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Forums - Microsoft - Why Did Microsoft Not Include Asian, Straight, While, Male Gamers on their YouTube videos at GDC?

JC317 said:
Pemalite said:

Asians aren't under-represented though. 
There is an entire genre of video games that are almost exclusively about them. (JRPG's.)
Sony and Nintendo are gaming powerhouses from an... You guessed it. Asian country.

Notice how I said western media? Of course Eastern media have Asians in them, in fact the opposite holds true as well. Would the Western audience have gone see The Great Wall if it did not star Matt Damon? (Even when it did include a western star, the movie did not perform well overseas while it was a massive hit in China, but that might be besides the point)

Also, JRPGs aren't the best option to prove your point about Asians in video games. Sure, they may be developed by Japanese, but that hardly means it stars Asian characters. Let's look at JRPGs in 2016 according to Kotaku:

Mario & Luigi Paper Jam - definitely no Asians here, I mean there are two Italians though

Adventures of Mana - while some of the names seem Asian (Fuji, Sumo), their designs are definitely more Western than Asian

Bravely Second End Layer - western characters in a western setting

Dragon Quest VII - other than the hero, whose design can be argued to be an Asian character, all other playable characters are distinctly western

I am Setsuna - other than Setsuna who has a Japanese name, not really

Fire Emblem Fates - half and half mixture of Japanese and Western characters, but it really should be noted that the Fire Emblem francgise has traditionally been set in Medieval times, a western time period. And no, Martha only speaking Japanese does not make him Japanese

Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness - it takes place in the distant future and characters have western names

Shin Megami Tensei IV - yes, it takes place in Japan with Japanese characters

The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel II - quick look on Wikipedia seems to show that it's a western setting, but I'm not familiar with the series so feel free to correct me on this. I also don't know the history of the franchise, so I wouldn't know if past entries feature heavy Asian inspirations

All Final Fantasy Releases in 2016 - Probably some Asian characters somewhere in the mix, but I'm really tired with this long list. But I would venture to say Final Fantasy is not known for its Asian characters

Dragon Quest Builders - I guess since it is Dragon Quest Minecraft, you can make it Asian setting and characters if you try

Tokyo Mirage Sessions - yes, set in a Japanese high school with some Fire Emblem characters sprinkled in

 

So looking at the list, no, JRPGs do not necessarily feature Asian characters. JRPGs refer to a genre of games with a distinct playstyle different from regular RPGs.

 

Finally, I never said Asians are underrepresented, I am saying the most likely reason for the inclusion of Asian characters in Western media is to pander to the Asian market and sell more in those regions.

 

PS I would really appreciate it if you give me a thought-out response, this is probably my longest post on VGchartz

You should know there is a distinct reason why anime and game characters from Japan don't look Japanese - it's intentional.  But what is being misunderstood, is it's not an attempt to create "white" characters, but rather ethnic-less characters.  It's called "mukokuseki" - which means "stateless".  It is an attempt to create stories that are outside of established real ethnicities in the world so that it appeals to more people.

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki



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In regards to the main OP:

There is a non-SJW reason for creating those videos:  to entice people that are not normally players to come to the playstation platform.  White and Asian men are already the core of players, so they don't really need to convince them to come aboard.  The only thing that kinda points to this maybe not being the case, is why spend money on creating gay-affirmative videos when gay males are also already big players of video games.  Perhaps it's just because the end of May, all of June and beginning of July has many Pride festivals being held and Sony just wanted something to play in booths at those events. 

 

My 2 cents.

 



noagenda said:
JC317 said:

You should know there is a distinct reason why anime and game characters from Japan don't look Japanese - it's intentional.  But what is being misunderstood, is it's not an attempt to create "white" characters, but rather ethnic-less characters.  It's called "mukokuseki" - which means "stateless".  It is an attempt to create stories that are outside of established real ethnicities in the world so that it appeals to more people.

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki

I understand, most people in real life don't have multicolored hair. But what I'm talking about are characters who ARE Asian, not characters who look like Asians. Using anime as an example (how about To Love Ru), a character named Rito Yuki or Haruna Sairenji would be clearly Japanese from their names, despite having non-realistically depicted hair color. On the other hand, a character named Lala Satalin Deviluke is clearly non-Japnanese (for that matter, non-human, but that's besides the point I think). 

 

Also, I was going to edit this part into my original response, but since this is newer I'll post here instead. After posting, I realized that Permalite was talking about the presence of Asians in the game industry. And I agree, Asians have a rather large presence in the game industry, but what I was originally talking about in my first post was that putting Asian characters into Western media is often neglected since Asians make up a really small portion of Western community, smaller than Blacks or Latinos. If the video from Microsoft was to be released in Asian territories, there would probably be Asians in the video



White/straight don't need reps that bad so that's a non-issue. However, I always laugh when black or Latino people say they're underrepresented when you see how grossly underrepresented Asians are in media. It's like, bitch, there's at least one black person or Latino person in every movie -where the flippity fuck are the Asians? That's right there are none. So stop thinking you're the only fucking race that isn't shown enough.
Asians have been better rep'd in recent years but it isn't enough.

In some ways it makes sense, only 5.6% of the US pop is Asian. Then again only 12% of the US pop is black and you see them in media everywhere!

But I do see a shift happening in the coming decades when Asians make up 10, 15, and possibly even 20% of the population. I do see that happening here at some point



StarOcean said:
White/straight don't need reps that bad so that's a non-issue. However, I always laugh when black or Latino people say they're underrepresented when you see how grossly underrepresented Asians are in media. It's like, bitch, there's at least one black person or Latino person in every movie -where the flippity fuck are the Asians? That's right there are none. So stop thinking you're the only fucking race that isn't shown enough.
Asians have been better rep'd in recent years but it isn't enough.

In some ways it makes sense, only 5.6% of the US pop is Asian. Then again only 12% of the US pop is black and you see them in media everywhere!

But I do see a shift happening in the coming decades when Asians make up 10, 15, and possibly even 20% of the population. I do see that happening here at some point

Thanks, that was what I was trying to get at, but you put it much better than I did



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Fei-Hung said:
I'm going to throw my rattle out of the pram too since OP has and add my two cents:

1) why aren't brown people (Pakistani, Indian, bengali) not getting their own video

2) why aren't Arabs getting their own video

3) why aren't people with dwarfism getting their own video

4) why aren't people with autism getting their own video

5) why aren't oaps getting their own video

6) my cat isn't represented either and that's a big no no, because my cat is frigging awesome

These people are Asian too so like I said Asians should get their own video. 

As for Dwarfs, people with austism, and ops it would be good for them to get a video too since I assume we have for gamers with these conditions. 

Pemalite said:
jason1637 said:

I'm happy that other groups are getting attention but people like me demographics wise arent included so i have ythe right to be upset.

And what is your demographic? And why aren't you bothering to do something about it? Get productive.

Ka-pi96 said:

What's the I?

L = Lesbian.
G = Gay.
B = Bisexual.
T = Transgender.
Q = Queer/Questioning.
I = Intersex.

jason1637 said:

Well the percentage of Male to Female gamers are about even https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.windowscentral.com/heres-some-interesting-stats-about-xbox-one-owners-microsoft-shared-partners%3Famp

So why give women their own special event? I get they want to be inclusive but why not have an event for Asians, whites, heterosexuals, and males since the goal is to include EVERYONE.

Just because women might number equally to men in terms of overall numbers... Doesn't mean they are as fairly represented.

JC317 said:
Regarding Asians, because no one in western media ever cared about Asians unless the purpose of their inclusion is pandering to the Asian market.

Asians aren't under-represented though.
There is an entire genre of video games that are almost exclusively about them. (JRPG's.)
Sony and Nintendo are gaming powerhouses from an... You guessed it. Asian country.

Zkuq said:
I really don't understand the claims about political correctness here. Political correctness isn't about trying to advance the situation of some groups. It's more about what you can and what you can't say. If anything, this is the opposite of political correctness.

Whilst correct, it's also more than that.

Straight White/Asian Male.

If about half of gamers are women and they aren't represented as developers than that's on the women not wanting to pursue that profession and it's not like there's not a lot of women gamers. 



noagenda said:

In regards to the main OP:

There is a non-SJW reason for creating those videos:  to entice people that are not normally players to come to the playstation platform.  White and Asian men are already the core of players, so they don't really need to convince them to come aboard.  The only thing that kinda points to this maybe not being the case, is why spend money on creating gay-affirmative videos when gay males are also already big players of video games.  Perhaps it's just because the end of May, all of June and beginning of July has many Pride festivals being held and Sony just wanted something to play in booths at those events. 

 

My 2 cents.

 

Are you saying that Sony is gonna play Microsoft adverts at their booth, just to gain the homophobic (etc) audience? Seems kinda weird.



Reading the comments here, I swear gamers are the most triggered group of people I've ever seen



Cheers for posting those. Disliked every single one of them.

MS are slipping up more and more by the day.



Because they've fallen to the pandering phase.



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