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Forums - Politics Discussion - IGN takes issue with white male lead in Days Gone.

0D0 said:
Regardless, I reckon nobody's allowed to say "yet another Black character" in any circumstance whatsoever without being called racist. Even on the right context, there are certain criticisms that can only be said about white people.

Yesterday on Twitter I saw I tweet saying something like "only shitty white males like it". I wonder if we can tweet something like "only shitty black males like it" without being called the police upon.

You mean the term token black guy? That term that is commonly used to described generic black male character? Ya we never say that, in the history of anything. 

Last edited by Acevil - on 06 March 2019

 

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ArchangelMadzz said:
Dulfite said:
Most games in Japan are catered towards what the Japanese want to see, so you don't exactly see a lot of white or black people in those games and, when you do, their stereotypes are greatly exaggerated (huge eyes on white people, for instance). Am I offended by that? No. That is their market and they do what makes sense.

Here are demographic breakdowns of the United States:
*These numbers may not be exact, but we can update after the 2020 census*

U.S.
63% white
17% Latino/Hispanic
13.1% Black
5.1% Asian
1.2% Native American

If a game is catered towards the American/European Market, then it makes sense for it to often, if not the majority of the time, have white main characters. People need to stop being so offended. This is simply capitalism at work.

The writer in the article didn't say it was because he was white. Which is your entire point.

He said because it's a generic version of a white guy that's often used in many video games. Gruffy bearded gravel voiced white guy. Boring on the outlook, but he then says the character is really good and interesting. 

Well, I'm glad the writer didn't suggest or imply disgruntled feelings towards the fact that it was another white protagonist, in this instance at least. Thanks for the clarification.



Dulfite said:
Most games in Japan are catered towards what the Japanese want to see, so you don't exactly see a lot of white or black people in those games and, when you do, their stereotypes are greatly exaggerated (huge eyes on white people, for instance). Am I offended by that? No. That is their market and they do what makes sense.

Here are demographic breakdowns of the United States:
*These numbers may not be exact, but we can update after the 2020 census*

U.S.
63% white
17% Latino/Hispanic
13.1% Black
5.1% Asian
1.2% Native American

If a game is catered towards the American/European Market, then it makes sense for it to often, if not the majority of the time, have white main characters. People need to stop being so offended. This is simply capitalism at work.

I get what you are saying and I agree what someone else posted, that video game writers are just going with what they know. If they are white they are likely to write white characters.

Yet I would point out that video games are not perportionate to the demographic you cited. And I have seen some charts that put the margin of white in america is 40-50% now. This is not properly demonstrated in media because 90%+ is white male, not 50%. Almost all movies/video games of yesterday and today have the same exact archtype white male leads. The number of video games that put a Black or hispanic(god forbid....an asian) main character on it are very slim. Mafia III, Dishonored 3, GTA San Andreas, Just Cause, Watch Dogs 2, Sleeping Dogs and.......I think that is about it. It gets really dicey when you bring in the fact that 50% of the population is female yet still..... 90%+ of the leads are male.  I can probably name more than 100 games with character archtypes as the Previewer stated.

The few games that are experimenting with diversification are selling less(except in the case of games like GTA SA), even when in a anthology series. Why is this? The quality of the game itself could very well be different but at least part of that factor is thought to be white male gamers have a harder time identifying with characters that are not on some level similar to them, or at least the pennacle masculine archtype they are used to. This is often sited as a capitalistic reason on why games do not deviate too often from the traditional. Yet if this even is the case, I would state that black/hispanic/asian/women/etc have been consuming video games for a long time, combined make up 40-50% of the marketshare,  yet have always just been expected to be able to find common denominator with characters that don't look anything like them.

 

And then people complain about anyone wanting to see a little more diversity, not even in race....just give us some variance from the gruff white male lead. Give me a bookwormy clean shaven guy with a normal voice.  Sure, it feels pandering now but developers,fans  and critics alike seek to make up for lost time.



      

      

      

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PSN:Forevercloud (looking for Soul Sacrifice Partners!!!)

ArchangelMadzz said:
Kerotan said:

The initial reaction is the problem here. White males should be looked at as equals to every other type of human. As an Irish white male, my white male ancestors were treated like dirt by the British so why should I be downgraded, just because other white males from other races were dominant in the past? 

I enjoy games with white female, black female and black male leads among other races but the gender or race of the lead is not why. It's because the character created is cool or likeable. If the lead is white male their judgment will still be based on their personality not their race or gender. 

The initial reaction is not because white guys aren't seen as equals, it's becausethe character sounds boring, this is because gruffy bearded white guy with a voice like gravel has been overdone. But they made the character in days gone really interesting which was noted in the next paragraph. 


Well I wonder if a writer said "oh look yet another female lead" would it go down as well. The bottom line is him being white should be a complete non issue. His skin colour full stop a non issue. 

snyperdud said:
So, I actually found this article to be a fairly decent read, and the author actually ended up saying he was "invested" in the character, despite his preconceived judgement.
Now, why he would needlessly highlight his prejudice against "Gruff White Male Protagonists," I have no idea.

Agreed about the article. I thought it was very good making the advice from @Aceival not very good. Why stop reading an article because one point annoys me but the rest is good? 



ArchangelMadzz said:

From what I can tell from your quote they seem to go on to say how they grew to like the character despite their original reaction to a very common character canvas?

 

Edit: Yeah the write goes on about how much they empathised with him etc. 

 

People seem very quick to get outraged at any sort of mention like this, when it doesn't take much to think that he clearly meant that a white guy beardy scruffy main character has been beat to death. 

 

LuccaCardoso1 said:
He didn't roll his eyes because the character's male or because the character's white. He rolled his eyes because the character looks just like a ton of other protagonists out there, who just happen to be white, male and gruff. It has nothing to do with "reverse racism" or any political agenda you might be trying to imply here, but instead with the sameyness in the appearence of video game protagonists.

 

ArchangelMadzz said:
Kerotan said:

The initial reaction is the problem here. White males should be looked at as equals to every other type of human. As an Irish white male, my white male ancestors were treated like dirt by the British so why should I be downgraded, just because other white males from other races were dominant in the past? 

I enjoy games with white female, black female and black male leads among other races but the gender or race of the lead is not why. It's because the character created is cool or likeable. If the lead is white male their judgment will still be based on their personality not their race or gender. 

The initial reaction is not because white guys aren't seen as equals, it's becausethe character sounds boring, this is because gruffy bearded white guy with a voice like gravel has been overdone. But they made the character in days gone really interesting which was noted in the next paragraph. 


 

forevercloud3000 said:
Gruff White Male is just about 99% of all video game protagonist. It's not just a race thing, it's a general design thing. Must they always be unshaven and raspy voiced?! I get real tired of the low toned voices and the design aesthetic. I could not get into The Witcher after everyone hyped me up on it for this very reason. Geralt was far too template mellow raspy voiced stoic character. It is a painfully overused trope.

It is something that obviously comes from the common male fantasy to be that type Man's man.

Sometimes it just fits with the setting tho, such as Days Gone or Red Dead. Doesn't change the fact its kinda.....same-y.

 

snyperdud said:
So, I actually found this article to be a fairly decent read, and the author actually ended up saying he was "invested" in the character, despite his preconceived judgement.
Now, why he would needlessly highlight his prejudice against "Gruff White Male Protagonists," I have no idea.

 

Great Job you guys!



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You’d think it was the IGN writer suffering from outrage culture but it was actually the OP all along, assuming a racist angle was being played when in reality the writer was just tired of generic white dude as the biker character.



This feels like an exaggeration. All he was saying was he was tired of seeing characters which are boring and generic, and they usually fall into that type of character. Also, gruff is not a body type? Unless you're talking about the white part ... in which case that's not a body type either?

It honestly sounds like this will be exaggerated to appear more harmful than it really is. It's like when that review site said Far Cry 5's story was disappointing because it didn't try to say anything interesting about politics, and somehow people interpreted that as the writer saying he didn't like sympathetic republicans.



LudicrousSpeed said:
You’d think it was the IGN writer suffering from outrage culture but it was actually the OP all along, assuming a racist angle was being played when in reality the writer was just tired of generic white dude as the biker character.

Skin colour should be irrelevant. If someone met me would they say "oh great another generic white person with a beard. BORING". IMO this thought process is deeply flawed.

Definition: "Outrage is an intense feeling of anger and shock."

Yeah sorry buddy but I'm not feeling that. On my holidays chilling on a canary island beach 😂 



I think your original post is a bit naive (maybe on purpose, not sure). The writer's minor issue* is more about representation in the medium than just hating white men. It's not even that much of an insult, if at all. I personally don't really care, just make the story compelling enough. Based on his impressions, it sounds like he is at least a compelling character.



"Trick shot? The trick is NOT to get shot." - Lucian

Kerotan said:
ArchangelMadzz said:

The initial reaction is not because white guys aren't seen as equals, it's becausethe character sounds boring, this is because gruffy bearded white guy with a voice like gravel has been overdone. But they made the character in days gone really interesting which was noted in the next paragraph. 


Well I wonder if a writer said "oh look yet another female lead" would it go down as well. The bottom line is him being white should be a complete non issue. His skin colour full stop a non issue. 

Okay lets try this again.

It's not BECAUSE he's white and that's it. It's because of the type of character, a gravely voice, scruffy breaded white guy. It's very very common.

People don't say 'oh look another female character' they say 'oh look another defenceless female character' or 'oh look another ghetto black character' or 'oh look another funny bubbly fat guy, never seen that before' 

 

None of these things I just said are sexist, racist or body shaming etc. It's just a boring character type. You're getting hung up on the wrong thing. 



There's only 2 races: White and 'Political Agenda'
2 Genders: Male and 'Political Agenda'
2 Hairstyles for female characters: Long and 'Political Agenda'
2 Sexualities: Straight and 'Political Agenda'