Racism\Sexism in video games

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Amazing how realism and accuracy in video games only comes up for discussion when the characters are women or minorities...

Or in science fiction movies

Maybe you can clarify:
The presenter of the video clearly states they don't care about the race of the characters, having merely mentioned the accent of a character, and not their race, when talking about them in a previous video. They then follow this up by stating that the character in the game they were referring to could easily (and "believeably") be of a given, non-white "minority", and that they have no issue with this. This results in a number of people here stating that the presenter was therefore "racist" and only wanted "white" characters.

Similarly, the presenter indicates that one character was not "believeable" as a certain "sex" due to physiological requirements for the "role" of the character, and suggested that making a different character be of the "sex" in question instead: not saying characters had to be a ceretain "sex", or that there should be no characters of a given "sex", simply that the "requirements" of the role, in terms of physiological requirements, should be taken into account when choosing the "sex" of the character, in order to make them "believeable", given the characters are "human". This is then repeated by people here as the presenter being against "female" characters.

What I am curious about is that when a person suggests human characters be designed around known human physiology, indicating certain roles which may require a certain physiology (and so that specific character be of a given "sex"), with others being able to be filled by either "sex", that the race of the character is irrelevent and able to be whatever the designers wish: Why do so many people have a preference for interpreting this in a way that is against the plain language used and claim the presenter only wants "white", "male" characters, given that is diametrically opposed to what was presented\discussed?

Or to put it simply: In something like a computer game\movie\TV show, why is expecting a believeable human character considered racist or sexist, whereas making an unrealistic human character (either through assigning a "sex" to the character where the believeable physiology for the role does not match, or the assigned race is not appropriate for the setting of the piece - the latter only really be applicable for historically based products, such as allocating the role of a Japanese Emporer to an "African-America" character) in order to ensure "equality"\"balance"\"inclusion" (particularly in cases where trading the race or sex between 2 characters to ensure both are believeable, rather than one being believeable and the other not, whilst still retaining the desired "balance"\"equality"\"inclusion") is not. In the former, the focus of the "sex"\race is secondary to the character and its believability, and so compliments it. In the latter, the character's believeability is secondary to the focus on their "sex"\race, and so "contradicts"\distracts from this.

Well, the race thing again mostly because although he said that he did not care about race he did still go into a rant about race. Cannot know for sure what goes on in his head, but for someone who wants to make it clear he does not care about race he sure liked to go on about it and bring up that he has a black friend who totally agrees with him that the sort of people that care about diversity are the real racists. I am going to look at what he says rather than just him claiming that he is the true one for racial equality and the other people calling him out are the real racists.

As for the questions about sex and gender again, it is because it shouldn't matter when you have mutant dinosaurs or whatever it is. People are sick of female characters being relegated to princesses needing to be saved from castles. If all genders like games, then why are the vast majority of playable characters male? Is it because males are naturally stronger? Screw that, in real life people don't heal from eating a turkey, carry huge amount of guns that they can run and swim with, or take a bullet to the head and can keep going because they are wearing some body armor.

I can't get over how ridiculous the complaint is about believability when pretty much every videogame character is like the peak of physical fitness where they can run indefinitely and pull themselves up from an edge with little effort. Do you really think that you as a man could take on a super buff woman because her being stronger than a man is unrealistic? There should be no gender requirement whether that character can run around with a giant minigun, nor in whether they could be a flexible sniper. And if you have a problem with that you really need to reassess your priorities.

You REALLY did not listen to (or understand) what he was saying, did you...

He said that in the original video he took issue with the "Ugandan" accented female character carrying a mini-gun, as it was not believeable for a female character to be in that role. You followed the exact same racist line that he was complaining about, assuming anyone with a "Ugandan" accent is of a given race, and claiming he was focussed on the race of the character (the accent was mentioned in passing to descibe how she sounded, not as being an indicator of the race of the person) and didn't like characters of whatever race you are assuming the character is.

If you watch his initial video (the one he was talking about having closed the comment section for), he only mentioned this once in passing, where he said that "he doesn't want to play a 'Ugandan' sounding woman when using the minigun", followed by the character's voice from gameplay in the background, and then provides an example of the sort of character which would be believeable, taken from a movie\TV show. He doesn't mention character race\"sex" again. He is not fixated on it, as you appear to be.

I'll put what he said simply for you: He asks for "believable" characters. He is happy to see any race or sex used for a character, as long as the character is "believeable", as opposed to the developer saying "we need "X" characters of whatever race\sex" and assigning them in a random manner that ends up detracts from the believability of the final character. You then follow the same line as the racists and sexists he was complaining about from the comments section of his previous video, falsely asserting he has a problem with the inclusion of female or "minority" characters, when the problem he identified was the manner in which they are included.

Sorry Bric, you need to stop accusing people of trying to discuss their perspective from being "fixated", just make an interpretation doesn't make somebody fixated with racism or sexism.

I actually enjoy (and hope you continue to post here) reading your critique and I agree with pepe that you add balance and bring a different perspective.

Please take my point as friendly advice.

No, I really did not misunderstand what he said. I understood clearly that he is saying that his problem is with a female character carrying around a heavy gun, and he is confused why people were calling him a racist, so he is saying those people are the real racists, and by extra measure they are sexists too for not understanding his logical problem with a woman carrying around a heavy gun when a man logically would have an easier time. Is that right?

The deal is, why did he feel the need to mention that she sounded "Ugandan", when he could have just said that he did not want to play a woman as a heavy character? While you could say that an accent does not automatically denote race, it was something he mentioned in his complaint and does have a relationship a strong relationship with race, I can see why people might have accused him of having some racial bias, even if it was more about ethnicity of an African nation, when maybe he would have been happier with a more American black man voice. I would rather you link to me what he thought was acceptable, maybe he would have been happy if it was a male character from the same ethnic background. It is just kind of weird that he had such a problem of a female character, that he had to get a specific voice from something else to show what he would have accepted, when everyone knows the common differences of a man and woman voices.

But really I don't see why we can't have race/ethnicity and gender randomly attributed for interesting character and their roles. As it stands, how many more muscular black female characters are there even in games? Are female character only allowed to be light characters and men are heavy? That is so BS in saying no larger built women get representation in games, while small built men are barely men at all. It is such a boring lack of creativity and is exactly what people are talking about when discussing toxic masculinity, that men are masculine and women are feminine. I am going to inform you that most people are actually a mix, and some of us are not even men or women.

Could you suggest an alternative term to use?

The video discusses how "race"\"sex" are forced onto characters in games, regardless of "suitability", resulting in characters which are lacking in believeability, as opposed to looking at the characters and allocating the desired "race"\"sex" of characters in a way which adds to\increases their believability, yet certain people focus on this and claim it shows racism/sexism, or that the person in the video only wants "white", "male" characters.

As the example from the video indicated: There were 4 characters in the game. The person in the video expressed an opinion that the specific character would be more believable as a male, and suggested an alternative role that could easily have had a female in the position instead (personally, I think any (or all) of the other 3 could have believeably been female). By doing so, it both increases the believability of the characters in their roles, and also retains the desired male:female ratio of characters. You do not lose diversity in doing so, yet people focused on his mention of the "sex" of the character and automatically attacked the message as being against female characters.

Which is better: allocating race/"sex" so that they enhance a character and thereby a player's experience\immersion and acceptance of the included race/"sex" of the character(s) played, or forcing a character to have a race\"sex" which detracts from the beliveability of the character and players experience\immersion, making the player dislike the character for the unbelievable race/"sex"?

You know, a character can be well written by also going against clichés, giving some surprises.
For example, lets go over the interesting cast of companions from Fallout New Vegas.


This cast of characters are very well written and a part of why the game is held up high.
The brute of the team is super mutant, who is in fact a granny in aesthetics and personality.
A heavy drinker of the group that would usually fit a more male character is a woman.
The melee hitter of the group is another woman, being part of the conservative (and masculinity named) Brotherhood of Steel, so happen to be exiled in being a lesbian.
On the opposite end belonging to the group of highly empathetic doctors is a man, also a rare gay character too.
One of the other male characters as a sniper who's main backstory is around empathy of a loved one.
And the last man is a hardworking man more about smarts than strength, who has Spanish accent be indeterminate race due to his being a ghoul.

People really like this game and its characters, and few complain about their diversity despite the fact that it includes two queer characters, and it would be easy to argue for stereotypes of "more fitting" to gender you should probably swap them. But also they are well written, such as Veronica having to deal with the fact she comes from a bigoted background. I would much rather more continued interesting characters.

There’s so much to unpack here. I’m going to focus on the “it’s racist to assume all Ugandans are black” thing. I previously said race was a bit of a red herring when sexism seems to be the main driving force here, but the conversation had other ideas.

There are about 38m people in Uganda. Of these around 25,000 are South Asian (predominantly Indian), 10,000 European (predominantly English), and about 3,000 are Arab. That means about 99.9% of all Ugandans are black.

I would note that the commentator didn’t actually say “Ugandan”. He said “Ugandan/Jamaican”. Uganda and Jamaica are 12,000km apart. Uganda is closer to Australia than to Jamaica. The accents are very different. The ethnic groups are very different. However, both Jamaicans (at least 92% black) and Ugandans are predominantly considered black by Americans and British people.

So, what exactly is the impact that racism and sexism have had on video games? A woman using a minigun? Sorry, why is anyone upset about that?

The character is supposed to be from Cameroon.

Also as can be seen here (again) the character seems to be wearing a powered exoskeleton:
http://imgur.com/nhyn782

The fact this character is presented is as a weight lifter augmented by an exoskeleton suggests they are 'believable' in a future tech game where you shoot mutant dinos.

There's more on this guy's 'review' here where he rants about 'proportional representation' of character's sexes:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gamerevolution.com/news/662555-second-extinction-review-worth-a-buy-sexist-racist%3famp

When role playing video game characters were introduced back in the 1990s the game developers were likely considering a number of factors in offering a range of avatars with variation (not just in sex/ethnicity) but also in weapons, clothes, and even personality, skills, temperament etc...

I think gamers from early in the history of role player video games accepted that some characters offered a greater challenge in terms of their skill level or capacity to overcome obstacles to "level up" and move through the game. Speaking for myself that was part of the fun. It's not just about finding a character that matches myself;
1. How you look (sure girls might want a female character and Asians might want an Asian character etc) but that's just one preference
2. How they wished they look (plenty of teenage boys pick the biggest and strongest character with the best weapons)
3. switch up (sometimes I liked playing a female character or a black character just to switch things up but also curiosity to see how they fare in the levels)

That's the beauty of role play you can pretend to be anyone you want.

Reviewers are like TV commentators, after while you either relate to their views or you switch to another one. The question is whether this guy breached any laws/regulations saying that he preferred not be a Ugandan female when playing a particular character expressing his preferences - poor taste or breach? I strongly suspect he isn't the only one with these views so how do you shut him down when he has a following? what is the boundary of free speech here?

What I have found highly enlightening through this discussion is the number of people who, before commenting, went to the original video he discussed (the one he said he had to turn off comments for at the start of this one) in order to do any research, or to try and understand the context under which this was produced or the background behind it.

Then compare that to the number who blindly jump in with their assumptions about what the person thinks, preferring to let their own personal assumption\beliefs take the place of thought and research...

Also interesting is people suggesting that others making statements or claims which they disagree with should be "shut down"...Although, having said that, here's a review he did for a game they may like:


Personally, I find his videos interesting for the emphasis he places on the gameplay and how he will point out flaws in games, rather than trying to please the publishers by saying a game is perfect, as well as that the result of the review does not depend on whether the developer provided him a key or if he purchased the game himself. I don't agree with everything he says, nor disagree with everythng, but having a different outlook on something is useful to help question\clarify assumptions which I may have made, and helps ensure I don't get stuck in a bubble, only listening to\believeing things because they suit what I may want to believe and giving a distorted view of whatever is discussed.

The guy starts by saying - "Society is the most racist it's ever been in my lifetime and I lived through the 80s, it's just awful and its caused exactly because of things like this (as he his playing 2nd extinction) its all about identity politics?? - you see in this game second extinction I mentioned the fact that I did not like to play this Female "Ugandan type of antitype" woman....

This guy classically doesn't realise that he is one of those contributing to the racist environment he claims to abhor! sound familiar Bric?

Do I get a gold star? The link I posted leads to the original video. He cites a statistic from 2017 that only 7% of first person shooter players are women and goes on about how this game should cater to the majority, men. To a degree, I sympathize with his opinion, gamers like to feel they are their character in multiplayer games or at the very least have customization options as opposed to single player games. I usually stick to multiplayer games with more customization options myself (though I rarely play triple A multiplayer games). Maybe it was an investment choice, to try to bring more women players into the genre by creating games with characters they feel they can immerse themselves in a bit more. The article says something like that.



I thought it was funky the game has 4 classes but only allows 3 players. Probably wont play it ever, if I'm shooting Dino's I'll stick to Orion: Prelude