nah.
Marcus stands out for me because he doesn’t look particularly Black to me but when he speaks he pften sounds like a very poor imitation of a Black man.
A Black man is now all Black men?
now who’s being obtuse?
The general agreement is that it’s more Eastern European/Soviet bloc to go along with the fact that he’s an arms dealer.
I think you are. You’re clearly making the inference that I consider all Black men to have a Jamaican accent with the line:
As to the general consensus: I’m not aware of that. I’m just saying what it sounds like to me.
I never said anything about tone.
The passive aggressive and condescending replies here are strong.
If we cant take it down a notch and discuss in a frienely manner, it will be locked.
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My 2 cents:
http://hugelolcdn.com/i700/356945.jpg
I play this game because I like to shoot bandits, robots and weird alien creatures with wacky guns. The setting is such that basically everyone on the entire planet is an awful person. I don’t care about their relationships. If the writers think they need every character to be bisexual, then they have issues, they aren’t adding anything to my experience of playing a FPSRPG and they definitely aren’t achieving anything resembling diversity.
I guess I’ve seen this go long enough so here’s my take on it.
I agree that diversity in gaming and in all things is important but forced diversity for the sake of diversity is not good. The Witcher fight for example I think is really stupid, of course its a bunch of white people. Forcing diversity in there would be bad. Or the Barret FF7 argument I think is also grasping at straws, sure his dialect was bad but he was overly good, yes a much removed Japanese company did a poor job on his words but its the actions that count more and Barret was great, a true hero, memorable. I don’t think there was malice or poor intent there and intent matters.
Borderlands does this both well, and poorly.
On sexuality Sir Hammerlock is a great example, he is gay and black, but both are kinda just there and its natural. Janey pushes it a bit much and it does make her too much about the fact shes a lesbian. But at least they are doing it, you never do anything right all the time. So I hope they learn from it and just get better at it.
On race I think they are ok, Bl1 you had 4 vault hunters, 2 Caucasian, 1 Black, and 1 Hispanic. The bad part was all the NPC’s were Caucasian. Fast Forward to TPS and the racial diversity has really picked up within those games. I think at this point there is a pretty big cast with a lot of different races and skin colors in it.
On Gender I think they do this great. BL1 was 1 to 4 with playable characters but between Tannis, Athena, Moxxi, and Helena Pierce a lot of the most important NPC’s were women and not only that but strong, independent, capable women. That part is important, also Moxxi is a satire so anyone making the argument that she is sexist is someone I don’t listen to. Bl2 that pretty much continued 2 playable characters out of 6 and again a strong host of NPC women adding in characters like Scarlett, Tina, and Ellie. TPS just got better now 3/6 playable characters were women, add in Janey, Nina, Increase Moxxi’s role and Lilith and Athena are kinda the head of the story.
This is why when Anita called out Gearbox is made me see how full of it she was. Gearbox is a good example on how to go about gender diversity, and on top of that the women have realistic bodies, unlike many many games out there. Sure they had a trope, but they also have so many great examples and its not an honest argument to call out one without the other.
So I guess I don’t think Gearbox is the bad guy or the hero here. They are trying and thats important they do some of it amazing and some of it poorly. It’s like they are humans making a few mistakes trying to do the right thing.
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First off, apologies to @Kitty_Jo if any of my posts may have summoned her to this thread which now seems to warrant her attention. My bad. But allow me to explain myself.
But is my answer true? @shure has claimed that he cannot understand why some people would desire or appreciate immersion while experiencing a work of art. He has repeated this many times, in fact, so it seems that he desires an explanation why he lacks this understanding, that someone here would try to enlighten him on why some people want to have this kind of experience. I gave him a straight up answer. It’s not that complicated. It is very simple when you think about it. People are different, and thus their opinions are different. I tried to illustrate this point by comparing my opinions on the ■■■■ and the ■■■■■. Maybe I could have used the colors red and yellow instead, but I thought it wouldn’t be as amusing as censored blocks. In the end, if you are baiting for an answer, then don’t get offended when you are given an answer.
But hey, if anyone feels that my posts are not worthy of his or her time, then don’t bother to read them and don’t bother to reply. To do either implies otherwise. And I won’t get offended as well; my posts are not known for their brevity.
Well, my best guess is that the game maker desires to have people appreciate and buy its games. I assume the question was probably poorly worded, which would result in the above response. But again, if you ask a question, then be prepared to receive an answer.
Okay, fair warning: my response might sound a bit trolling, but please bear with me.
In the example cited above, I am assuming this is in regards to the character of Arwen, played by Liv Tyler. Yeah, in the book she has no part in rescuing Frodo from the Black Riders, whereas in the movie it’s Arwyn who single-handedly saves Frodo’s hobbit-ass. Now, for me, it is NOT obvious that this was an attempt to introduce a strong female into the movie narrative. Instead, I see two reasons for this change.
The first one is from a marketing perspective. Liv Tyler is eye-candy, obviously. And eye-candy is great when you want to sell licensed merchandise. Faithful readers already know that Awren hooks up with Strider/Aragorn by the end of the story, but that little detail is pretty irrelevant to the whole “Fellowship” story arc. In the end, it doesn’t matter to which chick Aragorn gets hitched, so long as that Ring gets tossed into the volcano. But because Hollywood is also about making money as well as making movies, elevating Arwen’s role in the first movie provides enough justification to plaster Liv’s face on plastic mugs, t-shirts, posters, and other trinkets and baubles that could be sold. And to be honest, despite Boromir’s significant role with the Fellowship, stuff with Liv Tyler’s face would probably sell more than stuff with Sean Bean’s face (at the very least Jackson created a pretty epic scene for Boromir’s death, instead of the couple paragraphs of text at the start of the second book).
The second (trolling) reason is that female Elven maidens were being marginalized and not given proper representation in the media. Unlike female Human maidens, who had depictions of being strong and independent figures (such Eowyn, who had slain the leader of the Black Riders, and the flying horse he rode on), Elven women were treated mostly as decorative tokens, such as prizes to the questing heroes looking for eternally young and beautiful wives, or as objects of lust that serve as disposable diversions for adventurers, e.g. that “Elven whore” that Nightblade is trying to do.
And yet, a question was asked. I simply provided an answer. We can all agree to disagree, but if someone keeps posing questions in regards to one’s stance, then it wouldn’t be unexpected to receive an answer.
There is no aggression. My original question was poised to challenge any preconceived notions in regards to how stereotypes could or should be received. It was regarding the previous discussion of whether Barret of FF7 was a racist caricature or an emulated image of popular public figures. But I think the challenge is pretty much lost since the original question was not answered.
Yeah, he was talking about the lack of brevity in my posts. I was thinking of adding more pictures so it would be easier to read through, but then I’d never get anything posted up without being accused of “necroing” the thread.
Well, once Gearbox starts to include female Elven maiden characters that are outside of the stereotype, then I’ll start to be impressed.
I’m about to post a lengthy reply, but I wish to contemplate and respond in due course. It should be up in an hour. I’d like to say this first.
Let us take a cue from the Socratic debates of old and not come in to any discussion with preconceived notions.
Most fools I know were quick to say “I know”, and one of the wisest men in history was known to have said; “I know now, that I know nothing.”
If anyone is becoming chippy and brief, I recognize that this is a very emotional conversation, but it is being held by people I consider to be intelligent. We honor ourselves when we show restraint.
This has been a great and educational conversation so far. If we do not keep it as such, we are wasting our own time.
(Note: This isn’t directed at anyone in particular. Just a fore-note.)
For the sake of the argumentative structure, I was making the assumption that the accusation was a fair one. Naturally, token can be thrown around as a biased accusation. But these days, anything can.
I do see the point.
I didn’t know you were an off-the-boater like myself. Where-abouts do you hail?
I grew up in pretty bad neighborhoods, and was often maligned since “Me come a foreign”. It was a bit deeper than that. That tagline actually sort of forced me to commit a lot of behaviors I’m not proud of for the sake of making a message. Had I “let it slide” it wouldn’t have worked well. Do not forget that some forms of discrimination are worse than others. Myself, a group of Jamaicans and Haitians made a bit of a greencard crew and we dealt with manners from there. It teaches you a lot about the futility of separation.
I don’t know if you were accusing me of not know how to shrug things off, but there are times where you don’t get such an opportunity.
I created a hyperbolic situation to illustrate a point in the most absolute way I could. It is not the responsibility of game productions companies to do so. The point was meant to show that some people are more affected by others, and the medium which affects some one most is dependent on circumstance. As such, every medium has a responsibility.
Do not forget. Again, no one is promoting that this be a necessity. No one is saying; “YOU MUST HAVE DIVERSITY”, what they’re do is applauding it when it is used and also noting that there is a lot of work to be done. No reasonable person in this debate is suggesting affirmative action for video games. This is simply a rewards based system, of sorts.
Maya is asexual. Straight is implicit of being attracted to men. She is about as attracted to them as she is to fine furniture.
Borderlands is a phenomenal series when it comes to inclusiveness and diversity. Borderlands is a game where the personalities of the characters are already diverse. You find out a lot of minutia about them, and sexuality is a big thing to step across. Let us assume for some reason that they did. That would be perfectly fine, but there are a lot of games where sexuality is in the forefront, and many of them are geared towards white males.
Once more, and I feel like I have stressed this a lot without you confirming the point and instead seemingly implying I am making another. I am not implying to change these games. I believe in freedom of expression. What I am doing is recognizing a trend which is skewered to one side, and giving the correct notice that as series like BL deserves when it goes against this grain.
It is like charity, you’re good to do it. But you really don’t need to. Once you start making in excess of 100 million, if you haven’t done a bit, I start suspecting you of being a jerk. They need not be diverse, but when a studio produces 20 some odd cast based games and none of them show any form of diversity, I suspect something more than “whoops, forgot”.
Yes, absolutely. There are great option out there. (Like BL). I think the Elder Scrolls series has been great too, if you ask me. There are tons of games with positive female characters, gay characters, and everything you can imagine.
The issue is there is a noticeable resistance to this, and on top of that, while those games are noted, they are still skewed the advantage of a single group. We’ve just come around to producing positive female leads en masse. I am proud of everyone for that, but it sure took a while.
You seem like a reasonable guy, and you’re fun to debate with. This has nothing to do with “your own ignorance”, it is just we are all privy to blind spots. I suspect you may not see that for some people this is a much awaited breath of fresh air, and necessity isn’t necessarily all that matters. That is the beauty of fiction, the writer is god, and relevance is his eye.
I’m sorry, but the fundamentals of a character are established by minutia. This in essence is the idea of having a “well rounded character”. When a character’s existence is defined only by the fundamentals, it is seen as extremely poor writing technique. You must add a depth to the existence of a character.
I know what you’re trying to say is about relevance, which is the old; “If there is a gun on the wall in act one, it better have been fired by act three.” The issue is sexuality of characters has always been on the forefront. It is SEX you’re speaking of, mate. Eros and Thanatos is what many people boil down the entirety of human behavior to. We’re not talking about sports preferences. It is sort of a big deal.
That gave me a laugh, well done.
A valid point, while many can double up on the two. I was more so indicating that games do serve an art function, as the only other one could be strictly a tool. Good point though.
While I do very well see your point. The issue with the token character is that they’re often added in as nothing more than a plug. Which is dangerous. Token characters are given little depth (almost always) otherwise, they’d really not earn the “token” title.
I said earlier that I do not consider Barrett to be “token”. He was novel, horribly written and offensive dialogue by today’s standard, but none of this had ill-intent. He is the best father, most stalwart emotional character, and arguably the ONLY person in the entire plot line to stay true to his principles. They were trying to make a positive message, and they fumbled on a simple aspect. Much of it, as was rightly said, was nothing more poor knowledge. I’m sure if Americans attempted to make a character from the Ryuku islands in a film, he’d come off slightly coarse to sensibilities.
What I mean by token, and I feel as though my post added confusion, is "added in simply to be added in. Like the black guy with a 20 minute expiration date in a horror film. While token does have a value in situations where there is standing hatred for a group; I.E. Homosexuals in certain communities, to act as a symbol of solidarity, they are often marginalized. If one has the courage, they should also have the conviction.
Neither? I have plenty more 21 year old white frat boys coming in to my shop trying to speak some preconception of ebonics to me, than I have black people do the same. I know what you mean to say; “Stereotypical black man”, but that in and off itself is where the issue may lie.
People complained when Tiny Tina spoke ‘ebonics’. Not realizing that the racism was actually within them, when they heard poor grammar and instantly equated it with black people.
(NOTE: Not accusing you of ANY of that. You just poorly worded it, I know what you were trying to say.)
This is the whole Blase Pascal quote;
“If I had more time, I would’ve written a shorter letter.”
While I completely understand your point, he is attempting to express himself as best he can, and that is often more difficult to do for others. I don’t think rating the conciseness is necessarily fair.
While I understand you added this for comedic value, this will instantly derail the thread due to word use. Please avoid it in the future for the sake of smooth debate.
I know pigeon patois. Sorry, I don’t see where the Jamaican comes in, at all.
I’m not trying to corner you, but what phrases in particular are you speaking of? I’m confused.
Krieg brotherhood knows no skin tone. Proud to have you swing a buzzaxe.
As much as I’ve enjoyed most responses, I feel as though you’ve done nothing at all to listen to the content of this discussion.
I ask; Please refrain from this in the future. It may lead to our thread and debate being closed due to hostilities that need not be here. YOU play the game for one reason OTHERS play it for others. Your reasoning isn’t absolute. Where did anyone say the writers thought “everyone should be bisexual”? The post is hyperbolic and unrelated. Please avoid the like in the future.
You keep writing beautiful posts like that and you may soon see this thread get a little more diverse, you tease.
Gentlemen’s conduct. Well done.
FORETHOUGHT:
Every time I hear phrases like “Check your privilege” or “White men are the most discriminated group” I often brace myself for the possibility that I’m either speaking to a talking billboard or a moron, not always true, but always a fair preparation.
This debate has been above that fold, but I feel like the shadows of those sorts of people are often following the discussion. Many of the arguments have been against those who are not present, and not the content being discussed. Their hyperbolic language has nothing to do with us. I think it is best we remember that as we continue this discussion.
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Are there numbers showing how *representative are the opinions written on these articles? If there are others backing/agreeing with such opinions and how big others population is.
My problems with most articles about the subject is how much artificial (read as biased or non-random) it all ends up feeling after characteristics getting so much handpicked.
I wonder how much this is due to *how difficult it is to ask someone to think like someone they aren’t (e.g. asking a normal person what someone with [specific_mental_disorder] would be thinking in certain situation) or asking someone to describe something that they don’t have a conscious representation of (for example asking a person to “walk normally” and suddenly they walking like they had been shot).
You ask a designer for specific characteristics and suddenly they don’t know how to represent that… this is where you start thinking about stereotypes.
A couple of hours later and dozen of games remembered I think most games’ characters I liked weren’t chosen consciously, I assume it usually ends up being the ones with the best looking armours/clothing in the end except for Krieg wich is due to how iconic the psycho is and aswell as playing melee in a shooter.
*didn’t and won’t read all the articles and posts here, sorry if this was already said/discussed. I would appreciate though if someone could point me to sections where similar points are discussed.
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I spend an absurd period of time considering character choices.
And I’m mostly like
Borderlands:
- soldier looks like a cool class
- I like his clothing
- a classmod with ammo regen? best class
Skyrim:
- Male Nord… just let me play the game
- My character looks so default that I think I’ve saw three NPC’s that look almost exactly as him…
- Male Ironguard, not as common as nords and good melee stats
- New game, a female breton now. female because why not, breton because tryhard-physical/elemental/magical-resists-fulltime-gamebreaking-420
- My character still looks painfully common, I feel like I should aways keep her helmet on just to differentiate from the crowd…
Borderlands 2:
- commando could be as interesting as bl1’s soldier
- I also like his clothing
- Zer0 can actually melee?
- Psycho class seems interesting
- a capstone that turns you into a badass psycho? how much does it costs?
but krosis, I digress. because in the end, this is what I mostly find people playing as.
You mean every class? ;p
Eventually this is going to get to a point where even saying Hello to someone is going to piss someone off. When did people become a bunch of whimpy kiddy whiner babies. Sheesh.
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I originally wanted to avoid this thread, since the discussion is going pretty well and civil so far thanks to great part to @Giuvito I will bite.
Perhaps I am from a different generation but it is generally understood that you are what you play, yeah there is a character, it has polygons, with a skin pigment the texture artist choose—all of which is just background noise to the gameplay, and this “template” of a character can be whatever. You want him Black? Pretent he is, you want him Gay? Pretend he is….because he/she/it is you.
This is especially true for first person shooters, it is implied that I am in the game—that is why it is in first person (get it? from my point you view). I can be whatever character I wish without having that spelled out to me by the developers.
Then videogame started having stories and lore. Now those skin pigments, character background, gender and all started to matter–background became the new foreground. Times changing.
I heard stories about some X videogame validating a person’s color or sexual orientation. I never understood that until I see that these players probably don’t get a lot of validation in their actual lives, so any validation, even a virtual one….is a huge deal. The TV Show Glee made gays cool, and that’s great. Video games should do that as well. I think we are a lot better today than we were 5 years ago. Having said that I think it’s equally as important to be able to empathize with another character other than your own likeness.
The key point is, this act should come from the developer, consumers can demand it to show the need….but that’s it. Borderlands worked well (for most part) because the writer and lead game designer cared enough about diversity but more importantly–it came from the inside. As someone who oversee creative people day to day-- the end product is ALWAYS better when the idea comes from the creator rather me telling them what to do.
My job is to simply work inception, make the creator feel like it’s their idea but that’s another art all together.
The problem begins when you turn diversity and comfort zone into a grade.
When websites start deducting review points just because of a lack of diversity–or say having too much nudity, (even though the game is rated M and nudity is part of the lore)–then you need to stop calling yourself a review site. This is exactly what Polygon did with the Witcher 3. That’s like me writing a negative Yelp review of a restaurant because the waiter was black, saying nothing of the food. Unfortunately that’s the level of nonsense we are dealing with today. My favorite is GTA V being misogynist because you can beat a women and kill them, right just like you can beat anything and kill anything in this game, 100% of the people you kill in the story are male. Where is the outcry about the males?
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My thoughts about skintones: I don´t care in games and I don´t care in reallife either. Took me a full year to recognize Hammerlock is black…I simply did not care. There could be more non-white heroes though, but thats a thought I already had in young years reading Marvel/DC comics.
On sexual stereotypes:
I love the female characters we saw in Borderlands-games so far. BL is literally the only gaming franchise with female characters I like, be it Moxxi, Tannis, Athena or Lillith. They all have quiet natural personalities and are not overdrawn sexy, even Moxxi. (only my opinion.)
I think female enemies should appear more often. As girl I feel same dangerous and vicious a a guy could be. I´m sure I´d be a great endboss. Also we are good at crimes too. Maybe women are even better in crime than men, but we hear about it rarely because we don´t get caught 
Love BL-1 and BL-2 for their skinny male heroes - I loved Mordecai and Zer0 because I´ve alot of quiet skinny friends who are braver than lions. Of course I´m a fan of Krieg too, but it does´nt requier sixpacks to be a hero.
Also I LOVE the game “NIER” for his protagonist - a 40+ years old father fighting fo his daughter. LIked Prototype out of the same reason, this whole “I have to save my girlfriend/princess/ best friend I´ve never told I loved her”-issue grew so old.
And hear the outcry over the males for you @Abvex ^^
Every enemie deserves to be killed, male or female, but at some points I wonder about the balancing too.
So many weird scenes ala “Oh, she killed that guy in cold blood, but I´ve to comfort her for whitnessing her own murder…” WTF?! If I would put of a fight and get a hug in return I´d crack completely.
MassEffect is the only gameseries so far that tried to balance enemy-sexes out in some battles, so you don´t shoot guys only.
Best counter example is “W.E.T.” an awesome game with a drunk female swordswielding b*tch as protagonist and a blind, creepy albino woman as endboss. Everytime I go mad about sexism I play that game and it makes me smile. The good way, not the zynical ways^^
Its a so deep rooted stereotype that women are more worthy of protection than man. I mean, it leads to the conclusion that the death of man is less important. Thats sexism and fascism pure. Yes, we can give birth to children, but that does not make us so much more important. A human life is a human life. If a videogame wants to showcase killing, a kill should be a kill, no matter what gender I shoot.
God that sounds coldblooded O.O’
After that portion of whatever - Hugs for ya all! 
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