The fact that fantasy has few non-white humans is because it is not the real world. And this kind of topics come up on many forums. Always whining about discrimination and stuff.
My opinion on this? I hate discrimination and racism even more. But if someone decides black humans have no place in there story its there choice, and the people who make that game have the right to do so. I'm fine with people that are not okay with that, but keep it for yourself and your friends and don't buy the book, movie, game, or whatever. But don't come whining on the internet on public forums. Its Fantasy know?!
A very fine example that you can make whatever you wish. They make it cause they can, you choose to get it or not.
The point I am making is, at what point do you draw the line between defamation and entertainment? The line of thinking, "don't like, don't buy" is all fine and well, but is frequently abused to excuse any vice and backwards thinking - including snuff films and child pornography. There does need to be a balance, and imo, putting down an entire race of people isn't an edifying trait for the games industry - or for the human race.
ahahahahaha you are so funny. Child pornografy is harming the minors and its a different story. On the other hand i cant see how a movie/game/book can harm you. If they made a movie about me, i wouldnt care less. Life is short, enjoy it and learn to keep your ears and eyes shut to whatever you dont like. Leave the Crusades to those who think that the world can change. 4000years still no actual change.
Ah and think of that: rape is bad there is no question about it. Still they make porn with *rape* scenes. Isnt that bad and insulting towards women? Of course it is. Still its good, cause many psychos can now watch it instead going out doing it. So everything what may seem discriminating at first, if looked closely enough can reveal some positive aspects.
ahahahahaha you are so funny. Child pornografy is harming the minors and its a different story. On the other hand i cant see how a movie/game/book can harm you. If they made a movie about me, i wouldnt care less. Life is short, enjoy it and learn to keep your ears and eyes shut to whatever you dont like. Leave the Crusades to those who think that the world can change. 4000years still no actual change.
Your condescension isn't impressive, and it isn't needed. I haven't treated you rudely, so please treat me with the same respect.
I won't close my eyes nor stand idly by when racism, homophobia, and sexism occur. I have never liked the "not my problem" philosphy, and I do my small part to work against that, no apologies. When people shut their eyes to problems and ignore them, those problems do not go away.
If you think that media is harmless, if you think that there has been no change in 4,000 hears on this planet, then I invite you to do some research on history, science, sociology, and pretty much everything. I guarantee you, there has been a great deal of change since then.
Anyways - back to the topic. I think that the lack of non-white, non-straight peoples and characters speaks volumes about the gaming industry. I invite a greater inclusion of racial and social diversity in games, and I think it's strange how this sector is lagging behind TV/movies.
Kangaxx is a golden skeleton and later a flying gold skull. I'm not sure how that makes him black.
How can you not get it? It's so clearly obvious. Half the skeleton warriors you fight are black as well.
Moving on to the apparently not as obvious as it should be lack of racial diversity in a particular area of the Realms:
Much as happens in many countries across the globe on Earth, small influxes of ethnically diverse migrants into an area will first integrate, and subsequently interbreed with, the local population. This is why approximately one in five supposedly "white" residents of London actually have fairly recent black ancestry, yet you probably would not be able to tell without genotyping. This is a product of the fairly small-scale influx of black migrants who were then subsumed by the local gene pool, giving the local gene pool a healthy boost from the new genetic material to work with, but not meaningfully altering the overall demographic.
It is only when too many individuals of a particular ethnicity migrate at once that the region begins to become ethnically diverse - there are too many for them to integrate seamlessly with the host population, and those that do begin to integrate with the local population will also integrate with the incoming "new" population as well; a natural human behaviour to stay with "your tribe" (one that frequently offsets the other urge to seek biological diversity).
As this large, unintegrated section of migrants are now interacting with others with similar views coming from their original homes, the urge to integrate is reduced, and instead you now have a more or less self-sustaining ethnic minority, frequently contained within a ghetto.
Because of the comparative ease of travel (and of course, the mass exoduses to the Americas), sizeable minority populations are a comparatively "modern" (historically speaking) phenomenon. Whilst populations did travel across the world (hence why we have small populations of red-headed Chinese people with Celtic ancestry), they usually did it in fairly small numbers, in fairly small distances. Ethnic differences were more likely to be based on religious or other social aspects than skin tone.
Now take this and apply it to the Realms.
First of all, overland travel is insanely dangerous. You, a party of six, encounter and murder probably easily a few hundred creatures tatting around the sword coast. One can only assume that anyone else wishing to travel from Beregost to Baldur's Gate will encounter an average of two to three bandit gangs, seven gibberlings with various afflictions, and a wandering mage asking them to rescue their cat in exchange for fabulous rewards. Likewise, given the number of sea voyages you take versus those that end in ship wreck, there is approximately a 25% chance that any sea voyage will be struck by a storm and sink, leaving only 1-6 survivors and on the outside a handful of NPCs. There is a further 50% chance that the boat will be attacked by pirates, sea monsters, or held captive by a powerful witch on her magical island shrouded in mist.
Secondly, those people capable of travelling these distances safely are insanely rare, whilst those tools that allow one to do so are insanely well protected by armies of vicious evil monsters in the middle of nowhere, which rather involves the aforementioned travel just to get there. Since the number of mages expected to be capable of overland teleport that aren't colossally evil or apathetic towards your average down-on-their-luck-family-looking-for-a-better-life are approaching 2 in Faerun and the expanded multiverse as well, the idea that these might supply a travel service (as opposed to a fun new "conscription into my undead hordes service") for the entire family are approaching nil.
With these odds, the average probability for a single family to successfully move from Africa-equivalent to the Sword Coast (or Amn) is approximately equal to the chance of an unarmed level 1 commoner beating a dozen housecats in mortal combat. The probability for a population large enough to actually form an enduring minority is almost literally nil, whilst the chances of it being isolated from society at large is unlikely, since Canon in the Realms in general is that skin colour is vastly irrelevant among a single race when they have completely different species to be prejudiced against.
Military invasions, whilst not unheard of, are far, far more likely to be neighbour to neighbour, or dark skinned subterranean villains to pasty surface-world equivalent. As mentioned, the chance of giant sea monster attack or super-storm is effectively a 50/50 chance, so the vast eldritch horror that was the British navy is extremely unlikely, as is the chance of a largescale empire forming across a sizeable area of the continent. There are simply too many monsters around, too many rampaging orc settlements, and too many secret elven villages to maintain the infrastructure necessary for serious Imperialism. This is why the Sword Coast consists of city states divided by psychotically dangerous stretches of wilderness, rather than a unified "country".
So any invasions that aren't thwarted by passing adventurers or returning lost princes/ses will be strictly local border conflicts or not even involve the same species at all, meaning it's unlikely for there to be any real ethnic diversity introduced (except presumably the number of half-orcs), and equally unlikely for the invading army to expand further.
Adventurers, in comparison, are most likely to find themselves in a foreign land sooner or later, presumably as the leader of a small tribe whose previous leader they defeated in single combat or something. Unfortunately, adventurers are not, by definition, social creatures, they travel vast distances with only 1-5 others as company, and are frequently not human either. When they settle, or as the case may be, father a significant proportion of the next generation in a region before moving on, their descendants are swiftly subsumed by the indigenous peoples, and the Realms remain largely ethnically homogenous (except for the elves, whose copper skin/blue skin/purple skin or whatever seems largely determined by local environment factors, not geography, and who somehow keep ending up mating with humans near their own nations).
These factors all add up to the one simple fact - 99.999% of the population, unless it exists in an area where there is already explicitly an existing mix of ethnic groups already, will be homogenous and of a specific type; in the Sword Coast, a fairly cold, northerly region, this ethnic group is likely to be the Realms equivalent of Caucasian. "Minorities" in these locations will almost always be first generation immigrants, from wherever they might originally hail (and there is no real guarantee that this will be from a region that is not primarily Caucasian itself), or adventurers themselves.
Take the estimated human population you encounter during the entire trilogy, calculate the odds of encountering ethnically diverse individuals from different *countries*, let alone areas distant enough to feature different ethnicities, and you'll see that the expected population of black people (I assume 'tis black people that has engendered this question, since there already exist "Asian-equivalent" individuals in the realms, and "Middle Eastern" is not one of the three distinct human races) is approximately equal to 0.12 of a person.
This is solely for the D&D conceit, however many fantasies set in Western Europe equivalents have very similar reasonings behind their actions, just as many fantasy works from Japan, Korea and China all have primarily or exclusively Asian characters. If Africa develops a media industry successful enough to export, and sets those stories in Africa then it is reasonable to assume their constituents will be appropriately mixed for the region they select as well.
Whilst this doesn't necessarily stop the player from encountering minorities across their adventures, as their adventures are by their very nature remarkable, to suggest that the absence of minorities is in some way racially prejudiced is ludicrous, indeed it is quite the opposite, the inclusion of racial minorities that by all rights should scarcely exist is an absurd bid for political correctness at the expense of the simulation's verisimilitude.
@Pantalion, that is a fantastic and very cool-headed explanation, thank you. I get what you said, and it's totally legitimate. My question is, why does the media (gaming industry included) focuses almost exclusively on the caucasian-equivalent? I am not sure how this is actually handled outside of the USA, because my experience of this was gained only from the states.
@theJoshFrost very good point, I would like to ask what a person from a different culture would think. But think of all the other games produced from Japan why have main characters been white all these years, even look back to the first final fantasy. The warrior and all most all other party members where white, except for the black mage, who's face you couldn't see.
To cover this more thoroughly, ideally you'd need to have a wider range of games producers and gaming history, but for me to do that would take pages, so I'll keep it brief.
Essentially, the majority of characters in the majority of Japanese games (including those games that make it out of the country to the West) are Asian, not Caucasian. This is because the creators are basing the game on their own demographic.
It's also worth noting that the majority of Westerners, particularly in the early days of gaming where graphics are a little.... sparse, tend to view those selfsame characters as white; there's a psychological reason for that in that your brain basically fills in the blanks with familiar frames of reference. It's not necessarily that the characters are created with Caucasian features, just that they lack contradicting features.
Secondly, few Eastern games feature black characters because Japan in particular is actually pretty racist, so their black characters can tend towards the stereotypical, the "offensive", or as vanilla-ised as possible.
But anyway, for a better look into gaming, it's worth looking back a ways, at gaming's past.
Master of Magic: Civilisation, except fun, enjoyable, and Fantasy. There are actually three different types of human "race" included; Barbarians, High Men and Nomads. There are primary wizards of every reasonable ethnicity - Native American equivalent, Black Voodoo Priestess, White Haired Pretty Boy, Arabic Sorcerer, Asian Chaos/Sorcery hybrid or something (I don't know, hybrids were lame, but his name was still Lo Pan). Units still tended to be a single colour, and that colour tended to be pale for the human units and their fantasy equivalents, but MoM was a real kitchen sink of ethnicity.
Date of this multi-ethnic paradise? Circa 1994. On the same year, UFO: Enemy Unknown (that's X-Com to you peeps, by Mythos, another British developer) came out, and whilst on the map screen, yet again, there were only two different types of X-Com soldier, guy and girl, their paper dolls could be any race, out of up to around five or six per gender. Purely cosmetic, purely random, and it ain't Fantasy, but hey, racial parity. If I were knocking around examples of non-Caucasians in Western games I'd probably point to Sports games (I seem to recall Sensible Soccer even had a black Referee) and a other specific genres, but I'm trying to keep on track with Fantasy.
So by 1994, 18 years ago, there were games that featured multiple ethnicities, and they were classics, so it's not that it's taken awhile to get to that point (barely fifteen years after Pac Man, and the Middle Eastern guy was already around in Prince of Persia since the 1980s...) but most games simply weren't of the type that could accommodate such a feature, nor needed one.
This fact continues today.
Film, for the vast, vast majority of films, focuses on people, characters, and humans. Books frequently don't even mention race, leaving it open to interpretation anyway.
And games, for the vast, vast majority of games, focus on mechanics; puzzle games that have no people at all, sports games feature just as many people of various skin tones as their respective sports do, strategy games still feature identical units like they always have, space ship games still have invisible pilots in little ships doing all the shooting, First Person Games.... Well, they sort of have a few actually.
The only games that really tend to have a focus on characters are "Adventure" games, where you have things like Assassin's Creed, which I seem to recall started with a prominent middle Eastern fellow with a penchant for stabbing, Prince of Persia, with much the same, and Prototype's sequel, which featured a black protagonist.
At the same time, a game like Ico, a beautiful work of art of a game, would not be improved by ensuring that the ambiguously tan-skinned character or glowy white heroine were black, nor is the issue of race in the remit of that game at all. Even in an adventure game
RPGs do nowadays tend to have major characters, if not the main characters, that are black or Asian equivalents. Where they do not have ethnic minorities, such as Dragon Age, it is frequently for the exact same reasons as my former post, and since the player is often free to appear as they like in a Western RPG, race is irrelevant (I seem to recall Fallout 3 had not only a diverse ethnic range of characters, but also explicitly altered your parent's face to match your chosen ethnicity).
So yeah, I can't exactly suggest that these games do not exist, but I assume the major question would be how many games feature ethnic minorities as protagonists? Or as key characters?
- Let's talk race here for a moment. In the US, about 80% of the population or so is Caucasian. In the UK, around 95% of the population is Caucasian. If 1 in 5 "Western" games from one of these two nations, *with actual characters*, has a non-Caucasian guy as either a main character, a major character, or as a major proportion of the game population, then it's actually more than reasonable for the share of the market share they represent.
Photographers take photos of people. Would you say a photographer was racist if they only had certain ethnicities in their portfolio?
So, off the top of my head: Mass Effect, Prototype 2, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, Red dead Redemption, Dragon's Dogma, Secret World, Dead Island, one or two Grand Theft Autos that I can think of, and pretty much any other RPG that features a customisable main character. I've already mentioned Neverwinter Nights 2 as featuring a campaign on Samarach, with the natives there being a variety of races as a result, whilst the Sword Coast features the same Caucasian heavy population as previously mentioned.
The fact that these games exist at all is fairly advanced from a "political correctness" standpoint, the fact that major characters exist who are minorities without being exclusively focused on is a sign of the maturity of the industry, there's nothing particularly "wrong" with them not being the focus of each, or their lacking a "be a black guy" option or some other such feature; it would be nice, but it's a feature that for the vast majority of their expected demographic (at least until Africa becomes a major market force in the gaming industry) will go unappreciated or ignored by those who don't actually care about race one way or another and just enjoy playing games.
It's important to remember that it isn't the game developer's job to include minorities in their stories any more than it is in any other form of fiction; if there are too many black people, then it's an anomaly, not a championing moment for political correctness. Albion's population is mostly Caucasian because the country is populated mostly by Caucasians, not because Lionhead is actually a subdivision of Stormfront. Jensen isn't a white cyborg guy rather than an Asian cyborg guy to thumb his nose at racial equality, games exist to be purchased and are created according to the developer's vision; if that vision includes a particular race, then neat; if not, then good chance that that race will be the majority race in the creator's nation by default, just like the Japanese RPG actually stars Japanese people and Korean dramas star Koreans. As their Westerners.
You can have 5% of your gaming demographic identify more easily with your character, or 95%, your game isn't the kind of game you can just let them switch, what would you do?
I'll take a moment to step off topic to sexual orientation, since the absence of these does come up frequently hand-in-hand. Ultimately most games do not have romances, nor sex, nor does sexuality come up. Adding these to a game which lacked them out of hand would be inappropriate for most games, and yet more and more often a game can be seen with these as an option. If anything, this demographic is over, not under, represented, comparing the number of games where the option exists for anything at all to those where it is included. The percentage of gay individuals in the US is less than 5% after all.
Looking at both of these together, you can actually see some of the pitfalls associated with including a certain minority in the game from the various gay threads about the forum; if you may the only black man gay, does that mean you're implying all black men are gay? If the only Asian man is a psycho, are you making a statement by that? What if the main character is a white man killing black zombies?
People read a lot more into all these things than they should, when in reality the situation is quite simple, from a supply and demand point of view. If minorities want to feature in more games, they need to represent a larger market share for maximum profit, or develop games themselves. This isn't what I would consider a major racial issue, it's hard to say it ever was, especially since graphics only advanced far enough to routinely include this sort of variety fairly recently.
As time progresses, likely as not the game market will oversaturate, leading to developers intentionally targeting minority groups to access a previously untapped market share, and this "problem" shall solve itself naturally.
However, the Realms did have an actual invasion from the East, based on real-world history: the Invasion of the Tuigan Horde, which included Batu Min Ho, a Shou Lung (or T'u Lung, I don't remember) general who tried to keep the Horde from invading his country, failed, and was blamed by his Emperor, who killed his family. Batu Min Ho ended up joining with the Tuigan, becoming one of their generals. Yamun Khahan was their leader and it was based on the Mongols and Genghis Khan.
There are also places in the Realms, like Halruaa, where magic is used much more freely than in the North, with things like flying ships and so on. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Halruaa
However, the Realms did have an actual invasion from the East, based on real-world history: the Invasion of the Tuigan Horde, which included Batu Min Ho, a Shou Lung (or T'u Lung, I don't remember) general who tried to keep the Horde from invading his country, failed, and was blamed by his Emperor, who killed his family. Batu Min Ho ended up joining with the Tuigan, becoming one of their generals. Yamun Khahan was their leader and it was based on the Mongols and Genghis Khan.
There are also places in the Realms, like Halruaa, where magic is used much more freely than in the North, with things like flying ships and so on. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Halruaa
Interesting, though I note that even this invasion never reached the Sword Coast or Amn, much like the Mongolian equivalent never quite reached Western Europe. I do think it would be interesting for one of these games to actually feature the region however; especially since the horde was defeated only ten years before BG1 started; the Bhaalspawn was both alive, and in the case of one of the longer lived races, potentially an adult at the time.
And needless to say, any time someone uses a flying ship there's a 50/50 risk they'll be attacked by Wyverns, passing dragons, or the ship will accidentally tumble through a tear in the weave and end up surrounded by several thousand Netherese wizards. It is an interesting question however, of what the average level is in a population of mages; Overland Teleport is what, level 6 or so?
@Pantalion The Horde was fought by a coalition led by King Azoun IV of Cormyr. Not all of the defeated horde ran away, a great number of them settled in Thesk, which is South of Cormyr in the Western Heartlands of the Realms (Probably where Germany/Austria is in Europe-Cormyr that is). Thesk is near Rashemen and Thay, both of which were invaded by the Horde.
this is why whenever I do table top, I purposefully do not describe skin color, just to see how people would imagine what the NPCs they interact it look like. I mostly play with white Midwestern US folks and so often times they get surprised when their character actually looks completely out of place for the setting yet no one in the world seems to care. It would be interesting to look over all the fantasy systems (both in literature and gaming) so see how they hold hope when it comes to racial diversity and what authors would say is the key issue in a culture. For some, race not be an issue, but instead classism would be the issue. Honestly though, a system without any sort of underlying "ism" would be rather boring and probably unrelatable thus making it harder to play. Though I would be interested if anyone knows of a system where there is no "isms" of any sort, whether that be classism, sexism, enthocentricism, heterocentricism etc etc.
@Pantalion Also, Halruaa is where mages from Netheril settled after the cataclysm destroyed their floating cities (well, some of them did- others went to the Plane of Shade/Shadow).
Why bother to put labels on things? A game where all are whites. Ok, cool, if black people dont like it then noone is going to make them play it. A game full of black people. White people dont like it? Dont play it. A game full of men ruling over women. Feminists dont like it? Dont play it. A game of women keeping men lock up only for recreational reasons. Mens dont like it? Dont play it. The choice is always yours. Dont like something? DONT PLAY/READ/SEE IT. That simple. And instead of bitching and judging, move your lazy arsch and make something that fits your likes. If you try to bring me up to my sences or reply in an extreme *sofisticated* way, i will start trolling you.
Exactly! There is so much movies/games/books out there, there is NO REASON to bit** because some of them does not fit your tastes. But it's always "Oh, they are keeping the down!" with this generation...
Why bother to put labels on things? A game where all are whites. Ok, cool, if black people dont like it then noone is going to make them play it. A game full of black people. White people dont like it? Dont play it. A game full of men ruling over women. Feminists dont like it? Dont play it. A game of women keeping men lock up only for recreational reasons. Mens dont like it? Dont play it. The choice is always yours. Dont like something? DONT PLAY/READ/SEE IT. That simple. And instead of bitching and judging, move your lazy arsch and make something that fits your likes. If you try to bring me up to my sences or reply in an extreme *sofisticated* way, i will start trolling you.
Exactly! There is so much movies/games/books out there, there is NO REASON to bit** because some of them does not fit your tastes. But it's always "Oh, they are keeping the down!" with this generation...
While literature and games should be free of censorship, nor should truly racist, etc., crap, not be ostracized. And continually questioning such things isn't bitching. Take racist heavy metal. It is highly ignored. But nor should it not be commented on, or even studied. To ignore such things completely is dangerous, and can imply passive agreement. I think the underlying theme is humanism. The Cosby Show was huge, not because it whitewashed the characters, but because it, and Cosbys material, are human stories. Or "everybody hates Chris" as a more modern example. Great show, very Black, but not as an end. The more knee jerk, "political correct" responses are probably more of what you folks are reacting to - my 2 cents is to ignore that kind of bitching, but not forgo critical analysis.
Its very simple minorities in fantasy are in the books of those authors who choose to include them. I can identify myself with the common human race in fantasy games just fine. Honestly what I take from this thread is: first there were hundreds of topics about sexuality quotas, now that that is done with you come up with the next drama: racial quotas. Forget it. The point of fantasy is exactly forgeting our real world for a while. If everyone is green on that fantasy world thats how it is, accept it or write your own stories.
The point of fantasy is exactly forgeting our real world for a while. If everyone is green on that fantasy world thats how it is, accept it or write your own stories.
@GygaxianProse - I highly agree, and honestly I would love to see what research could show about data discovered in fantasy literature. Now that I am thinking about it, it would be interested to see how different people even define literature or act upon in story telling or game play. Sometimes it can be just a simple thing like they are just thought up in the story telling. For example: in my DND created world, Gnomes are rare and I don't ever use them as NPCs, mainly because I just haven't really thought up a place for them in the world because I am too busy focusing on Human, Elven, Dwarven, and my created races interactions. Other times it could be interesting to see why something is or isn't included because of GM's underlying cultural tendencies. Maybe I am a sociology/psychology nerd, but I think it could provide some fascinating data.
Steven Erikson's Malazan Books of the Fallen series have a majority of non-white characters, I believe. In fact, thinking about it, most of the main characters were either Dal Honese (black), Seven Cities (Arabic) or similar. I think the Quon Talians might have been white, but for the most part, they were not well-represented in the series.
Of course, he also set out to purposefully subvert and break standard fantasy tropes in several areas, and that is just one of many he took aim at. I think if we excluded the bit parts from the 14th Army, a slight majority of his characters weren't even human.
I'm sure I'm not the first to make this observation, but how come in every fantasy setting there's a lack of black people/latinos/asians/middle easterners?
In Lord of the Rings there's NOTHING but white people, and even Star Wars only has 2 black guys. One for each trilogy. And no, the racially charged aliens don't count.
So why is that, I wonder? I just find it sort of interesting.
Well i always assumed that since these fantasies do not take place on earth then the species and races that the fantasy revolved around would be very different. Obviously they're not gonna show you every single person involved so just because you don't see black people doesn't mean there aren't any at all. There aren't just white people in LoTR btw.
@GygaxianProse Never try to figure why people act in a specific way. They are simply stupid, ignorant, selfish and ungratefull. But i will say STUPID again just to make sure you get it. Take a day off and try to walk the city and observe them. Mankind wont change ever. For that im pretty sure, even if even bigger technological steps will be made in the future. Its the vile nature of man that wont let him become in any way at all close to the definition that we have given to ourselves, "human". They just dont care to use their brain. They prefer to keep it boxed in that jar full of shit that they like to call a "brain".
I'm not really sure why affirmative action needs to be applied to every single aspect of Western culture. I'm sure other countries with different races have this same "issue", if it can be called that.
I just think it's interesting to have the option to play as characters that look different. I mean, I can choose to play as an elf, dwarf, gnome, or half-orc in the game, but for some reason I can't change my character's skin tone. That just seems odd to me.
My personal preference is to play as a character that is very different from how I am in real life. I imagine many other people like to do the same. If this game is being marketed in an area where most of the population is white, that would mean that logically a significant number of characters should be something else, so that players can be a character that is a different race than they are in real life. I mean, in BG I'm a half-elf and obviously I'm a human in real life, but I would prefer to be a black half-elf or maybe an Asian half-elf, not a white half-elf. Being a white half-elf just seems boring and not conducive with the general creativity of designing a character in Baldur's Gate.
@ARKdeEREH: Elves for the most part are portrayed to be white/light tan, and very "fair looking". I definitely can understand your desire to not want to play as yourself, and most games (Baldur's Gate included, or so I thought) allow you to change your skin tone to one of a decently-sized number of options.
However, I have to disagree with you when it comes to marketing. I find that many people, myself included, like to inject themselves or a familiar looking person into fantasy games. Not that I have the statistics to back this up, (nor do I honestly care to) but I imagine that if you were to:
Give a white population the choice of playing a white, black, asian, or hispanic character, white will be the most popular choice. Swap the first and last reference with any one race and I believe the outcome would be the same. Many people play fantasy games to inject themselves into an amazing and adventurous theme, with immersion being VERY important. I'd have a very difficult time role-playing as something that I cannot imagine being. I think this mostly applies to human, but once you step out of that species, it would seem easier to be different. Afterall, as long as it fits the species, do you really care what colour you are as a scum *ahem* I mean vile *cough* I mean drow elf? Black, dark blue, dark purple are all part of their skin tones, and I doubt anyone is that colour in real life. If you are an Ogre, I doubt anyone would care too much about playing the same skin tone as they have in real life.
Anyways, not trying to flatout call you wrong, just figured that I would share my perspective.
@Anduine: I agree. Personally, and I don't say this to offend anyone, I never play a dark-tanned or Asian-looking character myself.
That's actually part of the problem. The fact that you felt obligated to some degree to use the term "and I don't say this to offend anyone" means that people take this too seriously. There should never be a problem wanting to be comfortable. You play a game to have fun, afterall.
Comments
My opinion on this? I hate discrimination and racism even more. But if someone decides black humans have no place in there story its there choice, and the people who make that game have the right to do so. I'm fine with people that are not okay with that, but keep it for yourself and your friends and don't buy the book, movie, game, or whatever. But don't come whining on the internet on public forums. Its Fantasy know?!
A very fine example that you can make whatever you wish. They make it cause they can, you choose to get it or not.
If they made a movie about me, i wouldnt care less.
Life is short, enjoy it and learn to keep your ears and eyes shut to whatever you dont like.
Leave the Crusades to those who think that the world can change. 4000years still no actual change.
So everything what may seem discriminating at first, if looked closely enough can reveal some positive aspects.
I won't close my eyes nor stand idly by when racism, homophobia, and sexism occur. I have never liked the "not my problem" philosphy, and I do my small part to work against that, no apologies. When people shut their eyes to problems and ignore them, those problems do not go away.
If you think that media is harmless, if you think that there has been no change in 4,000 hears on this planet, then I invite you to do some research on history, science, sociology, and pretty much everything. I guarantee you, there has been a great deal of change since then.
Anyways - back to the topic. I think that the lack of non-white, non-straight peoples and characters speaks volumes about the gaming industry. I invite a greater inclusion of racial and social diversity in games, and I think it's strange how this sector is lagging behind TV/movies.
Moving on to the apparently not as obvious as it should be lack of racial diversity in a particular area of the Realms:
Much as happens in many countries across the globe on Earth, small influxes of ethnically diverse migrants into an area will first integrate, and subsequently interbreed with, the local population. This is why approximately one in five supposedly "white" residents of London actually have fairly recent black ancestry, yet you probably would not be able to tell without genotyping. This is a product of the fairly small-scale influx of black migrants who were then subsumed by the local gene pool, giving the local gene pool a healthy boost from the new genetic material to work with, but not meaningfully altering the overall demographic.
It is only when too many individuals of a particular ethnicity migrate at once that the region begins to become ethnically diverse - there are too many for them to integrate seamlessly with the host population, and those that do begin to integrate with the local population will also integrate with the incoming "new" population as well; a natural human behaviour to stay with "your tribe" (one that frequently offsets the other urge to seek biological diversity).
As this large, unintegrated section of migrants are now interacting with others with similar views coming from their original homes, the urge to integrate is reduced, and instead you now have a more or less self-sustaining ethnic minority, frequently contained within a ghetto.
Because of the comparative ease of travel (and of course, the mass exoduses to the Americas), sizeable minority populations are a comparatively "modern" (historically speaking) phenomenon. Whilst populations did travel across the world (hence why we have small populations of red-headed Chinese people with Celtic ancestry), they usually did it in fairly small numbers, in fairly small distances. Ethnic differences were more likely to be based on religious or other social aspects than skin tone.
Now take this and apply it to the Realms.
First of all, overland travel is insanely dangerous. You, a party of six, encounter and murder probably easily a few hundred creatures tatting around the sword coast. One can only assume that anyone else wishing to travel from Beregost to Baldur's Gate will encounter an average of two to three bandit gangs, seven gibberlings with various afflictions, and a wandering mage asking them to rescue their cat in exchange for fabulous rewards. Likewise, given the number of sea voyages you take versus those that end in ship wreck, there is approximately a 25% chance that any sea voyage will be struck by a storm and sink, leaving only 1-6 survivors and on the outside a handful of NPCs. There is a further 50% chance that the boat will be attacked by pirates, sea monsters, or held captive by a powerful witch on her magical island shrouded in mist.
Secondly, those people capable of travelling these distances safely are insanely rare, whilst those tools that allow one to do so are insanely well protected by armies of vicious evil monsters in the middle of nowhere, which rather involves the aforementioned travel just to get there. Since the number of mages expected to be capable of overland teleport that aren't colossally evil or apathetic towards your average down-on-their-luck-family-looking-for-a-better-life are approaching 2 in Faerun and the expanded multiverse as well, the idea that these might supply a travel service (as opposed to a fun new "conscription into my undead hordes service") for the entire family are approaching nil.
With these odds, the average probability for a single family to successfully move from Africa-equivalent to the Sword Coast (or Amn) is approximately equal to the chance of an unarmed level 1 commoner beating a dozen housecats in mortal combat. The probability for a population large enough to actually form an enduring minority is almost literally nil, whilst the chances of it being isolated from society at large is unlikely, since Canon in the Realms in general is that skin colour is vastly irrelevant among a single race when they have completely different species to be prejudiced against.
Military invasions, whilst not unheard of, are far, far more likely to be neighbour to neighbour, or dark skinned subterranean villains to pasty surface-world equivalent. As mentioned, the chance of giant sea monster attack or super-storm is effectively a 50/50 chance, so the vast eldritch horror that was the British navy is extremely unlikely, as is the chance of a largescale empire forming across a sizeable area of the continent. There are simply too many monsters around, too many rampaging orc settlements, and too many secret elven villages to maintain the infrastructure necessary for serious Imperialism. This is why the Sword Coast consists of city states divided by psychotically dangerous stretches of wilderness, rather than a unified "country".
So any invasions that aren't thwarted by passing adventurers or returning lost princes/ses will be strictly local border conflicts or not even involve the same species at all, meaning it's unlikely for there to be any real ethnic diversity introduced (except presumably the number of half-orcs), and equally unlikely for the invading army to expand further.
Adventurers, in comparison, are most likely to find themselves in a foreign land sooner or later, presumably as the leader of a small tribe whose previous leader they defeated in single combat or something. Unfortunately, adventurers are not, by definition, social creatures, they travel vast distances with only 1-5 others as company, and are frequently not human either. When they settle, or as the case may be, father a significant proportion of the next generation in a region before moving on, their descendants are swiftly subsumed by the indigenous peoples, and the Realms remain largely ethnically homogenous (except for the elves, whose copper skin/blue skin/purple skin or whatever seems largely determined by local environment factors, not geography, and who somehow keep ending up mating with humans near their own nations).
These factors all add up to the one simple fact - 99.999% of the population, unless it exists in an area where there is already explicitly an existing mix of ethnic groups already, will be homogenous and of a specific type; in the Sword Coast, a fairly cold, northerly region, this ethnic group is likely to be the Realms equivalent of Caucasian. "Minorities" in these locations will almost always be first generation immigrants, from wherever they might originally hail (and there is no real guarantee that this will be from a region that is not primarily Caucasian itself), or adventurers themselves.
Take the estimated human population you encounter during the entire trilogy, calculate the odds of encountering ethnically diverse individuals from different *countries*, let alone areas distant enough to feature different ethnicities, and you'll see that the expected population of black people (I assume 'tis black people that has engendered this question, since there already exist "Asian-equivalent" individuals in the realms, and "Middle Eastern" is not one of the three distinct human races) is approximately equal to 0.12 of a person.
This is solely for the D&D conceit, however many fantasies set in Western Europe equivalents have very similar reasonings behind their actions, just as many fantasy works from Japan, Korea and China all have primarily or exclusively Asian characters. If Africa develops a media industry successful enough to export, and sets those stories in Africa then it is reasonable to assume their constituents will be appropriately mixed for the region they select as well.
Whilst this doesn't necessarily stop the player from encountering minorities across their adventures, as their adventures are by their very nature remarkable, to suggest that the absence of minorities is in some way racially prejudiced is ludicrous, indeed it is quite the opposite, the inclusion of racial minorities that by all rights should scarcely exist is an absurd bid for political correctness at the expense of the simulation's verisimilitude.
@theJoshFrost very good point, I would like to ask what a person from a different culture would think. But think of all the other games produced from Japan why have main characters been white all these years, even look back to the first final fantasy. The warrior and all most all other party members where white, except for the black mage, who's face you couldn't see.
Essentially, the majority of characters in the majority of Japanese games (including those games that make it out of the country to the West) are Asian, not Caucasian. This is because the creators are basing the game on their own demographic.
It's also worth noting that the majority of Westerners, particularly in the early days of gaming where graphics are a little.... sparse, tend to view those selfsame characters as white; there's a psychological reason for that in that your brain basically fills in the blanks with familiar frames of reference. It's not necessarily that the characters are created with Caucasian features, just that they lack contradicting features.
Secondly, few Eastern games feature black characters because Japan in particular is actually pretty racist, so their black characters can tend towards the stereotypical, the "offensive", or as vanilla-ised as possible.
But anyway, for a better look into gaming, it's worth looking back a ways, at gaming's past.
Master of Magic: Civilisation, except fun, enjoyable, and Fantasy. There are actually three different types of human "race" included; Barbarians, High Men and Nomads. There are primary wizards of every reasonable ethnicity - Native American equivalent, Black Voodoo Priestess, White Haired Pretty Boy, Arabic Sorcerer, Asian Chaos/Sorcery hybrid or something (I don't know, hybrids were lame, but his name was still Lo Pan). Units still tended to be a single colour, and that colour tended to be pale for the human units and their fantasy equivalents, but MoM was a real kitchen sink of ethnicity.
Date of this multi-ethnic paradise? Circa 1994. On the same year, UFO: Enemy Unknown (that's X-Com to you peeps, by Mythos, another British developer) came out, and whilst on the map screen, yet again, there were only two different types of X-Com soldier, guy and girl, their paper dolls could be any race, out of up to around five or six per gender. Purely cosmetic, purely random, and it ain't Fantasy, but hey, racial parity. If I were knocking around examples of non-Caucasians in Western games I'd probably point to Sports games (I seem to recall Sensible Soccer even had a black Referee) and a other specific genres, but I'm trying to keep on track with Fantasy.
So by 1994, 18 years ago, there were games that featured multiple ethnicities, and they were classics, so it's not that it's taken awhile to get to that point (barely fifteen years after Pac Man, and the Middle Eastern guy was already around in Prince of Persia since the 1980s...) but most games simply weren't of the type that could accommodate such a feature, nor needed one.
This fact continues today.
Film, for the vast, vast majority of films, focuses on people, characters, and humans.
Books frequently don't even mention race, leaving it open to interpretation anyway.
And games, for the vast, vast majority of games, focus on mechanics; puzzle games that have no people at all, sports games feature just as many people of various skin tones as their respective sports do, strategy games still feature identical units like they always have, space ship games still have invisible pilots in little ships doing all the shooting, First Person Games.... Well, they sort of have a few actually.
The only games that really tend to have a focus on characters are "Adventure" games, where you have things like Assassin's Creed, which I seem to recall started with a prominent middle Eastern fellow with a penchant for stabbing, Prince of Persia, with much the same, and Prototype's sequel, which featured a black protagonist.
At the same time, a game like Ico, a beautiful work of art of a game, would not be improved by ensuring that the ambiguously tan-skinned character or glowy white heroine were black, nor is the issue of race in the remit of that game at all. Even in an adventure game
RPGs do nowadays tend to have major characters, if not the main characters, that are black or Asian equivalents. Where they do not have ethnic minorities, such as Dragon Age, it is frequently for the exact same reasons as my former post, and since the player is often free to appear as they like in a Western RPG, race is irrelevant (I seem to recall Fallout 3 had not only a diverse ethnic range of characters, but also explicitly altered your parent's face to match your chosen ethnicity).
So yeah, I can't exactly suggest that these games do not exist, but I assume the major question would be how many games feature ethnic minorities as protagonists? Or as key characters?
- Let's talk race here for a moment. In the US, about 80% of the population or so is Caucasian. In the UK, around 95% of the population is Caucasian.
If 1 in 5 "Western" games from one of these two nations, *with actual characters*, has a non-Caucasian guy as either a main character, a major character, or as a major proportion of the game population, then it's actually more than reasonable for the share of the market share they represent.
Photographers take photos of people. Would you say a photographer was racist if they only had certain ethnicities in their portfolio?
So, off the top of my head: Mass Effect, Prototype 2, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, Red dead Redemption, Dragon's Dogma, Secret World, Dead Island, one or two Grand Theft Autos that I can think of, and pretty much any other RPG that features a customisable main character. I've already mentioned Neverwinter Nights 2 as featuring a campaign on Samarach, with the natives there being a variety of races as a result, whilst the Sword Coast features the same Caucasian heavy population as previously mentioned.
The fact that these games exist at all is fairly advanced from a "political correctness" standpoint, the fact that major characters exist who are minorities without being exclusively focused on is a sign of the maturity of the industry, there's nothing particularly "wrong" with them not being the focus of each, or their lacking a "be a black guy" option or some other such feature; it would be nice, but it's a feature that for the vast majority of their expected demographic (at least until Africa becomes a major market force in the gaming industry) will go unappreciated or ignored by those who don't actually care about race one way or another and just enjoy playing games.
It's important to remember that it isn't the game developer's job to include minorities in their stories any more than it is in any other form of fiction; if there are too many black people, then it's an anomaly, not a championing moment for political correctness. Albion's population is mostly Caucasian because the country is populated mostly by Caucasians, not because Lionhead is actually a subdivision of Stormfront. Jensen isn't a white cyborg guy rather than an Asian cyborg guy to thumb his nose at racial equality, games exist to be purchased and are created according to the developer's vision; if that vision includes a particular race, then neat; if not, then good chance that that race will be the majority race in the creator's nation by default, just like the Japanese RPG actually stars Japanese people and Korean dramas star Koreans. As their Westerners.
You can have 5% of your gaming demographic identify more easily with your character, or 95%, your game isn't the kind of game you can just let them switch, what would you do?
I'll take a moment to step off topic to sexual orientation, since the absence of these does come up frequently hand-in-hand. Ultimately most games do not have romances, nor sex, nor does sexuality come up. Adding these to a game which lacked them out of hand would be inappropriate for most games, and yet more and more often a game can be seen with these as an option. If anything, this demographic is over, not under, represented, comparing the number of games where the option exists for anything at all to those where it is included. The percentage of gay individuals in the US is less than 5% after all.
Looking at both of these together, you can actually see some of the pitfalls associated with including a certain minority in the game from the various gay threads about the forum; if you may the only black man gay, does that mean you're implying all black men are gay? If the only Asian man is a psycho, are you making a statement by that? What if the main character is a white man killing black zombies?
People read a lot more into all these things than they should, when in reality the situation is quite simple, from a supply and demand point of view. If minorities want to feature in more games, they need to represent a larger market share for maximum profit, or develop games themselves. This isn't what I would consider a major racial issue, it's hard to say it ever was, especially since graphics only advanced far enough to routinely include this sort of variety fairly recently.
As time progresses, likely as not the game market will oversaturate, leading to developers intentionally targeting minority groups to access a previously untapped market share, and this "problem" shall solve itself naturally.
There are also places in the Realms, like Halruaa, where magic is used much more freely than in the North, with things like flying ships and so on.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Halruaa
And needless to say, any time someone uses a flying ship there's a 50/50 risk they'll be attacked by Wyverns, passing dragons, or the ship will accidentally tumble through a tear in the weave and end up surrounded by several thousand Netherese wizards. It is an interesting question however, of what the average level is in a population of mages; Overland Teleport is what, level 6 or so?
A: In the fantastical countries that a specific story is not set in.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Thesk
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tuigan
But it's always "Oh, they are keeping the down!" with this generation...
While literature and games should be free of censorship, nor should truly racist, etc., crap, not be ostracized. And continually questioning such things isn't bitching.
Take racist heavy metal. It is highly ignored. But nor should it not be commented on, or even studied. To ignore such things completely is dangerous, and can imply passive agreement.
I think the underlying theme is humanism. The Cosby Show was huge, not because it whitewashed the characters, but because it, and Cosbys material, are human stories. Or "everybody hates Chris" as a more modern example. Great show, very Black, but not as an end.
The more knee jerk, "political correct" responses are probably more of what you folks are reacting to - my 2 cents is to ignore that kind of bitching, but not forgo critical analysis.
We don't allow DARK elves here!
HAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAW!
Of course, he also set out to purposefully subvert and break standard fantasy tropes in several areas, and that is just one of many he took aim at. I think if we excluded the bit parts from the 14th Army, a slight majority of his characters weren't even human.
Never try to figure why people act in a specific way. They are simply stupid, ignorant, selfish and ungratefull. But i will say STUPID again just to make sure you get it. Take a day off and try to walk the city and observe them. Mankind wont change ever. For that im pretty sure, even if even bigger technological steps will be made in the future. Its the vile nature of man that wont let him become in any way at all close to the definition that we have given to ourselves, "human". They just dont care to use their brain. They prefer to keep it boxed in that jar full of shit that they like to call a "brain".
My personal preference is to play as a character that is very different from how I am in real life. I imagine many other people like to do the same. If this game is being marketed in an area where most of the population is white, that would mean that logically a significant number of characters should be something else, so that players can be a character that is a different race than they are in real life. I mean, in BG I'm a half-elf and obviously I'm a human in real life, but I would prefer to be a black half-elf or maybe an Asian half-elf, not a white half-elf. Being a white half-elf just seems boring and not conducive with the general creativity of designing a character in Baldur's Gate.
However, I have to disagree with you when it comes to marketing. I find that many people, myself included, like to inject themselves or a familiar looking person into fantasy games. Not that I have the statistics to back this up, (nor do I honestly care to) but I imagine that if you were to:
Give a white population the choice of playing a white, black, asian, or hispanic character, white will be the most popular choice. Swap the first and last reference with any one race and I believe the outcome would be the same. Many people play fantasy games to inject themselves into an amazing and adventurous theme, with immersion being VERY important. I'd have a very difficult time role-playing as something that I cannot imagine being. I think this mostly applies to human, but once you step out of that species, it would seem easier to be different. Afterall, as long as it fits the species, do you really care what colour you are as a scum *ahem* I mean vile *cough* I mean drow elf? Black, dark blue, dark purple are all part of their skin tones, and I doubt anyone is that colour in real life. If you are an Ogre, I doubt anyone would care too much about playing the same skin tone as they have in real life.
Anyways, not trying to flatout call you wrong, just figured that I would share my perspective.
That's actually part of the problem. The fact that you felt obligated to some degree to use the term "and I don't say this to offend anyone" means that people take this too seriously. There should never be a problem wanting to be comfortable. You play a game to have fun, afterall.