Slavic people are today mostly seen as “white” to the point that a Polish game developer was in USA criticised for making the computer game Witcher 3 without any people of color that could be recognized as such in modern world. Similarly a few years later a Czech developer was criticised for the same thing in a game Kingdom Come: Deliverance, deliberately set in medieval Bohemia and made as historically accurate as possible.
Whilst I understand all the arguments for the importance of diversity in representation, I think all these critiques were misguided, because they were targeted at the wrong target – they criticised products of one culture from the perspective of another culture with entirely different roots.
Slavs are indeed white when you look at the color of their skin, and by Gob do we have an awful lot of white supremacists and neo-nazis today. However a white nationalist or even a neo-nazi Slav makes about as much sense as white nationalist or neo-nazi (or Trump loving) Jew. After all, Jews have white skin too. And after all, how many Jew-hating Arabs and Arab-hating Jews know that both Jews and Arabs are in fact semitic tribes? I would venture a guess that many do not, or they do but don’t care. People are perfectly capable of being misguided, misinformed, bigoted and downright willfully ignorant and hold contradictory ideas in one head, so there is that.
Historically Slavs migrated in the Europe from east and north, displacing come celtic and germanic populations. As a result they lived mostly in the woodlands and mountains of north, central and East Europe and they were comparatively poor. They had no written language that we know of, so very little is in fact known about their culture or religion. Some knowledge can be derived from linguistics, some from written reports by neighbouring nations, some from archeology, but Slavs established themselves in Europe during the dark ages and knowledge is therefore scarce.
However it is sometimes alleged that their own name for themselves – Slovan (originating from the word sloviť=to speak) might have been the origin of the word sclavus (Lat), and later on Sklave (Ger) and slave (En) . Because these poor people were popular sources of cheap slave labor for neighbouring Germanic and Italic tribes through the early history of Europe way over to the Ottoman Empire in Middle East later on.
And even apart from slavery, a lot of the time right from Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages until very recently most Slavic nations were second-class citizens in countries led by people of other nationalities. Only Russians have managed to be oppressors and not oppressed in this period, and ironically they mostly oppressed and sometimes even tried to exterminate other Slavs. Both Czechs and Poles did not have any independency right until the end of WW1, after which they had few short decades to get the taste of self-determination before being swept into the bloody cauldron of WW2.
Under the Third Reich the Slavs were seen as barely people. They were not targeted for outright extermination like Jews and Roma, but the intent was to put them back into their proper place – slavery (that is why I think that a neo-nazi Slav is an ignoramus and a completely daft person – if nazis got their way, he would think scrubbing floors with his own toothbrush is a posh job).
After the WW2 all slavic nations ended up being wrapped behind the Iron Curtain under the not-so subtle hegemony of USSR. This time at least it was not overtly attempted to obliterate local cultures and languages (not here anyway). But whilst the Russian rule did try and manage to instill some sense of Pan-Slavic belonging, they also managed to instill some anti russian sentiments along the way (in Poland on top of the hundreds of years long grudge Poles held against Russians from the time of the Russian Empire). And the sense of always being second class, not being allowed anything truly ours, pervaded.
In this sense, sprouting of some nationalism after the fall of the Iron Curtain was perhaps inevitable, what with the nations trying to finally re-assert themselves for good. I do think white nationalists are going about the business the wrong way, proclaiming your superiority over others is not the right thing to do and it is also demonstrably false. But I also think that Polish game developers who make a PC game packed with people who bear the typical facial features of contemporary Poles, with architecture and ornaments of medieval Slavic kingdoms and based on Slavic mythology, or Czech game developers making a game set in a very distinct and specific area of medieval Kingdom of Bohemia with focus on historical accuracy are doing nothing wrong and are indeed going about it the right way. And even though these works of art have managed to succeed on an international stage, their creators were in no way obliged to fall in step with USA culture and reflect USA racial make-up.
Those who criticised these two games for a lack of representation of POC have failed to realize that they were essentially trying to bully others into giving their own culture away and let the USA to appropriate said culture the way USA likes it. In fact, they should take these games as an opportunity to learn that “white people” are not a monolith and that outside of USA there is a lot more that defines your ancestry and your culture than the color of your skin. This way said critics were – probably unwittingly – perpetuating the USA collonialism ad absurdum, by requiring everyone everywhere to reflect contemporary social ills of USA.
We do not need nor want to do that, thank you very much. We have our own social ills to deal with.
Very fascinating and I agree, USAians tend to be very narrow in their focus and think everywhere is just like here. And actually that is one of the great charms of this blog -- so many different voices, from so many different places. It helps the mind to stretch and grow and accommodate more than one idea at a time, pushing the boundaries if you will, to allow so much more in. Thank you for the history.
Thank you for a thoughtful piece on this Charly.
In the UK there definitely were people with different skin colours back at least as far as the Romans, the proportion of the population would have varied at different times depending on how much trade was being done versus how pre-occupied with civil wars the governing classes were -- you don’t buy foreign trinkets when you are fighting your cousin for the throne -- as the way people came to the UK in the first place was mostly trade. The non-whites weren’t just black either, there is an old Chinese presence in ports like Liverpool. However as far as I can tell they were always a small percetage of the population so it’s been easy to ignore their existence completely.
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Completely off topic, I couldn’t read this piece on Firefox, my normal browser, it just isn’t there, for me the page starts with Kestrel’s comment, just like TNET starts with the first comment. I was able to read it in Internet Explorer. I don’t know what happened differently when you posted this post as normally I can read your posts fine. It also isn’t showing for me in Firefox on the list of your posts I get if I click on your name. It’s no big deal, but I thought I’d mention it.
Interesting reading, Charly. I think many Americans are contemptuous of any culture not their own, despite the fact that their own culture is so dysfunctional. I blame propaganda. These people are taught from the time they’re young that the USA is the best at everything in the world. Even many disenfranchised Americans think the USA is the best place to live. How do you even start to dismantle such a beast?
Nope, sorry. Not with you on this one, and do note that I’m not American. As I like video games I remeber the controversy over Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and the comments of the project’s developer on twitter made it very much obvious that he was a white supremacist piece of shit. Furthermore, he was pointed out that there were, indeed, people of color in medieval Bohemia, so it wasn’t unrealistic at all to have them in the game, a fact that many people dismissed or ridiculed. Finally, no offense but using the history of the oppresion of the Slav people in this specific context reminds me too much of the canard (they were indentured servants, not slaves) that white supremacists in the US sometimes try to use to minimize the impact of slavery, so I don’t think it’s a good way to frame the issue. Please do read those links I posted, they should prove illuminating.
I can agree with you on some things -- like the tendency for USAnian culture to be perceived as ‘correct’, but I think the two games you cite as examples should have done much better (Kingdom Come is even set towards the end of the Middle Ages, when people were migrating all over the place and a hell of a lot). Even in my small backwoods end of Europe, there is ample evidence of contact (or at least knowledge of) countries well beyond Europe. I mean, the Duke was sending indentured colonists to Gambia and Tobago! And that’s a mere 200 years or so after the end of Medieval Times. Before that, Tacitus was visiting the Baltic region around 100AD. In between those times, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that people, especially merchants and traders, would have travelled far distances and become known to each other -- this doesn’t mean that visitors from, say, the Far East were commonplace, but to get a couple of faces in some crowd scenes in a videogame set in a vibrant, populated environment? Sure, why not? Crusaders were heading out to the Middle East towards the end of the period, and Spain is not all that far from the northern African countries.
I think it’s lazy not to include people of colour, at least in the background (if you can’t be arsed to make a playable character of colour), and it shows a distinct lack of appreciation for the travel, communications, collaboration and initiative capacities of previous civilisations and peoples. The creativity and ingenuity of previous generations and the accomplishments of the ‘other’ are constantly being underestimated, and leads to weird theories like aliens building the pyramids.
I do agree with this statement:
esp. as it pertains to people of eastern European origin in this climate of Immigrants Bad! and Brexit, and yes, USA colonialism can read its ugly head in a myriad ways. But I think the historical and current erasure of people of colour in Europe, all of Europe, is definitely one of our own social ills, as is the accompanying racism and resultant white supremacy. If we could accept that people of colour have always been a part of the European constellation of cultures, then it wouldn’t be so difficult to sort out the refugee crisis (although that last bit could just be me trying to be optimistic about people being more sensible than they are).
@Kreator: I read those links. I am unimpressed and uniluminated.
1) Note that all the depictions of people of color in your links are depictions of people living outside of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Nowhere do I say or have I implied (or seen anyone to imply) that people in medieval Bohemia did not know about the existence of people of color. However in those links is actually not presented any evidence for believing there were people of color (specifialy blacks) present in Bohemia in any significant numbers to speak of. There might be an occasional merchant going through. But what you definitively cannot expect are local people of color representing today’s racial make-up of USA. The hell, you cannot see that racial make-up reflected in Central Europe today, when people are much, much more mobile (both socially and geographically) than they used to be back then!
2) Turkic people are actually in the game. Because there are actual, historic reasons for them to be present at that time and place (note that the game is on a very small place in central Bohemia.
3) I do concede that Daniel Vávra, one of the main developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a bit of an asshole. His opinions about women and political corectness are misguided and he seems to be more right-wing and a sexist than I think is decent. But those issues are not the point of this post and I am not going to discuss them.
4) I was pointing the slavery not to minimize the impacts of cattle slavery in US, but to point out that just because Slavs are recognized as White today, they were historicaly not seen as equals of other white people. Even very recently in fact sometimes are not seen as such. The Brexit frenzy was initiated by “filthy” Poles and Czechs being loathed for taking jobs from decent, clean white Brits. Hatred of brown people came into picture later on. When the Czech Republic was accepted into the EU, a significant number of Germans feared that those uncivilized Czechs will cause massive crime wave.
@rq, please take into consideration, that Czech Kingdom is surrounded by mountains and has no acces to sea. As a result it was more isolated than baltic and scandinavian nations.
Ad this:
I think that this is kind of Catch 22. Because if the creators of Kingdom Come: Deliverance did this, they could be -- and no doubt would be -- accused of tokenism.
Ad this:
In a game set on 16 square km in medieval Bohemia in 1403 that would require an awfull lot of bending backwards.
And I ask -- why should a Czech developer bend over backwards to appease social sensibilities of other cultures? I mean, how many are there american movies where there are visible and clearly recognizable Czech characters?
To me it seems just as misguided as if I was whining there are no white people in Black Panther movie.
Because he wants in on the global market? I’m assuming he’s not making a game just for Czech audiences, but a game that people around the world can enjoy. Why, then, shouldn’t he at least consider the social sensibilities of other cultures?
Also, medieval Bohemia doesn’t sound too isolated to me:
If you can get involved in world politics and your kings can become Holy Roman Emperors, I doubt those mountains are all that insulating. Granted, that’s from Wikipedia and they’ve been known to get things wrong from time to time.
Why not have the option, though? If you have choices about clothing to wear, and can pick and choose and combine according to what you want, why not just… add the option? The developer also didn’t add an option to play as a woman . I guess women never did anything in the Middle Ages, much less blacksmithing? Maybe I should be grateful there’s women at all. (I just googled about it -- playable female character in Kingdom Come: Deliverance -- and holy shit the discussions around this question just make it not worth talking about at all.) It’s a game, not history revived, and I think it’s a shame the developer didn’t put a little more effort into considering his audien… oh wait, never mind, he probably did.
I do appreciate your original information on the Slavs, Charly. But I can’t wrap my head around people really being bothered about putting in something other than straight white men in their games (oh, I forgot about the enemy Turks, sorry) and then having it presented as ‘historically accurate’. Sounds like some pretty boring history, if you ask me.
I’m bowing out of the discussion. Good night.
But why should it only be possible to get on the global market by only presenting what already is on the global market? In the name of diversity we make everything the same? Why should someone from a small and for multiple centuries relatively unrecognized nation not be allowed to try and make it big in the global market with somethign of their own? Should Japanese be also required to incorporate whites (and blacks) when they make anime from medieval Japan?
So in essence, after three hunderd years of forced germanization and half a century of having to bend over backwards to Russians now we have to do everything so it appeals to Americans? Or West Europeans? Or anyone else in the name of “global market”?
I am personaly not too big on the national pride part. Not at all in fact. I think it lends itself way too easy to othering. I think it plays a big role in the Visegrad 4 boneheaded attitude towards immigration and our refusal to accept refugees, which I consider wrong. I think it lends itself way too easy to racism, which we have no shortage of.
But I also do understand why someone might want to make something “Really Czech” for a change, present it to the world at large and succeed. To show that our history is ours, that it is great and that it is worth knowing. And making a game in that part of history where Czechs had some shot at being big players on the international stage is to me a part of that.
That rich aristocracy was able to play soldiers throughout the Europe says nothing whatsoever about the mobility of actual commoners. There is a difference between mobility of goods, mobility of ideas and mobility of people. It is easy to transfer ideas (at least once writing is invented), more difficult to transfer goods and really difficult to transfer actual people, especially in medieval feudal society. Again, there is no actual evidence of there being black Czechs at that time. There are some today, but still nowhere near enough to see any in a random sample of 16 square km of countryside. And today, absolutely inarguably, the mobility of people is much, much bigger.
I am 100% with you on the sexism angle. I am not going to dispute or oppose you on that front whatsoever. I also consider it to be off topic.
Addendum to the mobility: Routes over land limit your contact only to your neighbours. Harbors anywhere were always more diverse than inlands for this reason.
Haven’t there been similar discussions about games with bog-standard fantasy settings that are largely based on “generic medieval Europe” tropes? I mean, I recall that people sometimes defend the exclusion of women and POC in *those* games in the name of “historical accuracy”. Now that’s a weak excuse, but you could also ask why this vaguely “European” styled fantasy is so bog-standard on the global market to begin with.
Games with genuine fantasy settings very well could and often should have a representation of real world human diversity. (And if you choose to put in diversity consisting of fantasy races/species, try to avoid circling around the white male human outlook)
@lumipuna Who and why made said game is important, in my opinion. When two do the same, it is not the same. When an USA based company makes a fantasy game placed in completely fictional environment from scratch and excludes people of color, it is different than when a Czech or Poland based company makes a game based on historicarl or literary sources and does not artificially force people of color to appear in it.
Further, I am not a gamer, but the most succesful game fransise in the fantasy world is TES from Bethesda, and those games actually are really racially diverse. I do not know many fantasy games, so I do not know how prevalent is exclusion of POC from them.
I know even less about the subject of games, so that’s that on my part.
@Charly: I was afraid that you were going to react this way. Your reply and most of what you’ve said afterwards in defense of your argument mirrors almost to a letter the arguments and feelings of the racists who just want their own little white male fantasy -not reality (heck, I read that the game even ended up having health potions -- what’s realistic about that?!). I understand that this is a sensible topic and I’m really not helping though, so, like rq, I’m out.
In a game set on 16 square km in medieval Bohemia in 1403 that would require an awful lot of bending backwards.
I grew up in a rural area of Eastern Ontario (Canada) in the 1960’s. We had one Chinese family (well a father and son) and no blacks or other ethnic groups. I cannot ever remember seeing a black person in town though there probably were a few visitors whom I did not see. My high school (20 km away) had the one Chinese student and one black teacher but the teacher lived 60 km away. Other than that it was lily-white.
I have no problem with an all-white cast in a small area of medieval Bohemia in 1403. Adding different races unless it was a definite part of the plot would strike me as an affection. I think wanting to add minorities without a reason is what historians call presentisim(sp?).
No; sorry to return uninvited after saying I was leaving but I can’t let this stand in good conscience. Not only are the developers of Kingdom Come a bunch of bigots, so are those of the Witcher 3. To see them defended in Affinity of all places feels like a slap in the face. Please, I urge you one final time to rethink your stance and recant this blog post.
@Kreator, I am sorry you see it this way too. From my perspective you seem not to realize that you are explaining to me the history of my land and issues in my contemporary culture from afar. Not only that, you are explaining to me an issue where you read some second to third hand accounts, to which I have read first hand accounts. How would you feel if I started to explain to you things about Argentina?
Also I started to write longer answer and then I relized that you are deliberately derailing the discussion by throwing red herrings in it and I am not going to rise to that. This topic is not about trans issues or sexism (nevermind that I already agreed that the game is wrong on that front!). There are enough more qualified people on this network to write about those issues and I am not going to meddle in that unless I find an part of those complex issues where I think my perspective might be informative. This topic is on one specific issue. A company, a person, a product, can be correct in one issue and wrong on another. Arguments for them one being correct about one issue does not translate as argument for them being correct on other issues and vice versa.
The game Kingdom Come: Deliverance was after it came out evaluated by actual expert historians, here. And their verdict on the POC issue in short? “In this part of Bohemia, in this age, probability of POC being present is nearly zero, They only were realistically to be expected in big cities and traveling along major routes.” Furhter the game was considered so well researched and so well done, that Masaryks University in Brno has decided to incorporate it into its curriculum both for “showing the actual historical era in which the game takes place, but also to show by example the differences between how is the past portrayed in popculture and how it is reconstructed by historians” although as far as historical accuracy is concerned, the historians have reservations -- but no local historian objected to the absence of black people. They pointed out however that the clothing of turkic people in the game is anachronistic about 100 years.
In fact you (and to lesser extent rq) are actually making my point for me. You adamantly insist on viewing the game from the perspective of your cultures -- wheras you both grew up in significantly different environments than I did -- and you are completely ignoring the perspective of how those games are seen here -- they are seen as huge international succes of Czechs and as presenting succesfuly Czech history an culture to the world.
I am making your point for you? Let me make some more points, then.
This doesn’t mean they could have done better in a lot of ways. The game can be a commercial and gaming success and still fail at being accessible and diverse and relatable. As is obvious.
And by dismissing Kreator’s concerns re: transphobia and sexism of the developers, you miss the heavy correlation between racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination that has often been noted. These things tend to go together, and I’m sorry, but having some (most likely) white Czech historians declare a game not-racist because it is so perfectly historically accurate? Just say that out loud and listen to the words. You can show the historical accuracy of a piece of history -- the way of life, the motivations of the main characters, the tools they used and the clothing they wore, and still have a background character or two be something other than white.
Heck, Latvians are notoriously bad at this, but even the recently made “Baltic Tribes” docudrama managed a scene where we catch glimpses of *gasp* four people of colour. The only reason I noticed? Because I was looking out for it, because I do that these days, and it makes a difference in how I see a piece of art, a game, a movie, anything. The funniest thing? It didn’t take anything from the story! No actual proto-Latvian people were ruined by this! No attention was removed from the main story! They were just there, in a panning shot of a crowd, in context. I doubt most people will notice, but to those for whom this is important, it’s there -- an acknowledgement. Not hard. Still historically accurate.
(And before you bring up that whole mobility and rivers and mountains argument, I call bullshit, because if you can be emperor of a holy empire, you better damn well have the people to move to support your power -- and that’s not just rich aristocrats, that’s soldiers and peasants, too. The information and books etc. you mentioned previously need someone to carry them, and there’s no reason to think that there weren’t adventurous people from other lands venturing into Bohemia itself -- just because no one wrote down their names and took their picture doesn’t mean they didn’t come and go. Anyway, Bohemia was a world power, and the Czech Republic is still a recognizable country. Try telling someone you’re from Latvia, and talk to the blank stares and the wild guesses, even here in Europe. So you don’t have to explain to me the importance of having a history, of knowing your history, and having the world know your history. The world doesn’t care. Do Czech historians? Yes, and I’m glad they’ve found a good medium to teach history (though I suspect it will still perpetuate a lot of myths about women’s roles, so… mixed goods). But does the rest of the world actually care about the historical accuracy? I doubt it. The game’s target audience wants a good game, magic potions (!!) and all, and maybe some relatable characters for the players who are not white or male. Be proud of the creative abilities of Czech gamesmakers -- they’re obviously good at what they do. But please recognize that they can do better.)
I’m standing with Kreator on this one, and I won’t be coming back to this thread, so feel free to offer whatever explanations you think you might have missed in your previous comments, just know that they will be wasted on me.
Where and when do I disagree with that? They could do better. However for a Czech developer, who has limited experience with POC in real life, and has no reason whatsoever to assume they were in the area where the game takes place, their inclusion in the game is not in any way a priority and it does not make the whole company a bunch of racist white supremacists. And again, shoehorning a black character in there somewhere could be seen as tokenism. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But we cannot know for sure, because that scenario did not happen.
I am not dismissing anyhting. I am not qualified to discuss those issues so I won’t. Besides I already acknowledged that I agree with you on the sexism part being wrong. Twice. So do historians, btw. What else can I do?
No, I do not miss them. But that said correlation (AFAIK scientifically evaluated in USA) does not mean that automaticaly every sexist everywhere around the world is also a racist and vice versa. There are also plenty of sexist POC and plenty of racist women etc. etc. There are plenty of people who have some racist or sexist ideas and notins, but who are not entirely defined by those sexist and racist notions. Correlational findings about populations cannot be applied to every single individual of said populations.
Yes, and that someone can pass them onto another person. Ideas can even be copied and spread that way way faster than goods can. Whereas to transfer actuall people, you have to move them from A to B. And to get a population established, you have to convince them to stay.
Evidence that kings took peasants with them is where? Soldiers when going to battle, yes. Servants when going anywhere, yes. But peasants? No. Peasants (serfs) were bound to land and if a king moved somewhere, he needed not take them with him, because there already were other peasants working the land. There was some movement between the european countries, but thinking there were black peasants in Czech countryside would really, really be stretching it. A lot. There were, as I said, multiple times, some POC merchants in big cities, but the game does not take place in big city or along a main mercantile route.
Actually the historians said that the role of women is one of the things the game got wrong. And the developers are working on free DLC that would make female character playable. So at least someone somewhere in the company was able to listen to outside objections and was influential enough to get the company to react. No matter how flawed person Vávra is, he is not the company.
When I was in USA, I got those blank stares all the time, nearly nobody knew what Czech Republic is, let alone where it is on the map. One man even wondered if we already have computers and if we know what internet is, another one thought that we are a part of Great Brittain and are ruled by the Queen. Some knew that there was some land called Czechoslovakia somewhere and missed it does not exist anymore for nearly a generation. And some thought we are Russians.
So I post it for others, then.
I’ll try to adress some of @rq’s points. Perhaps it will make someone think for a while, perhaps not.
AFAIK, the most widely supported opinion by the experts on Czech history is that in 14th century Bohemia, in the very small -- mainly rural -- area where the game takes place, the probability of encountering people of color was almost zero. Yes, “almost zero” doesn’t equal “zero” but if one of the points the developers decided to focus on is historical accuracy, then NOT including PoC is decision that fits better to reality of those medieval times. Decision made in such a manner isn’t necessarily a sign of racism/white supremacy etc.
Historical reality and facts don’t depend on what one thinks is “important”. I’m all for racial diversity but I see no reason why a historicaly accurate, well researched game set in a very specific time and place should acknowledge something just because some people (mostly from culutres with different social-ethnical background, mostly USA) wish it did despite strong historical (counter)evidence.
The fact that majority (“rest of the world”) doesn’t care about X doesn’t mean that X isn’t worth depicting/pursuing. For example, rest of the world doesn’t care about high-school math. Billions of people use mostly only basic arithmetic operations during their whole lives. Does it mean we should pay less attention to higher-than-basic math in schools? I don’t think so.
Years before the game’s release date everyone could find out that the game’s protagonist will be male, the game will be tougher than lot of other games in it’s genre, the game will be mostly white because of historical accuracy, you won’t be able to save the game anytime you like, etc. There was a strong motivation and reason for every one of those points. So years before the release date everyone could decide if (s)he belongs to the target audience or not. Sure, some would prefer female protagonist or easier difficulty but those people were not in the (center of) target audience.
Notice that the game recieved mostly positive reviews and some of the most praised ascpects were it’s attention to detail, historical accuracy and overall different approach. As for your “magic potions (!!)”, bear in mind that it is a videogame -- an entertainment medium -- not a scientific thesis and therefore it must make some compromises.
Sorry, I come back to this topic late because the preholiday season is keeping me extremely busy.
Yes, I realize it. No, it wasn’t deliberate. But I apologize for all this, I really do. This is not something I’m enjoying, I assure you, but I think it’s just too important to let go.
I’m going to have to echo rq. “These things tend to go together, and I’m sorry, but having some (most likely) white Czech historians declare a game not-racist because it is so perfectly historically accurate? Just say that out loud and listen to the words.”
The history we get today has been severely whitewashed. The stories of people of color in Europe were there, they were just ignored, and historians often have to work with these incomplete records. In other words, wether they realize it or not, these historians you speak of are biased towards the dominant groups, in this case the light-skinned ones. But don’t just take it from me. Here’s a person that makes the case better than I ever could, and he’s in a better position by means of a) being European, and b) having university degrees in Medieval Studies and History.
@Kreator, I appreciate your measured response. I have already read the article you linked, and I see no reason to dispute it or to disagree with it in any way. In fact, I plan to write about some of the historical issues mentioned in it in some next Slavic Saturday (which might take a few weeks to surface, since this week I am away). However, I still did not see a smigeon of evidence that there was any reason to expect POC, other than the depicted Cumans, in that area of Bohemia at that time -- the article does not mention that particular issue at all. In fact, it only bemoans that the game did not include every nuance imaginable, which is, as the article says “fool’s errand”. Well duh, Captain Obvious. It is still just a game and many things simply had to be omitted/modified/simplified for the sake of it being enjoyable and playable. I can as a craftsman never achieve perfection, does it mean I shall not even try?
However, I am going to adress one of the tangents, specifically the absence of a playable female character. According to Czech sources, plans for a female character were in there for quite a long time (whether from Vávra himself, or despite him, I did not find out). But it requires a lot more work. Work, for which there originally was not enough money -- the game barely squeaked by into publication as it is, even when making it with only male playable character. It was a choice of necessity. Now that the game has paid for itself and is turning a profit, the studio is working on a DLC to finalize this goal and include a historicaoly accurate gameplay/questline from female perspective. Maybe that flops and confirms that the whole studio is a bunch of sexist assholes. But maybe not, maybe it will provide an entertaining and accurate (but not complete) glimpse in how women in that time lived. The jury is still out on that one.
However they had female character as a “strech goal” i.e. an option to be implemented in case things go well since at least 2014.
Vávra is an asshole, a sexist (even though he denies it), free speech absolutist and rambling loudmouth. He might be a Czech nationalist, but calling him a Nazi or white supremacist would be stretching it a bit -- I have never seen any evidence of him writing anything about the superiority of white race, inferiority of POC or antisemitism, only assertions of such (edit: I mean assertions by other people that he helds such views). Further the company Warhorse consists of 120 people. Their main in house consulting historian is a woman. The company as a whole is not defined by Vávra. He only had the initial great idea for the game. That idea, and its realization, are no longer only his and cannot be judged only through the lense smeared by his assholish persona.
Addendum: The Czech (and German) white historians did not proclaim “the game is not racist”.
They only stated what I wrote, i.e. “In this part of Bohemia, in this age, probability of POC being present is nearly zero, They only were realistically to be expected in big cities and traveling along major routes.”.
When you change the matter-of fact neutral and non-judgemental language that the historians actually have used into a sentence that makes moral judgement and is full of loaded words, you are not engaging in criticism or counter-argument, but in emotional manipulation. However justified your position might be, that is not going to convince me that said historians are factually wrong.