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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Microsoft Vetoed A Black Woman On Cover For Fable II

Soundwave on 13 May 2016
Slimebeast said:
CosmicSex said:

Originally I thought SJW were folks who act tlike they have been offended.  Or people who get mad for the most redicilous reasons^^

But:

I'm pretty sure anytime you want to be a bigot, you can just call someone a SJW and you get to dismiss their point without offering anything of your own.  Thats how it works now.

But in any case please explain how anything that anyone said means that they think they are better than someone else.  

The guy in the article whining about how MS turned down his idea of having a black female character on the box art, how does he think he's better than everyone else?

To just have that idea (to have a black female on the box) necessarily doesn't mean you are politically correct or a SJW, but that he whines about it in the article and criticizes MS without showing any understanding for their reasoning, shows that he thinks he is better than everyone else. He is so sure of himself that he is progressive, open-minded, that he has seen the light.

It's so easy, and cheap, to kick this already open door - in this day and age, who will disagree with him? In this PC day, who will say it is wrong to have a black lead and risk being perceived as a racist? It's so cheap. He paints anyone that disagree as the evil guy racist.

That's how political correctness works and how these SJWs work. Their sole goal in life is to appear as good.

His fucking holy anger, he was screaming, he was yelling, he really took the fight for this mighty important cause!, it shows how highly he thinks of himself and his moral battle.

I hate people like this. Just like the Pharisees in the times of Jesus, always making sure to display their goodness in front of everybody. Disgusting behaviour.

I doubt Jesus was much of a conservative.

There is some racism in saying you can't put a black woman on the cover, their own analogy of comparing it to a Disney film The Princess & The Frog is disingenious because Treasure Planet and Atlantis did even worse than P&F, so if that was their excuse, it's hard to say that they don't have some ignorance at the very least. P&F actually performed better than most/all of Disney's final slate of traditionally animated films (I think only Lilo & Stitch did better and L&S also has a Hawaiian native lead).

Consumers have shown time and time again that they don't have a problem with black or lead characters of other ethnicities ... Star Wars just had a black lead, The Jungle Book just did huge box office, the Fast & The Furious is one of the biggest franchises with a largely minority cast.

So if people are willing to accept that, what really is the reasoning that a black character can't be on the cover of a non-sports video game in 2012? It's bullshit, plain and simple, these marketing executives don't know their own audience.



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the_dark_lewd on 13 May 2016

Hardly surprising news.
Black women make up about 0.5% of the Xbox audience. White men make up about 80%.

It's kind of silly to get annoyed about that. Microsoft are paying for it. They won't want to gamble on something like that.



Slimebeast on 13 May 2016
Soundwave said:
Slimebeast said:

The guy in the article whining about how MS turned down his idea of having a black female character on the box art, how does he think he's better than everyone else?

To just have that idea (to have a black female on the box) necessarily doesn't mean you are politically correct or a SJW, but that he whines about it in the article and criticizes MS without showing any understanding for their reasoning, shows that he thinks he is better than everyone else. He is so sure of himself that he is progressive, open-minded, that he has seen the light.

It's so easy, and cheap, to kick this already open door - in this day and age, who will disagree with him? In this PC day, who will say it is wrong to have a black lead and risk being perceived as a racist? It's so cheap. He paints anyone that disagree as the evil guy racist.

That's how political correctness works and how these SJWs work. Their sole goal in life is to appear as good.

His fucking holy anger, he was screaming, he was yelling, he really took the fight for this mighty important cause!, it shows how highly he thinks of himself and his moral battle.

I hate people like this. Just like the Pharisees in the times of Jesus, always making sure to display their goodness in front of everybody. Disgusting behaviour.

I doubt Jesus was much of a conservative.

There is some racism in saying you can't put a black woman on the cover, their own analogy of comparing it to a Disney film The Princess & The Frog is disingenious because Treasure Planet and Atlantis did even worse than P&F, so if that was their excuse, it's hard to say that they don't have some ignorance at the very least. P&F actually performed better than most/all of Disney's final slate of traditionally animated films (I think only Lilo & Stitch did better and L&S also has a Hawaiian native lead).

Consumers have shown time and time again that they don't have a problem with black or lead characters of other ethnicities ... Star Wars just had a black lead, The Jungle Book just did huge box office, the Fast & The Furious is one of the biggest franchises with a largely minority cast.

So if people are willing to accept that, what really is the reasoning that a black character can't be on the cover of a non-sports video game in 2012? It's bullshit, plain and simple, these marketing executives don't know their own audience.

Yes, Jesus was politically conservative.

No, Microsoft was not racist for not putting a black woman on the cover. It could mean that they were out of touch with their audience, underestimating and not understanding that the audience has progressed so far, yes. But racism, no.

Also, it's not racism to have the following thoughts:

In our day and age in the Western world, white is the norm, white is neutral, while minorities could be described as niche. No matter if it should be this way or not, most people agree on this.

Putting a black woman on the game cover could signal that Fable is niche. I sincerely believe many people would ask, why a black woman? What does that signal? Many might think "this is not a classic RPG, is this  a progressive game trying to break conventions? But I'm not interested in political statements, I want a good game."

It's not racism to be aware of this mentality among the audience.



the_dark_lewd on 13 May 2016
CosmicSex said:

Originally I thought SJW were folks who act tlike they have been offended.  Or people who get mad for the most redicilous reasons^^

But:

I'm pretty sure anytime you want to be a bigot, you can just call someone a SJW and you get to dismiss their point without offering anything of your own.  Thats how it works now.

Yep that's pretty much what it's become at this point.

Ironically it's the mirror image of the exact same thing you just did with the word "bigot". "Bigot", "sexist", "racist" etc are all used in this exact same way. As substitutes for actual arguments.



Soundwave on 13 May 2016
the_dark_lewd said:
Hardly surprising news.
Black women make up about 0.5% of the Xbox audience. White men make up about 80%.

It's kind of silly to get annoyed about that. Microsoft are paying for it. They won't want to gamble on something like that.

I doubt that demographic, pretty sure Asian/black/latino makes up more than 30% of the gaming market. Could be closer to 40%.

By 2020 less than half of the children in the US are projected to be white, so continuing to make games in this "you can only make a game with a white lead" is quite frankly just stupid.



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Soundwave on 13 May 2016
Ka-pi96 said:
Soundwave said:

I doubt that demographic, pretty sure Asian/black/latino makes up more than 30% of the gaming market. Could be closer to 40%.

Yeah but he only said Xbox so...

I think he's actually mistaking "game nerds" for "general gamer". General gamer is the one that drives PS4/XB1 sales, the "dudebros" as it were and a large portion of that is definitely not white. GTA, NBA 2K, Madden NFL 2K, COD ... these games ain't just selling to white dudes and these are the franchises dominating the market.

Actually I suspect XBox as a brand is more popular with the black community (than Playstation) but that's just ancedontal on my part.



Nem on 13 May 2016

Who cares... is this more of that victimisation game everyone is tired of? No, thanks.



AgentZorn on 13 May 2016
Soundwave said:
Lawlight said:
Always about black and white characters. Always.

Pretty sure from the sound of it MS would've vetoed Chinese/Japanese/Latino/Indian/etc. too.

True, but whenever there is an issue with ethnic diversity within media it often boils down to the black and white character ratio while those in the middle dont get as much attention.



kurasakiichimaru on 13 May 2016
Darashiva said:
Honestly, I just wish developers and publishers would get a bit more creative with video game box arts. The basic white guy/space marine/soldier with a weapon of some kind on the cover is getting really boring. If that's the most interesting thing you can think off to make your game stand out, you need to look harder. The most recent notable example I can think of is the Doom box art. It's just boring and uninteresting.

By the way, them saying Princess and the Frog is the most unsuccessful Disney film isn't even close to being true. It wasn't as successful as many of their other films that came later or during the Disney renaissance, but that statement is just blatantly false.

Princess and the Frog helped expand Disney in a way by breaking the racial barriers. It may have been not the most successful Disney film but it brushed away every racist or inclusive claims against Disney. Usually, you do that by cleaning up the ranks just like what they are doing with reddit or by giving the minority a piece of that pie.  And when they have your loyalty, it's just momentum that will carry you from here to the peak. After all, it's hard to give someone your money if they aren't supporting you as a unique individual or a different group. Investors know that. No matter how good your business establishment is as long as it has a dirty little past, buyers will avoid it like a plague. And you don't want that of you were an investor.



SvennoJ on 13 May 2016
CosmicSex said:
The funny thing is that by all account, Fable Legends was Microsoft's vision as the team wanted to make the darker Fable 4... since Microsoft know so damn much about what appeals to gamers... and it failed. A massive fucking failure. So, this is just more reason to advocate developer agency. Publishers should at the very least believe in the product they are publishing and the ability of their developers to produce it.

This actually has parallels to Konami and its alleged interference with development. Microsoft invested $75 million into their vision of Fable and if fucking failed.

It was McCormack that wanted to make Fable 4. Molyneux had the core Fable team working on Project Opal which morphed into Fable legends. He didn't seem interested in a traditional single player RPG anymore and had enough of Fable. He was already all about interconnected multiplayer experiences. Project Opal sounds quite mental and I guess parts of it made its way into Godus. Without Microsoft Fable 4 wouldn't have happened either, and Fable would have ended much sooner. Molyneux already lost interest during Fable 3 and was busy with Milo and Kate.

Molyneux wanted to make crazy new things, MS wanted to use Fable to promote Kinect, games as a service, windows 10, the development team was using the funds to create a framework for fable 4. It seems there was no leadership or direction.

Strangely at the end of the article Molyneux flip flops again and seems interested in making Fable 4 again.