Mass Effect 2 - Old Fashioned Prejudices

Out of all the articles whose sole purpose seems to be to generate some traffic via namedropping Mass Effect 2, this one is particularly pathetic. Just lol.

Some like ROLE-playing, others prefer role-PLAYING.
Personally, when I play the game for the first time, it´s in the vein of how I would act in the shoes of the protagonist. For any potential replay, the more detached approach it is, especially since I can´t really "roleplay myself" anymore for the reason of having metaknowledge gained in the first playthrough.

Then there are those who play a female character simply because they like to look at a female derrière.
Or, as is the case of Mass Effect, those who find female character has more … character (mainly thanks to voice acting).
 
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I honestly think people (in this case a person who writes in a website), have too much time on their hands and too little real things to talk about.


This whole issue is a waste of time. Who in the hell cares if the hero of a computer game is human, or alien, black or white, man or woman, american or european, asian or indian. In my humble opinion, the people who actualy care are the ones with the biggest prejudice, not the people (like me) who didnt even notice that shepard is "a prototype", just played the game, had fun, finished it, re-done it, and put it aside for a couple of months until a new playthrough.

Honestly, write about important stuff, leave the revolutionary mumbo-jumbo to stuff that realy matters, not a video game.
 
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I don't get why race/sex are that important in gaming , to tell the truth i have never thought that some people take notes on this stuff.

You must be new to RPGs then. Its for the same reason why you see countless threads in forums about people wanting gay/hetro/whatever romance in games etc.

I *think* people want the games they play to identify with them in some level.
 
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You must be new to RPGs then. Its for the same reason why you see countless threads in forums about people wanting gay/hetro/whatever romance in games etc.

I *think* people want the games they play to identify with them in some level.

I am not new to RPGs but to tell you the truth i don't like romance in (most) games .
If i get you right you are saying that very few played as a female redguard in TES games.... not true .
The whole "identify" issue is RPG defeating if people play a game more than once unless humans can play themselves as a good , a bad or an ugly woman or dude and feel like home both inside an assassin and a monk .
 
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Honestly, write about important stuff, leave the revolutionary mumbo-jumbo to stuff that really matters, not a video game.

One could argue that it is important since computer games like this one helps to maintain the white, heterosexual, male norm as though it is the natural first choice.

I think it is good to make people aware of their own prejudice. Everyone is prejudiced, no matter if they think about ethnicity, culture, age, sex, etc., or not. That is simply how our brains work.
 
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SveNitoR beat me to the punch. These kinds of things DO end up mattering. If all the important people you see, real or fictional, are almost always white males then you are going to start associating them with success. Period. I don't care how smart you think you are or how fair you think you are. If all we had to do was decide that all races are equal, racism would have died out long ago.
 
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Heroes being white, Americans saving the world, aliens attacking only America (or some some random video feed, show the destroyed lesser world who couldn't fight). The only other race they bother adding are Africans or Chinese as side-kicks.

Same old same old, but learn to live with it. Unless games are going to be developed by South-Asian developers (like from India) in masses, you will always end up seeing same crap over and over again. Too bad game development and gaming isn't a big thing in this region (despite Indians buying companies like Codemasters, it's still just the beginning).

Personally, I play games cause of gameplay, it's not like any of these games are actually coming up with something new and revolutionary (like Dragon Age for example..) anytime soon as far as story is concerned. Actually, come to think of it, it didn't bother me that most characters in DeusEx and VTM: Bloodlines were white. The story and world was so well that you didn't care. These days however, with crap like Crysis on the front page, you find it hard not to notice the stuff like "racial diversity" (esp. those racist otherwordly aliens preferring to attack only American cities :p ) .

Also, Mass Effect is still fun. Story is so-so but love the characters they throw at you (gameplay is as challenging as playing Mario with unlimited lives even on hardest difficulty). At least it's better than Dragon Age which gave the false illusion of huge open world to explore. ME sticks to linear design and doesn't waste your time making you explore corners expecting some secret (only to be disappointed yet again).

PS: Master Chief is white. :p
 
Well, as somebody who has been playing RPGs since before there were computer versions I can testify to the fact that's pretty unusual. People always tended to create and play characters that roughly corresponded to their own personalities.

As someone who's been playing RPG's for a quarter century, that's not my experience at all. In fact, I think one of the main attractions of role-playing is that it lets us explore those sides of our personalities that we suppress IRL.

I've been playing with my current group, more or less, for over a decade. This time has spanned three campaigns in a variety of settings -- one Arabian Nights themed, one in Planescape, and the latest kung-fu Chinese themed. In these, we've had the same players playing pretty damn different characters -- one guy going from an idealistic, somewhat simple "holy fool" paladin to a cunning and inquisitive rogue/explorer, to a straightforward barbarian of questionable moral fibre; another going from a near-psychotic cold-blooded assassin who practically never speaks to an official highly conscious of his status and responsibilities and highly conscientious at executing them... and that sort of thing. I think there's really only one guy there who always ends up playing more or less the same character, no matter what the stats say.
 
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On the side topic:

If people were playing themselves in RPGs, why have their mages an int of 16 or 18, while fighters have a strength of similar amount?

If people were really playing themselves, they would have strength and int of 8 (if they are nerds, maybe an int of 11). They would be Level zero peasants.

If anything, people play what they would like to be.

Anyway, role playing from the real meaning of the word means playing somebody else. A good actor doesn't play herself but the role in the script of her film/play/whatever.


On topic:

If you analyse games scientifically, you will probably find lots of subconscious prejudices realised in there, even if developers actively try to do the contrary on the conscious level. You can't get rid of your socialisation by a design decision.

How much you care about this as a player is an entirely different question. I usually don't.
 
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On the side topic:

If people were playing themselves in RPGs, why have their mages an int of 16 or 18, while fighters have a strength of similar amount?

If people were really playing themselves, they would have strength and int of 8 (if they are nerds, maybe an int of 11). They would be Level zero peasants.

If anything, people play what they would like to be.

IMO the stats are largely immaterial when it comes to playing a role. I can play someone with my personality, values, and worldview regardless of what the character sheet says; ultimately the stats only affect the game mechanics, with everything else up to the player. Some players choose to mold their role around the stats, with more or less success; others don't.

I honestly have a very hazy recollection of the stats each of the PC's in my group has, but I have a very good idea of their personalities -- which are often very different from the personalities of the players. And these personalities don't have much at all to do with their stats -- someone isn't "intelligent" or "strong" or "wise" or "unwise," they're things like "conscientious" or "larcenous" or "manipulative" or "benevolent."

Anyway, role playing from the real meaning of the word means playing somebody else. A good actor doesn't play herself but the role in the script of her film/play/whatever.

Unless s/he's a character actor, of course...
 
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While I don't necessarily argue the validity of the point made in the article in general, I would have to take issue with it in regards to Mass Effect 1 & 2. It has some of the stronger non-white characters of any RPG in recent memory and does do a somewhat good job touching on the ideas of racism - abliet indirectly and in the guise of xenophobia.

Beyond the fact that you can make your character look however you want - with one or two decent non-whte presets included, many of the more memorable human NPCs are fairly clearly non-white as well. Captain Anderson, Admiral Kohaku, Jacob Taylor, Emily Wong, and Khalisah Al-Jilani are all decidedly not white. If you only consider the human characters that exist in both games then the list of white:non-white ones is fairly similar in length. Of course, the depth of these characters is arguable though the same can be said for almost any of the characters in the game.

As a bi-racial gamer I found ME 2 to be relatively refreshing in its inclusion of non-white characters and their progressive treatment - I mean to say that no spear wielding space-zulus come to mind. While I think such a far future setting stand to see a bit more racial and cultural diversity in its human character set, I have to admit that what there is is at least encouraging. This is especially true if you look at any Bioware staff photos - I'm fairly certain that if the entire Bioware staff were to go to the beach on the same day the collective glare reflecting off of them would result in the beaching of wayward ships and small planes.

If non-white gamers want to see better representation through non-white PCs and NPCs in games then they need to consider going into game development themselves. Failing that, we should encourage our children to consider game development as a valid and desirable career path if they are so inclined. If nothing else, we should encourage our kids to be character designers for Bethesda so if their models' faces must look so deformed, at least the non-white models won't have to look down right subhuman.
 
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it's just easier to use white people. Use anyone else and you run the risk of:

A) Stereotyped appearance and behavior no-win situation. For example black guy's lips too big so he's a sambo, or too small he's not black enough. To Fro or Not to Fro, that's the question. Guy acts too white he's an Uncle Tom, other way he's a stereotyped ghetto monkey. Chinese guy's accent isnt authetic enough, or he sounds "too chinese". What do you do? Make em white, you dont have to even consider any of this.

b) If portrayed as anything other than heroic, noble, powerful, brilliant, and glorious, it's called a racial or sexist insult. Some people would likely even consider it a hate crime. Use a white male, and you can make him be the worst or most weak person possible w/ no problems.

I just see it as a combination of them knowing their market on one hand, and on the other just not wanting to mess w/ all the modern "sensitivity" bullshit that comes up.
 
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There's an easy way around all that, though.

Don't be white, and then make the protagonist your ethnicity.

I have a hunch that most cRPG writers and designers are white, and therefore they find it easier to write white protagonists -- partly for the reasons you listed.

(FWIW, I would probably get seriously nervous if an actual real-life Chinese person wanted to join my kung-fu PnP campaign -- at the very least, I'd be worried about inadvertently causing offense by my mangling of the culture. I'd be even more nervous if I had to write that PnP game up as a cRPG that got distributed to thousands or -- horror -- millions of people.)
 
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Such term is quite famous in popular culture.
"Uncle Tom is a pejorative term for a black person who is perceived by others as behaving in a subservient manner to white authority figures, or as seeking ingratiation with them by way of unnecessary accommodation.[1] The term comes from the title character of American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Critical and popular views of both the character and the novel have shifted over time,[2] leading to the shift in the term's use….."
 
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it's just easier to use white people. Use anyone else and you run the risk of:

A) Stereotyped appearance and behavior no-win situation. For example black guy's lips too big so he's a sambo, or too small he's not black enough. To Fro or Not to Fro, that's the question. Guy acts too white he's an Uncle Tom, other way he's a stereotyped ghetto monkey. Chinese guy's accent isnt authetic enough, or he sounds "too chinese". What do you do? Make em white, you dont have to even consider any of this.

b) If portrayed as anything other than heroic, noble, powerful, brilliant, and glorious, it's called a racial or sexist insult. Some people would likely even consider it a hate crime. Use a white male, and you can make him be the worst or most weak person possible w/ no problems.

I just see it as a combination of them knowing their market on one hand, and on the other just not wanting to mess w/ all the modern "sensitivity" bullshit that comes up.
nailed it...
 
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it's just easier to use white people. Use anyone else and you run the risk of:

A) Stereotyped appearance and behavior no-win situation. For example black guy's lips too big so he's a sambo, or too small he's not black enough. To Fro or Not to Fro, that's the question. Guy acts too white he's an Uncle Tom, other way he's a stereotyped ghetto monkey. Chinese guy's accent isnt authetic enough, or he sounds "too chinese". What do you do? Make em white, you dont have to even consider any of this.
...
I just see it as a combination of them knowing their market on one hand, and on the other just not wanting to mess w/ all the modern "sensitivity" bullshit that comes up.

Better to be represented with a few missteps, than to be ignored all together.

Throwing your hands up and being afraid to actually engage the issue is not the answer. It only widens the racial divide.

If game makers are committed to creating more realistic and diverse "minority" characters, then they should be eager to hear feedback so they can improve future offerings.

You're right -- everyone shouldn't be brilliant, noble, heroic. There should be a range of character types in the mix. The point is -- do more characters and the other stuff will fall into place.

P.S. - A recent example of a good black character was Grace Holloway in Bioshock 2. She's sort of like a Billie Holliday-type who runs a section of the slums. Well written and well voiced.
 
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This deeply disturbing, completely un-sophomoric, not at all paint-by-numbers article comes as no surprise to me. CRPGs have long been a bastion of jackbooted Aryan supremacy. Even the otherwise progressive Ultima games only offer the option of playing as a white guy.
 
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