Monday, July 21, 2008

Email

John forgot to post the email we received from Joshua to the last post, so here's an extra-special post just for the email. Check out the first comment for the complete text.

-Phil
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1 Comments On This Post:

Inside The Console said...

Email from Joshua regarding Racism and Discrimination in games:

First of all, Bargamot Oil is derived from the rind of a bergamot orange, which is predominantly found in Calabria, Italy -- if I'm not mistaken. Earl Grey, as a side note is the first tea that Starbucks offered in it's national expansion -- and along with chai, and non-fat vanilla lattes, is one of Paula Abdul's three favourite drinks. Oh, and the fruit itself tastes like shit. It's a cross between a lemon and an orange. It's not nice at all. Unfortunately, I've decided to play the drinking game, while listening to the podcast, and type my responses at the same time. I think I'll be using the tea, since the other two sound like shit, and I happen to have a few earl grey bags in the cupboard.

Ethnic Cleansing & White Law: The Video Games -- I want them. I'm the single most un-Politically-Correct human being on earth, and I long for the opportunity to play something like that. Is it available for MAC? Afterall, Apple is the biggest white-washed company on earth. After all we know exactly what colour person does the best programming... yellow.

You did make a good point though, the victim complex. John knows my thoughts on the Victim Complex, especially since I've personally spent extensive time convincing gay men that they are total retards because of some of their "beliefs". There are a lot of things I don't want my kids to learn, when that comes around. While I don't wbant my children to be bigotted ass-clowns, I also don't want them to be stereotypically fag-tastic. The big problem with a victim-complex is that people perpetuate these ideas and these feelings and actions that "offend" them. I've told John my favourite story about "racism". I refered to a woman as "colored", not to her face, and not in a derogatory method, but because I couldn't think of any other way to describe her to somebody else. She got up in arms and shouted and yelled and flailed about like a goat being raped by an Irishman. She then uttered one comment, "I am an avid supporter of the N double A C P -- " to which I replied, "You mean the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?!"

Extra Points for Avenue Q explanations. As for me, I have a lot of racism. I hate everybody, a lot.

Racism is rampant in our society, discrimination is rampant. It's common in MANY games and various systems. I mean, even from an online RPG standpoint, which is entirely text based. Less than 2% of the popuation of any single one of the games I've worked for are 'black' characters. I've run the test myself. More than 60% of the characters generated by players for any of the seve games I've coded for are caucasian, and some degree of blonde. And this comes from a text-based engine that has way too many options for skin colouring and hair colour.

Fair, milky, alabaster, waxy, cadaverous, chalky, creamy, doughy, pasty, pink, freckled, pale, rosy, light, white, sallow, ruddy, florid, tanned, bronze, yellow, olice, nut-brown, dusky, swarthy, sickly, dark, brown, ebony, black, wrinkled -- the list really does go on. Just looking at this RANDOM collection of colour options you can tell that the coder who sat down to write this list, added Dark, brown, ebony and black as a random last-minute side-thought.

The gamer, coding, and entertainment industry as a whole is not racially inclusive. Think about where most games come from. Japan. Look at animé, and see what they think of. You pulled reference to Metal Gear Solid, and the traditional roles played in games. You can go even further back from that. Final Fantasy VII: Cloud: the blonde, pale-skinned hero. Barret: the Ginormously Huge black dude with a big gun. Tifa: the urban feminist. Aeris: the sweet unassuming blonde girl. ShinRa: the evil white-faced corporation. It's always going to be there, we can draw attention to it, but you're either going to let something that doesn't REALLY affect you offend you, or you're not going to let it.

I do have to comment on your assumption that there hasn't been a main-character in a video game who happened to be black. I bring up the following games, all of which I have personally played:

Spawn: In which you play as Al SImmons. A black zombie, ironically enough.
GTA:SA ... Carl Johnson! (I only know this because of the voice over actors and I love a certain voice actor extra points if you guess which voice actor in San Andreas I love so much.)
Blade: for the PS1 as well, you know the black vampire hunter.
Akuji The Heartless: For the PS1, a stereotypical voodoo priest of African descent.

I'm sure I can think of three or four more, but they do exist.

I'm actually interested in reading Tim's boss battle email, it better be worth it.

Cheers,
Joshie

((PS: Feel free to rearrange and reword anything for the sake of fluidity, I realize that I tend to ramble and type tangentially))
--
Steven Wright - "A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths."

--
Ronald Reagan - "Recession is when a neighbour loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours."

Monday, July 21, 2008 at 11:21:00 AM CDT

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