Yeah! Everyone knows the main character is a Kahjiit, right?DizzyChuggernaut said:
...R-Right? Or was that just me? >_>
White male protagonists in video games
- Thread starter endtherapture
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...R-Right? Or was that just me? >_>
Fair enough, some designs work better for some than they do for others. Though I'm pretty sure fertility really is a big thing for the asari culture in general, as breeding with other species for genetic variation has been the thing for them to do for centuries. Hell, those that breed with their own species instead of others are frowned upon in their society, that's how big a deal that is for them.erttheking said:
The argument of "but anyone can be Shepherd" is intentionally missing the point. It's like saying a game in which a character of any gender or sexuality can be Hitler is about diversity.
Shepherd is a militaristic imperialist who gains power throughout the series primarily through murder and looting. None of this is changed when the player selects "female" or "black" or "bisexual" as the surface representation of Shepherd, no more so than selecting such categories for Hitler would change the context.
As was pointed out, Lara Croft is largely the same type of character as is Shepherd - a "survivor" who does whatever it takes, no matter the amount of destruction of both precious artifacts and human lives, to achieve her goals. This "do whatever it takes", again *no matter what* the sexual or gender details of the protagonist, counts as heroism by the AAA game industry in general. Take care that you don't get in the way of said heroism, or you'll be roadkill. As any RPG "heroic protagonist" can tell you, if it gives XP and loot and isn't more useful alive than dead (such as quest givers) it's murdered.
Said "heroism" is cheapened, falsified, by the superpowers granted every video game protagonist that are not granted to those who oppose him, such as the reload function, vastly different gameplay options, and a consumer controlling the character whose vanity must be catered to in order to sell the product. This always takes place within a fictional context under the conceit of fairness, as if the protagonist is actually living in the world and undergoing some heroic process, saving the world or saving his friends or whatever.
All of this attention given to "but gender choice!" and "but sexual-orientation choice!" disguises the fact that this is shallow and irrelevant. It doesn't matter to a farmer in Yemen whether a black man or a white woman sits on the American throne when a drone obliterates his family, and the industry's treatment of Lara Croft indicates that the content of games remains the same no matter the surface details of the protagonist.
Shepherd is a militaristic imperialist who gains power throughout the series primarily through murder and looting. None of this is changed when the player selects "female" or "black" or "bisexual" as the surface representation of Shepherd, no more so than selecting such categories for Hitler would change the context.
As was pointed out, Lara Croft is largely the same type of character as is Shepherd - a "survivor" who does whatever it takes, no matter the amount of destruction of both precious artifacts and human lives, to achieve her goals. This "do whatever it takes", again *no matter what* the sexual or gender details of the protagonist, counts as heroism by the AAA game industry in general. Take care that you don't get in the way of said heroism, or you'll be roadkill. As any RPG "heroic protagonist" can tell you, if it gives XP and loot and isn't more useful alive than dead (such as quest givers) it's murdered.
Said "heroism" is cheapened, falsified, by the superpowers granted every video game protagonist that are not granted to those who oppose him, such as the reload function, vastly different gameplay options, and a consumer controlling the character whose vanity must be catered to in order to sell the product. This always takes place within a fictional context under the conceit of fairness, as if the protagonist is actually living in the world and undergoing some heroic process, saving the world or saving his friends or whatever.
All of this attention given to "but gender choice!" and "but sexual-orientation choice!" disguises the fact that this is shallow and irrelevant. It doesn't matter to a farmer in Yemen whether a black man or a white woman sits on the American throne when a drone obliterates his family, and the industry's treatment of Lara Croft indicates that the content of games remains the same no matter the surface details of the protagonist.
Which essentially confirms the findings of some scientific studies.briankoontz said:
Gender identification (or even just identification) never happens in games between the player-character and the player (at least not in the same sense as it happens with movie-goers or novel aficionados).
No one thinks about what the character is doing, but rather what they themselves are doing.
I for example am a huge fan of the Sly Cooper series. Now I don't know about you guys but I as a Danish nerd, don't identify with a US American raccoon, who resides in Paris and is a master-thief. I merely find him a likeable character, but I couldn't give a toss if he was male or female, or gay or straight, or a raccoon or a human. It's simply not a factor. He's just the thing on the screen who's holding the cane that I'm using to pick some guards pockets.
This is sarcasm right?briankoontz said:
For starters, Shepard being even remotely imperialistic is up to the player (even then it hardly constitutes as imperialistic). Secondly Shepard being a "murderer" is also player determinate, killing people in self defense, which in mass effect you mainly kill = Pirates, Robots trying to end organic life, Gangsters, Aliens trying to end organic life, cyborgs trying to end organic life, and fanatics trying to make humans the dominate with dangerous super weapons, all of whom have no issue what so ever gunning you down. Anyone who eats anything more than milk and honey can constitute as a "murderer" by you're liberal interpretation of the word. You know quest givers seldom don't give a pretty valid reason for why they're asking you to kill something, usually its attacking the village, killing us. In the vast majority of these instances shrugging off this "cheapened heroism" (Here we call it self preservation) would lead to a untimely suicide of many protagonist.
I'd like to see these studies, because they seem to have a lot of holes in it, and disregarding many different genres of games. I for one see movies as simply watching people in act a series of events and books (barring the one's with visuals) are taken as someone telling me a story. One video games trigger immersion in me. I find myself in a happy balance between thinking what the character is doing and how it relates to what I'm doing, and most people I know do the same, genre permit of course. I don't think Briankoontz, possibly sarcastic, statement really confirms a incredibly flawed study.MrFalconfly said:
The study is flawed, but then again, it did originate from DiGRA, so what would you expect.Islandbuffilo said:
It is however a study made by the very same people who seem to want a problem to exist (the fact that people can't play games because of lack of identification with the character), but apparently, that was never a problem.
http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/he-could-be-a-bunny-rabbit-for-all-i-care-identification-with-video-game-characters-and-arguments-for-diversity-in-representation/
For a more thorough runthrough of Adrienne Shaw's papers I recommend watching the "Why Gamers had to die" video-series on YouTube by Sargon of Akkad.
However, this study seems to be the backbone for the whole argument that "Gamers need more diversity", even though Gamers are by their very nature diverse and meritocratic.
I disagree with you. Not that writing more characters will generally make writers better at it, but that what skin colors or genitals those characters have is a primary consideration to writing quality. Or to put it another way, if Ashley Williams had a bit more melanin, would that have somehow made her a better character?Gladion said:
It's one thing to make a character a given set of demographics out of creative choice, it's another to do it because the outrage brigade will be shaming you if you don't (see Deliverance: Kingdom Come which wants to be a piece of vaguely historical fiction set in a few square km of medieval Bulgaria being attacked over not including black characters and making a female PC option a stretch goal [said female PC being a stretch goal was because the original PCs planned plot didn't make sense for a woman, so they were going to give her her own background and storyline]).
That's before we take into consideration one of the reasons why characters are white and (especially) male by default -- no one complains about how they are (mis)treated. Someone made a great comparison elsewhere using the Secret of Monkey Island, if Guybrush had been a woman, the same outrage brigade that complains about there not being enough female characters would be complaining about Galbrush due to her incompetence and the abuse directed at her (which are fine things to do to a male character, but rank misogyny if done to a female character). It would be even worse if we gender-flipped Elaine Morley and LeChuck too, because then the only competent good character would be male. Alan Morley would be described as a manifestation of a patriarchal need to demonstrate superiority over women or similar.
Not just you. Warm sands, sirrah.aegix drakan said:
I'd do the same, if I were the sort to block people for their opinions, but that's not a thing I do. I did block one account on Steam, but they were linking malware at me repeatedly and was an obvious bot.Alma Mare said:
The base consumer of the FPS is overwhelmingly white male. They're going to get catered to more than smaller niche demographics if a limited number of protagonists exist.
What's troublesome is if there's a lot of protagonists and they're all white-male. That's where it's needlessly trite where diversity was easily obtainable.
But there is no moral imperative to demand companies cater to groups other than their main consumer base. If every consumer constitutes one vote for their own demographic, then we're just seeing the free market's majority ruling. To argue for anything else would be to demand that each member of the largest group counts for less than each member of the smaller group and that's no better than what they're being accused of.
Equality isn't everyone being catered to. Equality is one person's vote counting as the same as another person's vote. Otherwise no equality can be had.
What's troublesome is if there's a lot of protagonists and they're all white-male. That's where it's needlessly trite where diversity was easily obtainable.
But there is no moral imperative to demand companies cater to groups other than their main consumer base. If every consumer constitutes one vote for their own demographic, then we're just seeing the free market's majority ruling. To argue for anything else would be to demand that each member of the largest group counts for less than each member of the smaller group and that's no better than what they're being accused of.
Equality isn't everyone being catered to. Equality is one person's vote counting as the same as another person's vote. Otherwise no equality can be had.
Hate to nitpick, but supernatural is defined as something beyond the natural order of things and not explained by laws. Everything in Mass Effect is explained without magic (the "magic" would be element zero, which gets around the hocus pocus and offers a scientific explanation for everything).TopazFusion said:
Nerd stuff aside, I'd thought we all saw the explanation that white, heterosexual male protagonists are actually necessary in art. That character can believably experience anything, and everything can be understood through him without bias because we don't focus on the irrelevant attributes like we do with women and other minorities.