I think it's fine. Not having white people is perfectly OK.
But the reason you're doing it is not. You're planning to not put in white people. Like the others said, other races and such are simply overlooked.
Not putting whites in your game is OK, and is not racist. It's your game, do what you want. Skin color means nothing, especially in a game. Just make good gameplay...
This was taken from Clappaz Post.
[19 Jul 21:38] ChipsMan: Say the whites died out [19 Jul 21:38] ChipsMan: And turned black/mexian/spanish [19 Jul 21:38] ChipsMan: mexican* Well what about asians?Your overlooking a race just like almost everyone else is. If i was to consider that racist then start a game with just asians then i would just continue a chain of games that only include a certain race. | |
Dession wrote:
Would you care if I didnt have white people in my game? If there is some sort of character creation system where I can control what they look like, then I'd want to have white people in the game. I like to be able to make characters that look like me. If you can't control their appearance then it doesn't matter. | |
Why does it matter? You aren't racist. I don't think people will care. If someone hoestly can stop and say "Well, I ain't playing no [insert racial slur here]!" Do you want that person to play your game?
If someone bothers you about something so trivial and minour, just tell them to be quiet, their opinion doesn't matter to you, and if they have a problem with it, they can talk all they want, because you will have them on your ignore/ban list. | |
Speaking as a white guy, it sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Make the game you want to make, and if people want to whine about it, let them whine; no one's forcing them to play it. Me, I expect to be quite content playing a black character when GTA: San Andreas comes out.
[Edit: I don't mean to suggest that everyone who opposes the idea is "whining." But most of the people who oppose the idea will be. :) ] | |
Than why make a big deal of it if you dont want others too? If you would have just not said anything, nobody would have cared, they might have asked, but you seem to be making a point to make a big deal out of it. Almost like you are saying 'I am not going to put white people in my game, I want everyone to know, but why is my reason and if anyone asks me why, I will yell at them and call them racist or a hipocrit'
Is this getting into your head yet? Also, to note, lots of games have black/mexican/asians in it. And a lot more games than you realize have asians. Almost all the old nintendo games where mostly Asians. Looking at my game collection, I dont see one that doesn't have at least one char that is not white, well, the ones that have people in it. | |
Who wouldn't be content? There's no other way you'd be able to gun someone down while riding on a BMX... at least, not without going to prison for a couple decades.
(Addendum: No, that is not meant to be related to the racial discussion.) | |
If there is a valid in-game reason why whites no longer exist in the universe, no-one will have a problem with your game. If you are basing the game around the concept of some sort of disaster completely wiping out Europe and North America, thereby eliminating most of the whites and your game is based on the political climate of such a world no one will care. If you're game requires a more equal distribution of global wealth, and you are accomplishing that in game by having North America, Europe and Asia be destroyed for some reason that's fine too. If you're setting your game in Africa it's fine. If your game is about an alternate development of the world without European influence go for it.
If, on the other hand, there's no significance in your game to the fact that all the whites died beyond that you can't play whites, then you might have some people who take offence. Any of the players who you'd want playing in the first place will accept that games are often based on interesting scenarios and will be curious how you've used the setting you've chosen. If the lack of whites adds nothing to the scenario and you make a big deal of the lack of whites then yes, people are going to take some offence. Some people will assume you are holding them out maliciously (see what happened in this post? Whether you meant any offense against Caucasians or not, people will percieve you as a racist for doing it. The exact same thing would happen if you made a game that made a big deal about not having any blacks for no perceptible reason. If people can't tell your motive, they'll assume its racism.) So to avoid the most trouble make sure the lack of whites is signficant to the game. If you can't do that, then at least make the lack of whites quiet. Don't say anything about it, just give the characters non-caucasian icons and don't acknowledge that whites are missing. Most people won't think anything of it unless you go out of your way to point it out. | |
Well Dession, judging from the people I have spoken to and associated myself in the BYOND community, it seems that the majority of the community happens to be white. Since I have almost no artistic skills, I have to hire icon artists to make sprites for any game I intend on creating. Since the icon artist is white, when he makes the base, it is more than likely he would make it white as well (unless he is asked to do otherwise).
What I am more or less trying to say, is that if the person creating the game is white, it is very likely that you would play as a white character (assuming there is no skin tone customization in the game). Although I am black, I have no problem with that. And I also have no problem with you doing the opposite and not including a white character. And if anyone has a problem with that, then they have the option not to play the game. No real loss, on your part at least. | |
While it's not necessarily racist, it's probably not very politically correct to make a game with no white characters in it. Since political correctness is a force approximately ten times as sinister as nazism, communism, and Pokemon combined, this is an excellent reason as to why you should go ahead with your plan.
In all seriousness, mostly it's a matter of context. If your game occurs in a completely fictional world where Earth and all its civilizations never even existed, then what you propose isn't even remotely racist (well, not on its own; it would still be entirely possible to insert racist messages which would not be inherently implied by the lack of icons of a certain ethnicity). Ditto for if it's supposed to represent thousands of years in our future, or a completely alternate timeline which diverged thousands of years in the past, or even a portion of our own world in which whites would be a minority--this, you might notice, covers an awful lot of ground. The only way that I'd classify this as racist is if you were deliberately excluding whites from an environment in which they would be very notably present. Of course, just because it's not racist doesn't mean that it's not going to bother people. A white supremecist, for example, would be very bothered by your game--and I think you would probably agree that they would fully deserve to be bothered by it. | |
White people, Black people, or whoever your favorite Teletubby is doesn't really matter to me as long as the game is good and the characters fit.
I don't really believe who the characters in your game are really matters, as long as they don't display any racist statements or actions. Hell, you could make a non-racist game where the Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan quests for a magical hood and as long as you keep it clean and be careful, it would be just fine. Just make sure that no matter what, you don't get any ideas from Dave Chapelle... And you have to realize that no matter what you do, there will always be somebody that finds something wrong. It's impossible to please everyone. The only people that would find problems with you using an "all black" character race, are probably too ignorant to bother with. I personally wouldn't care, or even really notice, just make sure that the characters fit in with the world. Placing a bunch of Irish characters in a Mexican setting wouldn't make too much sense, but hell even if you do that right it'd still be interesting. ~Ken~ | |
If you can't do that, then at least make the lack of whites quiet. Don't say anything about it, just give the characters non-caucasian icons and don't acknowledge that whites are missing. Most people won't think anything of it unless you go out of your way to point it out. I think that pretty well addresses any further thoughts I might have had on the subject, which I didn't. However annoying or impractical it may be, there is a political aspect to this question, and in that regard "it just never occurred to me" is far more politically palatable than "I just decided not to include white people". That said, [screw] politics. Make the game you want to make. If it's a good game, people will play it, and if it's not good, all the butt-kissing in the world won't make people play it. [Edit: added a carriage return for aesthetic reasons.] | |
That makes me think of the Rino911 episode when someone went up to the "Klu Klux Klan" sign and painted over one of the Ks so it raid "Klu Sux Klan." Even though it was the Klu Klux Klan, it was still be racist or hateful( much like the KKK is known for) to vandilize their sign. Basicly, being racist is still being racist, but not agreeing with someone elses believes is not being racist. Ok, the point being that they used the KKK, in a funny way, and where not at all, what so ever, racist about it (except the police that the KKK called didnt want to help them).
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Luap wrote:
...If you're setting your game in Africa it's fine... Africa is not a country it's a continent..So that should say, "...If you're setting your game on Africa it's fine..." | |
Scoobert wrote:
That makes me think of the Rino911 episode when someone went up to the "Klu Klux Klan" sign and painted over one of the Ks so it raid "Klu Sux Klan." Even though it was the Klu Klux Klan, it was still be racist or hateful( much like the KKK is known for) to vandilize their sign. Basicly, being racist is still being racist, but not agreeing with someone elses believes is not being racist. Ok, the point being that they used the KKK, in a funny way, and where not at all, what so ever, racist about it (except the police that the KKK called didnt want to help them). E's giving you trouble tonight scooby? | |
Dession wrote:
Luap wrote: If you're gonna carry grammar to the point of pedantry, you should at least be right. "In" would apply correctly to any kind of region. Hence, since Africa is a region, it is correct. "On", on the other hand, is usually reserved for only small bodies of land such as islands, and usually not even then. E.g., "The statues on Easter Island are big." Lummox JR | |
Erm... no. I've never heard anyone say "on Africa". Ever.
Unless it's a dialect thing, but it's still wrong. =P | |
At first it seemed like you were just trying to either incite a flame-war or make other people look like racists or get other people to persecute you a la some sort of martyr complex. But I don't know you and it certainly was possible that you were using the lack of white icons for some real purpose in your game and genuinely wanted to discuss what people thought of that. I tried to answer your question, then, to give you my opinion on when the lack of white icons would be an issue and when it wouldn't to most people. I posted my thoughts in a message that was more correct grammatically and in spelling then most posts on byond, and you respond by making up a rule of grammar and demanding I follow it. If you genuinely want to discuss the significance of racism in the attraction of players to your game, then we can do that. Really, the lack of other races in many games is an issue definitely worth discussing. However, it appears that you're doing everything you can not to have that discussion. I probably ought to have just ignored your post and let this thread die down into history, but I thought maybe there were just some misunderstandings going around throughout this thread. If you do genuinely want to discuss how racism will affect your game, then post some information about your game. Tell us why whites aren't being included, beyond "I don't want them." Tell us the background story to how the world got to be the way it is in your world, and what you think the setting will add to your game. Or write a good long post about why you're not including whites even though it won't add anything per say to your game if that's the case. There's a lot of smart people on byond who can give some very insightful answers to questions, especially questions on design philosophy. Or you can reply to this post with some ambiguous and vaguely hostile sounding post or ignore it altogether and we can all let this thread die away. As I said I think it'd be an interesting topic to discuss, but if its going to devolve into semantics I'd rather just not discuss it all.
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And since the majority of games out there are chock full of nothing but caucasians, then we'd have an awful lot of racists on our hands...
However, these people are not necessarily racist just because they only include one race in their games... It's just a matter of what you're accustomed to, coupled with a sense of vanity, and a healthy bit of laziness...lol
As a caucasian, I am most often around other caucasians... So when thinking of charcters, my mind naturally goes towards my own race... Also, as a game creator, your mind often puts yourself into the game's roles... And part of that is reflected in making those roles all match your skin color...
And then there's laziness... That's what prevents most of us from changing what we've created to offer more skin tones... We've put all this work into designing and drawing icons for all one color, and now we're too lazy to draw more just to include another color...
Nowhere along this line does a thought of hate or even dislike come into play... It's just something that happens naturally, regardless of your thoughts on one race or another...
So, simply and mindlessly neglecting to include a race is not a problem...
However, if you plan on going out of your way just to exclude a race, then that's a questionable motive... Of course, it doesn't automatically brand you a racist, and I'm not suggesting that you are, but I'm saying that I can see where the question was raised in their minds...