ShawnElliott · @ShawnElliott
3rd Jun 2015 from TwitLonger
On Moosa's "Colorblind"
“We should raise concerns about race, but it needs to be consistent.”
--Tauriq Moosa, Colorblind: On Witcher 3, Rust, and gaming's race problem
http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/3/8719389/colorblind-on-witcher-3-rust-and-gamings-race-problem
Depending upon who and where you are, Gone Home is arguably among the whitest games of all time. Life is Strange has, what, a single, tertiary character of color? Neither title inspired a single editorial on this trait, nor did reviews take issue with their lack of diversity, their overwhelming whiteness. I'm not contending that Gone Home necessarily needed characters of color; that it would be better off if Terry was black, if Janice was Indian, if Sam was biracial, and if Kaitlin had been an adopted Korean. Nor am I arguing that if we're going to demand representational diversity from The Witcher, then we need also ask it from other games with ostensibly progressive politics (like The Witcher).
I agree wholeheartedly that inadequate representation of people of color in popular videogames is indeed a very real concern. I agree that gaming's monochromatic look isn't good; that ideally the range of games released in a year would afford the Brazilian, the Iranian, the Nigerian, and the white Norwegian alike the opportunity to assume the roles of heroes and heroines with whom they share physical and cultural resemblance. The problem, though, is not that Gone Home is white, or that The Witcher is white. The problem is that what is true for these two titles is also true for the majority of games that are popular in North America and Europe. (I emphasize popularity because while game development communities in regions such as Iran create products that, in this example, prominently feature Persian characters http://kotaku.com/5835402/a-look-at-41-of-irans-best-video-games/ these games are practically unknown in America.) When the issue is that the Western market as a whole fails to mirror the present racial makeup of America and Europe, it seems odd to single out one Polish product as the poster child of gaming's “race problem.” The goal here is for the aggregate of games to represent human diversity. The goal is not that each and every game adopt the approach that characterizes Girl Scout cookie packaging.
Moosa contends that in omitting people of color, and instead including fantasy races with which to “mimic real world racist policies” The Witcher 'literally dehumanizes people of color.' I haven't played enough of The Witcher III to say for certain, but I do doubt that the game is so foolish as to substitute specific human groups with its assorted fantasy races. I suspect we'd see many more editorials if, for instance, Trolls stood in for Arabs, or elves for Africans. The inclusion of a few characters of color would open CD Projekt to charges of tokenism, and certainly these characters could come under the microscope as unfairly and potentially unfavorably representing entire races and cultures if CD Projekt's Polish writers stumbled. So knowing that CD Projekt was committed to creating a fantasy world that humans share with other human-like species, diversity could either come from expanding the game's scope to include kingdoms across the globe (in addition to the franchise's mythical monsters), or radically reworking the society it does depict to more closely resemble modern America. Both options are promising, but I don't know that they conform with the game CD Projekt wanted to – or was able to – deliver. Instead of expecting a Polish game to reflect the attempt of white people to properly represent the entirety of our planet's cultural and ethnic diversity, I'd prefer shelves (or Steam's store) to invite us into a wider realm of experiences created by and for demographically diverse collections of people who more closely resemble the inhabitants of our world.