Japanese games and race

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Why are most of the newer Japanese games afraid of giving characters a race?

Western games generally don't do this. Gordon Freeman and Lara Croft are clearly of European heritage and something you'd be likely to find in any given city in the western world. You find characters of all races in western games, and even the characters in more cartoony games usually have a defined race, whether European, Asian or African or a mixture. The artist knows what race the character is meant to be, and makes him or her look like that.

Not that I care what race they are. I don't. But it seems to me that in Japanese games that I'm exposed to in advertisements and images (I don't play many), the major art style they use is usually a blend of East/West characteristics. Somehow that turns me off - I would rather them picking something than creating a blend of characteristics that doesn't look like something you'd find anywhere in the world. No matter what art style (cartoony or realistic) I always see this in their games.

I can only speculate on the reasons why, but it would make sense to think that they are doing it to appeal to both eastern and western audiences. It's insulting, in a way, that they feel I would not be willing to play completely Japanese looking characters. Or that the Japanese audience would only accept vaguely Eastern looking characters.

I liked the pink and green hair and unique costumes of older JRPGs (by older I mean early Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger etc.). That was great because it was total fantasy. We don't know what Zelda is, and that's good. But that old art style seems to have given way to a monotonous blend of 'attractive' features selected from across the world and pasted on faces, like dolls made in a factory with a custom-made selection of eye and hair color, face shape and body type without regard to them fitting together. It's trying to be realist but scared of going all the way, and ends up looking totally fake and artificial. It makes all the characters look the same.

I've strayed from the topic a bit. Regardless of my taste, I'm actually interested in why this is, why western and eastern developers have different tendencies with regard to portraying ethnicity.

I know posters will come up with exceptions. I'm a PC gamer and not a huge consumer of Japanese games, so forgive me if I'm misinformed. I've played the well known games on the old SNES and Genesis, watched friends playing Zelda and Final Fantasy on the N64 and PS. These are just my impressions and one of the reasons I'm hesitant to delve deeper into newer Japanese games.

 

[Orange12345]

I think this can be compared to stick men if you draw a stick man with five lines and a circle and show it to someone in japan they are going to subconsciously assume it is asian if you show it to someone in america they are going to subconsciously assume it is white. My theory is that this "raceless" feature you are describing is just an extension of this. take the second guy in the picture (we'll call him bob) bob doesn't really have any defining ethnic features so I see him a white guy but a Japanese person probably sees an Asian. I don't think it is trying to pull a fast one as much as it is just letting people see what they see and I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with that. Also note that the most popular game character from Japan and in the world is Italian

 

[krazykidd]

Because people in general are idiots and would refuse to play a game due to race/sex of a character. Yes PEOPLE ARE PETTY . Ever wonder why most ( "most " being the key word )action games feature white males between 20-30 with brown hair and brown eyes? Because that's what the general population identifies to.

Making characters raceless is an easy way to avoid people not playing your games because of the protagonists race.

 

[Dracthor]

Alot of their games tend to take place off of earth though so they wouldn't have pure east, west, or whatever we are used to. Back to your point though, not having well defined characters in the proper setting can be a bit of a put off. If the place in the game is a place I visit, seeing races that I know are not there can be a bit of a disconnect. But then again, disconnecting is the whole reasion I play games in the first place.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I think this can be compared to stick men if you draw a stick man with five lines and a circle and show it to someone in japan they are going to subconsciously assume it is asian if you show it to someone in america they are going to subconsciously assume it is white. My theory is that this "raceless" feature you are describing is just an extension of this. take the second guy in the picture (we'll call him bob) bob doesn't really have any defining ethnic features so I see him a white guy but a Japanese person probably sees an Asian. I don't think it is trying to pull a fast one as much as it is just letting people see what they see and I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with that. Also note that the most popular game character from Japan and in the world is Italian

The eyes of the 2nd guy are definitely asian. The rest of the face is more caucasian. And yet I don't see an asian or a caucasian.

I know Mario is big in Japan but if you read my post I was talking about more recent games with better graphics. The girl with the asian eyes, blonde hair and eastern complexion and breasts the size of an african woman, dressed in traditional japanese clothes. These type of games seem to mix-and-match a lot more, using whatever features they like. Regardless of what you 'see', western games don't do that.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Because people in general are idiots and would refuse to play a game due to race/sex of a character. Yes PEOPLE ARE PETTY . Ever wonder why most ( "most " being the key word )action games feature white males between 20-30 with brown hair and brown eyes? Because that's what the general population identifies to.

Making characters raceless is an easy way to avoid people not playing your games because of the protagonists race.

Ah. So we can put it all down to this:

The Japanese are better businessmen than westerners.

A plausible theory.

 

[Keoul]

take the second guy in the picture (we'll call him bob)

GGUUUMMMSSHHHOOOEEEE!!!!
His name is Dick Gumshoe
Apologies I am a fan of that specific video game series and I simply had to correct you on that.

OT: You're angry because you can't distinguish what nationality they are from...
On your second image characters[footnote] I'm not using their real names because I doubt it would clarify things since not everyone knows about that game[/footnote] 3 and 4 (starting from the left) are clearly from "the east" while characters 1 and 2 clearly from "The west" this is evident both by attire and facial features.

But that old art style seems to have given way to a monotonous blend of 'attractive' features selected from across the world and pasted on faces, like dolls made in a factory with a custom-made selection of eye and hair color, face shape and body type without regard to them fitting together. It's trying to be realist but scared of going all the way, and ends up looking totally fake and artificial. It makes all the characters look the same.

Yeah, cause the title characters on your image and this character look the same, and this guy is also "a monotonous blend of 'attractive features'". Look mate there's some details you must clarify about your argument, what do you mean by "it makes all the characters look the same"? cause clearly they look vastly different (and do note my balding friend here is from the same game as img 2).

I seriously have no clue what you're complaining about since these characters look completely different and I can tell what nationalities they originate from so they aren't just a conglomeration of attractive features across all nationalities.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

take the second guy in the picture (we'll call him bob)

GGUUUMMMSSHHHOOOEEEE!!!!
His name is Dick Gumshoe
Apologies I am a fan of that specific video game series and I simply had to correct you on that.

OT: You're angry because you can't distinguish what nationality they are from...
On your second image characters[footnote] I'm not using their real names because I doubt it would clarify things since not everyone knows about that game[/footnote] 3 and 4 (starting from the left) are clearly from "the east" while characters 1 and 2 clearly from "The west" this is evident both by attire and facial features.

But that old art style seems to have given way to a monotonous blend of 'attractive' features selected from across the world and pasted on faces, like dolls made in a factory with a custom-made selection of eye and hair color, face shape and body type without regard to them fitting together. It's trying to be realist but scared of going all the way, and ends up looking totally fake and artificial. It makes all the characters look the same.

Yeah, cause the title characters on your image and this character look the same, and this guy is also "a monotonous blend of 'attractive features'". Look mate there's some details you must clarify about your argument, what do you mean by "it makes all the characters look the same"? cause clearly they look vastly different (and do note my balding friend here is from the same game as img 2).

I seriously have no clue what you're complaining about since these characters look completely different and I can tell what nationalities they originate from so they aren't just a conglomeration of attractive features across all nationalities.

Show me a western girl who has eyes like that girl in the picture. They are clearly the shape of asian eyes.

As for the "they all look the same": Obviously they look different, but they also look the same. It's not a contradiction. When ethnic background has no place in the appearance of the characters, their sense of place also disappears. The look from the appropriate combination of ethnic features which provides us with so much information about their background is lacking. Visually, that is. Severed from their ethnic background the facial features are just a range of shapes and colors with no grounded meaning.

 

[Gun Animal]

All the characters look japanese with the exception of the last character in that Phoenix Wright poster, I'd guess he's german or something. Think the OP is basing his understanding of what asian people look like on this dude [http://gothamist.com/attachments/jen/2011_07_breaktiff.jpg].

 

[Keoul]

Show me a western girl who has eyes like that girl in the picture. They are clearly the shape of asian eyes.

As for the "they all look the same": Obviously they look different, but they also look the same. It's not a contradiction. When ethnic background has no place in the appearance of the characters, their sense of place also disappears. The look from the appropriate combination of ethnic features which provides us with so much information about their background is lacking. Visually, that is. Severed from their ethnic background the facial features are just a range of shapes and colors with no grounded meaning.

What girl in the picture? The one with 4 people? grey hair, dick gumshoe, "girl", and angry guy?
I called her oriental, from "the east".

As for your second statement I find that untrue, we do not need to know their ethnic background. It doesn't provide as much information as you're implying. If I told you that the 4th character, angry looking dude on your second img was from China, what additional information does that provide? Did you deduce that his character design was based off wolves? how about that he's an Interpol officer?

And about that "severed from their ethnic background the facial features are just a range of shapes and colors with no ground meaning" statement, this is silly, facial features by default are just shapes and colors how would knowing their ethnicity or rather, which nation these facial features correspond to add any more value to these characters?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Show me a western girl who has eyes like that girl in the picture. They are clearly the shape of asian eyes.

As for the "they all look the same": Obviously they look different, but they also look the same. It's not a contradiction. When ethnic background has no place in the appearance of the characters, their sense of place also disappears. The look from the appropriate combination of ethnic features which provides us with so much information about their background is lacking. Visually, that is. Severed from their ethnic background the facial features are just a range of shapes and colors with no grounded meaning.

What girl in the picture? The one with 4 people? grey hair, dick gumshoe, "girl", and angry guy?
I called her oriental, from "the east".

As for your second statement I find that untrue, we do not need to know their ethnic background. It doesn't provide as much information as you're implying. If I told you that the 4th character, angry looking dude on your second img was from China, what additional information does that provide? Did you deduce that his character design was based off wolves? how about that he's an Interpol officer?

And about that "severed from their ethnic background the facial features are just a range of shapes and colors with no ground meaning" statement, this is silly, facial features by default are just shapes and colors how would knowing their ethnicity or rather, which nation these facial features correspond to add any more value to these characters?

Knowing someone is from China doesn't tell me much, I agree. All I'm saying is that facial features are surely not just shapes and colors, they are tied to family background, self-identity, and possibly (not necessarily) nationality. That's missing from Japanese games, for better or worse. What I'm more interested in is why Japanese developers think it removes value to specify a definite race. Because besides Mario, I have rarely seen a 100% Japanese or 100% American looking character (as opposed to telling us "he's American"). No doubt that is a conscious decision by the developers, and it feels peculiar to me.

 

[Windcaler]

This is just my guess but my thought is its because of culture. Actually I do identify a lot of characters in JRPG as Japanese descent because it just makes sense to me. However I say its because of culture because if you look at large population centers in Japan your going to see mostly japanese people. However there is no race association with being American. You can be white, black, asian, latino, etc, etc, etc and still be American. Racial diversity and equality is one of our cultural strengths so were far more likely to make a variety of characters with different races

 

[Gun Animal]

I think you're basically just picking and choosing to make your point, OP. There's plenty of japanese games where the characters have pronounced ethnicities; Yakuza and Metal Gear as a few examples. Most of your examples use a psuedo-anime style instead of photorealism and anime is always very vague on the ethnicity front regardless of what country [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Titans_(TV_series)] it's made in. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_10] I think your problem is more with that art style than the japanese game industry as a whole but the fact that you equate anime with all japanese media is hella lame.

 

[The_Echo]

This same thing happened in a different thread, but with anime. And since you're very clearly picking up on games using the anime style, the answer is the same.

Lightning looks European to you, but to a Japanese person, Lightning will look Japanese. It's, like someone else posted, akin to stick figures.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I have to say it is basically exactly what the comment 13 above me said. You've gone and pick examples that use characters styled in a similar way to anime which is supposed to be generic and evoke a response of being Japanese if shown to a Japanese person but American/British/Whatever when shown to a person of said country.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Show me a western girl who has eyes like that girl in the picture. They are clearly the shape of asian eyes.

As for the "they all look the same": Obviously they look different, but they also look the same. It's not a contradiction. When ethnic background has no place in the appearance of the characters, their sense of place also disappears. The look from the appropriate combination of ethnic features which provides us with so much information about their background is lacking. Visually, that is. Severed from their ethnic background the facial features are just a range of shapes and colors with no grounded meaning.

What girl in the picture? The one with 4 people? grey hair, dick gumshoe, "girl", and angry guy?
I called her oriental, from "the east".

As for your second statement I find that untrue, we do not need to know their ethnic background. It doesn't provide as much information as you're implying. If I told you that the 4th character, angry looking dude on your second img was from China, what additional information does that provide? Did you deduce that his character design was based off wolves? how about that he's an Interpol officer?

And about that "severed from their ethnic background the facial features are just a range of shapes and colors with no ground meaning" statement, this is silly, facial features by default are just shapes and colors how would knowing their ethnicity or rather, which nation these facial features correspond to add any more value to these characters?

Knowing someone is from China doesn't tell me much, I agree. All I'm saying is that facial features are surely not just shapes and colors, they are tied to family background, self-identity, and possibly (not necessarily) nationality. That's missing from Japanese games, for better or worse. What I'm more interested in is why Japanese developers think it removes value to specify a definite race. Because besides Mario, I have rarely seen a 100% Japanese or 100% American looking character (as opposed to telling us "he's American"). No doubt that is a conscious decision by the developers, and it feels peculiar to me.

How many of these games take place on Planet Earth? Just because certain features are grounded in what we know does not mean that in videos we have to have a White person that looks American/Whatever. Neither does it mean that we must have all countries in games that exactly correspond to ones on Earth same as races as there is a certain poetic licence at work here aside from trying to emulate a stick man type effect.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

This same thing happened in a different thread, but with anime. And since you're very clearly picking up on games using the anime style, the answer is the same.

How so? The games I had in mind were Final Fantasy and Resident Evil series. Those aren't anime, are they?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

How many of these games take place on Planet Earth? Just because certain features are grounded in what we know does not mean that in videos we have to have a White person that looks American/Whatever. Neither does it mean that we must have all countries in games that exactly correspond to ones on Earth same as races as there is a certain poetic licence at work here aside from trying to emulate a stick man type effect.

This is relevant how? No one is saying games need to have anything, least of all me.

With regard to your question, I don't think there's much difference between western and eastern games in terms of being on or off Earth. Regardless, you have to admit there's a clear difference in displaying race.

I have to say it is basically exactly what the comment 13 above me said. You've gone and pick examples that use characters styled in a similar way to anime which is supposed to be generic and evoke a response of being Japanese if shown to a Japanese person but American/British/Whatever when shown to a person of said country.

No and no. If you want to accuse me of picking and choosing, post pics of some exceptions. And I'd really like to see you prove that these characters shown to different races evoke responses according to their own race.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

How many of these games take place on Planet Earth? Just because certain features are grounded in what we know does not mean that in videos we have to have a White person that looks American/Whatever. Neither does it mean that we must have all countries in games that exactly correspond to ones on Earth same as races as there is a certain poetic licence at work here aside from trying to emulate a stick man type effect.

This is relevant how? No one is saying games need to have anything, least of all me.

With regard to your question, I don't think there's much difference between western and eastern games in terms of being on or off Earth. Regardless, you have to admit there's a clear difference in displaying race.

It is relevant because the races in these games as you seem to know them do not exist. There are no Europeans or Asians or anything like it in Final Fantasy 13 there is just people some pasty and some Blacker than black. There is a difference because that is the style the choose to display these race of similar looking people that are not as comparable to Earth's real races as you would like.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

How many of these games take place on Planet Earth? Just because certain features are grounded in what we know does not mean that in videos we have to have a White person that looks American/Whatever. Neither does it mean that we must have all countries in games that exactly correspond to ones on Earth same as races as there is a certain poetic licence at work here aside from trying to emulate a stick man type effect.

This is relevant how? No one is saying games need to have anything, least of all me.

With regard to your question, I don't think there's much difference between western and eastern games in terms of being on or off Earth. Regardless, you have to admit there's a clear difference in displaying race.

It is relevant because the races in these games as you seem to know them do not exist. There are no Europeans or Asians in Final Fantasy 13 there is just people some pasty and some Blacker than black. There is a difference because that is the style the choose to display these race of similar looking people that are not as comparable to Earth's real races as you would like.

So where are the western games which do the same thing when a game is set off-world? There aren't any. Let's not dismiss the question as a matter of "art style" and "taste". That's too easy (and incorrect).

And also, Resident Evil and Silent Hill don't seem to be set off-world.