Ethnicity
- Thread starter Zwanzig
- Start date
Morpoggel said:
Nonsense. That would mean that every movie which shows racism could be accused as rascist.
Illustrating racism != racist
Racism exists in reality, and it damn sure would be even stronger in a post apocalyptic world - no problem with integrating that into a game.
Something other would be if you used racistic stereotypes in your game/movie like showing for example that all the bad dudes are black ones and the heroes are whities or something like that.
Yeah, I'm was unfair with that "nonsense"
While in fact in would be stupid to accuse a game including such elements as rascistic, you would propably find a whole bunch of idiots who would exactly do this no matter how moronic that is.
And since Beth is only after the $$ they would be propably to afraid that such accusitions would decrease their sales.
While in fact in would be stupid to accuse a game including such elements as rascistic, you would propably find a whole bunch of idiots who would exactly do this no matter how moronic that is.
And since Beth is only after the $$ they would be propably to afraid that such accusitions would decrease their sales.
Atomic Cowboy
It Wandered In From the Wastes
I don't think we're going to see race affecting things. I remember a number of years back when I first got the D&D 3rd Ed Lost Realms campaign setting it was very noticeable that every race (dwar, elf, human, etc.) had multiple sub-categories of races with different attributes (+2 Dex, -1 Int, etc.)... EXCEPT humans. They had different races sure enough, with descriptions of culture & appearance, but no differences in racial stats.
Also keep in mind that in the fallout setting prejudices will have greatly shifted. People would be more likely to be prejudiced against the guy from the next town over, then the ethnically different family they've been neighbored to for 3 generations.
In situations where you don't have universal criminal law coverage outsiders are always suspect. The situation would be similar to 14th century Europe where outside of the town there was no law.
Besides, nobody out there has the balls to do something like that. And even if they did, I'm not sure that it would really be helping the cause, because there'd be some race that would be at an advantage over the others.
Also keep in mind that in the fallout setting prejudices will have greatly shifted. People would be more likely to be prejudiced against the guy from the next town over, then the ethnically different family they've been neighbored to for 3 generations.
In situations where you don't have universal criminal law coverage outsiders are always suspect. The situation would be similar to 14th century Europe where outside of the town there was no law.
Besides, nobody out there has the balls to do something like that. And even if they did, I'm not sure that it would really be helping the cause, because there'd be some race that would be at an advantage over the others.
Carib FMJ
Nuka-Cola Chaser
Limited reactions, unless in FO3 Beth you can play as a mutant or a ghoul and a human.... That would be interesting.
Lazarus Plus said:
It would be very simple to do but I agree Bethesda will fuck it up. They never made a good RPG and have no concept of how good story plots... even linear plots.
Race should affect the gameplay.
Eg if you are Asian you get a -20 speech check or some karmic trait (representing suspicion). The nuclear war was fought against China so there must have been riots/pogroms like during WWII.
For blacks maybe there are communities descended from neo-nazi survivalists who'll shoot you on sight. Etc.
Religion would also be interesting. Of course it wouldn't affect dialogue in the same way (not being visible) and would only be checked if you advertized your faith.
Yeah some people might find that uncomfortable but whatever. The real world is uncomfortable.
If you are going to implement ethnicity realistically, you are going to create racism.
Currently the only "pc" approach to ethnicity is having a skin colour slider, which will either work on a range from pale white to deep black, or with a colour picker, sometimes resulting in ridiculous tans (green, blue, etc) if there isn't any proper sanity checking involved.
Even more so, skin colour is usually just treated as random trivia with no effects whatsoever -- just look at The Sims 2, where you could even have black natural blondes (which, last time I checked, isn't genetically possible).
Implementing ethnicity is inherently racist. Why? It aknowledges differences, i.e. allows for categorisation into races. That's racism.
The problem is whether or not the implementation is also offensive (i.e. whether people will cry "Racists!" or not). There are many movies that manage to be perceived as "not racist" despite aknowledging the effects of people's ethnicities in society and thus being de facto racist. Most of them are not considered offensive, simply because they are well-made and properly balanced (i.e. not discriminating against any portrayed ethnicity).
Doing this with a movie is hard. Especially if you have to keep the money-givers happy and yet stay true to your artistic vision.
Doing this with a game (as of yet) is nearly impossible.
Games, in most societies, are not yet seen in the same light as movies, books or theatre. They are not perceived as something that is an artistic expression or tells a subjective story, but to many they are still just simulators or mere entertainment -- not in the sense that a movie is entertainment, but in the sense that porn or jumping up and down is entertainment.
It would be possible to do it right, or at least in a way that doesn't offend people who aknowledge games as an artform or cultural element, but I honestly doubt Beth cares enough or has the proper talent and aspiration to do it right, or attempt to do it in the first place.
As an afterthought: Of course people will still discriminate based on appearance even after the bombs have fallen. That's how human minds work. We spot differences and we categorise things based on these differences. And if one of those things happens to show certain properties, we assume those properties to be existant in all things of that category -- be it lifeless things or living ones.
It's one of the most basic patterns of human behaviour and can easily be proven and proven again. It was of evolutionary significance (and still is), but it's also one of the reasons we may never be able to archieve that ideal of peace and harmony.
Everyone's different and we tend to assume that those who share SOME of the properties that make them different from us (or others) also share other properties we have not been able to observe yet.
If you're white and a black man steals your car and you have never dealt with people of a different skin colour before, it's only natural to assume (conciously or not) that the next black man you meet will not be trustworthy either.
The good thing about (post-enlightenment) "civilisation" (or rational science) is that it helps overriding that subjective experience. The bad thing about it is that there wouldn't be much left in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Of course everyone'd be skeptical of foreigners no matter WHAT they look like as they would simply not meet a lot of people, but if that foreigner also speaks differently, acts differently or looks differently, the skepsis and potential violence (resulting from fear or mere disrespect) can be much greater.
Let's not forget that violence against and exploitation of minorities has nearly always been rationalised (by the wrong-doers) by the assertion that they are not "real humans" in the same way the wrong-doers are -- nearly every large-scale war has always been full of de-humanisation of the enemy (look at the racist propaganda on all sides throughout World War 2 for an obvious example).
Heck, even murderers and criminals are frequently understood as "monsters" out of the subconcious fear that aknowledging their humanity would make their behaviour purely human and thus "normal" (rather than "inhuman" and "monstrous").
My 2 bottle caps.
Currently the only "pc" approach to ethnicity is having a skin colour slider, which will either work on a range from pale white to deep black, or with a colour picker, sometimes resulting in ridiculous tans (green, blue, etc) if there isn't any proper sanity checking involved.
Even more so, skin colour is usually just treated as random trivia with no effects whatsoever -- just look at The Sims 2, where you could even have black natural blondes (which, last time I checked, isn't genetically possible).
Implementing ethnicity is inherently racist. Why? It aknowledges differences, i.e. allows for categorisation into races. That's racism.
The problem is whether or not the implementation is also offensive (i.e. whether people will cry "Racists!" or not). There are many movies that manage to be perceived as "not racist" despite aknowledging the effects of people's ethnicities in society and thus being de facto racist. Most of them are not considered offensive, simply because they are well-made and properly balanced (i.e. not discriminating against any portrayed ethnicity).
Doing this with a movie is hard. Especially if you have to keep the money-givers happy and yet stay true to your artistic vision.
Doing this with a game (as of yet) is nearly impossible.
Games, in most societies, are not yet seen in the same light as movies, books or theatre. They are not perceived as something that is an artistic expression or tells a subjective story, but to many they are still just simulators or mere entertainment -- not in the sense that a movie is entertainment, but in the sense that porn or jumping up and down is entertainment.
It would be possible to do it right, or at least in a way that doesn't offend people who aknowledge games as an artform or cultural element, but I honestly doubt Beth cares enough or has the proper talent and aspiration to do it right, or attempt to do it in the first place.
As an afterthought: Of course people will still discriminate based on appearance even after the bombs have fallen. That's how human minds work. We spot differences and we categorise things based on these differences. And if one of those things happens to show certain properties, we assume those properties to be existant in all things of that category -- be it lifeless things or living ones.
It's one of the most basic patterns of human behaviour and can easily be proven and proven again. It was of evolutionary significance (and still is), but it's also one of the reasons we may never be able to archieve that ideal of peace and harmony.
Everyone's different and we tend to assume that those who share SOME of the properties that make them different from us (or others) also share other properties we have not been able to observe yet.
If you're white and a black man steals your car and you have never dealt with people of a different skin colour before, it's only natural to assume (conciously or not) that the next black man you meet will not be trustworthy either.
The good thing about (post-enlightenment) "civilisation" (or rational science) is that it helps overriding that subjective experience. The bad thing about it is that there wouldn't be much left in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Of course everyone'd be skeptical of foreigners no matter WHAT they look like as they would simply not meet a lot of people, but if that foreigner also speaks differently, acts differently or looks differently, the skepsis and potential violence (resulting from fear or mere disrespect) can be much greater.
Let's not forget that violence against and exploitation of minorities has nearly always been rationalised (by the wrong-doers) by the assertion that they are not "real humans" in the same way the wrong-doers are -- nearly every large-scale war has always been full of de-humanisation of the enemy (look at the racist propaganda on all sides throughout World War 2 for an obvious example).
Heck, even murderers and criminals are frequently understood as "monsters" out of the subconcious fear that aknowledging their humanity would make their behaviour purely human and thus "normal" (rather than "inhuman" and "monstrous").
My 2 bottle caps.
And you forget that Fallout and Fallout 2 had black character models as well.
Choosing a skin colour is no different from choosing eye colour, and it shouldn't be. There's no problem with it whatsoever, really, and everyone accepts the fact that there are multiple races in a game.
No one but the whiniest people are going to be screaming 'Racist!' if they see a black character model portraying something other than an ideal person.
Choosing a skin colour is no different from choosing eye colour, and it shouldn't be. There's no problem with it whatsoever, really, and everyone accepts the fact that there are multiple races in a game.
No one but the whiniest people are going to be screaming 'Racist!' if they see a black character model portraying something other than an ideal person.
Skin colour in Fallout was as arbitrary as the other properties of the critter models.
I wouldn't make the claim that Fallout gave ethnicity any actual consideration. Unless we're talking about Fallout 2, which basically abused the topic for stereotypes (the black guys in New Reno, the Chinese in Frisco, etc).
Also, Fallout didn't attempt to implement any such concept realistically.
Choosing skin colour, eye colour, hair colour etc are avatar customisation in most games. That's fine, but it's not an implementation of "ethnicity".
If you want to follow the doctrine of choice and consequence, all attributes of your character, including purely visual ones, should be considered.
How certain attributes should affect the story, though, is a matter of artistic vision.
In the world of Fallout it makes sense to have ghouls and mutants be discriminated against more than any particular group of humans, but that's hardly a political nor ethical statement, that's just a matter of focus and taste.
I guess whether and what kind of effect ethnicity has in a game is largely dependant on the artistic vision.
As an aside: Considering GTA:SA, I am actually beginning to wonder if what I wrote actually holds true for it. Granted, it's based on a stylised reality, but it's fictional nevertheless -- and it does rely heavily on ethnicity as one of the recurring motifs (not purely stereotypical either). And apparently nobody has held that against it at large yet.
I agree that ethnicity should ideally not matter at all, ever, but I also think that a dystopian future should not have to follow the same ideals just for the sake of political correctness.
Being able to play a black guy in a Wild West setting without experiencing any negative feedback from anyone, for example, would seem highly unlikely.
That said, I don't find the thought of having to deal with ethnicity of the player character or anybody else in a Fallout game particularily great. It might work if properly executed, but it just seems way out of touch -- just like having blunt "deeply" religious issues in the game.
That aside, I also don't think I'd feel particularily comfortable playing a game as a racist discriminating bastard just for the experience's sake, so I'm rather happy most games don't give me that "freedom".
Anyway. I should finally go to bed. Forgive me if I haven't made any sense today -- it's hard to think straight if you haven't slept much and spent most of your day trying to form coherent sentences in Dutch or manually transcribing coordinates on a 2D map of Great Britain.
I wouldn't make the claim that Fallout gave ethnicity any actual consideration. Unless we're talking about Fallout 2, which basically abused the topic for stereotypes (the black guys in New Reno, the Chinese in Frisco, etc).
Also, Fallout didn't attempt to implement any such concept realistically.
Choosing skin colour, eye colour, hair colour etc are avatar customisation in most games. That's fine, but it's not an implementation of "ethnicity".
If you want to follow the doctrine of choice and consequence, all attributes of your character, including purely visual ones, should be considered.
How certain attributes should affect the story, though, is a matter of artistic vision.
In the world of Fallout it makes sense to have ghouls and mutants be discriminated against more than any particular group of humans, but that's hardly a political nor ethical statement, that's just a matter of focus and taste.
I guess whether and what kind of effect ethnicity has in a game is largely dependant on the artistic vision.
As an aside: Considering GTA:SA, I am actually beginning to wonder if what I wrote actually holds true for it. Granted, it's based on a stylised reality, but it's fictional nevertheless -- and it does rely heavily on ethnicity as one of the recurring motifs (not purely stereotypical either). And apparently nobody has held that against it at large yet.
I agree that ethnicity should ideally not matter at all, ever, but I also think that a dystopian future should not have to follow the same ideals just for the sake of political correctness.
Being able to play a black guy in a Wild West setting without experiencing any negative feedback from anyone, for example, would seem highly unlikely.
That said, I don't find the thought of having to deal with ethnicity of the player character or anybody else in a Fallout game particularily great. It might work if properly executed, but it just seems way out of touch -- just like having blunt "deeply" religious issues in the game.
That aside, I also don't think I'd feel particularily comfortable playing a game as a racist discriminating bastard just for the experience's sake, so I'm rather happy most games don't give me that "freedom".
Anyway. I should finally go to bed. Forgive me if I haven't made any sense today -- it's hard to think straight if you haven't slept much and spent most of your day trying to form coherent sentences in Dutch or manually transcribing coordinates on a 2D map of Great Britain.
I don't really see what's wrong with having racial discrimination. Anyone who says that a game which wishes to be somewhat realistic should not have discrimination because it's not politically correct is a moron.
And there's a difference between the movie itself discriminating or showing discriminations. If a movie portrays a black community in a completly negative way, and a white community being terrorized by the black community, than that movie is politically incorrect. If the movie shows the black community being what it truly is, but discriminated by the white community, than that movie is completly fine, since it only portrays political incorrectness.
And there's a difference between the movie itself discriminating or showing discriminations. If a movie portrays a black community in a completly negative way, and a white community being terrorized by the black community, than that movie is politically incorrect. If the movie shows the black community being what it truly is, but discriminated by the white community, than that movie is completly fine, since it only portrays political incorrectness.
Do keep in mind that Fallout is a portrayal of a future. Fallout's creators purposely left out details of more sensitive, contemporary things to be replaced by future things.
Think, for instance, of the Dharma the people in Shady Shands worshipped instead of a Christian God.
As such, they replaced any racial discrimination with ghoul and mutant discrimination, although this was most (if not just) visible in Fallout 2.
Hell, discriminating against other humans because of skin colour seems a bit out of place in a post-apocalyptic world. Especially one where neither ethnicity would really have the upper hand.
Think, for instance, of the Dharma the people in Shady Shands worshipped instead of a Christian God.
As such, they replaced any racial discrimination with ghoul and mutant discrimination, although this was most (if not just) visible in Fallout 2.
Hell, discriminating against other humans because of skin colour seems a bit out of place in a post-apocalyptic world. Especially one where neither ethnicity would really have the upper hand.
Sander said:
Kind of a good point, there's really not that many people to choose from...
About ghoul and mutant racism, it seemed to as in Fallout, the ghouls were more or less centered in Necropolis, where "normies" were the ones beeing picked on. Then there's the Hub, with Harold the mutant beeing picked on for beeing different.
In Fallout, the super mutants was an über race with not much contact with humans other than the occasional caravan raid, etc.
In Fallout2, super mutants had made peace with humans and were now just a minority, and they lacked the über-ness they had in Fallout, less big guns and all...
Ghouls are getting rarer in Fallout2, theygrow old(very old), and they are in really bad shape, they are weaker than humans, so the eventually die out, they were just temporary side effects from the bombs, so to say...
Just my quarter of a bottle cap
Makes sense.
Pretty much just like Star Trek replaced national interconflicts with intergalactic conflicts (heavily relying on the same stereotypes at times: greed (Ferengi), obsession with war (Klingons), backstabbing (Romulans), etc).
I don't think adding another, lower, layer of "racism" would make sense for Fallout. Especially considering Fallout was about a mutant attempting to create the perfect superhuman master race.
Pretty much just like Star Trek replaced national interconflicts with intergalactic conflicts (heavily relying on the same stereotypes at times: greed (Ferengi), obsession with war (Klingons), backstabbing (Romulans), etc).
I don't think adding another, lower, layer of "racism" would make sense for Fallout. Especially considering Fallout was about a mutant attempting to create the perfect superhuman master race.
Lazarus Plus
The smoovest
Seems to me (as has been basically stated) that any racism that exists should purely be between species at this point. (Ghouls and humans, etc.)
Could lead to interesting story arc potential.
Could lead to interesting story arc potential.
well people are beeing accused of beeing anti-semits just for talking about the israel-palestinia conflict, and I'll probably be accused of beeing anti-semit for saying that...
But that's politics, wich I normally don't discuss
On topic, let's hope Bethesda don't try to be politicaly correct, or whatever it's called.
But that's politics, wich I normally don't discuss
On topic, let's hope Bethesda don't try to be politicaly correct, or whatever it's called.