There’s a game called “Rust” in which you play a character in a wilderness. When it first came out, everyone was assigned the same avatar: a white dude. As we all know, “white dude” is the default everywhere, so no one complained.
Then, in an upgrade, they added other avatar options: different faces, different skin color. As an interesting experiment, these options were not under player control: they were randomly assigned. White dudes logging in suddenly found that their avatar might be a black dude (still a dude, at least; female avatars aren’t yet available).
If the skin color is forced on you, you won’t like it
…OK, where were you when everyone was forced to play a white dude?
Not trying to be racist, it just comes naturally to you, I guess.
You don’t want to “take the chance of playing a black character.” Why? What would happen to you in the game? This is an entirely cosmetic feature, you know.
But please, self-awareness! Turn it around. Racism must be a big deal if the devs are MAKING PEOPLE PLAY AS WHITE CHARACTERS.
Here’s a lovely summary of what’s going on in this situation.
Why is it that the supposed lack of choice with regards to the player’s avatar only became a concern after people of color were added to the game? The reactions reflect a failure on the part of some gamers to recognize that whiteness is a race at all. These players appear to think of whiteness as a neutral type of embodiment, the universal category of humanity against which all those who do “have” a race (anyone who is not white) are compared. The backlash also confirms a theory posited by new media scholar Lisa Nakamura that, on the Internet, there is a tendency to assume that, in the absence of direct statements to the contrary, the people that we meet are white. Indeed, as Nakamura writes in “Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet”:
Until lately, the structure of the Internet has been such that it has greatly facilitated covering [or passing]; early utopians especially lauded and adored the Internet’s ability to hide or anonymize race as its best and most socially valuable feature. The Internet was just as much a machine for not-seeing as it was a machine of vision, at least in terms of race and gender identity.
In other words, by reintroducing the visualization of difference into the virtual world, Rust is making gamers question their racialized assumptions about the people they are interacting with online.
Making people question their assumptions…it’s like skepticism and critical thinking and all those good things science-minded people like to promote! I guess the problem is that white people must not be science-minded.
Oh, that’s not fair. We’re looking at a subset of white people in this example. Maybe it’s just gamers who are stupid.
This is probably the reason why most video game companies are terrified of having a protagonist that isn’t a white male. These assholes will freak the fuck out. I can only imagine what the backlash would be if a developer tried this on a triple A title.
I get the frustration of not being able to create a character one can identify with. Welcome to what so many other people go through when playing video games.
Everybody is given “white”, no choice.—-> Not a peep.
Everybody is given a random race, no choice.—-> White dudes loose their shit.
No choice either way…just what the game assigns to you whether you like it or not…which clearly means that what these people don’t like is not being white. Fuck you, you transparently racist arseholes.
Or maybe it’s just some gamers. I have MMO characters who’re not white and/or not male.
I never heard of Rust before now, but maybe I’ll look at it.
Why do these people assume that light beige (white) is the default skin color? Don’t the majority of people on this planet have brown skin?
The majority of people they interact with don’t, though, ekwhite. Social segregation is a verifiable thing in the western world.
I’m pretty much the opposite of these yahoos: I frequently play POC in games, though I don’t play any MMO at the moment (and until Firefly Online boots up, probably won’t). My Skyrim character is a Black lesbian (married with two kids, too!); my Mass Effect 2 & 3 Shepard is an Asian bisexual woman. My favourite Grand Theft Auto was San Andreas, in which you play the entire game as a Black protagonist – in fact, playing it taught me a lot about race in the US. I don’t get why the limit of their ability to fantasize about themselves as a badass warrior or super-powerful mage or whatever is “as long as it’s white”.
azhael has it right: transparently racist, assholes.
azhael,
I’m going to disagree with you.
Everybody is given a random race, no choice.—-> White dudes loose their shit.
Everybody is given “white”, no choice.—-> Not a peep, except from a small minority of people —-> White dudes loose their shit, start of harassment campaigns against these “evil PC censorious SJW’s”
@CaitieCat
I’m sure these people identify as white. As someone who’s identify doesn’t fit into a neat little category it feels wrong of me to dump on them about theirs.
I will dump on them for their complete and utter lack of awareness for other people. How those gamers probably feel (not having an avatar they can identify with) is how I felt many many times in my life.
Maybe I’m giving them too much credit. Maybe they just feel revolted when playing as a black man.
6@ zenlike
Indeed! Also the small number of people complaining that they have no choice but to be white by default are the real racists…
Poor sorry sad gamers. Reminds me of the old Pen and Paper post apocalyptic game The Morrow Project (which is in one of my basement boxes as we speak), which would have you roll your character’s race and ethnicity randomly!
That’s exactly what I thought. I’ve never followed anything to do with Rust so I don’t know if there was any noticeable waves made over the fact that you could only be a white dude. But I’m sure that, if there was, all these same douchebros would have been/were howling about SJWs invading their blessed hobby with their nefarious, SJW agenda.
As a female Rust player, I am extremely, extremely glad there are no female avatars. Not because I wouldn’t like the representation but because… ehh you can probably guess.
[I should have finished my previous thought, forgive me for double posting]
In case you can’t guess, or are not familiar with Rust, it is a sort of survival game where your player wakes up naked and stranded in the wilderness. You have to forage for food, create shelters, craft weaponry, build fires, and more or less keep yourself alive. As far as I understand, it was inspired by such fabulous indie games as Stranded 1 & 2 which was itself inspired by the movie Castaway.
Unfortunately Rust ultimately falls a bit light on the wilderness survival aspect and is more or less a sandbox team shooter game, with little to no need or reason to craft much of anything when you can find a military assault rifle in a cache box five minutes after starting the game.
Each player cannot see their own avatar, indeed don’t even have legs when looking down at them, only hands appear in the player’s view and while I’m not certain whether the texturing of those hands is any different than another player’s, I’m fairly sure all these complainey-pants people had to be told by a friend who was looking at them in game to even know they were not-white.
And the reason I’m glad there are no female avatars is because Rust characters start out absolutely naked (and not Ken Doll naked ether, fully anatomical, yes actual digital junk) and a female would be swiftly pigeonholed into what I call “The Zoey” (that is, Zoey from Left4Dead). In any post-apocalyptic or survival scenario, the “we gotta repopulate the earth” shit starts real quick. I’ve heard it enough on such games as it is, without having to be an actual naked woman avatar.
GTA 5 set what will hopefully be a new standard of multiple protagonists in the story component of the game where a young black man worked with a psychopathic, white-trash creep and a white, upper-class retired criminal. The results were brilliant, but should just be a start of a generation of games that allow us to explore not only a diversity of characters in different games, but diversity of characters and interactions within a single game. Of course the game also mocks nearly everything Southern California, which is a bonus for those of us in the region. I often choose an avatar that looks somewhat like me, or a non-human of possible, but limitations in avatar are in no way a deal breaker and diversity in characters is a huge bonus, creating a more immersive experience. My worry about this game is that, because you can limit the avatar selection to just white in the first place, is that it has no significant story and your character doesn’t matter. That would be a deal breaker for me.
I’m sort of glad race is assigned randomly in Rust. Considering how brutal it is in terms of PvP if you got to choose your race I imagine a virtual race war would erupt pretty quickly. I see this in the same style as the Sick Puppies and MRAs, a bunch of white men who are upset that “those” people are encroaching on “their” turf. Next time you go to a sci-fi or gaming convention see if the racial breakdown of attendees even approaches that of the country. I try paying attention and it disturbs me just how much white people dominate. It’s not out of some sense of social justice, it’s because I want to see my hobby grow and expand and thrive. You can’t do that if you specialize. PZ, as a biologist you know just how bad specialization can be in a changing environment.
If often try to play POC in MMOs and other games, but usually the pickings are slim. You can kind of make your skin dark-toned in WoW, though the range of facial features is pretty well limited to average caucasian. I very much enjoyed being “forced” to play a black character in The Walking Dead – was there any backlash to that design choice?
I once tried EVE, the space-based MMO, and actively sought out a black toon. At that point (I haven’t checked since), EVE had one faction with sample toons that looked black. But, much to my disgust, that faction was named “Brutor”. I just couldn’t play.
Happy Memorial Day everyone, especially those who have served our country in uniform.
So…what could go wrong with trying to make a social justice point to a group of people who just want to play a game?
I think the more interesting point here is about freedom, not race. Gamers have been conditioned to accept a mandated character with madated race/gender so there would not have been an uproar when the only option was a caucasian male.
But when other options were made available, and then randomly assigned, I would be willing to bet that it wasn’t just caucasian males who were upset. My hypothesis would be that every race would be equally upset at being randomly assigned a different race.
But that wouldn’t be much of a story, because only caucasian males can be racist…
Having not played Rust but knowing the central premise of survivalist roguelike FPS, I wonder if it has the same creepy-as-fuck power dynamics as DayZ.
There’s an entire subcommunity in that game that get their kicks holding people’s characters hostage and torturing them with insane demands at gunpoint. And yes, they do make it sexual if there’s any indication that the victim is female. They’ll post these videos to youtube for anyone that’s curious. It’s really some of the most sickening behavior I’ve ever actually witnessed in games anywhere.
For those who might think “Well, it’s just a video game, let them kill your character.” It’s not Mario, if your character dies, all their resources are gone, and any time you’ve spent foraging and building supplies is wasted.
I’d worry, since it shares the same mechanics of survivalism and permadeath, Rust would end up with a similar situation.
This sounds as though this guy thinks that having a black avatar would actually affect his game play, like he’s one of those people who thinks PoC are less intelligent, so if he has a black avatar, he’d be less intelligent, too!
The racism runs very deep, and it’s frightening. Why aren’t these people examining their reactions?
Tom Weiss:
You didn’t give one thought to white male being the default, did you? Have you ever considered all the years where people of colour had no choice as to the race of their game avatars? Have you ever considered all the years where women had no choice as to the race or gender of their avatars? No one is supposed to get upset about that, though, because white male is the default. It’s not only the default in games, but it’s the default in literature, plays, movies, and television.
Okay, but try it the other way around.
Make a game where you have no choice but to play a black guy.
Then change it so you will randomly be a white guy, or a green monster or something.
I’d guess the reaction would be pretty similar. Gamers are usually pretty understanding about stuff just not being in the game, but when stuff is in the game and we’re not allowed to choose it at will?
Some of the first mods made for every Total War title make non-playable factions playable. Think about that for a minute. Non-playable factions are generally set aside as such because they’re not supposed to be fun to play. And they’re mostly not, but gamers hate not having the option.
It seems irrational, but there’s a kind of strange logic to it. There’s also certainly some racism in there, and also a weird thing where some gamers (and not just white dudes, though this must be much more frustrating if you aren’t one) are very strongly attached to their own identities and insist that their avatars reflect them. These are the folks who refuse to play femshep because they’re dudes and whatnot.
This seems to rest on the assumption that just because no social justice point is being made, no point is being made at all. That would be wrong. When a game makes white the default, that’s very much making a point.
They didn’t “just want to play a game”. If that was the issue, they’d have been upset at the locked-in white character… because that’s also making a point.
So, these people aren’t upset that their game is being used to make a point. They’re upset that the point no longer favors them.
Tom Weiss sez:
Ya think? Jesus fuck. So close. And yet, so far.
I wonder if the Rust devs tracked how long characters of different races lasted. Given the backlash I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair number of avatars who weren’t white died sooner either by player “suicide” or actively hunted by other players.
So, your avatar is supposed to be just like you?
It’s not a fantasy?
Where does that leave small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri?
jedibear @ 20,
Uh… no? No, I don’t think your guess is on point at all. Gamers can be highly demanding of things that aren’t in the game if they feel it should be there. Gamers in general love the “wouldn’t it be great if game could do X” angle. Hence, modding. And, roguelike survivalist games have a long, long tradition of randomizing attributes.
You can feel your opinions are true, of course, but those are just feels. I don’t think it’s a reasonable opinion to hold at all.
Fechez le Vache @ 15:
It’s gotten both better and worse. The avatar creation in-game now pretty much lets you choose whatever skin colour, facial structure, etc, you like, and they even have some playable races that feature epicanthic folds. The avatar creation part of the game has come a long way, and they should be commended for providing as much diversity as they do.
And yet, at the same time, the playable race you mentioned still exists as the only dark-skinned one, that starts default with that skin tone. What’s worse though is the in-game behaviour. Players over the past year or so have started to use the word “Brutor” as a stand-in for a particular word that starts with N, and are throwing it around everywhere. If I have to read the phrase “brutor please” one more time I swear I’m going to have a conniption.
Caine @18,
I was thinking they were upset because they know how they would react to a POC avatar, and they’re afraid of getting the same treatment. They know they’re losing their white privilege, and it sucks.
But I dont think these are mutually exclusive hypotheses.
That’s not true. Whites of any gender can be racist, silly.
On another note, I think it’s funny that one of the screencapped whiners has a Garnet avatar and handle.
Lou “Weegee” Doench @ 9
In Jeff Dee’s recent RPG iteration of Tékumel, he includes an optional table where you can randomly roll your PCs sexual orientation and gender identity.
Rust is a fascinating experience of paranoia, tribalism and comradery. Time to play again!
Tom Weidd and Jedibear.
Have you missed the actual examples of transparently racist individuals? Your speculationsw about the motivations of these people are fine and all (and by that i mean, dishonestly detached from reality), except that we actually have their words to judge what their motivations are and it’s certainly not “i’m not being given a choice”, it’s “i don’t want to be anything other than white”.
It just blows my mind that there are people who view being white as lacking something called “race” that being black has; it never occurred to me and explains a lot.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
You’ve confused Memorial Day with Veterans’ Day. Memorial Day is about the dead, not the retired. It is by definition not happy.
And I’m not even an American.
Well, there are people who regard vanilla as not being a flavor, or at best “plain” vanilla. Vanilla is the fermented sex organ of a tropical orchid, for flavor’s sake.
Likewise, white is the northwest part of the northwestern part of the human world, the color of people living ‘way out of the comfort zone, most of them having left other places in recent memory.
If you were USan, David, you’d know that “thanking the troops for their service” is the new way that conservatives say hello to anyone they suspect of having worn a uniform at some point. Doesn’t matter what the situation is. “Thank you for your service, can I get fries with that?” “Do you have to give me a ticket, officer, and thank you for your service?” “Thank you for your service, and how YOU doin’?” At the risk of the Godwin, though I do think it’s relevant, If you think of it as a sort of Murcan-speaking parenthetical “heil Hitler”, it probably fills a similar niche. They don’t show it on television much, but it’d be pretty hilarious to see a show accurately portray what it’s like to be a known veteran in the US these days.
It’s weirdly creepy when you hear it in action. Like other veterans of foreign services, I don’t tend to mention my having served around USans.
What a Maroon:
The article quotes the lead developer saying there’s been “a definite uptick in overtly racist language”. So a lot of white players will have the novel experience of having the N-word thrown at them. But it also says:
Will you look at that! Apparently racism is bad when whites are on the receiving end! Maybe some of the white players will learn something from this (though I suspect that the ones who really need the lesson simply won’t play).
CaitieCat:
Yeah, I think that–
*record scratch*
Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone!
HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS THIS IS A THING THAT EXISTS???
I’ll be in my bunk!
I thought EVE was Firefly Online, at least in some spiritual sense.
I have fond memories of City of Heroes where you had lots of options for your appearance. Granted half my characters were robots or other kind of non-humans so their race wasn’t much of a factor.
Some animals are more equal than others…
You know, when I see this kind of thing, it always blows my mind. Play a game as a blue-skinned humanoid creature from another planet with tentacles growing out your face? No problem. Play a game as a giant, sentient cat? Yes, why not. Play as a human with a darker coloured skin? OMFGWTFBBQ?!?!?!?!?!?!?
For all of the criticisms leveled against it (lack of a really compelling story, lack of initial content, balance issues, loot distribution) one of the things I really enjoyed about Destiny right away was how you can have any color of skin and be either male or female, and the game doesn’t give a shit. There is no difference in stats, the armor isn’t vastly different (apart from adhering roughly to the contours of the body) and absolutely no one in the game treats you differently due to your gender, race or skin color. I started out as a female character on my Hunter, and recently started a female Warlock as well, and it makes zero damn difference. Some of my friends tell me it’s weird that I play as a girl, and I counter with “was it any weirder when women had to play as guys in past games?”
Firefly Online is a thing, yes. It’s not yet an active thing, but as they’ve been detailing lately on the Cortex app, they’ve had almost all the actors in to do voices, and I’ve already acquired two ships – a Sandfly I’m calling Dong Ma, and a Kepler, I think it is, I’m calling tsuyoku naritai. :D
Damn, does that mean Adam Baldwin is getting gaming work still? That kinda sucks, post-Goobergate.
And now I’m wondering about Culture ship names in Japanese translation. Tsuyoku naritai is not very SC.
Yeah, I’ve already decided the character will be a half-Japanese half-English Captain from somewhere near the colony Badger’s from (whose name slips my brain just now, Dyton maybe?). There’s Japanese writing on some of the gear in Serenity, which says to me there’s still a Japanese culture out there somewhere.
Not that this isn’t wildly off-topic by now or anything. :)
I knew a man who almost got his Sensei to name his Karate club Benjo-kan.
I’m pretty confident the same “gamers” who freak out here would scoff at anyone who hasn’t played GTA San Andreas, where the *only* playable character is a black criminal. Yeah I know “but but but that’s part of the background story *whine”
Any gamer who can’t forget he’s playing a black guy is either in a game that makes it an issue, or he’s a dipshit pseudo-gamer. In other words, a BETA. *Chuckle*
FWIW, when I was a kid (many decades ago) my box of Crayola® crayons had a pinkish one labeled “Flesh”
‘Flesh’ colored band-aids, too.
http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add.php?iid=86276
what the hell was that all about. I just had to solve a simple math problem in order to log on again after I just tried to log on?
I remember those crayons I thought they were wired even as a kid and am not a poc! and a dam ugly color to boot!
uncle frogy
@20 Jedibear
This comment deserves more recognition.
There are many outright racist people for whom their ability to emphasize or sympathize with a character is dependent on the character’s race. That fact is pretty indisputable.
There are also people who just want to be able to customize their avatar for a personalized game experience, such as the “i m black i just wanted to be white” person in the OP (who I really doubt hates black people considering the character she chose for her namesake).
As much as the “white is the default” thing is clearly real, it’s really unfair to say that’s all this is. Having only one player option for avatar means that your avatar is actually a *character*, even if they have no discernible personality – like Link, or Steve?, or Gordon Freeman. By adding different character appearances, they’ve taken away the appeal of having what feels like a character as the protagonist, but they don’t give you the tools to create your own character to replace it.
It’s not ridiculous to expect an immersive game to care more about emotional investment. It’s the difference between hearing a story about a specific person you have an actual relationship with, and a story about some random, nameless guy you’ve never met. Which are you going to care more about?
(also, arbitrary customization limitations just plain suck, such as with gender-specific equipment. Why can’t my hulking male barbarian put on an enchanted Tiara? Is it like magnets, and it’ll just propel itself off his head?)
you know for all the hype about it being make believe and all, there does seem to be a marked pinched feel to the imaginations of the some of the people involved with playing and making some of the games that are so popular.
It is so bad that they have to freak out if there is any variation from their small minds ability to imagine. sad really and pathetic.
uncle frogy
Just like in too many comic book cultures. For these idiots it’s more plausible to be ejected from a planet with a dying son and growing up in Rust Belt US able to fly to the sun and back in 6 seconds than it is to be a woman director of SHIELD.
@47, emc2
(Made your URL into a link for convenience. :P )
You forgot to post the follow-up strip to that one. (There are very good reasons why so many later cartoonists cite Bloom County as a major influence. Between that, Calvin and Hobbes, and The Far Side, most of the rest of the newspaper comic strips of the ’80s and ’90s might as well not have existed.)
What, did they forget about all the black people who were forced to play white people? Still are in many games.
I’m sad there are no women still, myself.
Interesting, I read
as from a person actually black in real life, who wanted to play as a white person in the game. Esp. considering the avatar.
Which has a whole list of implications all its own, too, but that’s how that comment comes off to me. The second (Izanberg) is a lot, a lot, a lot more obvious. :(
@ zibble & jedibear
IT’S ABOUT ETHICS IN CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION!
Bullshit. There were no options before. There are still no options. The problem for these people is brown skin, not lack of options. Get your heads out of your asses.
zibble,
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
We are not talking here about a protagonist-centered game. We are talking about a game where you play a non-distinct person, in a game without a storyline, even without a big backstory. The player just plays a random person. This random person happened to be white. No choices. Now your random person has a random skin colour. No choices. Nothing changes, there is no immersion, there is no protagonist. But suddenly it becomes a Big Problem.
This has NOTHING to do with choice. No choices were taken away. No distinct protagonist has now become a non-distinct character. In fact, as a player you don’t even see your own character.
This is a total non-issue. Or it should be. But apparntly, for some people it is an issue. White is standard. White is viewed as the neutral. White is the default. And deviations are seen as an issue. The fact that even non-whites see it as an issue does not mean racism is not in play here.
No, I don’t think the posters of these comments are card-carrying KKK members. Most of them are probably not POC-hating loud-mouthed racists. That doesn’t mean their thought patterns don’t contain racist tropes. Hell, I don’t think any of us are 100% non-racist. It is impossible to be that way in our current society/world.
Oh, I’ve seen it in action on teh intarwebz. Of course it’s creepy; it’s an unthinking authoritarian ritual. Even when I take this into account, however, Tom Weiss chose the wrong ritual for yesterday. :-)
It already was one. The software here does that automatically.
1. This game is still in development. Still in Alpha. They are whining about lack of customization options in a game and Scary Change Oh Noes in a game that is still actively being worked on.
2. If this was really about player choice there would be complaints about randomly generated faces and “head meshes” as well. Instead, the complaints are exclusively focused on skin color.
3. Fuck all of you trying to quibble, excuse, and explain away obvious racism when it shows its ugly head.
Actually, still not accurate. “Racism” is the systemic bias that privileges one race over the others, just as “sexism” is an inherent systemic bias that favors one gender over the others.
You can be black and racist, or a woman and sexist–if you are buying into the systemic bias.
A black cab driver who passes by a black man on a street corner is as racist as his white counterpart who does the same thing. A black cop who watches as his white partner stages a shooting scene by dropping a taser by the victim and says nothing about it is also being racist.
In short, it’s about the target, more than the originator. There’s bigotry on all sides, sure, but there’s only systemic abuse in one direction, and it’s the behavior that reinforces that bias that needs to be corrected most of all.
Do we blame this on Sarkeesian or Obama?
FWIW, I’d like to point to a couple of paragraphs from an article on Kotaku about this.
As a white male who enjoys video games, might I play devils advocate for a minute? The type of games I enjoy give expansive freedoms to the player. I’ll give an example: Mass Effect; a game that has gotten accolades and high praise for injecting huge elements of player choice into the game’s content. Mass Effect lets you specify the gender and skin tone (among other traits) of your character form the onset, which is brilliant. You can also choose to pursue relationships with individuals (or aliens) of the opposite or same gender. Here they built in tremendous opportunity for an inclusive gaming experience, while leaving intact and respecting the player’s choices in shaping there character. If I was a black woman, and forced to play a white male version of Commander Shepard (the protagonist) by random chance, even though the game had the ability for other genders/ethnicities, I’d be mad. Surely some of the white males upset about this are racist, but I also believe that most gamers have just come to expect wide freedoms to build their characters and shape them into the protagonist they envision in their minds. That is something that makes modern gaming so great.
I re-read my above post and think it might not adequately convey my point: to be clear, I support diversity in video games while preserving the choice of the player to customize their character. The choices being built into some games now are amazing and I see this as the way to win an inclusive gaming experience for everybody. There is no reason, if multiple skin textures are supported, for this not to be a choice the for the player at the onset of the game.
@3 DLC:
I also have many MMO characters with differing genders and colors. In one, Last Chaos, the type of character you choose will determine your gender.
The characters all play the same to me…
Lemurcatt,
Have the courtesy to read the thread before commenting. At a minimum, read zenlike @ 56.
Nope, can’t have player choice in a game. Doesn’t matter what the consumers want from a game nowadays, because everything has to be made in the name of social justice. No wonder game development is getting more and more difficult when you are pushing ideology like this.
Also, people did complain about not being able to play as anything else other than a white guy before. It’s just not mentioned because it doesn’t fit the fucking narrative that’s being spun here.
@What a Maroon, oblivious,
Yea, read it. My point stands. There is a larger problem in gaming and that is the lack of inclusiveness in characters. The solution is to continue recognize games that have done great work with this problem while preserving choice.
@kreggur
Yes, there are consumers to cater to, but game developers rightly see themselves as creative artists and view their games as a form of self-expression. Video games may have started out as commercial hack work, but they’ve evolved past then. Don’t like the game? Don’t buy it and don’t play it, and find one that caters to your choice. If people complained that you could only play as a white character before, this is how the developers chose to deal with it.
@lemurcatta
The problem with the ‘choice’ angle is that, depending on the game, not having a choice may be an important aspect of play. To use a non-video game analogy, I’m not about to complain that running marathons is deficient because it deprives competitors of the choice of using automobiles.
For years and years game developers, and an awful lot of gamers have been trying to get games taken seriously, games are art, they said. But now that those games might touch on uncomfortable topics, or game developers decided to tackle these issues when making a game, they suddenly become consumer toys again. But not just any consumer toy, they are toys where many buyers think they are owed the game they want. The devs don’t have to respond to customer demand. They might judge the demand is quite small, or might actually simply not want to change it. They might have a reason for their decisions and want to stick by it. As smrnda said, if you don’t like it, buy another game. And yes, I realize Rust is in early access, but they still don’t have to take the game in directions you like, or make decisions consumers want it to go. It is the risk of buying into an unfinished game.
Also, I dabble in game dev, and know a lot of game developers, a lot of indie devs, and when they complain about people’s demands, and what is making game development difficult, it is not the SJW they complain about.
A few thoughts on this, again from a white, male gamer. I realise I’m likely to be wrong on some of this, so I welcome the corrections.
Firstly, randomly assigning racial characteristics in a permadeath survival sandbox is an utterly brilliant idea, and more people should do it. Also gender. One of the things video games can do better than any other medium is allow a person to experience being someone else.
A lot of games don’t think about things of that nature, games are a commercial endeavour and more often a product of their culture than a point of change. Many of my favourite developers speak often to others in the industry about being mindful of the impact of such choices on the direction of gaming.
Some gamers are deeply immersed in a culture which normalises racism, sexism and in general the macho male bullshit that governs other areas in which young males traditionally congregate. See rugby clubs, frat houses etc.
These pockets of festering ugliness are generally quite specific though, and the actual majority of people who play games are not these people. I realise this is a ‘not all gamers’ argument, but I want to make a more serious point. The nastiness from these deep pockets of macho culture bleeds into many other games, it’s a weeping sore in our own community and needs to be drained for the good of gaming itself, and gamers of every kind. Which is why I find it hopeful that Rust’s community is beginning to police itself. Though I am uncertain that ‘hunt the racist’ is necessarily a flawless solution, even if it is the obvious one within the framework of that game.
I do wonder if there was a reaction to Carl Johnson in GTA:SA which I do not now recall. It’s possible, but I think that there is some fundamental difference between inhabiting a character and creating one. In something like Tomb Raider you are given a person whose actions you control, a person who is female. In Mass Effect, conversely, you create a projection of your self into the game. The effects of either are likely too complex and subtle for me to easily perceive, but I feel sure there is a distinction. I am unsure which category Rust falls into now, though much of the apologetics in this thread center on that distinction.
I have never played Mass Effect with a female character, though I have played several times over. While it may be the case that the choice is a result of prejudice on my part, I myself feel it’s more about lacking confidence in my own ability to inhabit a female experience. In general the relationship of the player to their character may be less important than the relationship of the character to the world. I expect that if there is a resurgence in RPGs led by the recent kickstarter releases, a random generation and varied npc conversations based on race and sex may provide a significant shift in perspective on these issues.
Oh, wow, There’s something amazing in the first paragraph of that Kotaku article. Your race is TIED TO YOUR STEAM ID. Dying will not change it. Restarting will not change it. Reinstalling the game will not change it. There is no way to get another random appearance short of a new Steam account and buying the game again. I love that, but it must produce a much more pronounced response than simply each life being a new roll.
lemurcatta, #62, 63
I agree with you about having choices that reflect the diversity of players in real life.
But that’s not what the issue is in this thread. The issue is that these white gamers didn’t have a problem when everyone was given a white dude avatar. They only complained when some of them were assigned non-white avatars.
There was no choice before and they didn’t complain. There was still no choice after and all of a sudden they “don’t want to take the chance of playing a black character.”
And we have more people barging in and missing the point. Shriek all you want about Player Choice, you do not get full and complete control of every aspect of the person you play in the vast VAST majority of games . In most games, in fact, you play an actual character and have almost NO customization options. And in addition, the Player Choice fig leaf is just a fucking ridiculously obvious distraction when the real complaint isn’t about choice or control of the character as much as control over RACE. Other things, MANY things, are not under player control. Other things were also randomized with no chance of player customization. Yet the ridiculous, entitled, whiny, wrathful gamer response, as well as the tedious fuckers wringing their hands about the necessity of Choice, has all been specifically in response to Race.
Why the fuck is that? That’s the issue.
And smarmy fuckers coming in and bleating about how the game is allegedly doing this on behalf of the evil Social Justice Warriors just further illustrates what is REALLY going on. It is NOT about the sweet, sweet freedoms and anyone insisting otherwise is either blind or disingenuous.
Of course there was a choice before!
It was Hobson’s choice, but they’re all Hobson…
Skim pretty much any thread for any game on the Steam forums and one thing that is readily apparent is that gamers are rabid in their belief that the customer is always right. Which is, of course, utter bullshit: sometimes the customer is a toxic asshole that a game’s community would do well without. For every customer lost because their tantrum didn’t result in getting their own way, I can guarantee there’s at least two more who’ll respect the developer for having principles and sticking to them.
(If this article had been about people criticising the lack of female models in the game, I’d put money on many of the same complainers here crapping on about the artistic vision of the creator being sacrosanct.)
Matthew Trevor:
Critical Hit!
(Fucking exactly, great point)
Because the cop characters would come and harrass you obviously.
Extra Credits has a video on this today:
https://youtu.be/eh1zfdUTqBY
http://steamed.kotaku.com/rust-chooses-players-race-for-them-things-get-messy-1693426299
And more comments…oh god.
This one wants to be their actual skin color, and they wouldn’t want to play a woman either, because Roleplaying.
http://www.gamespot.com/images/1300-2836272
This one mentions how they had to mod GTA San Andreas because they Just Could NOT play as a black man.
http://www.gamespot.com/images/1300-2836271
Another “BAAAAW, SJWs DUN IT AGAIN!!!” comment:
http://www.gamespot.com/images/1300-2836274
And finally, this odious little shit nugget of a joke: http://www.gamespot.com/images/1300-2836273
Ethics in Character Customization, in-fucking-deed.
@32 David – I’m a veteran of two wars and have witnessed my brothers pass away in front of me. I’m not confused in the slightest about Memorial Day. Our unique freedoms are guaranteed by those who choose to serve. The only way, in my opinion, to honor that sacrifice is to celebrate the freedoms we – almost alone among the peoples of the earth – enjoy. To me, that’s not a sad occasion. If anything you’re the one who is confused.
@34 CaitieCat – thank you for your comment, I was performing my own social justice experiment by mentioning Memorial Day. For some reason I can’t fully fathom, progressives detest the idea that the military serves them in any way, shape or form. It’s the only form of government you all hate. I knew my mention of Memorial day would not go unchallenged – didn’t expect the “heil Hitler” comparison, that’s pretty special – and I wondered if it would completely derail the comment thread. Extreme partisan political advocates have very little in the way of self-awareness, so I thought the title of this post had some unintentional irony.
Tom Weiss,
So, you are basically trolling. Well congratz.
Tom Weiss, your little rant might possibly be improved with the knowledge that David @32 is not American – he is fact an Austrian living in Germany. Thus “our unique freedoms” are not necessarily due to either the Austrian or German militaries or their dead, but to the will of the Austrian and German people.
Pharyngula is a blog with an international readership. Not everyone here is American.
Matthew Trevor
An example of this might be Kerbal Space Program, if you want an example.
For example, on that thread I linked in 85:
For example, on that thread I linked in 85:
Retry.
throwaway @ 85:
That’s so depressing, but given last years debacle I don’t know why I expected people interested in rockets to be more open-minded.
Can you imagine the internet apocalypse that would occur is the “Samus is female” reveal happened today?