PEOPLE, I BEG OF YOU! PLEASE ACTUALLY WATCH THE VIDEO BEFORE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF IN THE COMMENTS SECTION!! My goal for the rest of the year is going to be to get better at Green Screening lol Anyways, if you enjoyed the video, don't forget to SUBSCRIBE!! One thing this video didn't have time to talk about is that representation is more than just skin deep. It would be marvelous to see more uniquely Black Stories told in big budget video games, however I'm not sure that, at time of writing, the current game industry is necessarily best equipped to handle that weight. Hopefully someday though. Also a lot of what I say in video is applicable to the representation (or lack thereof) of other minorities too, not just Black People.
I liked the video and made me realize we do need more diversity but not forced in cuz that’s what corporate wants. We need to find that balance of “why are there so many straight white guys?” And “why is there 1 not straight white guy that was forced in here cuz of corporate.” Honestly, just have an AI that randomly generates the models and characters. Same build and body (aside from gender) but just randomly made characters and same animations that were already included.
So you admit you don't play any fighting games? There are plenty of black characters in fighting games. Sports games too for that matter. Otherwise this just sounds like more Nintendo bashing; it's not Nintendo's job to mandate diversity ahead of creativity in their games. If you're so passionate about more black characters in those style of games, learn how to build your own games or form a team with other people so you can make your own. Stop being dependent on other people for your desired representation, and represent yourself. Otherwise you're never going to get what you actually want; this should be common sense.
I love this video. Personally, lack of hair options bother me the most. Not having black characters is one thing but giving me a character creator and not allowing me to be black is wild
I think what's bothersome about that over just not having black characters is the promise of "make your own character. You can be yourself!" and literally not being able to create yourself is just the biggest fuck you to the player. The game essentially says "oh not even as a custom character do we think you're worth being allowed in this game." It's ridiculous.
The hairstyle thing hit the closest to home for me. I'm only half black, and I'm lighter skinned, so the curly hair is kind of my only indicator. I don't always try to make myself in games, but when I do its irritating
As the palest white guy often mistaken for a vampire, I wholeheartedly support the sentiment of your video. You are not asking for much and not even being at all unreasonable or anti-immersion. The people who disliked this video either didn't watch the whole video or hella racist.
@@MrXreuf sense* Learn to spell bigot. And no, no it does not. Tribalism is what separates us, why we (humanity) can't achieve seemingly easy goals. And yes, racists are proud, they are proud of a color they were born with and did absolutely nothing to achieve.
@@MrXreuf what the fuck, this is exactly why we need to move anyway and show that racism is so fucked up. Aw yes, I hate you because you're not me. Please spend your time doing something worthwhile.
Someone could’ve disliked the video just from viewing the music/voice/editing/other things as aesthetically displeasing. Maybe the colors just don’t work well enough together for some rare person.
Nah, if I was developing a game, I would want to have the option at least to have any character be killed early, no matter what the skin color. Having black characters specifically excluded from that feels unnecessarily restrictive.
Customization is always a struggle. I always go “o wow I can finally make a character that looks like me” *looks at hair options “Um ok I guess I’ll be a black guy with a perm”
I've noticed character creator hair options aren't great from a gender-perspective, either. With Japanese games in particular, making a male character gives you about 1/3rd the options of female characters, just in general, and there's always a few that just look silly and unappealing. And most games gender-lock the hairstyles, so it's even more limiting.
Same with typically afro-centric hair. Very few games will allow you to have course hair, an afro, or anything afro-centric. So you got dark skinned characters with straight hair, which i feel like doesn't feel like black representation.
At last, the japanese games have better options, than the western. I hate most hair stils in the western games, because, they didnt even come near to my wish for hair. And that is simply, straight, flatt hair, without any extra and a pony. How are the hairs of most western games? Nearly all of them has free foreheads. Or are to short. Dont have simply semi long hairs. Or, have some extra or fancy things in the hairs.
@@aliceslab I don't know, some guys make the most incredibly femme styles work, though not everyone has the same tastes. Vomit-inducing is kind of a worrying reaction though. You might want to stop and examine why a dude with his hair in a bun bothers you to the point of illness. Sounds like a symptom of possible fear of people who defy gender norms or your expectations. Lots of people take the sight of people subverting gender expectations as a direct assault on their personal masculinity/femininity, which is unfortunate.
My problem goes like: imagine being part of a cultural minority and whenever your culture appears in any media it's nearly always played as a joke or a gag character lol
As an indian guy that is almost never represented in any media as anything other than a guy wearing a turban or doing yoga and breathing fire or something, I relate to this video
I’m an autistic guy (white in the US if that gives any context) and one of my best childhood friends was also autistic and she was half Indian and half British and we easily bonded over our special interest in Pokémon and often joked about there being no Indian characters. Then sword and shield came around, based on a place with a pretty substantial Indian population (Great Britain) and we got multiple that are probably meant to be Indian. (It’s technically unclear cause it’s Pokémon but still) not just that, but your main rival and his brother who is the champion/strongest trainer of the region, and other characters. She really enjoyed getting to see her fairly unknown culture (at least where we live) get shown off so openly in the largest franchise in the world.
Honestly yeah. And as an Indian woman.. I thought I’d probably see my own death before I’d see a protagonist who’s a woman with skin color darker than beige. Then came Raji. The game itself was okay but I enjoyed the heck out of it because I am badly starved for some representation.
There's over a billion people in India. Game engines and tools are free and more powerful than ever, and you can learn enough just with free youtube tutorials and there's thousands of super cheap learning courses online. Out of those over a billion people, where are the indian game devs?
An interesting thing in anime is that dark skinned characters in Japanese settings usually are tanned Japanese people, Okinawa people, Indians and other South East Asian people because those are the more common dark skinned people in Japan. In Shokugeki no Souma we have two dark skinned characters among the important characters, one is a tanned Japanese girl and the other in an Indian boy.
a point about hair, ive always found it interesting how yes there seem to be a lack of black hairstyles however as a white person with curly hair it has even been hard to find a hairstyle similar to mine when making a character, sometimes (cough cough mii maker) the only non straight hairstyles they have are just afro and dreds. i will agree that this issue mainly affects the black community but i do think that it isnt intentionally racist and often games just cater to 'straight hair as opposed to white people hair (which are often the same thing but u get what im saying)
bro i was LOOKING for this comment. like curly white hair rep isn’t as bad as african hair but man it’s like 1 step above. they always got like one jewfro and that’s it.
yeah a lot of things, even if it pertains to the group we are in are kinda missed because we are conditioned to think a certain way. I always try to go out of these ways of thinking, but yeah sometimes it's like.... my brain cannot handle this. My life is already full of bs and now I'm learning there is MORE injustice in my life? IDK we the people are just... tired. But compared to other things in this world that REALLY need to be fixed... this one is a quick fix... just imo.
And the way he's always a villain is lowkey messed up. (They even try and give him a sympathetic portrayal in Wind Waker, but Link doesn't really do anything new with that info).
Arguably the most popular Ganon (from OoT etc) is Gerudo Ganondorf, and Captain Astronaut as do many others also consider the Gerudo from BoTW black. So you can justify Ganondorf being black if you think the Gerudo are black, right?
@@pablitotorres8254 I think the demise curse helps explain things to a degree, but like in Windwaker he mentions that his region was barren and in need of resources. I also think Hyrule's royal family at the time wasn't really willing to help in that regard (not unlike our own geopolitics and race). I'm just hoping that curse gets yeeted in botw2 and homie ganon gets a fair chance at being his own person.
Social Experiment - Make a Souls-like game featuring a silent, male main character that wears full-body knight armor (Hidden face, hidden body, hidden voice, hidden everything basically). However, add an equippable chest plate near the end of the game that has exposed biceps that reveals the character is black. See what happens.
@@chao3948 yeah technically your right especially if its historically accurate or has a historical backing to it but most war games tends to focus more on the events that take place in the game. Not to mention theres also fictional war/shooter games like killzone, gears of war, lost planet, (maybe metal gear solid) etc
Agree but just want to point out that the sword and shield "black charcters" are actually "brown"(british-indian or Indian immigrants) Edit:- yea I meant to write to be of the respected country's pkmn works counterpart
@@Valstrax420 Yeah their work and creativity is becoming half assed lol. Plus they are completely running out of ideas for Pokémon too lol. Literally repeating the designs of previous Pokémons once again now. Plus their main series games have become completely repetitive and it's almost becoming 30 years of doing it. But oh well... everyone buys it either way because it's Pokémon. So they have nothing to lose and the undefeated have nothing to learn either.
LET’S GO!! Love your content, Captain. This is such a good, clear, and concise video-you did such a good job! As a fiction author I feel like you encapsulated a lot of the issues that show up not only in games but books and other media. 👍❤️
17:03 As witcher fan, I'm just gonna say that witcher world was not suppose to be like that. The showrunner of the show just did't give a shit about anything in it, including worldbuilding, so she just made it as present america, just in fantasy setting.
yeah i agree. i dont think inserting random ethnicities into pre-existing literary works as an afterthought is the correct way to achieve diversity within media because it harms the authenticity of the source material, which can be particularly off-putting and borderline insulting for people originating from the culture which the literary work takes inspiration from (for the witcher, this would be polish mythology). really, what is needed are stories where diversity is built into the foundation (league of legends, baldurs gate, etc), or stories that are specifically focused on portraying the culture of other ethnicities. throwing random ethnicities into modern works is such a sloppy and short-sighted way to appease people and doesnt even attack the root of the problem, which is a fair and varied amount of cultural expression across modern media for people of all backgrounds.
Jet Set Radio was Japanese and came out in 1999, and it featured not one, not two, but THREE wholearse playable black characters, one of whom was female. Jet Set Radio Future came out three years later and featured the same cast but with another playable black female character. And guess what? The world didn't fucking implode. JSR and JSRF are, like, the only games by a triple A publisher (Sega) to feature black female playable characters that I can think of. (okay until apex was brought up)
Wow, so either you're too young, or haven't gamed for that long. Virtua Fighter has Vanessa, DOA has an Afro-Mexican girl, Tekken has Raven Master, and there's more from other games in addition to that especially when also adding male characters to it. This is the dangerous rhetoric that happens when people don't know history, including their own. You should probably play I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream as that also has an African-American woman in it who is playable.
@@samalton5837 I mean I am sixteen so that would explain it (Although I will say, I'm not sure how asking for more diversity in games is "dangerous rhetoric", and he did actually mention fighting games in the video)
It's hilarious when they complain someone is Black in a universe with purple, green, red, etc aliens. Like they'll accept an alien with purple skin and 30 arms over a regular Black dude. Shit crazy.
Genshin Impact is terrified of making black or dark skinned characters, despite having literal regions based on India and Africa. At most, they'll do a very light tan.
Honestly it’s pretty much the same in all of Mihoyo’s games in general. Out of all the characters in HSR and ZZZ, Arlan from starrail is the only one who has a skin tone darker than tan; he’s also probably the worst and least popular character in the game. It’s especially telling when they’re okay with making some npcs and enemies have dark skin, but not the playable characters.
as with most asian companies. I feel like the biggest problem of not including diversity comes from animes and asian games/media, as i cant remember a single asian game/show ive watched and there being a memorable/good character that isnt white
@@Designated_loser It's a Chinese game primarily catered towards the tastes of China/East Asia. What do you expect? China, Japan, and Korea account for 74% of Genshin Impact's revenue so the characters are going to be designed accordingly.
Something people have to realize is that you can criticize media you love. Just because I love a game doesn’t mean I think it’s perfect! There’s always room for improvement. This mindset can be applied to imperfect game design so why can’t it be applied to their representation too?
Critiquing a medium of art, whether it be a film, a photograph, or a video games, is a sign you care about that medium and therefore want the best from it.
I want to see dark skinned characters who are: animal lovers, book nerds, awkward, techy, snobby, haughty, humble, quirky, shy, religious, or snarky or any other traits that you see used constantly by lighter skinned characters. Representation of skin colors falls short when you cycle through the same 3 tropes.
Virgin "normal fictional game characters": Read useless books, aka nerds who get bullied and always think about how world revolves around them, have really high levels of narcissism. Don't know how to fight, learn it only midway or at the end of the story. Most of the shy and quirky types soon become cannon fodders or go into irrelevancy. Sometimes, they are so over the top of their tropes, you begin to question authenticity of them existing in real life, for if they did, they would be socially ostracized. CHAD BLACK PEOPLE VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS: Only 3 trope behaviors, all delivered excellently. Since birth knows how to put up aa good fight, his homies are always by his side. Always set in DA HOOD, where everyone lifts, no bullshit hobbies. Most keep it real, some snitch out and become bad, but overall, they are all believable and likeable. And overall, they all are just trying to live a life normally, but circumstances force them otherwise, still humble about themselves.
actually i could do with less religious black people. that's actually a very common trope--even barret talks like an incensed pastor. and i'd be warry of a lot of these otherwise. representation falls short when you cycle through the same 3 tropes, sure, but one of those tropes for black people is negative personalities. i'd much rather take boring black characters then to deal with the catch 22 of "we exist, but we either die immediately or have a bad attitude". representation also falls short when your representation is primarily negative; i want black characters treated like the main characters, fuck being a side character with a shitty personality.
I was always one of those guys who said "Oh, I don't really mind if I never see/play a character that looks like me, as long as the story is good". And then the Shang Chi movie came out, and while it wasn't the "Black Panther for Asian people" that the world expected it to be, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel pretty happy about seeing someone who looked like me on the screen paired with cultural stuff that hit pretty close to home. That being said, I also liked the "stereotypical" stuff, so take this with a grain of salt.
It would be refreshing to see more dark skinned characters and WITHOUT some sort of stereotypes. Your skin colour doesn't dictate a particular personality after all; people are diverse.
exactly!!!exactly!!like Leroy Smith in telling is basically a black iPhone man which is awesome and not stereotypical and if u have a problem with diversity than play sports ages and fighting games they are one if the best games in terms of good diverse representation
@@t.funkthecoolmunk5472 Granted her original render during the N64 games was just too similar to Peach at the time, but I liked that in the latest Mario Golf game, they gave her a slightly darker skin tone, I was hoping that would stick, but unfortunately Nintendo can't decide what the hell to do with Daisy to the point of taking away her personality.
It has been so hard to create myself in games every time I get to a character creation screen I end up praying “Please have dreadlocks PLEASE HAVE DREADLOCKS!”
that's why i personally just don't and i create anything that isn't human if it allows me to. literally in most character creations i would just make a white character lmfaoo
It crazy cause dreads are the coolest hairstyle imo. Why not have it as an option? Don't people get tired of making and having the same usual rehashed protag?
@BristolBomb yes just like everybody else. It's not so much that as just anti filth. Of course you can't smell it because you are used to it but have some consideration for others around you.
Good video! As a writer it's easy to lose sight of what's normal to everyone else because you usually point out things about a character if they become relevant later (chekows gun or whatever) and tend to leave other details 'normal'. But that doesn't give a reason not to have appropriately many black (or other ethnicity) characters, especially in fantasy settings, since it is normal in our world and in many settings would be likely, it just maybe is not in the society you live in, so you don't think about it much.
Oh my goodness,the amount of times PEOPLE get flustered and their panties in a bunch over me having dark-skinned characters from Asia,specifically Japan,(in a story of mine,one of the main protagonists is literally black and grew up in Japan all his life) is insane. and it’s always frustrating,because I know dang well if he were white,nothing would be said. Absolutely nothing.
I'm pretty white, but here's how I write races in fantasy for anyone who cares to dismantle it: Step 1: I write the dynamics of a character personality. Step 2: I write their backstory based on birthplace/cultural influences. Step 3: I establish their skin tone. Step 4: I never let Step 3 become more important than 1 or 2. So far, this seems functional. Personally, I am bored of slavery being used as an easy backdrop for civil unrest in fantasy settings so I try to avoid skin tone being a contributing factor in anything regarding a character aside from their physical appearance and physiology.
I would say you're spot on. Fantasy stories don't have to inject our real life issues into them. So literally skin tone can just be skin tone. I applaud you for your considerations of others.
This is how I always have said it should be done. I never saw the problem with characters not looking like me. I'm white skinned (mix race tho) but I dont need white characters just to feel included. For example, I still loved watching Everybody Hates Chris despite nearly the entire cast being black people. I never thought anything of it, I just thought of them as relatable characters that happened to live in a predominantly black populated city. Keep doing things the right way: character substance first, skin tone after. Just like anybody with the right mindset should be seeing people.
See this guy already has a problem with that because he thinks that if u do 1 and 2 then ur being racist lol this video is too vague because on purpose
This can get you in trouble with SJWs though. I have heard that white people should "stay in their lane" when writing fantasy as they could never "comprehend the struggles of black people" - from a white liberal professor. I think that might be one of the many problems contributing to lack of black diversity in media. Racists on the right and the left play a role.
Now this isnt technically a "video game" but imma talk abt Gacha. It is a character creator made by Lunime. Oh my, the controversies of that game date back YEARS ago. But back to the subject, I have played since Gacha Studio. It was hard to make black characters, a lot of the presets were white which I have no problem with. Gacha Verse, it did a little better but still missing somethings...HAIR STYLES. Gacha Life, did WAAAY better than the last 2 games. Added better POC hairstyles and overall good performance, lacking in a few areas tho. Gacha Club, Oh my. It did so well, adding more POC hairstyles, and more assets to make a good black character. Now we are in the present, Gacha Life 2. At the start, it LACKED assets to make black characters. (But with some updates, we were able to make some pretty good black characters.) But like I said before abt the presets. I barely see ANY black presets, it took me an hour to make a black character. Not because I didn't have any inspo or ideas, but because of the lack of assets. I am talking from the start of the game, they did better with the assets for black people after some updates. But the fact it took them 5 GAMES to give us POC assets is just disgraceful. This will conclude my rant. Sorry for it being so long, just had to speak my mind. If there are any problems lemme know in the comments. Have a good day/night.
"I am a straight white dude and I'm dissatisfied because this game only has one straight white dude and he's locked behind progression/paywalls!" Damn, he was so close to getting why people make a fuss over diversity, wasn't he.
@@jb34ch1 That redditor was upset because the game was "too diverse" and he was unable to pick a character of his race, and when he finally got ONE option to do so, it turned out the character was lacking in key ways (he didn't like the character's personality or skill set). This took away from his enjoyment of the game enough to complain online about it. Almost like what people of colour have been upset by for years now. I'm white, and even I see the irony.
@@jb34ch1 They're saying people of colour have this exact experience with most games where it's just one black character locked behind progression/paywalls, or they aren't even playable.
"He even made the first game to have a Pause Button in game!" Okay, hold up, Gerald "Jerry" Lawson ought to be one of the most revered and respected video game pioneers of all time. Not even kidding. The interchangeable cartridges thing is obviously important, but the *pause* button? Beyond essential. That is one hell of a legacy.
I was aware of the cartridges, but didn’t know about the pause button. Pause Kidding. RIP to the God. Yet ANOTHER reason why Elden Ring is racist. There is no pause. Fuck that game. Pause.
@@thorocomments there actually is a pause button, hidden behind some menus, there's two ways, the one I remember is by pressing the map button twice and selecting the second option, the other way is through the start menu, don't remember the exact way, but it opens the same options as the map one.
Native American Jew here: yeah, I actually relate to this so much that I got so sick of not seeing a diverse swath of characters, especially with almost all Jewish characters being portrayed as just white (ignoring the long history of both Native and Black Jews in America, as well as Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews and the growing number of East and Southeast Asian Jews in the US), and the sheer lack of Jewish characters in video games that I am currently taking it upon myself to make my own video game to rectify this.
Thats one of the major problems I find with people who complain about diversity. If the jewish characters are basically all just white how do you solve that. The only thing you can really do is have them bring up the fact that theyre jewish all the time, make them a rabi or make them a jewish stereotype. So even when different ethnicities are represented its not enough because they arent ethnic enough. But dont make them too ethnic or thats racist. The only solution I can think of is to give the jewish person a yiddish accent and have them bring up their faith or upbringing, but not too often. I would like to know how you would solve this issue.
@@pithagorian4394 Well that’s actually easier than you would think. When you already have characters in a Jewish context, you can more easily show diversity. Plus, many Jews don’t even speak Yiddish. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.
@@pithagorian4394In the case of my game, it takes place on a street full of Kosher Restaurants, owned by people of various diverse backgrounds. You have Chinese Jews, Indian Jews, Black Jews, Latine Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews… heck, even Jews who tick multiple of these boxes. And the food helps differentiate their backgrounds. The main character, for example, has a father from the Amazonian Jewish community, and thus has roots in Morocco as well as Amazonian Natives, and he has Native, African (specifically Malagasy, Angolan, and Yoruba), as well as Portuguese roots on his mother’s side. Both are very real Jewish ethnicities and I wanted to include them. Should be up front here: I used to write for a Jewish News outlet called TribeHerald when it was still fairly active, so I have a background in exactly this kind of subject. The goal is that everyone here has their own issues, and your goal is to basically help everyone out while balancing your own love life and raising your son. And also helping make sure everyone survives, because some of those issues are pretty dire (an unresolved feud between one restaurant owner and a particularly stubborn rabbi over the latter’s former support of the Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach will result in both of them killing each other if the latter enters the former’s restaurant again. Said restaurant owner is a former Goan Catholic of some Sephardic ancestry who left that faith specifically due to the scandals with child molestation. The latter didn’t want to believe the allegations against Carlbach, but has since realized he was not only wrong, but terribly wrong, and he shouldn’t have been so hasty, though the owner will not forgive so easily.) The key is, make them full-fledged characters, and not stereotypes. By presenting all these characters within a Jewish context, with layers to themselves, it helps provide plenty of depth and keeps them from being simple stereotypes. I also try to do my research and enjoy presenting something unique. It’s actually energizing what I am doing. And I know people can handle all these characters because so many people played games like Skyrim and the like, so large numbers of deeper characters isn’t hard to them to handle
@@cratorcic9362 That does sound like the best way to do it and I think thats what most people want. Stories about certain communities where the focus can be on those people and their culture rather than throwing a mix of things together for the sake of diversity. But youre also kind of side stepping the problem of diversity all together because youre making a game about representing the various Jewish peoples and so presumably none of the primary characters will be non-Jewish. Not being diverse in your case is what allows you to make your story, because if you had to worry about representing everyone, as well as all the Jewish peoples, with a limited set of resources you could only afford to tokenize them since they aren't the main focus of your game. In this way having diversity of religion would actually compromise your game. A bad example of diversity in games is god of war Ragnarök because there simply is no place in Norse mythology for a black character, but they decided that they need to have a non-white character for the sake of diversity. All this ended up doing however was representing black people but not anything substantial about them while compromising their portrayal of Norse mythology since intentionally portrayed the god Angrboda incorrectly. What they could have done instead if they wanted a more diverse cast is have other characters enter the world of Norse mythology. The same way that Kratos came from the world of Greek mythology, gods from chinese, african, indian, etc. mythology appear
@@pithagorian4394 Actually, there are some fairly major non-Jewish characters, however, for the most part, a lot of them have Jewish family members, which is a real phenomenon in most Jewish communities. Plus, it also allows me to analyze the relationship between these people. In two months, I have created over 80 characters
spitting facts, and your humour is on point, really nice video. it's great to have perspectives on this topic from black gamers, really appreciate the effort you've put into this!
One thing that has bothered me for a while is that a lot of games that I have played with a character creator don't allow you to be a ginger, as in real life red head. It is either too brown or too red. I know it isn't as big of a deal compared to what others have to deal with but the fact I can't have my hair color without having a rgb slider is really annoying. In other words I understand why you and other people are upset and you guys have my full support.
This drives me nuts! I usually end up downloading custom content for more hair options or else design a character that looks completely different from me.
It drives me bonkers that people get so hostile to others who only want to see more of themselves in media they want. My entire life I was expected to relate and consume media that was spearheaded by white male leads. And I did! Dare I say I loved some of that media. But theres such a wonderful personal connection when you see someone like you in something you watch/read/play that's difficult to articulate. Its what I felt when i watched El Tigre, or the Book of Life, Coco.... Of course, my experience as a Mexican is very different from a black person, but I can heavily empathize with the angle of media and cultural connections.
I related to a lot of characters that are like me and they don't even have the same race as me. Spiderman, Batman, and some of my non black friends irl.
I personally stopped seeing race Genuinely, I don't care about the race and gender of a character as long as it's the relatability that allows me to connect to them For instance, I don't dislike a female lead because they're female, but perhaps because their writing is terrible, or they're nothing more than a political push (Btw, there are many beautiful female leads in games and movies, Ellen Ripley is one of the best female protagonists of all time, I can and will debate you on that) But for me. It depends on writing, relatability, and enjoyment. I don't have to be a 16 year old Japanese boy to like or relate to tanjiro from demon slayer, but I can like and relate to him through his writing and struggles. As for representation, I don't really care Hell, in games, I typically just play as a female character, because I like women I don't look for a Hispanic person to play, but if there a Hispanic tomboy in the game, then more power to it I'm just the type who won't care if there isn't
As a white person, I even remember playing on multiple save files on games around the ages of 8-12 and being frustrated that there weren’t more skin tone/hair style customization options, purely for the sake of variety
It never really bothered me growing up that the characters I would play as usually didn’t look exactly like me, and I didn’t need them to. I do think it’s great that things are gradually becoming more inclusive in many aspects of the gaming industry. As long as the characters aren’t tokenized, and are allowed to have arcs outside of their race or something. Good video!
How the hell did I not know about Gerald Lawson when he invented the PAUSE BUTTON which is one of the most recognizable features in video games as a whole and can be used in nearly every single genre of game!?! Amazing vid btw
The lack of hair styles in games has bothered me for over 20 years. Like seriously, it bothers me as much as the lack of skin options. I've also been told all my life that my skin is too light for me to be considered black for most of my life.
it's a game bro, not everything has to match you specifically or should match you specifically. I myself couldn't care less about my specific hairstyle not being in a game or my exact skin shade not being in a game or even my own ethnic people in a game. Because it's a game, stop worrying and have fun.
@@xXJLNINJAXx Yeah, probably a blue checkmark BLM ANTIFA SJW woke feminist soy boy cuck just annoyed about the lack of hairstyles. Probably tweets all day about how white people are the devil and there are too many hairstyles for them in video games and took gender studies in collage. Twitter people are all like this, and anyone that suggests something that all gamers should also want is like that to. Come on man seriously. Why wouldn't and shouldn't people want more hairstyle options? That's just more characterization opportunities that people are mad about because they're so terminally online that they see everything as a political battle field. So something that would be an objectively good thing like more hairstyles, is now a political issue that needs to be pushed back on by all the contrarians who would also benefit.
I figure I mention this here since I have no where else to talk about this (and I refuse to be this open about myself on twitter) That one part about how representation matters really struck me because when I began drawing as a kid I would only draw white or light skinned/coded characters simply because there werent any main or important black characters at the time when I was growing up. It got to the point where even if I drew myself, I'd have all my features down EXCEPT my hair, making it either a spikey mess like Naruto or just making it straight. Growing up around primarily white folk also didnt help at all as I was constantly reminded about how different I was. I believe it was when my brother and I were watching Soul Eater and this one character appeared named Killik. I was already a huge fan of the Boondocks, but this was different since Soul Eater came from an entirely different country. On top of that, he was just so cool and he sort of looked like me! (at the time) It deffinitely changed how I viewed my media forever and inspired me to draw more accurately. The people that say representation doesnt matter never needed it in the first place. Also, if any artist say that "learning" to draw black people is "too hard" are hacks and arent good artists to begin with
I personally find it hard to draw black characters, but I also don't draw them a lot. I'm willing to learn, and watching this video gave me some inspiration to draw more black characters. I agree though, it's easy to say people don't need more representation when you've always had it
@@shondon-.-4363 Yeah, my little comment at the end was very harsh and I apologize if it stung you or anyone personally. But you trying to draw black characters instead of not and staying stagnant is way better than the "artists" out there that dont even try and I feel like thats definitely worth something in the end
As an African I've grown apprehensive over these kinds of videos because the end result is usually a demand of bad faith representation where they insist on changing established characters and labelling every non-black character as problematic and then telling me that I have to be outraged at it because I'm black. Which is why I am So SO glad that this video wasn't one of those, there was genuinely not a single thing I disagreed with in this video and you even called to attention some things that never even occurred to me, so thank you for this Astronaut, this will be my go to video to link if I ever enter a discussion about this topic
Yeah same here, except I'm a black American. A lot of the time these sorts of videos essentially make the "race swapping is good because white people already have enough representation" argument, but this one neatly avoided making that argument and spoke against it. I personally don't care about representation in videogames because in games where I can create my character I always design them according to the game's worldbuilding. I never thought of custom characters as an extension of myself or having to be relatable, to me that's a bit weird and larpy (but I get why others like it even though I disagree).
@@AudaciousBourgeois I completely agree with you there friend, like idk why so many people don't realise that you don't fix discrimination with more discrimination, that's how we stay divided. And yeah I'm in the same exact boat as you on character customization, I never spend more than like 5 minutes on that, I just make them dark skinned if I can and call it a day, otherwise I just pick the default option since 90% of the time they're going to be wearing a helmet anyways lol. But I do put in a lot more effort in life simulator games like Animal Crossing or Sims where the entire point is for the character to be a direct extension of you.
Same here, I'm aware of the current climate of anti whiteness and thought it was going to be another sjw video, but he's just asking for reasonable representation.
If you wanna lose an argument, then sure, go ahead. Dude says he doesn't want established characters to be race swapped but a minute earlier contradicts himself by praising representation in Witcher Netflix show where established white characters from books are played by black actors.
I think what makes people dislike "forced representation" is that its implemented in a really shameless and stereotypical way, like, if you look at how some writers represent other races, genders or sexualities they usually end up making characters that are just walking stereotypes, like black characters have to be loud or a comic relief, or gay characters have to be overly feminine or masculine and every action they make has to announce that they are gay ect. This makes people dislike this characters because they are just badly written, they dont feel like real people and thats because real people have their own unique identity regardless of their gender, race or sexuality. At the end of the day representing others shouldn't go beyond a well written character who is also black or asian or whatever really, with that just being a characteristic and not their entire personality, otherwise it feels "forced" and just annoying to the people you're trying to represent really. TLDR: Don't make "black characters", make characters who are black.
then the people who are being represented would be the ones voicing their opinions on the alleged annoyance, but that's rarely the case, is it? it's always people NOT from that group. usually white, usually straight, usually male, etc. the fact of the matter is that the characters could be written like gold and the complaints would remain. the reason people dislike "forced representation" is no other reason than bigotry. full stop. the same groups don't give a shit about characters being boring or badly written nearly as much if they're a white boy. and actually we do still need "black characters". see, this is the issue, and why actually talking to a black person for once in your life is important--on both a personal and professional level: when the black experience is ignored entirely, it's how you get weird shit like keanu reeves coaching a little league team of black kids going to a catholic school in the 90's, like that's a real thing. for those unaware: black folks in the US are predominantly protestant for a variety of reasons. black catholics are more likely in latin america, the islands, and europe (black italians). while you can do this in a way that's clever(paramount+'s EVIL is a really good example as a major factor of david's character and struggle is that he's one of a handful of black catholic priests in the WORLD, hk rec) it's an example of something not making sense for a black character and clearly being an example of white writers and directors not understanding black people. the "colorblind" approach is almost as flawed as the nothing approach; you need both types. you need characters who's experience isn't defined by their "black experience" but also characters who are unabashedly very black with a very black experience. and in both cases, if you ain't sure: we are LITERALLY. ALL OVER THE PLANET. and even if you don't live next to one of us: THE INTERNET. IT EXISTS. compensate us for our time and give credit if you're getting consulting for a professional endeavor. it's that simple. i refuse to believe this is a thing people really have trouble understanding.
@@malum9478What Im referring to in my comment is stereotypical behaviour, not the "experience" you are talking about. I understand your point and you are partly right; of course there are differences in how someone lives their life based on their race, gender and/or sexuality, (those are parts of someone's personality and body afterall) but what Im referring to is stereotypical, untrue and often exaggerated characteristics that can end up being harmful by reaffirming the stereotypes they are based on. For example: Im not quite sure what you are referring to as "the black experience" in your comment but, lets say a writer wants to represent that experience with a character and the writer ends up writing a walking stereotype that completely misses the point of that "experience"; that could end up being harmful to the image of the "black experience" that the people who see this character have and that is the type of scenario is what Im talking about. This is also completely ignoring the fact that we are all human and none of this shit should really matter tbh. But the fact that more and more writers in modern media are following this trend in which a character has no personality beyond their race, gender and/or sexual orientation makes it clear that they dont really care about making good characters or a good story ,they only care about making more money by tricking people into relating to some charicature of themselves. So yeah the problem that I have with "forced representation" is that its lazy, greedy, pointless, possibly harmful and honestly just really annoying. Also don't assume my race, sexuality and gender based solely on my opinion pls and don't forget that discrimination is something every single person in this planet suffers reagrdless of how/who they are thx.
This is precisely why I dislike the idea of representation. Dont put a character in to "represent" shit. Characters need to exist because they are people involved in the story. This is the entire basis of why people scream WOKE at much of modern entertainment. Halo, Cowboy Beebop, Star Wars, The Witcher, Resident Evil, Saints Row, G4...The list continues to grow. Modern writers are guilty of precisely what you describe here. Their entire perspective is based upon one thing and one thing only, which is gender, race or sexual orientation. When those aspects take on more precedence than development of a competent plot, it's a surefire sign of woke pandering. How do you determine whether or not those aspects will take precedence over the plot before the show/game/movie is released? Pay attention to the first things the creators are excited to tell you about. They should never under any circumstance tell you anything related to gender, gender roles, race, or sexual orientation. If they're trying to sell you a product or earn a subscription by peddling that, you know it's agenda based and you can safely and smoothly avoid wasting your time and attention on that drivel.
My issue isn't representation, it's the fact that when a black person is shown in a non-historical piece, it's considered "forced diversity" Like the story can have well written characters that just exsist without refering to their race, or just be a good game, but people write it off anyways.
"forced diversity" Not true, It's only really forced diversity when you have tokenism. When you have proper adaptations or the creation of original characters of other ethnicities that were written to be on the story from the very beginning, you'll rarely see anyone complain. The problem arises when Hollywood will ignore all original ethnical characters in favor of tokenizing other characters
@Smash 123 I mean they are literally forced, there is a law hat make it an obligation to include a black character in a movie, that's why we have so much tokenism in Hollywood. Of course the law does make sense as Hollywood used to be devoid of any black representation whatsoever. But now that law is causing many problems. Still producers and directors are partly to blame anyway fr being scummy and not adapting characters to represent these ethnicity, many of which already exist in books and comics.
Like in sonic adventure knuckles fur is red but skin is dark brown..... I just recently noticed this along with the fact that in the classic games from japan he's jamaican his nick name is knuckles but his actual name is drieds and he was made in a deal to sell shoes..... i don't know why naming him drieds and him being jamaican helped with that but they thought it would help sell shoes if they added those facts sooo yeah
Hold on looking back at adventure 2 knuckles maybe it was just lighting that made him look darker but it look less like shadows or dark lighting on his face and him just straight up being dark skinned i cant tell if it's the lighting engine they used or him having dark skin but imma say its not the lighting cuz no matter how dark the room is skin color doesn't work like that 😆 😆 😆
Oh man great video. You should see the new Assassin's Creed game with a Black Samurai names Yasuke. They are screaming at the top of their lungs with WOKE and DEI
You know something I find interesting. How different cultures see cultural representation in games. I'm mexican and every time I see a stereotypical mexican with a sombrero and heavy accent in a game, I find it funny and I commend it. We enjoy representation even if it's stereotypical. Every mexican and their mother loved seeing mario with a poncho and Sombrero.
And yet people worried about representation ironically tried to cancel Speedy Gonzales and the Mexican community rose up and smacked their hand and was basically like "stop that stupid shit". lol. Its like when someone says 'we need more strong black voices on this" and then Candace Owens talks and they're like "but not you". Actual representation would be "good, now we need more voices from other perspectives too." But IMO most of the time the idea of representation is co-opted for people's personal gain...often by people who have nothing to do with that group.
@@Ralathar44 Usually the people crying over it are American born Hispanics who don't even speak Spanish, real Mexicans don't give a shit. I remember when they removed Mario with a sombrero from the cover of Odyssey, people actually got upset because it was nice having him there.
@@BaltaBueno I grew up in South Texas in HEAVILY Hispanic communities. The only part of your comment that is correct is that there is a deep division between American Hispanics and Mexicans. Ironically Mexicans have this sort of harry potter "mudblood" mentality about American Hispanics insomuchas the less "culturally pure" you are the less of a person you are. The lighter your skin is the worse of a person you are. The more "white" you act the worse of a person you are. It's basically just racism against subsets of their own race and it gets very very ugly. Right on down to gang violence. I've seen the same in black communities but not to the same crazy degree that Hispanics do it. I'll never understand why people are such assholes to each other for no good reason. But it has nothing to do with actual race and everything to do with people wanting to feel superior to each other based on a buncha stupid bullshit. Growing up on that fundamentally how I view racism. Because even if we were the same race we obviously just find new shit to discriminate against each other with.
@@Ralathar44 Just to give you a heads up my friend, what you described with "The lighter your skin is the worse of a person you are" is called "colorism" and it's also a massive problem in the black community. ETA: It also goes the other way where darker = worse
@@Words-of-encouragement.-. It's got touches in the asian community too. Each group even has its own terms like coconut, oreo, banana, meaning brown/black/yellow on the outside and white on the inside. It's disturbing and seeing it happen first hand and so prevalent in any majorly racial area basically removed any idea that we were ever going to "fix" racism. Best we'll ever do is change how it presents. Because it was never actually about race in the first place. People will just replace race with something else and enact all the exact same behaviors.
Soo, I gotta admit, as a person with the complexion of a mozzarella my first thought was as well "but there black characters in video games" and went through a list in my head... and then it clicked when you said, mostly never more than one, and nearly no main chars. Well, you're right and it's really fucked up that I haven't really realized it before, since not being represented (for my ethnicity) was never an issue and so I didn't develop the point of view for that. The game industry (and movie industry, while we're at it) really needs to do better.
@@unripetheberrby6283 Normally my response would be "you're welcome" to any thanks in my direction, but it feels weird to say that in this context. ^^ I hope I'll learn more to be a better ally and thank _you_ for your kind comment :)
@@Magrat_Knoblauch Most based comment I've seen all week. Also, don't be too hard on yourself, it's common for us in the "default human" category to simply not see the privilege we have with representation. Not because we're stupid or secretly racist, but because we haven't seen the shoe on the other foot. That bias is a universal human trait, by the way. And, the point is of course not to make people feel guilty. What we *can* do is realise what's going on and advocate for things to improve, just like you did :)
@@Magrat_Knoblauch Hah Thank you for the thanks! 😂 Please also try not to let the considerations weigh you down much in the future; I pray people can be a good team on these kind of situations and continue being truly helpful and, empathetic with each other whenever it's possible, or reasonable. Since we're all basically the same thing with a lot of emotions and thoughts of our own. If we ever cross roads somehow again, I hope I'd be a open-minded person and listener of you too ed: Plus I hope you have a good day/night or week or whatever you'll have!🙏😌 lol
Well, it depends on the type of game, I had a couple of games in my days as a 16 bits Sega kid with black characters : Adam in streets of rage 1, Sammy in its sequel, the black guy from forgotten world, Jax from mortal combat, balrog from Street fighter II and given I had at most 10 games in my collection, the rest was either mascotts (sonic and such), sports and racing games or ninjas (shinobi what a great game) few characters come to mind because few characters manage to capture the zeitgeist : FF7 managed to capture the people's imagination and what a shock everybody remember the characters and it might be the only black guy people could site on PSOne with Tekken characters that also manage to arrive at the right time. If you think about it almost every game non story driven have a black version of the default protagonist : Jet set Radio, bust a Groove, Crazy Taxi, Any figthing game. The problem is limited to story driven games where japanese people make the most memorable characters (and in japan they have 1% of foreigners including whites). Western studio just don't make interesting characters in my mind : white military-like short hair dudes, but whatever the skin they always go with characters that are bland and somewhat of jackasses rebel attitude exuding from their skin, aside from lara croft, (and even she is kinda bland if you don't count her sex appeal) what European / American compelling character comes to mind (not including comic books characters?), personnaly I have a harder time finding a character I'd like to cosplay as, choosing a character from westerns games. My point in one sentence : impacting the collective mind is nearly impossible and I think western studio are really bad at it, unless they have billions of budget and make GTA or overwatch
i have always thought about how there are literally no character traits, or any character that resembles Hispanic people, mainly guys, i wanna create a character that looks slightly like me with a light brown skin, dark hair and it looking good, but the only game i have played that gave me that kind of customization was excom. I know i will never see latin Americans represented in any asian games like let's say open world or any other kind of games because they don't care, but it would be nice to see representation that wasn't just Mexicans tacos and burritos, where is half the continent?
Yes I agree, I'm actually in the lighter complexion but that doesn't change that I'm still latina. Honestly, the only Hispanic video game characters that I know of are three from lethal league blaze ^^;;
@Wonderz I'm hispanic. I've literally played every game from Skyrim to GTA, Sims, and even WoW. I can literally make a character that looks like me, everytime. Edit and no, I'm not from Mexico or Spain. Cope
@@Deadassbruhfrfr cool but as u should know all latinos does not look the same xd im latino too is cool u dont have that issue but that doesnt mean other latinos dont i do and its irritating not to fine a nice curly hairstyle that reasembles my fking hair that are not like 2 options that are not even close
have you played with CK3's ultrarealistic character customizer (well only the face because in the game your body is barely seen, also some guy who looked hispanic like you described made his exact character in it)
OH MAH LORD OKAY SO Heroes of the Storm's character roster is made up of all the Blizzard games (originally Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, Overwatch added later), and I remember when they added their first Black female character in 2019. She had to be INVENTED SPECIFICALLY for the game. They did not have a Black female character to add from any of their existing franchises - not the demon war one, not the space war one, not the magic war one - so they had to invent one. What an incredible moment to summarize the history of game development.
that is in fact not true there is the Admiral from Wow the 4 story important named Paladins 6 separate Pirates two Priests 2 Rogues 7 Dragons and about 20 Warriors thank you for proving you dont know what you are talking about and then in SC we have about 3 and Diablo we have an entire NATION and the Witch Doctor of Hots is a Black man from Diablo 3 and he is one of their Beta characters stop being a racists
@@viktorgabriel2554said without a drop of punctuation. Seriously if you're going to post a counter argument, make it readable. I'm not sure if you're making a point or having a seizure. If you have a valid counter argument, please phrase it like you are having a conversation, not an exorcism. Also do you really want to call the witch doctor out as positive? One of the more crude racial stereotypes, we are using that?
@@viktorgabriel2554 Notice they said black FEMALE character, and it would have to be an important enough named character to actually make sense for a crossover. Come on bro if you're going to excuse racism you might want to try being at least marginally comprehensible first
If you think black people lack options, imagine being Native American lol But ya on a serious note as an ethno-historian this is mostly well constructed for a non-academic essay. You also did a good job picking up on the coded racism included with some of the criticism of inclusion in media.
I don’t understand how people can get upset about their being “too many” black people in games while also saying “if they’re well-written characters their race shouldn’t matter”. It’s not propaganda if it’s just reflecting reality.
If a game is pushed as being historically accurate and it's set in or based off an area that almost exclusively has one race at the time people will be upset if said race isn't represented accurately.
@@giovanni6643 agreed. If the game is set in 1400s Scotland, I don't expect to see any black people. However, if a game is set in modern day New York, I expect some diversity.
In that case wouldn't the argument be something like "The racial depictions of characters aren't historically accurate" rather than "there's too many black people" The way someone responds to something is very telling.
Thank you SO MUCH for making this video. As a person of colour, I grew up around my giant Indian extended family, so like half the people I saw during the first 5 years were also Indian. After that, as I grew up in England and was exposed to more and more media (which created my passion for video games), I was mostly just confused as to where the black people were. I obviously later realised what you have brought up in this video, but this topic has always been really big for me, being black and a video game lover. The thing that really gets me is when there isn’t exactly a character creator, but face presets which you can change hair/eyes and stuff like that. I just started playing Outriders, and there was one skin tone that fit me, but then the face shape was all wrong, and there wasn’t a single hairstyle that would fit my character.
Late to the party but I genuinely love Barret from the OG. Yes he definitely comes off as stereotypical, but his love for Marlene was really moving for me. His interaction with Dyne was great, learning more about Barret at all was great to me. The fact that his growth as a character was kind of the opposite of a traditional shonen protagonist was great, he quickly realizes that his goals are idealistic at best and unattainable realistically, so he sets his goal on the more realistic idea of "If I can make this a better, safer place for Marlene, then I've done my job as a person, and as a father" and I genuinely love that.
I play a lot of Smash and I’ve thought of this exact thing before! It is strange that media has been so slow to adapt and I think you bring up some really good points.
From a young age I always wondered why so many of my games never contained people that looked like my friends. I hope things continue to get better and better and we’ll get more black leading games/characters!
@@missingdiamond6676 I’d say it’s a lack of understanding, lack of care, and it wouldn’t shock me if racism was involved. But I really don’t know, there’s a lot of factors. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that know better than I do.
I think while some of it is a bit of racism, a lot of big international games come from Japan, which is very homogenous. Korea is another good example of a homogenous country. As a result, they hardly have anyone who’s POC. A lot of it stems from simply never considering it because their diversity is wildly different from say the USA’s diversity. It is becoming more and more common for POC characters and customizations to be included as time goes on, and hopefully will be standard soon. As for games made in the west, I don’t play very many of them that haven’t included those options. I don’t opt for them because they don’t look like me, but it seems to be more common over here. Granted, I wouldn’t consider one black character in a cast of two dozen white ones to be adequate.
I don't care if I don't look asain enough to play Asain Games with asain characters. I PLAY THEM TO HAVE FUN. And if the only purpose you're looking for characters with the same skin tone as you and your friends but not the character themselves. Then what's the point?
Honestly, despite being filled with jokes, this is one of the most mature discussions I've seen on race in games, most of the time it's just people seeing racism that isn't there for woke points on twitter, or them just plainly being racist themselves, my hat is off to you Funny Astronaut Man.
Um, as a black person I've seen these same arguments being made for years and people trashing them as "toxic woke culture". This is not a new topic, it's maybe we are often more willing to listen, pay attention and empathise when it's someone we "know" explaining it. It's been some years that I've learned to truly listen to whoever is trying to make an important point and then rebuttal, if necessary.
The only reason I can see why they wouldnt, is that then they would be pressured into customizing characters for every race, which would then either lead to less immersion, or getting blamed for prioritizing one race over another.
That's really interesting. I very genuinely did not realize that the lack of hair customization bothered the black community so much to the point of claiming that the characters were not black despite being a dark skin tone. It seems like a very easy fix though and I wonder if the problem is a lack of awareness. I personally had no idea, and I imagine many non black people also had no idea. It seems possible to me that the video game creators thought that they were giving black people the option to be themselves with their character creators and simply did not realize that hair is just as important as skin tone when it comes to identifying as yourself.
Apparently until "recently" (I mean like this last decade) black-people hair is rather hard to model. I remember a particular character that had a head of black-person curls in a Gamecube game I literally remember nothing else about and I only remember that it looks like a rats nest of razorwire spraypainted brown rather than hair, just _atrociously_ modeled, but that game has to be 20+ years old now. Nowadays, there is no excuse, and frankly I want to see those styles available! Variety is the spice of life!
Black just complain for preference treating that all, you will never satisfy it. Big ego but they will not develop any game for themselves. They just demands and do nothing. Others white, Japanese and EU need to do games for them.
Hell I'm black myself and out of the games I've played with character customization in them those being Skyrim, Splatoon and almost every Pokémon game after X and Y hair options never really bothered me personally. I guess it depends on the game your playing and the person in question. But I don't think this is something every black person that plays video games has a problem with.
Oh, I love this video so much! It perfectly encapsulates the lack of Black representation in video games while simultaneously shattering every single bad faith argument I've seen against them. My personal favorite was at 11:16, where you pointed out the bad faith argument that I hate the MOST where white people would pretend that representation doesn't matter while ignoring the fact that they can say that so comfortably due to them being represented in the vast majority of media. Plus, the point made at 12:01 was the cherry on top of how whenever there is non-white presentation, it is almost met with outcries of "Forced Diversity!", as if the presence of a Black person somehow means the absence of a white person. ...With that said, it's a shame that a lot of the new comments don't even watch the video and are immediately hostile for no real reason.
I'm not black, but as an artist, this has always been weird to me. Different races give SOOOO much variation to character design and give so many more opportunities for unique designs!! Like, its so much more fun? This just makes me think of games like Genshin Impact, where you have hundreds of characters but they all start to blend together at some point because they're all average attractive tall skinny white person. PLUS, THE WHOLE POINT OF THAT GAME IS TO EXPLORE DIFFERENT CULTURES??
@@xplodingkatz you can only get so much variation out of 5 default character models that all use the same skin tone, art style and and generally cluttered clothing hahah
My two cents is, video game writing hasnt been great in awhile except for a few exceptions. Personally i dont care about my race being represented, because the writers have shown me time and time again they cannot get white or black people right. If its a white character , gotta play it safe guns and family, if its a black character gotta make the whole game some allegory to Roots or some social commentary. Here's an idea , real shocker , just make a game with better writing where the content of the character is good or evil or whatever. Also real talk black people in media typically lean hard into race being the for front of our "entertainment experience" because the well of creativity is so damn shallow for so much money. Lee from the walking dead is a good character because his race didnt matter. Lee had a bad fucking day, and on top of that experienced shitty GA traffic all while a zombie outbreak was going on. That spoke to me more than anything .
Unfortunately, a lot of people in the online black community these days tend to be the ones demanding that all black characters portray "the black experience", regardless of the context of the fictional world (RIP Ekko from LoL). You know the ones, the "everything is political" types.
You know, this was something I've thought a lot about, and I think the one thing worse the no representation of minorities in media, is poor representation. I think you hit the nail on the head, just make the main character black and then it doesn't have to be focused on any "socio-political" mantra that might come from it. I simply wonder how possible that is? It's like any moment the focus turns to a minority character, eastern games makes the most stereotypical form of it, and then western games turns it into a political narrative. And not just games, but all media. A great quote I heard about Superman. Superman is hard to write about because he doesn't really have any character flaws. Because of that he is hard to be relatable too. But, the quote, "Superman doesn't have to be relatable, he just has to be inspiring." And I think if the media focused more on inspiring others to simply be good people despite our circumstances, instead of trying force concepts that attempt to help others understand perspectives, it would bridge the gaps much more effectively. I guess a couple of shows that come to mind are "Static Shock" and "Hey Arnold"
Any representation is better than none, because not only does the presence of characters rather than the absence open conversations, but minority communities are capable of latching onto any character regardless of “stereotypes”, because stereotypes hold true for at least somebody.
Fully agree. Instead of trying to write a black character, or gay character, or female character, just write a good character that happens to be any of those things.
@@kassidyryzer2909 huh? But the thing is, people would have a problem once they read about a gay character that wants to stop conversion therapy bcs... Well, it's too political. All of this "just make a character that happens to be gay" sounds like a good advice on a surface level and well intended. But the more I saw people use it, the meaning somehow changes to "I'm okay with gay characters as long as you don't talk about the systemic oppression against gay people" Okay like- maybe some of them need to realize that sometimes our issues/stories are closely tied to our identities.
My lineage is Scottish and Norwegian. Trying to make myself in games is beyond difficult. My particular hair style with curls is only found in the female hairstyles. If I can even find it, the next hurdle is beards. They'll give me everything from a soul patch to mutton chops, but a nice, full beard is actually pretty rare in games, usually it's just a dusting across the face. On the rare occasion all these are represented, my character comes out looking like a romance novel protagonist instead of me. I often joke that my self insert gets a different name because it's the version of me that can't find the "ugly" slider in the character creator. Closest I've ever found is this UA-cam PFP and even still... And yeah, we can't even find our own in videogames without everyone looking like they came out of the Vikings series on netflix. You know what I mean. Sides of the head are shaved, beard has a single braid, and they're dual wielding fantasy axes every time. It was bad enough back when it was all horned helmets and swedish meatballs but this... I can't say it's much better. Good music tho. And when you brought up the western studios, understand us white people feel it, too. That's not even white people getting represented. You're right, that's just Bruce Beefslab starring in every game, usually as a Jesus allegory with the initials of JC. Even white people can't be unique in a western game. Look at that, all face dustings. No hair, no beard, just the same Marine we've been playing as since Wolfenstein. So you're definitely on to something about this, but, from my white perspective, it's because most of our favorite games come from Japan, so everything isn't even necessarily white characters but Japanese characters or a Japanese interpretation of Americans, which means that 99.9% of playable characters look like some kind of K-Pop star. Even Link, based on the legend of King Arthur is very dainty and delicate looking with no facial hair. Their most gruff looking westerner is Snake. But Arthur was supposedly welsh with quite a hefty beard. There's the king of Hyrule... but he only has a big beard because he's old man santa with a crown. So, even though we come from different camps of representation, just know that you're heard and I'm pretty sure all of us who want to represent ourselves in games have a similar story. Personally, I wish we could get more games about Mace Windu, Afro Samurai and Blade, but instead we get Far Cry 6 playing as Saturday morning cartoon protagonists to save the world from your former college professor with the help of his son, Joseph Gribble from King of the Hill.
It's simple: if we (black people) want more representation in video games, then we have to make some and play the games these characters are in. Would it be nice for European and asian developers to add more black people to their games? Sure. But I don't think it's wise to rely on this form of "welfare of representation", banking on the solidarity from other races to "give" us a seat at the table. If we go that route, we won't gain any respect because "they" won't see us as peers, and all of the power is in their hands, allowing them to dictate what form that representation takes. The irony about all the talks concerning representation is that it would also apply to Asians and whites. if there's something about humans that just NEEDS to represent themselves racially in everything in order to identify with it or whathave you, then clearly that would impact white people and Asian people, which would cause these creators to prefer their own race when they create these works of fiction, ergo its foolish to expect them to rise above their own human qualities and NOT do that, for the sake of satisfying that same biological itch in another ethnicity.
THANK YOU! George RR Martin put it best. when asked why most of his characters are white, he simply replied that it's because he's white. he wasn't being racist, but he admitted his works are obviously gonna focus on European oriented fantasy. he said as people get older and more POC make their own works, you'll see a lot more representation. personally I think Africa is too underlooked in civilizations and Afrocentrists try to only use Egypt and call it all black rather than acknowledging the great diversity within Egypt. I'd love to see a fantasy world similar to the Kush, Mali, Axum, etc.
I kinda agree with most of this, except you can have more creators of more diverse groups *and* also demand it from other creators, let's say European or Japanese. Of course it's not a must for them and not every game is meant to be super internal but a clear example would be a character creator that lets you pick tons but it doesn't cover everything. That's a great opportunity to tell the developers to care just a bit more.
yea i can agree w/ what you're saying. but also, it's just not a very hard thing to do either. Pokemon has been doing if effortlessly across all their forms of media for a while now. And to play devils advocate a bit, japanese media seems very open to representing europe, white ppl, and medieval settings in their fantasy. So I don't buy that they are simply creating characters w/ only ppl who look like them.
I like that I watch this video and of course the first thing I see from someone, who I assume is black, goes “If we want to see change, we should make the change and expect no one else to do it for us.” Clearly, the lessons learned from Malcom and Garvey’s movements have not be learned. It is not as simple as “more black businesses = better black representation”, as systematically these things won’t have an impact. To do anything, you need to learn it. The tools to learn it may not be accessible to you. And if they are, the means to distribute may be inaccessible. The situation is so much more nuance than “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” We are a social people. It make sense we tried to connect to each other and want to se ourselves in each other and work. Tl;dr There are potentially thousands of black works from black authors about black fantasies and there’s reasons why they go overlooked.
I'm so mad, I wrote out so many paragraphs about my opinions on race in gaming, general media, shitty talking points from capital G Gamers, etc and I looked at the emojis I could use and then UA-cam just deleted my entire comment draft. But anyway, this was a very informative and entertaining video (as I've come to expect as a long-time(ish) viewer) and I hope that this comment contributes somewhat to keeping the comments section the opposite of a klan meeting.
The next time you want to make a *long* comment, first write it down on a notepad or microsoft word like program to avoid these disgraces, then copy and paste it on youtube.
I remember an in depth explanation that came out in the early 2000s. The dev was asked why all their characters were white guys with short hair. Their explanation was that they didn’t have the processing power to animate hair in 3D yet, and I think they didn’t have the pixel definition for black characters, the details became too hard to see on the screen. That being said, my memory on the topic is fuzzy, but they said that more diversity would appear once the technology allowed for it, and they needed a few years to figure out the tech and new software.
I like that you explored the ideas of migration, and integration. I hadn’t heard anyone else consider those before. The only thing that bugs me with “diversity” is the fact that it’s sometimes just randomly brought in rather than thoroughly explored like in your example for fire emblem. Being able to get another perspective on the story through an outsider point of view is really interesting. I hope there are more varieties of characters in media going forward but I also hope they are allowed their own unique settings and stories.
Black History Month (in America at least) should be considered as another part of American history, since many Black Americans of the past have contributed to America's history, thus they should be treated as another vital part of it.
Extremely well put together points on this. Disability also tends to get underrepresented or characters whose “quirk” or unique thing is their disability. And for all the bad faith arguments that visible disabilities wouldn’t exist in fantasy stories because healing magic exists (there were people legitimately arguing that a basic cure wounds in dnd could fix any issue that might require someone to use a wheelchair, because they’ve apparently never read the spell descriptions to learn that regrowing a lost limb is ridiculously high level magic that’s not available to the vast majority of people) those stories almost never seem to actually take a moment to explore the way something like healing magic effects the way disability can be treated or can’t be treated. Hell recently I saw someone try to argue evolution as to why it doesn’t make sense for Warhammer 40k to have black characters from a perpetually cold and frozen planet. This is fiction where we make up the rules, we’re already suspending our disbelief to accept the fungus orks who believe things into existence and that a galaxy spanning civilisation has made no technological advancements in 10,000 years, since when did we care about realism
This video was great and really gets at a lot of the frustration I have for the video game industry! However when you brought up images from triangle strategy I immediately lost focus and kept thinking about the fact they really named a war salt-iron
I think it can't be stated enough of how much I just want new characters instead of existing ones turning black like you said (unless there's a good story to by them being another race) but it's kind of funny about people not wanting Idris Elba to play James Bond as if he isn't a Different person in every iteration.
Definitely a good way of looking at it. Changing established characters is pretty lazy (Although don’t get me wrong, I prefer “Mr. Samuel L. Jackson himself” as Nick Fury rather than the original iteration. I’m saying your perspective is good because you’re not being aggressively polar with judgement, and a lot of people nowadays are too absolutist with their opinions.
From wikipedia "Portrayal of James Bond in Film": "Despite their depicting the same character, there have been notable differences among the portrayals." Just because different actors played him over the years doesn't mean that James Bonds is a different character each time. He's the same person. "James Bond" is his actual name, "Andrew Bond" is his father's name. So it makes sense that people don't want him to be suddenly made black for the sake of brownie points and studios being too lazy to make an original black character.
That's because race swapping does more than just swapping one white dude to another. With them u can squint and say "it's the same dude, but just a different version". Race/sex swaps introduces a whole bunch of "background" implications along with it, so it's more difficult to apply suspension of disbelief.
@@akselandor8975 but when you do that you may be able to do something different and unique that maybe the rest of the franchise hasn’t. But yes it is really hard to implement in a game since you have to change pretty much EVERYTHING.
Loved the video, great points and agree on all of them. Just a little sidenote for the whitewashed Nessa art for anyone that didn't know, it was mostly made by foreign asian artists. One Japanese artist made art of Nessa with a bright pastel color palette that made her look lighter skinned and people attacked them calling the artist racist. They got so upset they almost quit art so other Asian artists decided to troll people by drawing her purposefully very white as if to say "Oh you thought that was whitewashed? I'll show you whitewashed" and spilled over to the west causing the actually racist people to draw art like her as a monkey. Overall a bad time, no winners only losers.
*"Overall a bad time, no winners only losers."* ------------------------------ That's how it tends to go when everyone's being a reactionary instead of holding on to some sort of principles.
I can't say nuthin about the black experience, but as an asian who's always the assassin rogue ninja character or some samurai guy, it does get annoying as hell.
You would think there would be more east Asian characters represented as sailors or ship's captains especially because of Japan but I guess there just aren't enough games about boats that aren't about European pirates
i'd love to say 'theres always anime games' but its not like all asians are japanese. Naver should start funding game development Korean comics can have games like anime does
Games often reflect what’s the norm to see in the country they’re made, games from Japan tend to be homogenous, chances are they don’t think so much about race at all which is why variety is rarer, games in the US have more variety because it reflects what their society has, i don’t see anything special here. Imagine if say Nigeria made a game and every character is black, i wouldn’t expect a “why no white people?” question to pop up.
Sadly the only game series that seems to pass the "black people test" is the elder scrolls games, since they have an entire black race of people on Tamriel with lore and depth to back up their presence so they're not just shoe-horned in like so much modern fantasy does. Seriously, the Redguards, having migrated from the sunken continent of Yakuda, with a culture if mercantilism and swordsmanship. They completely belong in the setting and cause zero controversy yet at the same time fully cover the bases for representation. What is shit is that they're the only examples of this in modern fantasy and gaming! I mean seriously! The fuck!?
I agree about the Redguards being cool, but how can a person of any race ever be considered "shoe-horned" into fantasy? The whole point of fantasy is that it's another world, so there's absolutely no requirement for it to demographically align with our world in the slightest. You can make the racial/intelligent species composition of a fantasy world anything you want.
The only MMO that I've been able to make a character that actually looks like man with dreadlocks. Is guild wars. And even then there was a convenient based off Africa (Elona) and there were ton of just black characters the existed in both guild wars 1 and Guild wars 2 that We're just people and not sterotypes.
That's just the cliche in fantasy, you always have the main continent and then there is always the "lands beyond the mountains" or something like that where black people live and probably is going to be a tribe of warriors of some kind
In college I studied game art and I was trying to make a 3D model of my best friend at the time who’s black and the sheer lack of resources about how to properly model black people hair was absolutely absurd.
@@SamuraiiJakk Yeah, natural straight hair just follows the shape of the head, curvy hair goes everywhere, hard to depict. wtf is wrong with me? Well, I'm not virtue signalling, like you. Natural black hair is a mess, hard to modell, this is one reason not to use it, 2nd reason, esthetics. You're welcome.
@@Adrian-pp6qy that’s why often times you can use actual references and techniques, most artists will often times keep finding a way to do it. Just.. idk think ? Not trying isn’t going to get you anywhere, especially since as an artist you must really push your self to the limits. You can also use reference of people with 4c hair
@@Adrian-pp6qy plus in the end it’ll feel great and actually builds you as an artist as to what you can do, pretty much opening you up to a wider range of ability
I loved this video!! I just wish he would have mentioned the moors in Europe as a counterpoint to people saying there were no black people in medieval Europe
Yeah but there were VERY few of them. And they were mostly merchants and ambassadors. Having half or even a 3rd of the population be black in a medieval setting makes no sense. Just like there are white people in Africa but you didn't see any in Wakanda.
@@majesticgothitelle1802 The moor is African.... Bedouin(arabs) ruled them for centuries sure but moors are african. I think you mean they are light skinned and some of them look european as opposed to black. Moors can be either dark skinned, brown, or light skinned depending on the region. You really need to visit northern africa and observe the diversity there. In the middle ages, they lived all throughout modern day spain, sicily, and malta.
14:48 I was drinking water...and nearly lost a laptop today 💀 I'd love to see a part 2 of this featuring the other topics worthy of discussion! Starting with the politics in the mirror
I would like to see more games with non-stereotype black people in them as main characters. Hopefully this trend continues where a character can be a character, without any sort of perceived association with stereotypes. I had a lot of fun with both Subnautica games, and the Pokémon games have made great progress thus far.
Most video games are from Japan. In order for this to happen Japan has to be exposed to more POC within their country. You can’t make what you don’t know
Totally on board with what youre saying. Really strong arguments tbh. When you asked for names of black characters i thought… barret ff7 and…. Sports games. And then when you brought up LOTR trade it totally clicked man. Where the dark elves at? Where the representation for my mans at? Great vid 11/10
PEOPLE, I BEG OF YOU!
PLEASE ACTUALLY WATCH THE VIDEO BEFORE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF IN THE COMMENTS SECTION!!
My goal for the rest of the year is going to be to get better at Green Screening lol
Anyways, if you enjoyed the video, don't forget to SUBSCRIBE!!
One thing this video didn't have time to talk about is that representation is more than just skin deep.
It would be marvelous to see more uniquely Black Stories told in big budget video games, however I'm not sure that, at time of writing, the current game industry is necessarily best equipped to handle that weight. Hopefully someday though.
Also a lot of what I say in video is applicable to the representation (or lack thereof) of other minorities too, not just Black People.
Good video👍, I'm sorry for you having had bad neighbors in the past, they sound like A S S
Well what about tf2s demoman?
I liked the video and made me realize we do need more diversity but not forced in cuz that’s what corporate wants.
We need to find that balance of “why are there so many straight white guys?” And “why is there 1 not straight white guy that was forced in here cuz of corporate.”
Honestly, just have an AI that randomly generates the models and characters. Same build and body (aside from gender) but just randomly made characters and same animations that were already included.
So you admit you don't play any fighting games? There are plenty of black characters in fighting games. Sports games too for that matter. Otherwise this just sounds like more Nintendo bashing; it's not Nintendo's job to mandate diversity ahead of creativity in their games.
If you're so passionate about more black characters in those style of games, learn how to build your own games or form a team with other people so you can make your own. Stop being dependent on other people for your desired representation, and represent yourself. Otherwise you're never going to get what you actually want; this should be common sense.
@@samalton5837 I literally talk about sports games at 4:45 and fighting games at 5:07.
Please watch the entire video BEFORE commenting in the future.
I love this video. Personally, lack of hair options bother me the most. Not having black characters is one thing but giving me a character creator and not allowing me to be black is wild
Duuuude ifkr it's always bothered me too, just lemme be myself in a character creator y'know what I mean 😔
As a person who plays NBA 2k this has never been a problem but for every other game yeah 😭
I think what's bothersome about that over just not having black characters is the promise of "make your own character. You can be yourself!" and literally not being able to create yourself is just the biggest fuck you to the player.
The game essentially says "oh not even as a custom character do we think you're worth being allowed in this game." It's ridiculous.
Tru like how you make a bunch of models for hair n shit but can’t add a feature to change the skin color
Cough…Elden Ring…..Cough
The hairstyle thing hit the closest to home for me. I'm only half black, and I'm lighter skinned, so the curly hair is kind of my only indicator. I don't always try to make myself in games, but when I do its irritating
same brother, but im full black, my mom straight up ran out of ink and all i got is my black curly hair 😂
@@RESURGAM. same
it's impossible for me to make a mii
yeah im white but the traditionally black styles usually looks so damn good when done right too.
such a damn shame how few there are
me too
but I am black tho
"As a life long black person." Omg dude that had me rolling.
if he believes strong enough, everything is possible!
dont give up, remember mj !
😐
Wishing him quick recovery ❤
@@watchfaren’t you a ray of sunshine
Technically i am not a life long lightskin... i was born whiter than light, but now i am a lightskin (cuz my dad black and momma white)
As the palest white guy often mistaken for a vampire, I wholeheartedly support the sentiment of your video. You are not asking for much and not even being at all unreasonable or anti-immersion.
The people who disliked this video either didn't watch the whole video or hella racist.
Everytime the same argument : racist.
I think today, people a proud to be racist...
Because it's just sence in reality.
@@MrXreuf sense*
Learn to spell bigot.
And no, no it does not.
Tribalism is what separates us, why we (humanity) can't achieve seemingly easy goals.
And yes, racists are proud, they are proud of a color they were born with and did absolutely nothing to achieve.
@@MrXreuf what the fuck, this is exactly why we need to move anyway and show that racism is so fucked up. Aw yes, I hate you because you're not me. Please spend your time doing something worthwhile.
@@MrXreuf what?
Someone could’ve disliked the video just from viewing the music/voice/editing/other things as aesthetically displeasing.
Maybe the colors just don’t work well enough together for some rare person.
I propose an extra clause for the black-del test. So hear me out:
The black characters shouldn't immediately die
Fair
And shouldn't be stereotypes
nor kill
Nah, if I was developing a game, I would want to have the option at least to have any character be killed early, no matter what the skin color. Having black characters specifically excluded from that feels unnecessarily restrictive.
oH mY gOd HoW dArE yOu BrInG uP sOmEtHiNg sO UNREALISTIC????!!! (sarcastic)
Customization is always a struggle.
I always go “o wow I can finally make a character that looks like me”
*looks at hair options
“Um ok I guess I’ll be a black guy with a perm”
Hahahaha fr
Lol or just be bald. That’s every male black character I’ve made in a FromSoftware game
Why would you want a character that looks like you anyway? Go for fantasy, not realism.
I just go for the bald look everytime I stumble across that situation.
@@mjt1517 it's still fantasy. Lots of ppl like to see themselves in different settings. It doesn't take anything away from the game
I've noticed character creator hair options aren't great from a gender-perspective, either. With Japanese games in particular, making a male character gives you about 1/3rd the options of female characters, just in general, and there's always a few that just look silly and unappealing. And most games gender-lock the hairstyles, so it's even more limiting.
Same with typically afro-centric hair. Very few games will allow you to have course hair, an afro, or anything afro-centric. So you got dark skinned characters with straight hair, which i feel like doesn't feel like black representation.
At last, the japanese games have better options, than the western.
I hate most hair stils in the western games, because, they didnt even come near to my wish for hair. And that is simply, straight, flatt hair, without any extra and a pony.
How are the hairs of most western games?
Nearly all of them has free foreheads. Or are to short. Dont have simply semi long hairs. Or, have some extra or fancy things in the hairs.
ya but like, a man with some haircut thats meant to go on a girl is throw up worthy
cough cough* man bun
That's one of the reason Miis are/were so cool, you had no limitations based on genders.
@@aliceslab I don't know, some guys make the most incredibly femme styles work, though not everyone has the same tastes. Vomit-inducing is kind of a worrying reaction though. You might want to stop and examine why a dude with his hair in a bun bothers you to the point of illness. Sounds like a symptom of possible fear of people who defy gender norms or your expectations. Lots of people take the sight of people subverting gender expectations as a direct assault on their personal masculinity/femininity, which is unfortunate.
My girlfriend spent literally 40 minutes trying to make a black character in Bloodborne. We literally had to look up a tutorial😐😐
Only 40 minutes? Them's rookie numbers.
Fromsoftware's character creation is another whole can of worms, but yeah, representation on any of their games is a problem even nowadays
Thats just fromsoct character creator lol. Took me 3 hours to make a character
@@steveeev Yeah, especially if you're a human being. However, if you're a sentient potato, you're in luck, From is first class in spud support.
@@manlikemodie3206 Only 3 hours? What are you, some kinda WR speedrunner?
My problem goes like: imagine being part of a cultural minority and whenever your culture appears in any media it's nearly always played as a joke or a gag character lol
The pain
Exactly. Asians get it the worst.
And when you dare to have your own character in a white persons show, suddenly you’re the bad guy….
The Star Wars fans proved this again….
@Seggs Master Oh great, more racist bullshit….
What minority group are you from?
As an indian guy that is almost never represented in any media as anything other than a guy wearing a turban or doing yoga and breathing fire or something, I relate to this video
I’m an autistic guy (white in the US if that gives any context) and one of my best childhood friends was also autistic and she was half Indian and half British and we easily bonded over our special interest in Pokémon and often joked about there being no Indian characters. Then sword and shield came around, based on a place with a pretty substantial Indian population (Great Britain) and we got multiple that are probably meant to be Indian. (It’s technically unclear cause it’s Pokémon but still) not just that, but your main rival and his brother who is the champion/strongest trainer of the region, and other characters. She really enjoyed getting to see her fairly unknown culture (at least where we live) get shown off so openly in the largest franchise in the world.
Honestly yeah. And as an Indian woman.. I thought I’d probably see my own death before I’d see a protagonist who’s a woman with skin color darker than beige. Then came Raji. The game itself was okay but I enjoyed the heck out of it because I am badly starved for some representation.
There's over a billion people in India.
Game engines and tools are free and more powerful than ever, and you can learn enough just with free youtube tutorials and there's thousands of super cheap learning courses online.
Out of those over a billion people, where are the indian game devs?
An interesting thing in anime is that dark skinned characters in Japanese settings usually are tanned Japanese people, Okinawa people, Indians and other South East Asian people because those are the more common dark skinned people in Japan. In Shokugeki no Souma we have two dark skinned characters among the important characters, one is a tanned Japanese girl and the other in an Indian boy.
^
What the hell is that guy talking about? 💀
a point about hair, ive always found it interesting how yes there seem to be a lack of black hairstyles however as a white person with curly hair it has even been hard to find a hairstyle similar to mine when making a character, sometimes (cough cough mii maker) the only non straight hairstyles they have are just afro and dreds. i will agree that this issue mainly affects the black community but i do think that it isnt intentionally racist and often games just cater to 'straight hair as opposed to white people hair (which are often the same thing but u get what im saying)
just because something isn't intentionally racist doesn't mean the outcome isn't racist
@@FrogmanhatesQibli i agree but thats not my point
Us meditterenean whites with curls can't find hair options man it's annoying
bro i was LOOKING for this comment. like curly white hair rep isn’t as bad as african hair but man it’s like 1 step above. they always got like one jewfro and that’s it.
Made me realise a lot of things I’ve never considered. Especially the hairstyle thing I was like “oh fuck he’s right”
I don’t think i want goomba hair cut
@@Meatslap yeah, we need better hair than gumbas
Does the hairstyle part matter realy i undestand the rest but i don't think hairstyles are a big deal or a deal at all .
yeah a lot of things, even if it pertains to the group we are in are kinda missed because we are conditioned to think a certain way. I always try to go out of these ways of thinking, but yeah sometimes it's like.... my brain cannot handle this. My life is already full of bs and now I'm learning there is MORE injustice in my life? IDK we the people are just... tired. But compared to other things in this world that REALLY need to be fixed... this one is a quick fix... just imo.
yes it does matter 💀@@Adam-wg2rf
It’s a stretch but the homie Ganon counts in my heart as a brotha
And the way he's always a villain is lowkey messed up.
(They even try and give him a sympathetic portrayal in Wind Waker, but Link doesn't really do anything new with that info).
Well in ocarina of time he is just a male gerudo turned evil so, yeah he black
Arguably the most popular Ganon (from OoT etc) is Gerudo Ganondorf, and Captain Astronaut as do many others also consider the Gerudo from BoTW black. So you can justify Ganondorf being black if you think the Gerudo are black, right?
@@pablitotorres8254 I think the demise curse helps explain things to a degree, but like in Windwaker he mentions that his region was barren and in need of resources. I also think Hyrule's royal family at the time wasn't really willing to help in that regard (not unlike our own geopolitics and race).
I'm just hoping that curse gets yeeted in botw2 and homie ganon gets a fair chance at being his own person.
Lol he's not black. He's comes off as middle eastern.
“I’m a black, Scottish, cyclops. They got more feckin’ sea monsters in Loch Ness than they do the likes of me”
-Tavish Degroot, sometime in the 60’s
**Scottish Music Starts Playing**
Most game companies: nooo that would be racist
Valve: Imagine caring
Got to love the demoman
wooooooo a character that represents TWO minorities, is it even allowed ?
@@devforfun5618 Yes, finally some cyclops representation! Go poseidon!
Social Experiment - Make a Souls-like game featuring a silent, male main character that wears full-body knight armor (Hidden face, hidden body, hidden voice, hidden everything basically).
However, add an equippable chest plate near the end of the game that has exposed biceps that reveals the character is black.
See what happens.
I really wanna see what happens
"HOW DARE THEY BRING POLITICS INTO MY GAME ABOUT
war."
Well to be honest we want to have fun playing war shooter games not bring real life into it and make it all depressing
@@lordbeerus5990 i get your point but war is literally politics
@@chao3948 yeah technically your right especially if its historically accurate or has a historical backing to it but most war games tends to focus more on the events that take place in the game. Not to mention theres also fictional war/shooter games like killzone, gears of war, lost planet, (maybe metal gear solid) etc
@ its high skill trolling
@@dexulescu i actually agree with everything except that video games shouldn't be political. which now that i think about it, is probably imposible
Honestly, out of all the mainstream games, I can really appreciate Pokémon for going the extra mile.
Agree but just want to point out that the sword and shield "black charcters" are actually "brown"(british-indian or Indian immigrants)
Edit:- yea I meant to write to be of the respected country's pkmn works counterpart
They go the extra mile of adding things no one cares about but won't go the extra mile in making a better game. Arceus doesn't even have followers.
Agreed.
@@Valstrax420 Yeah their work and creativity is becoming half assed lol. Plus they are completely running out of ideas for Pokémon too lol. Literally repeating the designs of previous Pokémons once again now. Plus their main series games have become completely repetitive and it's almost becoming 30 years of doing it. But oh well... everyone buys it either way because it's Pokémon. So they have nothing to lose and the undefeated have nothing to learn either.
TFW the extra mile has been in play since the beginning of the franchise but was regulated to maybe only two named characters.
LET’S GO!! Love your content, Captain. This is such a good, clear, and concise video-you did such a good job! As a fiction author I feel like you encapsulated a lot of the issues that show up not only in games but books and other media. 👍❤️
17:03 As witcher fan, I'm just gonna say that witcher world was not suppose to be like that. The showrunner of the show just did't give a shit about anything in it, including worldbuilding, so she just made it as present america, just in fantasy setting.
yeah i agree. i dont think inserting random ethnicities into pre-existing literary works as an afterthought is the correct way to achieve diversity within media because it harms the authenticity of the source material, which can be particularly off-putting and borderline insulting for people originating from the culture which the literary work takes inspiration from (for the witcher, this would be polish mythology).
really, what is needed are stories where diversity is built into the foundation (league of legends, baldurs gate, etc), or stories that are specifically focused on portraying the culture of other ethnicities. throwing random ethnicities into modern works is such a sloppy and short-sighted way to appease people and doesnt even attack the root of the problem, which is a fair and varied amount of cultural expression across modern media for people of all backgrounds.
17:04 think you should’ve watched the rest of it
Jet Set Radio was Japanese and came out in 1999, and it featured not one, not two, but THREE wholearse playable black characters, one of whom was female. Jet Set Radio Future came out three years later and featured the same cast but with another playable black female character. And guess what? The world didn't fucking implode. JSR and JSRF are, like, the only games by a triple A publisher (Sega) to feature black female playable characters that I can think of.
(okay until apex was brought up)
Sega does what Nintendon't
Wow, so either you're too young, or haven't gamed for that long. Virtua Fighter has Vanessa, DOA has an Afro-Mexican girl, Tekken has Raven Master, and there's more from other games in addition to that especially when also adding male characters to it.
This is the dangerous rhetoric that happens when people don't know history, including their own. You should probably play I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream as that also has an African-American woman in it who is playable.
@@samalton5837 I mean I am sixteen so that would explain it
(Although I will say, I'm not sure how asking for more diversity in games is "dangerous rhetoric", and he did actually mention fighting games in the video)
There’s Age of Calamity (Urbosa) and Arms (Twintelle) as of now so that’s at least an improvement.
I've never played Jet Set Radio, but isn't inspired by American youth culture? Hmm.
It's hilarious when they complain someone is Black in a universe with purple, green, red, etc aliens. Like they'll accept an alien with purple skin and 30 arms over a regular Black dude. Shit crazy.
Retarded gamers when they see a minority, a different sexual orientation, women and etc: Omg politics in my vidya game
Lol
Yeah, like "I can't immerse myself" says the white neckbeard whilst playing a purple female elf.
@@cve486 haha
Aliens don’t bellyache about everything.
Man, I can't wait to get into storytelling. There's a market for the type of stories I want to write. Great video!
Facts and same!
Genshin Impact is terrified of making black or dark skinned characters, despite having literal regions based on India and Africa. At most, they'll do a very light tan.
(none of the cultures being Solar Panel People)
Honestly it’s pretty much the same in all of Mihoyo’s games in general. Out of all the characters in HSR and ZZZ, Arlan from starrail is the only one who has a skin tone darker than tan; he’s also probably the worst and least popular character in the game. It’s especially telling when they’re okay with making some npcs and enemies have dark skin, but not the playable characters.
as with most asian companies. I feel like the biggest problem of not including diversity comes from animes and asian games/media, as i cant remember a single asian game/show ive watched and there being a memorable/good character that isnt white
I know this is about skin tones but body shapes too. Mr mihoyo pls every single person is not a toothpick
@@Designated_loser It's a Chinese game primarily catered towards the tastes of China/East Asia. What do you expect? China, Japan, and Korea account for 74% of Genshin Impact's revenue so the characters are going to be designed accordingly.
Something people have to realize is that you can criticize media you love. Just because I love a game doesn’t mean I think it’s perfect! There’s always room for improvement. This mindset can be applied to imperfect game design so why can’t it be applied to their representation too?
Critiquing a medium of art, whether it be a film, a photograph, or a video games, is a sign you care about that medium and therefore want the best from it.
@@florpleborp2275 It should be, but many people do not understand this. To them "I like something" = "It's perfect"
@@bloody4558 Id like to add that you can like trash things the thing is to not act like just because you like it it's automatically ggod
@Russian Waifu What is "Forced Diversity" to you?
@Russian Waifu okay "Russian waifu"
I want to see dark skinned characters who are: animal lovers, book nerds, awkward, techy, snobby, haughty, humble, quirky, shy, religious, or snarky or any other traits that you see used constantly by lighter skinned characters. Representation of skin colors falls short when you cycle through the same 3 tropes.
This!
My personality has never been on a video game black woman 😭
@@XmrcaptainbobXCool, I can’t wait to play it with my friend Kanye West!
Virgin "normal fictional game characters":
Read useless books, aka nerds who get bullied and always think about how world revolves around them, have really high levels of narcissism.
Don't know how to fight, learn it only midway or at the end of the story.
Most of the shy and quirky types soon become cannon fodders or go into irrelevancy.
Sometimes, they are so over the top of their tropes, you begin to question authenticity of them existing in real life, for if they did, they would be socially ostracized.
CHAD BLACK PEOPLE VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS:
Only 3 trope behaviors, all delivered excellently.
Since birth knows how to put up aa good fight, his homies are always by his side.
Always set in DA HOOD, where everyone lifts, no bullshit hobbies.
Most keep it real, some snitch out and become bad, but overall, they are all believable and likeable.
And overall, they all are just trying to live a life normally, but circumstances force them otherwise, still humble about themselves.
actually i could do with less religious black people. that's actually a very common trope--even barret talks like an incensed pastor. and i'd be warry of a lot of these otherwise. representation falls short when you cycle through the same 3 tropes, sure, but one of those tropes for black people is negative personalities. i'd much rather take boring black characters then to deal with the catch 22 of "we exist, but we either die immediately or have a bad attitude". representation also falls short when your representation is primarily negative; i want black characters treated like the main characters, fuck being a side character with a shitty personality.
@@malum9478 I prefer my Negroes magical, personally.
I was always one of those guys who said "Oh, I don't really mind if I never see/play a character that looks like me, as long as the story is good". And then the Shang Chi movie came out, and while it wasn't the "Black Panther for Asian people" that the world expected it to be, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel pretty happy about seeing someone who looked like me on the screen paired with cultural stuff that hit pretty close to home. That being said, I also liked the "stereotypical" stuff, so take this with a grain of salt.
Today I learned that JSGWAM is Asian.
Neat!
I think I'm the same way. I'm happy if I see it but I don't mind if I don't.
Damn, didn't think you was Asian, but cool I guess.
Good to know
Literally half or more of the gaming industry is Asian so.....
I feel like theirs alot of untapped potential in having a game set in Africa, whether it be a modern setting or Historical/Mythological.
It would be refreshing to see more dark skinned characters and WITHOUT some sort of stereotypes. Your skin colour doesn't dictate a particular personality after all; people are diverse.
They should maybe combat it instead of perpetuating them. Then they get into a rage when called out on it.
But, but, muh black experience/struggle!
@@dansmith1661 The ones perpetuating the stereotypes are different than the ones who aren't perpetuating stereotypes.
exactly!!!exactly!!like Leroy Smith in telling is basically a black iPhone man which is awesome and not stereotypical and if u have a problem with diversity than play sports ages and fighting games they are one if the best games in terms of good diverse representation
ppl rly forgetting steve is black
“Remember how they whitewashed Daisy?”
*remember how they left her out of Mario strikers: Battle League*
Yet another example of white genocide smh
She’s home… and Shy Guy, I guess. Man that game was more barebones than launch SFV
@@kinoleogeo7998 yeah gladly
I like your pfp
Daisy was as white as mario was in her very first game appearance...
"Do you remember how they whitewashed Daisy?"
No, my neurons were firing too rapidly.
I was like, "Damn, I DIDN'T remember that until you brought it up!" Then I realized how fucked up that was.
@@nathanrailsback9667 and she’s from a desert kingdom so it would make more sense for her to be dark skinned
@@t.funkthecoolmunk5472 Granted her original render during the N64 games was just too similar to Peach at the time, but I liked that in the latest Mario Golf game, they gave her a slightly darker skin tone, I was hoping that would stick, but unfortunately Nintendo can't decide what the hell to do with Daisy to the point of taking away her personality.
Daisy was very pale in mario land her first appearance
@@beanieboi7743 Lmaoooooooo
😐
It has been so hard to create myself in games every time I get to a character creation screen I end up praying “Please have dreadlocks PLEASE HAVE DREADLOCKS!”
that's why i personally just don't and i create anything that isn't human if it allows me to. literally in most character creations i would just make a white character lmfaoo
It crazy cause dreads are the coolest hairstyle imo. Why not have it as an option? Don't people get tired of making and having the same usual rehashed protag?
I would cut them, anyone that has even remotely crossed paths with you would thank you.
@BristolBomb yes just like everybody else. It's not so much that as just anti filth. Of course you can't smell it because you are used to it but have some consideration for others around you.
@BristolBomb yes I do, that fact doesn't change my other point which is still very much a fact. Another fact? I gladly stay away from both.
Good video! As a writer it's easy to lose sight of what's normal to everyone else because you usually point out things about a character if they become relevant later (chekows gun or whatever) and tend to leave other details 'normal'. But that doesn't give a reason not to have appropriately many black (or other ethnicity) characters, especially in fantasy settings, since it is normal in our world and in many settings would be likely, it just maybe is not in the society you live in, so you don't think about it much.
"There are Japanese Black people!"
Thank you for acknowledging my family's existence.🇯🇵
Technically half-breeds. Like me, western European on my father's side and southern African on mother's. Too black to be white, too white to be black.
Oh my goodness,the amount of times PEOPLE get flustered and their panties in a bunch over me having dark-skinned characters from Asia,specifically Japan,(in a story of mine,one of the main protagonists is literally black and grew up in Japan all his life) is insane. and it’s always frustrating,because I know dang well if he were white,nothing would be said. Absolutely nothing.
People think of asians all light skins complexion, but there are a lot of brown complexion folks out there too. Curls and all
Ah yes. There was a video of a guy with a japanese mother and an african american father. So yeah there is in fact Japanese Black People.
wowee
Also at 9:50 why on earth would you think it’s okay to tweet that shit out?! HOLY SHIT
I'm pretty white, but here's how I write races in fantasy for anyone who cares to dismantle it:
Step 1: I write the dynamics of a character personality.
Step 2: I write their backstory based on birthplace/cultural influences.
Step 3: I establish their skin tone.
Step 4: I never let Step 3 become more important than 1 or 2.
So far, this seems functional. Personally, I am bored of slavery being used as an easy backdrop for civil unrest in fantasy settings so I try to avoid skin tone being a contributing factor in anything regarding a character aside from their physical appearance and physiology.
I would say you're spot on. Fantasy stories don't have to inject our real life issues into them. So literally skin tone can just be skin tone. I applaud you for your considerations of others.
I wish most people thought like this😔
This is how I always have said it should be done.
I never saw the problem with characters not looking like me. I'm white skinned (mix race tho) but I dont need white characters just to feel included.
For example, I still loved watching Everybody Hates Chris despite nearly the entire cast being black people. I never thought anything of it, I just thought of them as relatable characters that happened to live in a predominantly black populated city.
Keep doing things the right way: character substance first, skin tone after. Just like anybody with the right mindset should be seeing people.
See this guy already has a problem with that because he thinks that if u do 1 and 2 then ur being racist lol this video is too vague because on purpose
This can get you in trouble with SJWs though. I have heard that white people should "stay in their lane" when writing fantasy as they could never "comprehend the struggles of black people" - from a white liberal professor. I think that might be one of the many problems contributing to lack of black diversity in media. Racists on the right and the left play a role.
Now this isnt technically a "video game" but imma talk abt Gacha. It is a character creator made by Lunime. Oh my, the controversies of that game date back YEARS ago. But back to the subject, I have played since Gacha Studio. It was hard to make black characters, a lot of the presets were white which I have no problem with. Gacha Verse, it did a little better but still missing somethings...HAIR STYLES. Gacha Life, did WAAAY better than the last 2 games. Added better POC hairstyles and overall good performance, lacking in a few areas tho. Gacha Club, Oh my. It did so well, adding more POC hairstyles, and more assets to make a good black character. Now we are in the present, Gacha Life 2. At the start, it LACKED assets to make black characters. (But with some updates, we were able to make some pretty good black characters.) But like I said before abt the presets. I barely see ANY black presets, it took me an hour to make a black character. Not because I didn't have any inspo or ideas, but because of the lack of assets. I am talking from the start of the game, they did better with the assets for black people after some updates. But the fact it took them 5 GAMES to give us POC assets is just disgraceful.
This will conclude my rant. Sorry for it being so long, just had to speak my mind. If there are any problems lemme know in the comments. Have a good day/night.
"I am a straight white dude and I'm dissatisfied because this game only has one straight white dude and he's locked behind progression/paywalls!"
Damn, he was so close to getting why people make a fuss over diversity, wasn't he.
Could you just enlighten us then? I can't seem to decipher what you're trying to say.
@@jb34ch1 That redditor was upset because the game was "too diverse" and he was unable to pick a character of his race, and when he finally got ONE option to do so, it turned out the character was lacking in key ways (he didn't like the character's personality or skill set). This took away from his enjoyment of the game enough to complain online about it.
Almost like what people of colour have been upset by for years now. I'm white, and even I see the irony.
@@jb34ch1 They're saying people of colour have this exact experience with most games where it's just one black character locked behind progression/paywalls, or they aren't even playable.
Lmao exactly
I mean having the only character you can relate to locked is pretty bad.
Oh I just realized what you were talking about.
"He even made the first game to have a Pause Button in game!"
Okay, hold up, Gerald "Jerry" Lawson ought to be one of the most revered and respected video game pioneers of all time. Not even kidding. The interchangeable cartridges thing is obviously important, but the *pause* button? Beyond essential. That is one hell of a legacy.
I was aware of the cartridges, but didn’t know about the pause button.
Pause
Kidding. RIP to the God. Yet ANOTHER reason why Elden Ring is racist. There is no pause. Fuck that game.
Pause.
@@thorocomments there actually is a pause button, hidden behind some menus, there's two ways, the one I remember is by pressing the map button twice and selecting the second option, the other way is through the start menu, don't remember the exact way, but it opens the same options as the map one.
@@gustavonomegrande seems like a lot of hoops, lol. Thanks for this, though!
@@gustavonomegrande same with Nioh. Had to menu, the press start.
Lawson: I think we should incorporate a button to pause a game at anytime.
Elden Ring / Souls Fans: What's a pause button?..
You are literally too funny this was a blast. And thank you for so eloquently and clearly in a way no one can be more clearer about over this moment.
Native American Jew here: yeah, I actually relate to this so much that I got so sick of not seeing a diverse swath of characters, especially with almost all Jewish characters being portrayed as just white (ignoring the long history of both Native and Black Jews in America, as well as Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews and the growing number of East and Southeast Asian Jews in the US), and the sheer lack of Jewish characters in video games that I am currently taking it upon myself to make my own video game to rectify this.
Thats one of the major problems I find with people who complain about diversity. If the jewish characters are basically all just white how do you solve that. The only thing you can really do is have them bring up the fact that theyre jewish all the time, make them a rabi or make them a jewish stereotype. So even when different ethnicities are represented its not enough because they arent ethnic enough. But dont make them too ethnic or thats racist. The only solution I can think of is to give the jewish person a yiddish accent and have them bring up their faith or upbringing, but not too often. I would like to know how you would solve this issue.
@@pithagorian4394 Well that’s actually easier than you would think. When you already have characters in a Jewish context, you can more easily show diversity. Plus, many Jews don’t even speak Yiddish. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.
@@pithagorian4394In the case of my game, it takes place on a street full of Kosher Restaurants, owned by people of various diverse backgrounds. You have Chinese Jews, Indian Jews, Black Jews, Latine Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews… heck, even Jews who tick multiple of these boxes. And the food helps differentiate their backgrounds. The main character, for example, has a father from the Amazonian Jewish community, and thus has roots in Morocco as well as Amazonian Natives, and he has Native, African (specifically Malagasy, Angolan, and Yoruba), as well as Portuguese roots on his mother’s side. Both are very real Jewish ethnicities and I wanted to include them.
Should be up front here: I used to write for a Jewish News outlet called TribeHerald when it was still fairly active, so I have a background in exactly this kind of subject.
The goal is that everyone here has their own issues, and your goal is to basically help everyone out while balancing your own love life and raising your son. And also helping make sure everyone survives, because some of those issues are pretty dire (an unresolved feud between one restaurant owner and a particularly stubborn rabbi over the latter’s former support of the Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach will result in both of them killing each other if the latter enters the former’s restaurant again. Said restaurant owner is a former Goan Catholic of some Sephardic ancestry who left that faith specifically due to the scandals with child molestation. The latter didn’t want to believe the allegations against Carlbach, but has since realized he was not only wrong, but terribly wrong, and he shouldn’t have been so hasty, though the owner will not forgive so easily.)
The key is, make them full-fledged characters, and not stereotypes. By presenting all these characters within a Jewish context, with layers to themselves, it helps provide plenty of depth and keeps them from being simple stereotypes. I also try to do my research and enjoy presenting something unique. It’s actually energizing what I am doing. And I know people can handle all these characters because so many people played games like Skyrim and the like, so large numbers of deeper characters isn’t hard to them to handle
@@cratorcic9362 That does sound like the best way to do it and I think thats what most people want. Stories about certain communities where the focus can be on those people and their culture rather than throwing a mix of things together for the sake of diversity. But youre also kind of side stepping the problem of diversity all together because youre making a game about representing the various Jewish peoples and so presumably none of the primary characters will be non-Jewish. Not being diverse in your case is what allows you to make your story, because if you had to worry about representing everyone, as well as all the Jewish peoples, with a limited set of resources you could only afford to tokenize them since they aren't the main focus of your game. In this way having diversity of religion would actually compromise your game.
A bad example of diversity in games is god of war Ragnarök because there simply is no place in Norse mythology for a black character, but they decided that they need to have a non-white character for the sake of diversity. All this ended up doing however was representing black people but not anything substantial about them while compromising their portrayal of Norse mythology since intentionally portrayed the god Angrboda incorrectly.
What they could have done instead if they wanted a more diverse cast is have other characters enter the world of Norse mythology. The same way that Kratos came from the world of Greek mythology, gods from chinese, african, indian, etc. mythology appear
@@pithagorian4394 Actually, there are some fairly major non-Jewish characters, however, for the most part, a lot of them have Jewish family members, which is a real phenomenon in most Jewish communities.
Plus, it also allows me to analyze the relationship between these people. In two months, I have created over 80 characters
spitting facts, and your humour is on point, really nice video. it's great to have perspectives on this topic from black gamers, really appreciate the effort you've put into this!
One thing that has bothered me for a while is that a lot of games that I have played with a character creator don't allow you to be a ginger, as in real life red head. It is either too brown or too red. I know it isn't as big of a deal compared to what others have to deal with but the fact I can't have my hair color without having a rgb slider is really annoying.
In other words I understand why you and other people are upset and you guys have my full support.
Goes from a red ale/chestnut brown, to orange, neon, cotton candy clown hair real quick.
NO SUCH THING AS A GINGER, JUST A WHITEY WITH RED HAIR.
This drives me nuts! I usually end up downloading custom content for more hair options or else design a character that looks completely different from me.
Haha
He's a ginger
L IMAGINE BEING A GINGER
It drives me bonkers that people get so hostile to others who only want to see more of themselves in media they want.
My entire life I was expected to relate and consume media that was spearheaded by white male leads. And I did! Dare I say I loved some of that media. But theres such a wonderful personal connection when you see someone like you in something you watch/read/play that's difficult to articulate. Its what I felt when i watched El Tigre, or the Book of Life, Coco....
Of course, my experience as a Mexican is very different from a black person, but I can heavily empathize with the angle of media and cultural connections.
BS
I related to a lot of characters that are like me and they don't even have the same race as me. Spiderman, Batman, and some of my non black friends irl.
I personally stopped seeing race
Genuinely, I don't care about the race and gender of a character as long as it's the relatability that allows me to connect to them
For instance, I don't dislike a female lead because they're female, but perhaps because their writing is terrible, or they're nothing more than a political push
(Btw, there are many beautiful female leads in games and movies, Ellen Ripley is one of the best female protagonists of all time, I can and will debate you on that)
But for me. It depends on writing, relatability, and enjoyment.
I don't have to be a 16 year old Japanese boy to like or relate to tanjiro from demon slayer, but I can like and relate to him through his writing and struggles.
As for representation, I don't really care
Hell, in games, I typically just play as a female character, because I like women
I don't look for a Hispanic person to play, but if there a Hispanic tomboy in the game, then more power to it
I'm just the type who won't care if there isn't
Eh as a mexican Me vale mama
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek wth is wrong with u
As a white person, I even remember playing on multiple save files on games around the ages of 8-12 and being frustrated that there weren’t more skin tone/hair style customization options, purely for the sake of variety
That’s why we just make our own stuff. We can be able to make our own narrative, and get ride of the negative stereotypes in video games ab us.
It never really bothered me growing up that the characters I would play as usually didn’t look exactly like me, and I didn’t need them to. I do think it’s great that things are gradually becoming more inclusive in many aspects of the gaming industry. As long as the characters aren’t tokenized, and are allowed to have arcs outside of their race or something. Good video!
The animal crossing story about your mom broke my heart. Holy crap, that's heartbreaking.
Ikr I literally felt quite sad after hearing that :/
Right? That's so depressing
It was sweet and kinda sad
You should probably go to the hospital
very heartbreaking :(
How the hell did I not know about Gerald Lawson when he invented the PAUSE BUTTON which is one of the most recognizable features in video games as a whole and can be used in nearly every single genre of game!?!
Amazing vid btw
The lack of hair styles in games has bothered me for over 20 years. Like seriously, it bothers me as much as the lack of skin options.
I've also been told all my life that my skin is too light for me to be considered black for most of my life.
Doubt it, bro.
@@Aden_III That sort of attitude he's describing can be seen on twitter dude, I don't think it's that dubious.
@@xXJLNINJAXx You said Twitter? I take back my doubt, Twitter is garbage
it's a game bro, not everything has to match you specifically or should match you specifically. I myself couldn't care less about my specific hairstyle not being in a game or my exact skin shade not being in a game or even my own ethnic people in a game. Because it's a game, stop worrying and have fun.
@@xXJLNINJAXx Yeah, probably a blue checkmark BLM ANTIFA SJW woke feminist soy boy cuck just annoyed about the lack of hairstyles. Probably tweets all day about how white people are the devil and there are too many hairstyles for them in video games and took gender studies in collage.
Twitter people are all like this, and anyone that suggests something that all gamers should also want is like that to.
Come on man seriously. Why wouldn't and shouldn't people want more hairstyle options? That's just more characterization opportunities that people are mad about because they're so terminally online that they see everything as a political battle field. So something that would be an objectively good thing like more hairstyles, is now a political issue that needs to be pushed back on by all the contrarians who would also benefit.
I figure I mention this here since I have no where else to talk about this (and I refuse to be this open about myself on twitter)
That one part about how representation matters really struck me because when I began drawing as a kid I would only draw white or light skinned/coded characters simply because there werent any main or important black characters at the time when I was growing up. It got to the point where even if I drew myself, I'd have all my features down EXCEPT my hair, making it either a spikey mess like Naruto or just making it straight. Growing up around primarily white folk also didnt help at all as I was constantly reminded about how different I was. I believe it was when my brother and I were watching Soul Eater and this one character appeared named Killik. I was already a huge fan of the Boondocks, but this was different since Soul Eater came from an entirely different country. On top of that, he was just so cool and he sort of looked like me! (at the time) It deffinitely changed how I viewed my media forever and inspired me to draw more accurately. The people that say representation doesnt matter never needed it in the first place.
Also, if any artist say that "learning" to draw black people is "too hard" are hacks and arent good artists to begin with
@@Wishtelle I'm glad you could relate and I'm happier that we evolved ourself from such weird times 🙏
Same it's pretty embarrassing 😄
I personally find it hard to draw black characters, but I also don't draw them a lot. I'm willing to learn, and watching this video gave me some inspiration to draw more black characters. I agree though, it's easy to say people don't need more representation when you've always had it
@@shondon-.-4363 Yeah, my little comment at the end was very harsh and I apologize if it stung you or anyone personally. But you trying to draw black characters instead of not and staying stagnant is way better than the "artists" out there that dont even try and I feel like thats definitely worth something in the end
Wtf… is this a copypasta? i’ve litterally seen this comment almost word from word on other places.
As an African I've grown apprehensive over these kinds of videos because the end result is usually a demand of bad faith representation where they insist on changing established characters and labelling every non-black character as problematic and then telling me that I have to be outraged at it because I'm black. Which is why I am So SO glad that this video wasn't one of those, there was genuinely not a single thing I disagreed with in this video and you even called to attention some things that never even occurred to me, so thank you for this Astronaut, this will be my go to video to link if I ever enter a discussion about this topic
Yeah same here, except I'm a black American. A lot of the time these sorts of videos essentially make the "race swapping is good because white people already have enough representation" argument, but this one neatly avoided making that argument and spoke against it. I personally don't care about representation in videogames because in games where I can create my character I always design them according to the game's worldbuilding. I never thought of custom characters as an extension of myself or having to be relatable, to me that's a bit weird and larpy (but I get why others like it even though I disagree).
@@AudaciousBourgeois I completely agree with you there friend, like idk why so many people don't realise that you don't fix discrimination with more discrimination, that's how we stay divided. And yeah I'm in the same exact boat as you on character customization, I never spend more than like 5 minutes on that, I just make them dark skinned if I can and call it a day, otherwise I just pick the default option since 90% of the time they're going to be wearing a helmet anyways lol. But I do put in a lot more effort in life simulator games like Animal Crossing or Sims where the entire point is for the character to be a direct extension of you.
Yep African not equal black and vice versa
Same here, I'm aware of the current climate of anti whiteness and thought it was going to be another sjw video, but he's just asking for reasonable representation.
If you wanna lose an argument, then sure, go ahead. Dude says he doesn't want established characters to be race swapped but a minute earlier contradicts himself by praising representation in Witcher Netflix show where established white characters from books are played by black actors.
Great video, love from Norway
I think what makes people dislike "forced representation" is that its implemented in a really shameless and stereotypical way, like, if you look at how some writers represent other races, genders or sexualities they usually end up making characters that are just walking stereotypes, like black characters have to be loud or a comic relief, or gay characters have to be overly feminine or masculine and every action they make has to announce that they are gay ect.
This makes people dislike this characters because they are just badly written, they dont feel like real people and thats because real people have their own unique identity regardless of their gender, race or sexuality.
At the end of the day representing others shouldn't go beyond a well written character who is also black or asian or whatever really, with that just being a characteristic and not their entire personality, otherwise it feels "forced" and just annoying to the people you're trying to represent really.
TLDR: Don't make "black characters", make characters who are black.
then the people who are being represented would be the ones voicing their opinions on the alleged annoyance, but that's rarely the case, is it? it's always people NOT from that group. usually white, usually straight, usually male, etc. the fact of the matter is that the characters could be written like gold and the complaints would remain. the reason people dislike "forced representation" is no other reason than bigotry. full stop. the same groups don't give a shit about characters being boring or badly written nearly as much if they're a white boy.
and actually we do still need "black characters". see, this is the issue, and why actually talking to a black person for once in your life is important--on both a personal and professional level: when the black experience is ignored entirely, it's how you get weird shit like keanu reeves coaching a little league team of black kids going to a catholic school in the 90's, like that's a real thing. for those unaware: black folks in the US are predominantly protestant for a variety of reasons. black catholics are more likely in latin america, the islands, and europe (black italians). while you can do this in a way that's clever(paramount+'s EVIL is a really good example as a major factor of david's character and struggle is that he's one of a handful of black catholic priests in the WORLD, hk rec) it's an example of something not making sense for a black character and clearly being an example of white writers and directors not understanding black people.
the "colorblind" approach is almost as flawed as the nothing approach; you need both types. you need characters who's experience isn't defined by their "black experience" but also characters who are unabashedly very black with a very black experience. and in both cases, if you ain't sure: we are LITERALLY. ALL OVER THE PLANET. and even if you don't live next to one of us: THE INTERNET. IT EXISTS. compensate us for our time and give credit if you're getting consulting for a professional endeavor. it's that simple. i refuse to believe this is a thing people really have trouble understanding.
@@malum9478What Im referring to in my comment is stereotypical behaviour, not the "experience" you are talking about.
I understand your point and you are partly right; of course there are differences in how someone lives their life based on their race, gender and/or sexuality, (those are parts of someone's personality and body afterall) but what Im referring to is stereotypical, untrue and often exaggerated characteristics that can end up being harmful by reaffirming the stereotypes they are based on.
For example:
Im not quite sure what you are referring to as "the black experience" in your comment but, lets say a writer wants to represent that experience with a character and the writer ends up writing a walking stereotype that completely misses the point of that "experience"; that could end up being harmful to the image of the "black experience" that the people who see this character have and that is the type of scenario is what Im talking about.
This is also completely ignoring the fact that we are all human and none of this shit should really matter tbh.
But the fact that more and more writers in modern media are following this trend in which a character has no personality beyond their race, gender and/or sexual orientation makes it clear that they dont really care about making good characters or a good story ,they only care about making more money by tricking people into relating to some charicature of themselves.
So yeah the problem that I have with "forced representation" is that its lazy, greedy, pointless, possibly harmful and honestly just really annoying.
Also don't assume my race, sexuality and gender based solely on my opinion pls and don't forget that discrimination is something every single person in this planet suffers reagrdless of how/who they are thx.
This is precisely why I dislike the idea of representation. Dont put a character in to "represent" shit. Characters need to exist because they are people involved in the story. This is the entire basis of why people scream WOKE at much of modern entertainment. Halo, Cowboy Beebop, Star Wars, The Witcher, Resident Evil, Saints Row, G4...The list continues to grow.
Modern writers are guilty of precisely what you describe here. Their entire perspective is based upon one thing and one thing only, which is gender, race or sexual orientation. When those aspects take on more precedence than development of a competent plot, it's a surefire sign of woke pandering. How do you determine whether or not those aspects will take precedence over the plot before the show/game/movie is released? Pay attention to the first things the creators are excited to tell you about.
They should never under any circumstance tell you anything related to gender, gender roles, race, or sexual orientation. If they're trying to sell you a product or earn a subscription by peddling that, you know it's agenda based and you can safely and smoothly avoid wasting your time and attention on that drivel.
Yess thank you
@@dueydeebs5848 Halo, Disney Star Wars, and Cowboy Beebop were not "woke". They were poorly written, which is why they failed.
My issue isn't representation, it's the fact that when a black person is shown in a non-historical piece, it's considered "forced diversity"
Like the story can have well written characters that just exsist without refering to their race, or just be a good game, but people write it off anyways.
Not always, look at Game of Thrones.
"forced diversity"
Not true, It's only really forced diversity when you have tokenism. When you have proper adaptations or the creation of original characters of other ethnicities that were written to be on the story from the very beginning, you'll rarely see anyone complain. The problem arises when Hollywood will ignore all original ethnical characters in favor of tokenizing other characters
Weren't most cases of forced diversity not well-written in the first place?
@Smash 123 I mean they are literally forced, there is a law hat make it an obligation to include a black character in a movie, that's why we have so much tokenism in Hollywood. Of course the law does make sense as Hollywood used to be devoid of any black representation whatsoever. But now that law is causing many problems. Still producers and directors are partly to blame anyway fr being scummy and not adapting characters to represent these ethnicity, many of which already exist in books and comics.
@@bloody4558 no there's f*cking not? Don't spread BS
Gottta love Marina.
Also, I feel I should point out that Candy, Tiny, and Dixie Kong are all *blonde,* so Donkey does not seem "black-coded."
Besides, his hair may be brown, but his skin is still white.
Like in sonic adventure knuckles fur is red but skin is dark brown..... I just recently noticed this along with the fact that in the classic games from japan he's jamaican his nick name is knuckles but his actual name is drieds and he was made in a deal to sell shoes..... i don't know why naming him drieds and him being jamaican helped with that but they thought it would help sell shoes if they added those facts sooo yeah
Hold on looking back at adventure 2 knuckles maybe it was just lighting that made him look darker but it look less like shadows or dark lighting on his face and him just straight up being dark skinned i cant tell if it's the lighting engine they used or him having dark skin but imma say its not the lighting cuz no matter how dark the room is skin color doesn't work like that 😆 😆 😆
@@FenexTheFox
True, that too.
Im done yo lol. We gotta make our oen games at this point
Oh man great video. You should see the new Assassin's Creed game with a Black Samurai names Yasuke. They are screaming at the top of their lungs with WOKE and DEI
You know something I find interesting. How different cultures see cultural representation in games. I'm mexican and every time I see a stereotypical mexican with a sombrero and heavy accent in a game, I find it funny and I commend it. We enjoy representation even if it's stereotypical. Every mexican and their mother loved seeing mario with a poncho and Sombrero.
And yet people worried about representation ironically tried to cancel Speedy Gonzales and the Mexican community rose up and smacked their hand and was basically like "stop that stupid shit". lol.
Its like when someone says 'we need more strong black voices on this" and then Candace Owens talks and they're like "but not you". Actual representation would be "good, now we need more voices from other perspectives too."
But IMO most of the time the idea of representation is co-opted for people's personal gain...often by people who have nothing to do with that group.
@@Ralathar44 Usually the people crying over it are American born Hispanics who don't even speak Spanish, real Mexicans don't give a shit.
I remember when they removed Mario with a sombrero from the cover of Odyssey, people actually got upset because it was nice having him there.
@@BaltaBueno I grew up in South Texas in HEAVILY Hispanic communities. The only part of your comment that is correct is that there is a deep division between American Hispanics and Mexicans. Ironically Mexicans have this sort of harry potter "mudblood" mentality about American Hispanics insomuchas the less "culturally pure" you are the less of a person you are. The lighter your skin is the worse of a person you are. The more "white" you act the worse of a person you are.
It's basically just racism against subsets of their own race and it gets very very ugly. Right on down to gang violence.
I've seen the same in black communities but not to the same crazy degree that Hispanics do it. I'll never understand why people are such assholes to each other for no good reason. But it has nothing to do with actual race and everything to do with people wanting to feel superior to each other based on a buncha stupid bullshit.
Growing up on that fundamentally how I view racism. Because even if we were the same race we obviously just find new shit to discriminate against each other with.
@@Ralathar44 Just to give you a heads up my friend, what you described with "The lighter your skin is the worse of a person you are" is called "colorism" and it's also a massive problem in the black community.
ETA: It also goes the other way where darker = worse
@@Words-of-encouragement.-. It's got touches in the asian community too. Each group even has its own terms like coconut, oreo, banana, meaning brown/black/yellow on the outside and white on the inside.
It's disturbing and seeing it happen first hand and so prevalent in any majorly racial area basically removed any idea that we were ever going to "fix" racism. Best we'll ever do is change how it presents. Because it was never actually about race in the first place. People will just replace race with something else and enact all the exact same behaviors.
Soo, I gotta admit, as a person with the complexion of a mozzarella my first thought was as well "but there black characters in video games" and went through a list in my head... and then it clicked when you said, mostly never more than one, and nearly no main chars.
Well, you're right and it's really fucked up that I haven't really realized it before, since not being represented (for my ethnicity) was never an issue and so I didn't develop the point of view for that.
The game industry (and movie industry, while we're at it) really needs to do better.
What a lovely comment about your perspective. :'') Thank you for realizing these things, thank you for the support
@@unripetheberrby6283 Normally my response would be "you're welcome" to any thanks in my direction, but it feels weird to say that in this context. ^^
I hope I'll learn more to be a better ally and thank _you_ for your kind comment :)
@@Magrat_Knoblauch Most based comment I've seen all week. Also, don't be too hard on yourself, it's common for us in the "default human" category to simply not see the privilege we have with representation. Not because we're stupid or secretly racist, but because we haven't seen the shoe on the other foot. That bias is a universal human trait, by the way. And, the point is of course not to make people feel guilty. What we *can* do is realise what's going on and advocate for things to improve, just like you did :)
@@Magrat_Knoblauch Hah Thank you for the thanks! 😂 Please also try not to let the considerations weigh you down much in the future; I pray people can be a good team on these kind of situations and continue being truly helpful and, empathetic with each other whenever it's possible, or reasonable. Since we're all basically the same thing with a lot of emotions and thoughts of our own. If we ever cross roads somehow again, I hope I'd be a open-minded person and listener of you too
ed: Plus I hope you have a good day/night or week or whatever you'll have!🙏😌 lol
Well, it depends on the type of game, I had a couple of games in my days as a 16 bits Sega kid with black characters : Adam in streets of rage 1, Sammy in its sequel, the black guy from forgotten world, Jax from mortal combat, balrog from Street fighter II and given I had at most 10 games in my collection, the rest was either mascotts (sonic and such), sports and racing games or ninjas (shinobi what a great game)
few characters come to mind because few characters manage to capture the zeitgeist : FF7 managed to capture the people's imagination and what a shock everybody remember the characters and it might be the only black guy people could site on PSOne with Tekken characters that also manage to arrive at the right time.
If you think about it almost every game non story driven have a black version of the default protagonist : Jet set Radio, bust a Groove, Crazy Taxi, Any figthing game.
The problem is limited to story driven games where japanese people make the most memorable characters (and in japan they have 1% of foreigners including whites).
Western studio just don't make interesting characters in my mind : white military-like short hair dudes, but whatever the skin they always go with characters that are bland and somewhat of jackasses rebel attitude exuding from their skin,
aside from lara croft, (and even she is kinda bland if you don't count her sex appeal) what European / American compelling character comes to mind (not including comic books characters?), personnaly I have a harder time finding a character I'd like to cosplay as, choosing a character from westerns games.
My point in one sentence : impacting the collective mind is nearly impossible and I think western studio are really bad at it, unless they have billions of budget and make GTA or overwatch
i have always thought about how there are literally no character traits, or any character that resembles Hispanic people, mainly guys, i wanna create a character that looks slightly like me with a light brown skin, dark hair and it looking good, but the only game i have played that gave me that kind of customization was excom.
I know i will never see latin Americans represented in any asian games like let's say open world or any other kind of games because they don't care, but it would be nice to see representation that wasn't just Mexicans tacos and burritos, where is half the continent?
Yes I agree, I'm actually in the lighter complexion but that doesn't change that I'm still latina. Honestly, the only Hispanic video game characters that I know of are three from lethal league blaze ^^;;
Um yeah you do. Since hispanic is an ethnicity. They get represented, automatically.
@Wonderz I'm hispanic. I've literally played every game from Skyrim to GTA, Sims, and even WoW. I can literally make a character that looks like me, everytime.
Edit and no, I'm not from Mexico or Spain. Cope
@@Deadassbruhfrfr cool but as u should know all latinos does not look the same xd im latino too is cool u dont have that issue but that doesnt mean other latinos dont i do and its irritating not to fine a nice curly hairstyle that reasembles my fking hair that are not like 2 options that are not even close
have you played with CK3's ultrarealistic character customizer (well only the face because in the game your body is barely seen, also some guy who looked hispanic like you described made his exact character in it)
This video was so good. I want to scream your part about "forced diversity" from the rooftops because now it's moved to "forced DEI ______".
OH MAH LORD OKAY SO Heroes of the Storm's character roster is made up of all the Blizzard games (originally Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, Overwatch added later), and I remember when they added their first Black female character in 2019. She had to be INVENTED SPECIFICALLY for the game. They did not have a Black female character to add from any of their existing franchises - not the demon war one, not the space war one, not the magic war one - so they had to invent one. What an incredible moment to summarize the history of game development.
that is in fact not true there is the Admiral from Wow the 4 story important named Paladins 6 separate Pirates two Priests 2 Rogues 7 Dragons and about 20 Warriors thank you for proving you dont know what you are talking about and then in SC we have about 3 and Diablo we have an entire NATION and the Witch Doctor of Hots is a Black man from Diablo 3 and he is one of their Beta characters stop being a racists
@@viktorgabriel2554 you're cool can we hang out
@@viktorgabriel2554 Please put commas in your comments, I have no clue about what you're saying.
@@viktorgabriel2554said without a drop of punctuation. Seriously if you're going to post a counter argument, make it readable. I'm not sure if you're making a point or having a seizure. If you have a valid counter argument, please phrase it like you are having a conversation, not an exorcism.
Also do you really want to call the witch doctor out as positive? One of the more crude racial stereotypes, we are using that?
@@viktorgabriel2554 Notice they said black FEMALE character, and it would have to be an important enough named character to actually make sense for a crossover. Come on bro if you're going to excuse racism you might want to try being at least marginally comprehensible first
If you think black people lack options, imagine being Native American lol
But ya on a serious note as an ethno-historian this is mostly well constructed for a non-academic essay.
You also did a good job picking up on the coded racism included with some of the criticism of inclusion in media.
can confirm as a native american
Oh man how about the lack of Eskimos in video games? We can keep going on and on and on...
Trails of cold Steel got a Native American kinda character
@@sace3 isn't that because most full-blooded Native Americans no longer exist due to the fact of the white man murdering them?
Assassin's Creed 3. Character is half Native American. Although I hated the game play compared to Assassin's Creed black flag lol.
I don’t understand how people can get upset about their being “too many” black people in games while also saying “if they’re well-written characters their race shouldn’t matter”. It’s not propaganda if it’s just reflecting reality.
If a game is pushed as being historically accurate and it's set in or based off an area that almost exclusively has one race at the time people will be upset if said race isn't represented accurately.
@@giovanni6643 agreed. If the game is set in 1400s Scotland, I don't expect to see any black people. However, if a game is set in modern day New York, I expect some diversity.
The answer is simple, their problem is that they're racist. The whole "If they're well written" statement is just a cover
In that case wouldn't the argument be something like "The racial depictions of characters aren't historically accurate" rather than "there's too many black people"
The way someone responds to something is very telling.
"Reflecting reality" is always the go-to excuse, even when reality was nowhere like what's supposedly being reflected.
14:54. This is f0cking accurate, i should import this meme to my country😂😂😂
Thank you SO MUCH for making this video. As a person of colour, I grew up around my giant Indian extended family, so like half the people I saw during the first 5 years were also Indian. After that, as I grew up in England and was exposed to more and more media (which created my passion for video games), I was mostly just confused as to where the black people were. I obviously later realised what you have brought up in this video, but this topic has always been really big for me, being black and a video game lover.
The thing that really gets me is when there isn’t exactly a character creator, but face presets which you can change hair/eyes and stuff like that.
I just started playing Outriders, and there was one skin tone that fit me, but then the face shape was all wrong, and there wasn’t a single hairstyle that would fit my character.
Late to the party but I genuinely love Barret from the OG. Yes he definitely comes off as stereotypical, but his love for Marlene was really moving for me. His interaction with Dyne was great, learning more about Barret at all was great to me. The fact that his growth as a character was kind of the opposite of a traditional shonen protagonist was great, he quickly realizes that his goals are idealistic at best and unattainable realistically, so he sets his goal on the more realistic idea of "If I can make this a better, safer place for Marlene, then I've done my job as a person, and as a father" and I genuinely love that.
"I have no problem with women and blacks in video games.... but"
'But' is such a powerful word
I have no problems with the actual age of consent, but…
I am dead, BUT...
I want video games to be well made and fun ... but
im not a furry.........but
But.
I play a lot of Smash and I’ve thought of this exact thing before! It is strange that media has been so slow to adapt and I think you bring up some really good points.
From a young age I always wondered why so many of my games never contained people that looked like my friends. I hope things continue to get better and better and we’ll get more black leading games/characters!
Out of curiosity have you ever figured out why that is the case? why we don't have that many diverse characters in western media?
@@missingdiamond6676 I’d say it’s a lack of understanding, lack of care, and it wouldn’t shock me if racism was involved. But I really don’t know, there’s a lot of factors. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that know better than I do.
I think while some of it is a bit of racism, a lot of big international games come from Japan, which is very homogenous. Korea is another good example of a homogenous country. As a result, they hardly have anyone who’s POC. A lot of it stems from simply never considering it because their diversity is wildly different from say the USA’s diversity. It is becoming more and more common for POC characters and customizations to be included as time goes on, and hopefully will be standard soon.
As for games made in the west, I don’t play very many of them that haven’t included those options. I don’t opt for them because they don’t look like me, but it seems to be more common over here. Granted, I wouldn’t consider one black character in a cast of two dozen white ones to be adequate.
@@spongii7937 Or maybe the fact that the majority of the west is made up of white people.
I don't care if I don't look asain enough to play Asain Games with asain characters. I PLAY THEM TO HAVE FUN. And if the only purpose you're looking for characters with the same skin tone as you and your friends but not the character themselves. Then what's the point?
Honestly, despite being filled with jokes, this is one of the most mature discussions I've seen on race in games, most of the time it's just people seeing racism that isn't there for woke points on twitter, or them just plainly being racist themselves, my hat is off to you Funny Astronaut Man.
Um, as a black person I've seen these same arguments being made for years and people trashing them as "toxic woke culture". This is not a new topic, it's maybe we are often more willing to listen, pay attention and empathise when it's someone we "know" explaining it. It's been some years that I've learned to truly listen to whoever is trying to make an important point and then rebuttal, if necessary.
Yes, and you sullied this conversation with your bullshit….
It's always one 🤣
....or most of the time people like you whitesplaining racism that IS there to cry & whine about "woke points". you snowflakes are just as bad. =)
The only reason I can see why they wouldnt, is that then they would be pressured into customizing characters for every race, which would then either lead to less immersion, or getting blamed for prioritizing one race over another.
That's really interesting. I very genuinely did not realize that the lack of hair customization bothered the black community so much to the point of claiming that the characters were not black despite being a dark skin tone. It seems like a very easy fix though and I wonder if the problem is a lack of awareness. I personally had no idea, and I imagine many non black people also had no idea. It seems possible to me that the video game creators thought that they were giving black people the option to be themselves with their character creators and simply did not realize that hair is just as important as skin tone when it comes to identifying as yourself.
Apparently until "recently" (I mean like this last decade) black-people hair is rather hard to model. I remember a particular character that had a head of black-person curls in a Gamecube game I literally remember nothing else about and I only remember that it looks like a rats nest of razorwire spraypainted brown rather than hair, just _atrociously_ modeled, but that game has to be 20+ years old now. Nowadays, there is no excuse, and frankly I want to see those styles available! Variety is the spice of life!
Black just complain for preference treating that all, you will never satisfy it. Big ego but they will not develop any game for themselves. They just demands and do nothing. Others white, Japanese and EU need to do games for them.
it's quite annoying actually
Hell I'm black myself and out of the games I've played with character customization in them those being Skyrim, Splatoon and almost every Pokémon game after X and Y hair options never really bothered me personally. I guess it depends on the game your playing and the person in question. But I don't think this is something every black person that plays video games has a problem with.
@@PeterGriffin11 depends on the game really.
Oh, I love this video so much! It perfectly encapsulates the lack of Black representation in video games while simultaneously shattering every single bad faith argument I've seen against them.
My personal favorite was at 11:16, where you pointed out the bad faith argument that I hate the MOST where white people would pretend that representation doesn't matter while ignoring the fact that they can say that so comfortably due to them being represented in the vast majority of media. Plus, the point made at 12:01 was the cherry on top of how whenever there is non-white presentation, it is almost met with outcries of "Forced Diversity!", as if the presence of a Black person somehow means the absence of a white person.
...With that said, it's a shame that a lot of the new comments don't even watch the video and are immediately hostile for no real reason.
Actually agreed.
Encapsulates my thoughts on this video exactly
I'm not black, but as an artist, this has always been weird to me. Different races give SOOOO much variation to character design and give so many more opportunities for unique designs!! Like, its so much more fun? This just makes me think of games like Genshin Impact, where you have hundreds of characters but they all start to blend together at some point because they're all average attractive tall skinny white person. PLUS, THE WHOLE POINT OF THAT GAME IS TO EXPLORE DIFFERENT CULTURES??
I actually completely agree with that Genshin example
I thought it was just me, but most of them are extremely similar in design
@@xplodingkatz you can only get so much variation out of 5 default character models that all use the same skin tone, art style and and generally cluttered clothing hahah
I mean for genshin you kinda have the CN community to blame for it
I thought race was just skin color and the differences between the races were superficial? The Jews assured me of this.
And it's honestly impressive, given how overdesigned many of the characters are in Genshin.
My two cents is, video game writing hasnt been great in awhile except for a few exceptions. Personally i dont care about my race being represented, because the writers have shown me time and time again they cannot get white or black people right. If its a white character , gotta play it safe guns and family, if its a black character gotta make the whole game some allegory to Roots or some social commentary. Here's an idea , real shocker , just make a game with better writing where the content of the character is good or evil or whatever. Also real talk black people in media typically lean hard into race being the for front of our "entertainment experience" because the well of creativity is so damn shallow for so much money. Lee from the walking dead is a good character because his race didnt matter. Lee had a bad fucking day, and on top of that experienced shitty GA traffic all while a zombie outbreak was going on. That spoke to me more than anything .
GA traffic can be a bitch sometimes.
That traffic could make a priest want to tear shit up...
Yeah, Lee was a pretty fire character
Unfortunately, a lot of people in the online black community these days tend to be the ones demanding that all black characters portray "the black experience", regardless of the context of the fictional world (RIP Ekko from LoL). You know the ones, the "everything is political" types.
I fucking miss Lee😭🙏
You know, this was something I've thought a lot about, and I think the one thing worse the no representation of minorities in media, is poor representation. I think you hit the nail on the head, just make the main character black and then it doesn't have to be focused on any "socio-political" mantra that might come from it.
I simply wonder how possible that is?
It's like any moment the focus turns to a minority character, eastern games makes the most stereotypical form of it, and then western games turns it into a political narrative.
And not just games, but all media.
A great quote I heard about Superman. Superman is hard to write about because he doesn't really have any character flaws. Because of that he is hard to be relatable too.
But, the quote, "Superman doesn't have to be relatable, he just has to be inspiring."
And I think if the media focused more on inspiring others to simply be good people despite our circumstances, instead of trying force concepts that attempt to help others understand perspectives, it would bridge the gaps much more effectively.
I guess a couple of shows that come to mind are "Static Shock" and "Hey Arnold"
Any representation is better than none, because not only does the presence of characters rather than the absence open conversations, but minority communities are capable of latching onto any character regardless of “stereotypes”, because stereotypes hold true for at least somebody.
Fully agree. Instead of trying to write a black character, or gay character, or female character, just write a good character that happens to be any of those things.
Lol anyone who says superman isn't relatable probably only watched Man of Steel or BvS
@@kassidyryzer2909 huh? But the thing is, people would have a problem once they read about a gay character that wants to stop conversion therapy bcs... Well, it's too political. All of this "just make a character that happens to be gay" sounds like a good advice on a surface level and well intended.
But the more I saw people use it, the meaning somehow changes to "I'm okay with gay characters as long as you don't talk about the systemic oppression against gay people"
Okay like- maybe some of them need to realize that sometimes our issues/stories are closely tied to our identities.
I aree
My lineage is Scottish and Norwegian. Trying to make myself in games is beyond difficult. My particular hair style with curls is only found in the female hairstyles. If I can even find it, the next hurdle is beards. They'll give me everything from a soul patch to mutton chops, but a nice, full beard is actually pretty rare in games, usually it's just a dusting across the face. On the rare occasion all these are represented, my character comes out looking like a romance novel protagonist instead of me.
I often joke that my self insert gets a different name because it's the version of me that can't find the "ugly" slider in the character creator. Closest I've ever found is this UA-cam PFP and even still...
And yeah, we can't even find our own in videogames without everyone looking like they came out of the Vikings series on netflix. You know what I mean. Sides of the head are shaved, beard has a single braid, and they're dual wielding fantasy axes every time. It was bad enough back when it was all horned helmets and swedish meatballs but this... I can't say it's much better. Good music tho.
And when you brought up the western studios, understand us white people feel it, too. That's not even white people getting represented. You're right, that's just Bruce Beefslab starring in every game, usually as a Jesus allegory with the initials of JC. Even white people can't be unique in a western game. Look at that, all face dustings. No hair, no beard, just the same Marine we've been playing as since Wolfenstein.
So you're definitely on to something about this, but, from my white perspective, it's because most of our favorite games come from Japan, so everything isn't even necessarily white characters but Japanese characters or a Japanese interpretation of Americans, which means that 99.9% of playable characters look like some kind of K-Pop star.
Even Link, based on the legend of King Arthur is very dainty and delicate looking with no facial hair. Their most gruff looking westerner is Snake. But Arthur was supposedly welsh with quite a hefty beard. There's the king of Hyrule... but he only has a big beard because he's old man santa with a crown.
So, even though we come from different camps of representation, just know that you're heard and I'm pretty sure all of us who want to represent ourselves in games have a similar story. Personally, I wish we could get more games about Mace Windu, Afro Samurai and Blade, but instead we get Far Cry 6 playing as Saturday morning cartoon protagonists to save the world from your former college professor with the help of his son, Joseph Gribble from King of the Hill.
1:10 I'm so offended you saying this and not recognizing my man steve there on the bottom left corner.
I sometimes forget Steve actually has dark skin because he’s so severely white washed in a lot of adaptations of him, like it’s actually crazy
It's simple: if we (black people) want more representation in video games, then we have to make some and play the games these characters are in. Would it be nice for European and asian developers to add more black people to their games? Sure. But I don't think it's wise to rely on this form of "welfare of representation", banking on the solidarity from other races to "give" us a seat at the table. If we go that route, we won't gain any respect because "they" won't see us as peers, and all of the power is in their hands, allowing them to dictate what form that representation takes.
The irony about all the talks concerning representation is that it would also apply to Asians and whites. if there's something about humans that just NEEDS to represent themselves racially in everything in order to identify with it or whathave you, then clearly that would impact white people and Asian people, which would cause these creators to prefer their own race when they create these works of fiction, ergo its foolish to expect them to rise above their own human qualities and NOT do that, for the sake of satisfying that same biological itch in another ethnicity.
THANK YOU! George RR Martin put it best. when asked why most of his characters are white, he simply replied that it's because he's white. he wasn't being racist, but he admitted his works are obviously gonna focus on European oriented fantasy. he said as people get older and more POC make their own works, you'll see a lot more representation. personally I think Africa is too underlooked in civilizations and Afrocentrists try to only use Egypt and call it all black rather than acknowledging the great diversity within Egypt. I'd love to see a fantasy world similar to the Kush, Mali, Axum, etc.
I kinda agree with most of this, except you can have more creators of more diverse groups *and* also demand it from other creators, let's say European or Japanese. Of course it's not a must for them and not every game is meant to be super internal but a clear example would be a character creator that lets you pick tons but it doesn't cover everything. That's a great opportunity to tell the developers to care just a bit more.
yea i can agree w/ what you're saying. but also, it's just not a very hard thing to do either. Pokemon has been doing if effortlessly across all their forms of media for a while now. And to play devils advocate a bit, japanese media seems very open to representing europe, white ppl, and medieval settings in their fantasy. So I don't buy that they are simply creating characters w/ only ppl who look like them.
I like that I watch this video and of course the first thing I see from someone, who I assume is black, goes “If we want to see change, we should make the change and expect no one else to do it for us.” Clearly, the lessons learned from Malcom and Garvey’s movements have not be learned. It is not as simple as “more black businesses = better black representation”, as systematically these things won’t have an impact. To do anything, you need to learn it. The tools to learn it may not be accessible to you. And if they are, the means to distribute may be inaccessible. The situation is so much more nuance than “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” We are a social people. It make sense we tried to connect to each other and want to se ourselves in each other and work.
Tl;dr There are potentially thousands of black works from black authors about black fantasies and there’s reasons why they go overlooked.
@@ManiacMayhem7256 Egypt may have been diverse but the natives and rulers were still black
I'm so mad, I wrote out so many paragraphs about my opinions on race in gaming, general media, shitty talking points from capital G Gamers, etc and I looked at the emojis I could use and then UA-cam just deleted my entire comment draft. But anyway, this was a very informative and entertaining video (as I've come to expect as a long-time(ish) viewer) and I hope that this comment contributes somewhat to keeping the comments section the opposite of a klan meeting.
The next time you want to make a *long* comment, first write it down on a notepad or microsoft word like program to avoid these disgraces, then copy and paste it on youtube.
Yeah, can't trust UA-cam connection. Copy it somewhere else before posting.
@@aIkaIi Sam? Is that you?
@@andymcclurg9916 gonna get whooped during lunch tomorrow?
Also, remember to reload the page 1 minute in to make sure your comment was actually posted, the youtube censor bot works in strange ways
I remember an in depth explanation that came out in the early 2000s. The dev was asked why all their characters were white guys with short hair. Their explanation was that they didn’t have the processing power to animate hair in 3D yet, and I think they didn’t have the pixel definition for black characters, the details became too hard to see on the screen.
That being said, my memory on the topic is fuzzy, but they said that more diversity would appear once the technology allowed for it, and they needed a few years to figure out the tech and new software.
i've watched this video like 4 times and as somebody with cornrows the cornrows joke gets me everytime
I WANT NAMES
names
who did this to you cousin
They got my boy shroom 😭
The comments be killing me
I like that you explored the ideas of migration, and integration. I hadn’t heard anyone else consider those before.
The only thing that bugs me with “diversity” is the fact that it’s sometimes just randomly brought in rather than thoroughly explored like in your example for fire emblem. Being able to get another perspective on the story through an outsider point of view is really interesting.
I hope there are more varieties of characters in media going forward but I also hope they are allowed their own unique settings and stories.
black history month is every month if you really feel like it
I agree
Black History Month (in America at least) should be considered as another part of American history, since many Black Americans of the past have contributed to America's history, thus they should be treated as another vital part of it.
@@deadbeatnetwork9792
Who says it isn't already?
@@deadbeatnetwork9792 blacks contributed to what? Your country is ruined because of them, and it'll only get worse.
Extremely well put together points on this. Disability also tends to get underrepresented or characters whose “quirk” or unique thing is their disability.
And for all the bad faith arguments that visible disabilities wouldn’t exist in fantasy stories because healing magic exists (there were people legitimately arguing that a basic cure wounds in dnd could fix any issue that might require someone to use a wheelchair, because they’ve apparently never read the spell descriptions to learn that regrowing a lost limb is ridiculously high level magic that’s not available to the vast majority of people) those stories almost never seem to actually take a moment to explore the way something like healing magic effects the way disability can be treated or can’t be treated.
Hell recently I saw someone try to argue evolution as to why it doesn’t make sense for Warhammer 40k to have black characters from a perpetually cold and frozen planet. This is fiction where we make up the rules, we’re already suspending our disbelief to accept the fungus orks who believe things into existence and that a galaxy spanning civilisation has made no technological advancements in 10,000 years, since when did we care about realism
This video was great and really gets at a lot of the frustration I have for the video game industry! However when you brought up images from triangle strategy I immediately lost focus and kept thinking about the fact they really named a war salt-iron
“No I don’t count black mage!!” almost spit out my drink 😂😂
I think it can't be stated enough of how much I just want new characters instead of existing ones turning black like you said (unless there's a good story to by them being another race) but it's kind of funny about people not wanting Idris Elba to play James Bond as if he isn't a Different person in every iteration.
Definitely a good way of looking at it. Changing established characters is pretty lazy (Although don’t get me wrong, I prefer “Mr. Samuel L. Jackson himself” as Nick Fury rather than the original iteration. I’m saying your perspective is good because you’re not being aggressively polar with judgement, and a lot of people nowadays are too absolutist with their opinions.
From wikipedia "Portrayal of James Bond in Film": "Despite their depicting the same character, there have been notable differences among the portrayals."
Just because different actors played him over the years doesn't mean that James Bonds is a different character each time. He's the same person. "James Bond" is his actual name, "Andrew Bond" is his father's name. So it makes sense that people don't want him to be suddenly made black for the sake of brownie points and studios being too lazy to make an original black character.
"how did this character turned black?"
"SCP-914"
".....
Fair enough"
That's because race swapping does more than just swapping one white dude to another. With them u can squint and say "it's the same dude, but just a different version". Race/sex swaps introduces a whole bunch of "background" implications along with it, so it's more difficult to apply suspension of disbelief.
@@akselandor8975 but when you do that you may be able to do something different and unique that maybe the rest of the franchise hasn’t. But yes it is really hard to implement in a game since you have to change pretty much EVERYTHING.
This is why I’m an indie gamer you get more options and more and more diverse games are coming out and that’s a good thing.
Make a game with bees
Loved the video, great points and agree on all of them. Just a little sidenote for the whitewashed Nessa art for anyone that didn't know, it was mostly made by foreign asian artists. One Japanese artist made art of Nessa with a bright pastel color palette that made her look lighter skinned and people attacked them calling the artist racist. They got so upset they almost quit art so other Asian artists decided to troll people by drawing her purposefully very white as if to say "Oh you thought that was whitewashed? I'll show you whitewashed" and spilled over to the west causing the actually racist people to draw art like her as a monkey. Overall a bad time, no winners only losers.
Nessa is black. No if ands or buts. If yall say differently then your trippin.
@@Jaylobeans she looks Indian to me.
@@Jaylobeans bruh, dark skinned Asians exist. She's not black.
Reminds me of the time someone got harassed for drawing Rose Quartz from Steven Universe too skinny and they almost killed themselves.
*"Overall a bad time, no winners only losers."*
------------------------------
That's how it tends to go when everyone's being a reactionary instead of holding on to some sort of principles.
I can't say nuthin about the black experience, but as an asian who's always the assassin rogue ninja character or some samurai guy, it does get annoying as hell.
You would think there would be more east Asian characters represented as sailors or ship's captains especially because of Japan but I guess there just aren't enough games about boats that aren't about European pirates
@@-Teague- Japan put it all in One Piece.
i'd love to say 'theres always anime games' but its not like all asians are japanese. Naver should start funding game development Korean comics can have games like anime does
theres more all asian video games in the world than your so called majority white games you are bent about. go play one of those
Games often reflect what’s the norm to see in the country they’re made, games from Japan tend to be homogenous, chances are they don’t think so much about race at all which is why variety is rarer, games in the US have more variety because it reflects what their society has, i don’t see anything special here.
Imagine if say Nigeria made a game and every character is black, i wouldn’t expect a “why no white people?” question to pop up.
Literally
Games aren't supposed to represent real world statistics lol
Sadly the only game series that seems to pass the "black people test" is the elder scrolls games, since they have an entire black race of people on Tamriel with lore and depth to back up their presence so they're not just shoe-horned in like so much modern fantasy does.
Seriously, the Redguards, having migrated from the sunken continent of Yakuda, with a culture if mercantilism and swordsmanship. They completely belong in the setting and cause zero controversy yet at the same time fully cover the bases for representation.
What is shit is that they're the only examples of this in modern fantasy and gaming! I mean seriously! The fuck!?
I agree about the Redguards being cool, but how can a person of any race ever be considered "shoe-horned" into fantasy? The whole point of fantasy is that it's another world, so there's absolutely no requirement for it to demographically align with our world in the slightest. You can make the racial/intelligent species composition of a fantasy world anything you want.
Don't worry, I'm sure someone'll find something about them to deem problematic.
The only MMO that I've been able to make a character that actually looks like man with dreadlocks. Is guild wars. And even then there was a convenient based off Africa (Elona) and there were ton of just black characters the existed in both guild wars 1 and Guild wars 2 that
We're just people and not sterotypes.
Zelda also have Gerudo race, not as deep history wise tho, but they are presented enough.
That's just the cliche in fantasy, you always have the main continent and then there is always the "lands beyond the mountains" or something like that where black people live and probably is going to be a tribe of warriors of some kind
In college I studied game art and I was trying to make a 3D model of my best friend at the time who’s black and the sheer lack of resources about how to properly model black people hair was absolutely absurd.
Because, you have to admit it, it's a mess.
@@Adrian-pp6qy wtf is wrong with you, black hair can be in a variety of styles. so white hair can’t be messy?
@@SamuraiiJakk Yeah, natural straight hair just follows the shape of the head, curvy hair goes everywhere, hard to depict. wtf is wrong with me? Well, I'm not virtue signalling, like you. Natural black hair is a mess, hard to modell, this is one reason not to use it, 2nd reason, esthetics. You're welcome.
@@Adrian-pp6qy that’s why often times you can use actual references and techniques, most artists will often times keep finding a way to do it. Just.. idk think ? Not trying isn’t going to get you anywhere, especially since as an artist you must really push your self to the limits. You can also use reference of people with 4c hair
@@Adrian-pp6qy plus in the end it’ll feel great and actually builds you as an artist as to what you can do, pretty much opening you up to a wider range of ability
I loved this video!! I just wish he would have mentioned the moors in Europe as a counterpoint to people saying there were no black people in medieval Europe
Yeah but there were VERY few of them. And they were mostly merchants and ambassadors. Having half or even a 3rd of the population be black in a medieval setting makes no sense. Just like there are white people in Africa but you didn't see any in Wakanda.
The moor isn't African But middle Eastern
@@majesticgothitelle1802 The moor is African.... Bedouin(arabs) ruled them for centuries sure but moors are african. I think you mean they are light skinned and some of them look european as opposed to black. Moors can be either dark skinned, brown, or light skinned depending on the region. You really need to visit northern africa and observe the diversity there. In the middle ages, they lived all throughout modern day spain, sicily, and malta.
Because they were colonizers, not natives. So no, europe didnt have a blk ppluation. We feel disgusted by your kind here
Great video and I agree and I appreciate you pre calling out the bad ways to do it. Anyway have a great day sir.
14:48 I was drinking water...and nearly lost a laptop today 💀
I'd love to see a part 2 of this featuring the other topics worthy of discussion! Starting with the politics in the mirror
Oh hey, nice seeing you here :)
@@dariusjohnson3318 once again I spy a Nero with my little eye 😂
how is that even funny?
Extremely supportive comment: Loved ur vid, great watch, learned something new today.
I would like to see more games with non-stereotype black people in them as main characters. Hopefully this trend continues where a character can be a character, without any sort of perceived association with stereotypes.
I had a lot of fun with both Subnautica games, and the Pokémon games have made great progress thus far.
like craig of the creek
I wouldn’t call it progress it’s just something that should be done
Final fantasy 7 Barette (Original, haven't played new ones) is a good example of even if they do put a black character in, they're stereotyped to shit
I’d like to see more races other than black and white in media lol.
Most video games are from Japan.
In order for this to happen Japan has to be exposed to more POC within their country. You can’t make what you don’t know
Totally on board with what youre saying. Really strong arguments tbh. When you asked for names of black characters i thought… barret ff7 and…. Sports games. And then when you brought up LOTR trade it totally clicked man. Where the dark elves at? Where the representation for my mans at? Great vid 11/10