White male protagonists in video games

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Ishal

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Oh, you mean the stupid WMPB shit by the cult leader "cultural remixer" Josh McIntosh??

This thread is already all sorts of hilarious. Carry on folks.

But yeah, lot's of characters don't fit that. Some of the traits are shared by several, but so what? Most are just little more than justification to get into the gameplay. You know, the point of games.
 

MerlinCross

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Zhukov said:
(For example, I've always wanted to play a game with an unapologetic coward for a protagonist.)

If there's nothing but porridge on the menu, even a bowl of rice will seem novel.
Sounds like a decent idea. Have to make the character male though, can't be a woman. Image the backlash if there was a game about a cowardly woman.

Which might be one part(or another way to look at it) as to why we have so many white guys. You can do whatever the hell you want with them. Make them a drunk, gritty, noble, cowardly, selfish, etc. You can get away with it as they are 'porridge' just with different toppings/spices. When you start making something else, people are going to pick part that and possibly complain even louder.

Devs/Publishers might be going "So do we listen to them complain about porridge, or do we want them to throw the stake back in our face AND complain." Dunno food for thought..., and I'm hungry now.
 

verdant monkai

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DizzyChuggernaut said:
I hate how people call Commander Shepard a "straight white male" character.

No. Just. No.

The game begins WITH A GOD DAMN CHARACTER CREATION SCREEN.

Shephard can be a woman, can be black, can be ginger, can have a variety of face shapes and hairstyles. Anyone that claims that Commander Shephard is the white, generic-looking guy on the promotional material has obviously not played the game.
.
Damn straight. He can also be gay.

I'll say it now guys. Having a protagonist that's not a white male does not instantly make the game good.

I know its a 'trendy' 'hip' thing to hate on though. It makes me feel a lot more 'not racist' and just more politically correct in general when I do it. Sometimes when I'm slandering those samey white thugs I myself forget I am a straight white male.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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MerlinCross said:
Zhukov said:
(For example, I've always wanted to play a game with an unapologetic coward for a protagonist.)

If there's nothing but porridge on the menu, even a bowl of rice will seem novel.
Sounds like a decent idea. Have to make the character male though, can't be a woman. Image the backlash if there was a game about a cowardly woman.
I dunno, more than a few of the "run and hide" brand of survival horror have female protagonists.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Phasmal said:
Zhukov said:
(For example, I've always wanted to play a game with an unapologetic coward for a protagonist.)

If there's nothing but porridge on the menu, even a bowl of rice will seem novel.
That sounds like a great idea. For some reason I'm picturing a stealth game in which the most you can do if you get seen is throw things and run away making terrified sobbing noises.

I did actually try and think of any games with cowardly protagonists and I came up with nothing. Admittedly I haven't played every game in existence so there could be some, though.
Luigi is characterized as a coward in some games (primarily the Luigi's Mansion games).

Arguably you could throw in any horror game that runs on a sanity meter or whose protagonist's knee-jerk response, when put under pressure, is to run away crying like a little girl (i.e. Fiona in Haunting Ground).
 

Vigormortis

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On another note:
Why are people pointing to this thing as proof that there's a trend of bland, white, male protagonists in video games? All it proves (if one can argue that) is that there's a trend of cliched character traits in pop culture entertainment. Just about everything on the grid applies to protagonists of all shapes, sizes, races, and genders, and extends into pop-entertainment beyond video games. Hell, the contents of the grid are practically a how-to guide for creating action films in the 80's.

I swear, the more McIntosh opens his mouth the more he proves what a colossal fuckwit he is. It takes a lot for me to genuinely hate someone, but this man's found a way to do it over the course of the last year. What a manipulative, self-absorbed ass.

Johnny Novgorod said:
Can I point out there's technically no bingo in Shepard's card? There're no lines completed...
I could be one of those guys and say, "But Johnny, that's not the point! You just don't get it!", but I'm not going to.

Not because I entirely agree with you, but rather because the irony of McIntosh using Shepard as his first, prime example of being "practically guaranteed to win every time", even though Shepard doesn't actually win, is too delicious.
 

Vigormortis

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Johnny Novgorod said:
Luigi is characterized as a coward in some games (primarily the Luigi's Mansion games).

Arguably you could throw in any horror game that runs on a sanity meter or whose protagonist's knee-jerk response, when put under pressure, is to run away crying like a little girl (i.e. Fiona in Haunting Ground).
I was just thinking Amnesia is a good example of this. The entire premise of your character's interaction with the villains is that of running and hiding. Your sole method of survival is relying on cowardice. Courage equates to an almost guaranteed death. One could say the same for a game like Outlast as well.
 

Islandbuffilo

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Vigormortis said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
Luigi is characterized as a coward in some games (primarily the Luigi's Mansion games).

Arguably you could throw in any horror game that runs on a sanity meter or whose protagonist's knee-jerk response, when put under pressure, is to run away crying like a little girl (i.e. Fiona in Haunting Ground).
I was just thinking Amnesia is a good example of this. The entire premise of your character's interaction with the villains is that of running and hiding. Your sole method of survival is relying on cowardice. Courage equates to an almost guaranteed death. One could say the same for a game like Outlast as well.
I thought Zhukov was looking for more a comedic spin to cowardice, not reasonable fear.
 

Therumancer

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People can come up with amusing graphs, charts, and statistics to "prove" any point while mocking the other side with a bit of creativity, in reality it's meaningless and mostly tends to only serve the purpose when your in a vacuum chamber with people who agree with you and can laugh at it.

Social Justice Warriors have been around long before the term, it's just been over the last few years that it's been a problem. As long as I've been involved in geekdom people have been trying to make an issue out of things like fantasy artwork and the way comics portray the human physique, it's only recently that people like this have started to rally and be taken seriously.

Back before the WWW on Echos (message boards shared between BBS systems, with the contents very slowly distributed through hubs) some of the RPG forums like the ones on Fidonet had a joke about "who saved your ass". It was a cultural commentary that sort of showed that realistically speaking most "heroes" by modern standards are indeed militant white guys (the stereotype has been around for a long time). Exceptions of course exist, and it's not meant as a serious point, but the bottom line is that the US and European militaries and support organizations tend to run around performing charity, maintaining order, and rebuilding all around the world, forming the backbone of what even the UN has to work with. As a general rule your typical real world equivalent of an "action" villain nowadays is likely to be "ethnic", and ultimately brought down by the US or European military, and then playing those odds while they are multi-ethnic it's likely to be some white hard ass with a crew cut who does it. For example the real world equivalent of "OMG the evil warlord is terrorizing the villagers" is likely to happen in someplace like Africa, and who are the peacekeeprs likely to take the dude out if the story has a happy ending? I don't have the whole lineup for the joke, but it's similar to the whole Shepard thing but it goes in the opposite criticism direction, sort of saying "that is what an actual hero tends to look like".

There was also the whole "Villain" table which of course was in response to people talking about ethnic villains appearing in so much fantasy. The points it made ultimately got into how whites might have practiced slavery a few hundred years, dark skinned people practiced it for thousands of years through the ancient world, with whites being the major victims. An associated joke was that Hitler and Stalin must have great evil press agents because they seem to get tons of credit as "the most evil" when guys like Pol Pot killed more than both of them combined. The name eludes me but there was supposed to be some Chinese emperor who pretty much had a third of his population put to the sword to stop a plague that didn't exist. The bottom line is that it's racist for us to continue to act like the most evil people on earth are whites when Asia has "us" consistently beat in the mass murder and depravity department. Six million jews, psssh amateur, I think according to the charts especially when you adjust for relative population Hitler didn't even make the top 10.

Describing it lessens the impact, but the point is that it's also pretty ridiculous when you think about it, and generally only really funny even with the grain of truth when your talking to people who already agree with you. Though the idea of all the greatest mass murderers sitting around in hell discussing how evil they are, and Hitler not being able to join their club is kind of funny in a weird way, someone even drew a cartoon of him begging at one point if I remember. :)
 

Danny Dowling

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everything about this is so ridiculously ridiculous i find it ridiculous that there's this amount of ridiculous discussion about the ridiculousness without a ridiculous amount of people outlining the ridiculousness.

this comment is ridiculous, it fits the thread's ridiculous topic ridiculously well.
 

EyeReaper

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TopazFusion said:
Nevermind all the social justice stuff, I'm just offended that they forgot to circle the "Supernatural Powers" square on that grid, considering Shepard can be a biotic.
Honestly I think Shepard ticks off every box there, outside of "Gritty Reboot." But I don't think a customizable dialogue tree character really should be applicable in this sort of thing. I mean, c'mon. Dark Humor? Killing Sprees? Title instead of name? Ant-hero? If you don't think Shep falls under those, you've never played a renegade.

On topic though, I really don't see the point these bingo cards are trying to prove. Trying to point out how common it is for (generally) action packed games to have military ranks, killing sprees and guns is kinda like looking at a D&D party and going "HUh. Is there a bunch of Fantasy characters here or is it just me?"
 

irishda

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I don't need a card to tell me there's a LOT of samey white guys as video game protagonists. Almost everyone in the industry has pointed it out, including Yahtzee. And Yahtzee can hardly be characterized as a social justice warlock.
 

Islandbuffilo

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irishda said:
I don't need a card to tell me there's a LOT of samey white guys as video game protagonists. Almost everyone in the industry has pointed it out, including Yahtzee. And Yahtzee can hardly be characterized as a social justice warlock.
Yeah, usually all in the same genre, if you peeve out a bit, you'd notice its not really that much of a epidemic.
 

Vigormortis

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Islandbuffilo said:
I thought Zhukov was looking for more a comedic spin to cowardice, not reasonable fear.
There were some old school adventure games that had protags like that, but I am completely blanking on their names. If I can recall them I'll update my post.
 

MerlinCross

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altnameJag said:
I dunno, more than a few of the "run and hide" brand of survival horror have female protagonists.
I remember Clocktower doing something like that. I think the Fatal Frame series has more than a couple. Of course the Aliens game that came out and was good. The game, Amy, also could fall into that category but that was a bad game for several different reasons. Maybe I should reword what I said earlier.

Could you image the backlash if Ubisoft put forward a game that starred a cowardly, selfish female protagonist? Just replace Ubisoft with any of the big names.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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MerlinCross said:
Could you image the backlash if Ubisoft put forward a game that starred a cowardly, selfish female protagonist? Just replace Ubisoft with any of the big names.
Admittedly no, but that's more because it's more unbelievable that Ubi would have a cowardly, selfish, female protagonist in the first place.

It's a bit like saying "can you imagine what it would be like to find a winning powerball ticket" compared to "can you imagine winning the powerball."

That said, Ubi regularly gets shit for having terrible protagonists, who all tend to be stubbly, 30 something white(ish) guys. They might get some leeway for trying something different for goddamn once.

EDIT:
irishda said:
I don't need a card to tell me there's a LOT of samey white guys as video game protagonists. Almost everyone in the industry has pointed it out, including Yahtzee. And Yahtzee can hardly be characterized as a social justice warlock.
This, just so much. I figured this was common knowledge really.
 

MerlinCross

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altnameJag said:
I put Ubi because it was the first one to come to mind. That's why after that sentence I said "Any of the big names". By Big names I mean Triple AAA, somewhat common knowledge, news outlets would get the names right they are big enough.