the wrong implications.
Similarly, race and racial relations are context specific. You can't make a discussion about how to treat race globally because racial issues aren't internationally uniform. This video is talking about race in America and other countries with histories of imperialism.
Sorenmine They never specified "Minority" as being "non-white". The even said towards the end that minority and majority applies to your race relative to the socoety you live in.
Well what they consider the minority is in truth the majority on this Planet. In America and everywhere else in the world. Darker skin is the majority of this Planet
They mean in a particular place. If the characters interacted with the whole world I would agree, but obviously it’s confined to a specific location, which, in this case, is dominated by whites.
The purple race beastie is adorable.
That short moment when you thought "race" was like in "car race" before remembering about the ethnicity topic promise.
*facepalm*
Very interesting video, as always.
I really enjoy seeing all the old EC videos on UA-cam. It's a good excuse to see them all over again. :)
Does anyone else think The Walking Dead handles race pretty well? There's that part where Kenny expects Lee to be able to pick a lock because he's... "urban." Lee is pretty offended.
Context is friggin adorable... please make a plushie :3 Also, I'd like for devs to make whatever character they already are, but keep varying the color. I feel like that can drive home the point that any human is capable of any action or consequence based on WHO they are, and the sum of their experiences (as long as we have agency in some way shape or form, or lack thereof in key points as you've shown).
I think the only real reason the prevalence of caucasians and males is seen as damaging is because they're 95% of what we see, be they heroes, murderers, fixers, escorts, etc. I think we just need to see more people of all colors in all sorts of different roles to subconsciously understand that we can all be just about anything.
I think, a medium handles race the best when it works without any focus on the skin color and just treats everyone the same. Like Avatar/Korra - the people from the water tribe have darker color but they don't feel different at all. In Korra, the main protagonist has a darker skin color. And is bisexual. But it's not shown in an in-your-face way, everything grows so naturally. And she's kickass. That's a great character.
Of course, games that want to focus on race will do the opposite, and that's fine, these topics need to be explored, but when it's not the focus of a game, it should just not fall into stereotypes.
Yeah, you have to make a lot of decisions in game design. Whether or not to make an FPS or a Survival Horror game, what themes you try to include, what you're trying to say, whether you include an African or Puerto Rican minority character. All necessary design choices.
(To avoid ambiguity, I am parodying the common trend for minorities to be considered as a design choice to satisfy the masses, or make the game appeal to a wider audience, than to consider them as characters that can give depth and complexity to stories and themes.)
All RPGs have races. What's bad is many are stereotyped or can't change faction. Who says trolls are evil or can't be Holy knights? That's racist. Where's the RPGCLU (RPG civil liberties union) or the WAATP (world association for the advancement of troll people)? I have a dream when all races: trolls, humans, elves, and the undead will stand together as brothers and sisters of the world.
Yea I'm tired of people picking on us dark elves, making stereo types and calling us evil spies. We need equality for all races....Sept the argonians, there all dirt, and khajiit are all thieves! And woodelves are all rich snobs!!! And Talos was just a man!!! All praise the daedric Lord's!!!
ash jar I dunno man, seems kinda racist to me
Yeah, especially in some games you have to think, why am mindless killing them, am I truly doing the right thing or following orders.
@@ashjar2703 i agree with the last 2 of your statements
ALL HAIL MOLAG BALL
I feel that the concept of race is wrong.... People are people with hopes and wants. Just because they look diffrent doesn't mean that they aren't less of a human being. What we define as race is more a case of where do you come from... The caucasian skincolor is just a mutation that happened over time to survive in those climates. Same for everyone!!! I only use the term "race" when (Role)playing a fanatsy game.
Please don't mind my english spelling. Im Dutch ^^
+The Chanter You're a very intelligent Dutch.:)
You're right. As a man who would be identified as black and Latino here in the US, race shouldn't matter because, in and of itself, it doesn't. However, what needs to be understood is that it is those who act like it matters that cause the issues and actually make it matter. It wouldn't matter what someone's skin tone is or from where their ancestry hails if no one was discriminating against others for those reasons. But the problem is that we do have people hating against others and barring others from things due to their "race" or even wishing death upon them for it. In addition to this, we still have societal views of race that may not be apparent to those who are of the majority that the so called minorities can see quite clearly. This is what those of us who are speaking up about racism issues are trying to get rid of. Because when society becomes truly diverse in all it's aspects without discrimination or worse and without inequalities in opportunity and representation, race doesn't matter. Just like it shouldn't.
I love the Bob-Omb Battlefield remix.
@1:21 and when interrogating, I think someone on the dev team may have confused "doubt" with "wild accusation" because I'm pretty sure that wasn't what I was going for at all when I picked doubt.
I really wish you guys posted more links to the graphics you use in your vids (I'm thinking of how The Idea Channel does it, for instance), I found one about the different skin toned are dispatched at 6:32 really interesting (in how it seems to correlate with climates)...
I'd rather play a filipino character who respects all races, than to play a black character only for the reason that he's black, and thus has a minority character (who is often portrayed in caricature or stereotype, or worse in a negative light). I'd even settle on a white character who shows by his actions and words that he is not okay with negative racism. The real problem we should have is not so much that there is or is not a certain color of people in a game (why not purple people?) but that the WAY they treat other color of people is in a morally good way instead of in a negative one-color-is-better-than-another way.
I still would want more people of color in media.
Same.
Ditto. Heck, a lot more of any minority. It would be nice to see more games where a white/male/heterosexual isn't the *default* choice of main character in games where supposedly ethnicity/gender/sexuality "doesn't matter". Because if it truly doesn't matter then using a random variable generator to decide those factors shouldn't be a problem.
This is one thing I like about Kingdom (the game). Your starting character is randomly male or female and a random skin tone. The towns people are also random race and, I think, gender ambiguous. Nothing to discuss, it's just normal.
Osioxana Akai Kingdom is a great game. It is so beautiful, and it was the first game in a long time that I couldn't stop playing, even well into the early morning hours.
Could you make a video about The games James made. Becuase you always go so deep about how a good game is made i imagain that his games are pretty good.
You know what they say. Those that can't do, teach ;)
And those who can't teach, take drugs?
Lee Everett the perfect example about race in video games. Lee was an amazing character who just happened to be black. Over the course of the 5 episodes you get to see how lee interacts with the other characters and the little girl.
Ha: "if you choose to use race in a game," so if you are not making an abstract game... Its harder than a choice, it is always present
I agree with all of that, but it really tends to tick me off when they idolize minorities in games and antagonize majorities (racial and religious mostly) to gain mainstream support for sales.
yeah privilege sucks man, it's hard to have to portray good intentions as cynical marketing all the time #WhiteChristiansAreTheTruelyPursecutedPeople
When has this ever happened in a game?
SrGurkman Never has. Its just the hipster movement of the internet. You got to take something that's good and turn it around. Like being against racism has been a very unpopular the last 50 years, but its slowly went the other way. Suddenly racism is bad. So people online start to promote anti-racism, but doing so every hipster starts going all "Eugh, I see it everywhere online, so everybody must think it, and they are just white knights trying to get upvotes, so I gotta take it and turn it around, and suddenly now they are just trying to guilt the white man. So now I'm gonna go pro-racism! Saying its BAD to be against racism and shit."
The worst part is that they aren't even always aware that this is what they are doing, they just do it because it makes them feel "smart", and as if they "see things others don't", and just never experience the real world, just sit around and get impressions from people online, thinking that's what the entire world thinks.
CinderBlockRecording I've been an avid gamer for years, and to this day I've never come across a game which demonises white, straight or male people to gain mainstream support. One of the reasons for this is because as those three factors form the *main demographic of gamers*, from a business perspective they would be alienating a rather large portion of their target audience.
As 'PlayingWithFire' has also said, I feel like you've perhaps made this comment without totally thinking it through. If you have a person with who is of a racial, sexual or gender-based minority - and happens to be the protagonist or a leading support character - it does not automatically mean that the developers are "using" that character to gain more support from said minorities. It could very possibly mean that the story just suited a character of that description, or that the developer wanted to try something different to the usual straight white male character. And that's allowed.
You would definitely have to expand on the notion of "race" being handled well beyond the fact that a character had a prejudice towards another because of their, "race." I haven't played through far enough to know what you are referring to, but it seems 53 others agree. I'm wondering the "race" of those people; ya know, other than human.
I think Betheda set up a good racial situation that was pretty interesting. While playing a Argonian I went into Windhelm, once. Because I was a minority EVERYONE hated me so I ended up hating the Stormcloaks even though they were only fighting for they're personal freedom but because of my experiences with race I saw the Imperials in a better light, and I still do today.
I pickpocketed M'aiq the liar.. he had skooma....
Sipsipsipsip
Mmmmmmm skoooooma...
Skooma isn't a hard drug for Khajit.
To the other races, it's a destructive stimulant like meth.
To Khajit, it's a non-habit-forming harmless casual drug like marajuana.
It's also been part of their culture for thousands of years.
So… That's not racist.
Philo Wintercoat
your confusing it with moon sugar which has a religious purpose in addition to being a drug..
Skooma might not be as bad for a Khajiit but it's still damn bad!
for one thing they associate the drug with their pantheons version of Sheogorath...
that should tell you something....
If he was carrying moon sugar then that would be perfectly fine...
Moon sugar is the drug that like marijuana for khajiit.
ZerqTM Ah. Thanks for the clarification.
+Philo Wintercoat but marijuana isn't harmless.......
I like racing games
I can’t tell if this is fake or real
@@That.Political.Guy-- Or neither or those, but a joke?
Epic punnnnn
What you see nowadays in most fanfictions is that people just throw race and sexuality out the window entirely. They simply treat it as an element of the character and that's it.
I don't know about everyone else, but these labels bug me in general. You should just focus on making good characters. Period. Other traits should feed into being a good character, not the other way around.
I believe they did something similiar in Skyrim as well. When you need to go to Sovngarde and you end up there and when you leave, if you are a Nord they will talk about how you will end up there when you die. Also in Windhelm there will be Nords who discriminate anyone who is Nord, especially Dunmer and Argonians and they treat you depending on what race you are and how you yourself treat the other races.
That's absolutely correct. Lawful Good is by the "Good Book" not the Law Book.
A Lawful Good character wouldn't follow the laws in an Evil Nation any more than a Lawful Evil character would follow the laws in a Good one.
I had an idea for race in an mmo type game. Basically, every role is a race. The support role is the oppressed race. There are biased thoughts occassionally tossed at the player from the beginning, but all roles have a major impact in the environment. It's a thought experiment.
I'm sorry, but when you said Madlibs, I immedately went to you saying "Why let ____ get in the way of a good crusade?" More people should check out your Extra History series.
After watching this video, it got me thinking about Racial issues, hate , and discrimination, and how Video games could be used to remedy certain parts of the problem . It seems to me, that racism, and many other conflicts between people are caused by lack of empathy, a distinct lack of understanding about what the other side is feeling. Racism double so in my view , as racism usually amounts to " Those guys do something that I don't because of their race, I don't like understand that , and hate
Your comment was in every way something that has had me laughing for three consecutive minutes, and I just want to thank you for that.
Racin' games!
I genuinely thought this video was going to be about racing games. I was so confused when they started talking about sexual/gender differences in the intro. xD
I thought this is about racing games, not LA noire review, the title is misleading!
I have the same view on race, religion and sexuality; I'm fine with whatever you believe or are, just stop trying to shove it down my throat.
+redder876543 the problem being that for a lot of people, simply being and creating art or content with people like them feels like 'shoving it down your throat' to you.
thats a touchy subject if i ever saw one
It was a less touchy subject when this video first came out. It's even worse these days.
Good talk. I don't always agree with you guys, however it's refreshing to hear a different perspective.
Niko Bellic from GTA IV. Great video game character, who happened to be a minority. His nationality plays a huge role in the story.
Man, the end credit music is consistently amazing. If only the intro theme was half as nice...