"Colorblind: On Witcher 3, Rust, and gaming's race problem"

More social justice bullcrap. Why people still visit that trash of a website is beyond me.
A fellow guy from my country gave a great reply, though:

As a Slavic person (Yugoslavian or Bosnian to be exact) I find the subtle racism emanating from this piece to be gross. I can’t fault the author for that, but he should really think about how his perspective might be influenced by his American privilege. Of course in the USA "white" is "white". Doesn’t really matter if you are Irish-American, Italian-American or German-American, you are a White American nonetheless. However this same logic just can’t be applied to Europe where, dare I say, shades of white exist. Just to give one example: Poles, i.e. the people that made The Witcher game, actually face harsh discrimination in Germany, Britain etc. where they are faced by racial prejudices and stereotypes. "Poles are lazy and steal cars" is unfortunately an opinion that’s all too prevalent in Germany where I live). And in Britain being a Slav will often get you labelled a "benefits cheat!" by tabloid media, confronting you with much harsher discrimination than most BAME individuals. Being a Slav doesn’t get you entry into the cool people club in the richer European countries.

Also what the author fails to realise is that those white man’s stories he talks about are the stories of Americans or of the Central European people. Germans, Brits, French. But those aren’t my stories, they aren’t the stories of my people. The mythology of The Witcher games resonates with me because there are elements I recognise from my own mythology that I won’t find in those white man’s stories the author is criticising. It does seem that America-centrism is at play here and I do hope the author gets the opportunity to reflect on that. Just to give one example: saying that games made by American developers dealing with themes of Central European are "white" stories and should therefore resonate with Slavic people is just like claiming that a game about Olódùmarè should somehow resonate with all Black people even though it’s a distinct part of Yorubian mythology that won’t get recognised by people from many African states.

I am happy to see games like The Witcher III or the upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance bring some much needed diversity to the gaming landscape by looking at people previously marginalised in video games. Games dealing with Slavic mythology or history shouldn’t be demonised but appreciated. The author has a point, but he is missing the target by a country mile.

Take this crap to tumblr to die, where it belongs. Just more stinky trash from a fake outrage factory.

Hmm... i see his point but don't agree, I think it's an exaggerated stament.

Why do people tend to see racism in everything?

Also, people are tearing that article apart on Facebook, it hardly stands there for "well-written and thought provoking". But they are all CIS white men, why would anyone care what they have to say, right haha?

I, for one, think it's ironic that you approve that article, given your username. It's utter SJW garbage.

Love how the new fad is to slam any examination of the status quo. The fact that "social justice" is being demonized should be a large, red flag to anyone outside the hive mind.

Why on earth would you use "SJW" derogatorily? Is self and societal examination that scary? The discussion of change so frightening?

The aggressive and vitriolic defense of "the way things have always been" is disheartening.

That second sentence is pretty much the problem. It doesn't matter what skin colour you are. It's what skin colour the character is. If the character is white, that's how he/she was created. If the character is 'black', that's how he/she was created. No one is pandering to a specific group of people and if you're going to whine about games that don't pander to your group specifically, you're going to be in for a big shock.

Also, because this is very relevant, The Witcher series takes place in the medieval times. During those times, anyone who was not 'white', so to speak, was generally a slave or a commoner who was in the shittest-level of living. That's how it is. Changing that to pander to the so called 'minority' defeats the purpose of creativity.

So, Witcher 3... A game... By Polish devs... Based on a Polish book... Set in a fantasy version of 14th/early 15th century Poland... is criticized for not having non-white characters.

I hate to tell you this, guys, but today Poland is 95% white, which is a step up from what it used to be. Especially in, I dunno, the Middle Ages. It just wouldn't make much sense for non-whites to be in the story. And I'm not buying that "Moors in Bohemia" spin, either.

I'm sure everybody would be extatic to play a, let's say, Filipino game with only Filipino characters, so let us Poles make our games with characters that are ethnically Pole-like.

I would like to see more variety (anyone who has ridden one of my trains lately knows that :P) but it shouldn't be forced. This is going to be a slow and painful progress and to expect immediate results is foolish. Unfortunately, this field is dominated by white men and to expect them to make games that involve other races/ethicities/etc. is setting the bar a bit high (not impossible to do, but very difficult to do something right when you know very little about it yourself). We should pressure them to recruit new blood that will bring in a more varied perspective yet this is an inherently slow process. This is not a field than anyone can jump into to; it requires years of education and, in most cases, experiences to bring something productive to the industry.

Not all hope is lost though. We are already seeing this shift among the indie scene and it is there that we should focus our attention to. It is from these small teams where we can learn what works and what doesn't in this regard. AAA studios will get to this point eventually, but their large size is a natural retarding factor that we must accept.

The only constant in life is change :D.

When white gamers are forced to play people not of their race, it’s "forced politics;" when I’m forced into the same scenario, it’s business as usual.

What do you think?

I think that the argument probably falters - or fails - if you compare the numbers of ~25-year-old white gamers to those of any other group. It only makes sense that most games would be oriented towards their largest demographic; and, if a character is made "other" simply to appeal to the diversity camp (the most obvious example I can think of is black Heimdall in that Thor movie) it could be argued that this indeed constitutes forced politics.

That said, I do wish there were more diversity in gaming. The Ballad of Gay Tony gave us, well, Gay Tony; there have been quite a few recent RPGs that allow for male/male and female/female romances, like the Mass Effect series; and the indie scene has done a pretty good job of putting out games with female protagonists over the past few years, but most games - and certainly the AAA titles - still feature the same old white guy in his mid-20s in the leading role. The only black-by-default main character I can think of is C.J. from San Andreas, which... isn't exactly a positive portrayal of African-American culture.

Part of this, I think, stems from the fact that twentysomething white guys also constitute the majority of people who develop games - I'm not sure that I'd want to play, say, a black female protagonist as envisioned by someone who isn't black or female (or preferably both), and the SJW crowd would probably have a field day with such a situation: Disenfranchisement! Cultural appropriation! Patriarchy!

Although I think xarabas summed it up nicely, I would like to weigh in on "When white gamers are forced to play people not of their race, it’s "forced politics;" when I’m forced into the same scenario, it’s business as usual."

I'd love to see some evidence backing up this claim. As a white male I fucking loved the shit out of Portal, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Shadow Warrior and plenty of other games where I don't play as a white male and everyone else I know who has played these games really likes them too and none of my white male friends I have ever seen have ever said "wow, I had to play a chick in Portal, forced politics, man!" I never see people talk like this, the closest thing I've seen to what he describes is above is some of the flak BioWare has gotten for doing things like that but my interpretation was that it's because it's insincere, not because it's "forced politics".

I find the only worthwhile statement in that article to be "The problem is lack of freedom of choice,"

Other than that, just like the whole "feminist" outrage / gamergate mess, this cherry-picks the cases where reality doesn't align with what the author thinks reality should look like.

Stuff like "Because Slavic people are predominantly white, it therefore is in keeping with nods to that mythology to only feature white people in the game’s world. Just as you would feature Indian people if you were making a game based on Indian mythology, so you would do the same for Slavic.

But this misses a crucial point: Things are not equal. "
are mostly blah blah.

The Witcher is based on Slavic lore, so it centers around Slavic stereotypes. By the same token, the Garshasp games (for all their flaws) stick with their roots and draw from Persian stereotypes (more so than, say Prince of Persia does).

And the article promptly ignores games like XCOM (or X-COM) which happily generate heroes of all skin color & gender, Borderlands and GTA where protagonists are pulled from different ethnic backgrounds on a consistent basis, most fighting games (where different ethnic backgrounds are used heavily as a tool to allow for more diverse character design overall).
Or games where you can design your own character. (Yes, I made my biotic-focuses only-barely-paragon Commander Shepard was a black lesbian. I had absolutely no conscious reason for doing that, but I stuck with her all the same because it proved to be fun that way.)

So, taking the articles as applying to only games that force you to play a prescribed character: we could use more variety there I suppose. But even then I personally have no real problem playing different genderor ethnicality from what I am in real life as long as the story behind it is well-built.

What the hell are you talking about?
-Rust made an update MONTHS ago where you spawn with one from 8 different skin tones including: white,black,tan....etc
Gay or straight?
-That's absolutely your choice.Don't enforce your sexuality in games.We had many gay characters such as GTA IV,Mass Effect.
My answer is related to the quoted part.I DIDN'T read the full article.People need to stop take games serious.I'm an Arab from middle east and almost EVERY SINGLE GAME include us as bad-ass terrorists riding camels yet i still play and enjoy these games.Don't forget in the end that games are work of fiction sometimes based on facts like movies but interactive so i don't see where's the racism in this?

Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams.

Here is quickest and non politically correct summary:
Rust - good idea in a mediocre game executed so poorly that it backlashed, yet devs insist it was the best idea since sliced wheel.
Witcher 3 racism arguments - total bullshit thought up by ignorants and SJWs who forgot that Witcher isn't Mass Effect or Dragon Age gender bending crap.

I think many of us will want to read Gavin Dunne's (of Miracle of Sound fame) response to the article. Very balanced and thought-out.

http://miracleofsound.tumblr.com/post/120712944750/on-people-of-colour-in-witcher-3-racism

I don't understand anyone's perspective in this thread.

So here's a reply.

writers then to write about what they know, and that mostly derives from what they are, do you want some polish guy interpretation of a black character, or a latin character, or dif sexual orientation character? its just simply stupid to expect from someone or a group of people to be able to represent any other culture or derive of human nature, you cant please everyone and you try you wont please no one.

This article is just like many beofre them, starting with a set idea and the desperately selectively look for concepts that prove your set idea ignoring the ones that dont, no statistic mesures, calling an "issue" with no base, basically click bait.

if you want change, change should come from the source, support games that have dif concepts/ideas/characters. Dont demonize people that have only done what they tough they could do.

im sorry if some of my writing dosent make much sense, english is not my mother language.

racial equality has a place in games where you play as a blank page character - where you create and define your character from a scratch.

Witcher 3 on the other hand has well defined character and changing his race/orientation/sex would change the story and it's artistic vision. Plus game takes place in cold countries - guess what - ppl who live in such countries are black. Same as in game taking place in africa you will expect most of characters to be black and if game takes place in let's say ancient china you should expect that you will be "forced" to play as an asian.

"Colorblind"?
This term is usually used by people who try very hard to introduce racism into society because, according to them, people need to recognize differences between other people to not be "colorblind". And the so called "colorblindness" means not caring about differences and treat people as your fellow people and not as different people because of their skin color or whatever.
Disgusting. And they even claim they're not racist. They themselves are keeping racism running because they'd have nothing to do without enough racism in society.

probably because most of the developer are white and just don't think about that, i don't even know 80 % of the time what color is the main character when i play a game, and should it really matter ?

I cannot identify with the author's position since I don't have a problem with playing characters that are not like me. I'm a white man and I played a woman in Tomb Raider and I enjoyed it. Hell, I played a damn orc in Lord of the Rings Online and it was fine. So I consider the author unreasonable and making demands he's not entitled to, as well as any other person that takes his position, regardless of race or anything else.

Also: "As a person of colour, I am almost always forced to play a white person in games." -- no he isn't "forced". No one is forced to play anything. We all freely choose the games we play.