That's the thing though, no single game can ever actually be a significant part of the bigger issue. The bigger issue is the bigger issue. Homogeneity in games overall is the problem. You can try and fix that by trying to have every game include some degree of varied representation, but then you're fucking with creative freedom (and probably sowing some pretty nasty seeds while you're at it). Not to mention that having diversity become a necessary part of each and every game doesn't in the slightest guarantee that it'll actually counteract homogeneous protagonist design.

So what do we do? We do what we've been doing. Support indies, support risks, support the games that go against the grain. Not because the norm is inherently bad, but because more options are better. More options means more variety, more variety means less monotony.

I wanna reiterate that the norm isn't inherently bad here. The problem isn't that there are too many white-skinned characters in the medium, it's that the medium is too homogeneous. If the pendulum swung hard the other way and a year from now the medium was brimming with brown-skinned protagonists, the problem of homogeneity would still obviously be there.

Supporting a creatively free and open medium really kinda covers it all. Let people make what they want, make what you yourself want, support whatever you'd like to see get made.

But if someone just wants perfunctory inclusion of diversity in every game, retroactively even, or seriously needs to see someone with their skin colour in order to relate or connect with a game/world/character/narrative, then that's fucked up and they've got a problem. And that's not me ignoring the issue. I'm saying those people need to not ignore it, and fuckin kill that shit.

It's funny Austin mentioned Kendrick Lamar. Today I was thinking about all the songs from him that I liked, and I remembered one of my favourites:

If only video games everything was more like that. Of course, it could be.

@theht: This was a good post. At this point in the conversation I do not have much to add that was not already said but I will say I agree with this.

Supporting a creatively free and open medium really kinda covers it all. Let people make what they want, make what you yourself want, support whatever you'd like to see get made.

But if someone just wants perfunctory inclusion of diversity in every game, retroactively even, or seriously needs to see someone with their skin colour in order to relate or connect with a game/world/character/narrative, then that's fucked up and they've got a problem. And that's not me ignoring the issue. I'm saying those people need to not ignore it, and fuckin kill that shit.

I so would like to see south-eastern asian people represented in games that are not either hookers or gangsters. Doesn't seem right to me that a person like me that pretty much play every notable release can't think of even one example. I dont see it as a problem tho. Human are selfish by nature. People don't give a shit about my personal feelings. If I want it bad enough I would make it happen myself. I clearly don't so I wont begrudge other people for not caring.

This bothers me a lot since I've always chose to be a Khajit or Aragonian in Elder Scrolls games and actually never ever in my life tried to play as a person who looks like me. I enjoyed playing San Andreas and still remember Beyond Good And Evil as one of the best games I've ever played. However, I might feel different if I didn't have a choice for most of my life. If in great majority of works I try to enjoy I would have to inhabit a guy of different race, of race that still holds most of the cards in my society and very often plays these cards against me. There is no logical reason I shouldn't be able to empathise with him or her, but it could become irksome with time. It could.

I'm firmly on the side of the discussion that wants CDPR to stay true to the original material since it's so dear to me and my people, but it would be great to see more variety in protagonists in works that have no justification to default to white and male. If it's true that CoD is so consevative in this regard for financial reasons then I feel uneasy expecting black people to ignore the appearance of the protagonists and not shouting from the rooftops to the adolescent action loving white boys that they should do as well.

The bigger thing is this terribly narrow vision of fantasy. The Witcher is largely a critical commentary on societies of Poland and its neighbours, but most of fantasy seems to be a dadaist experiment (with appologies to dadaists) that still somehow always resembles medieval Europe.

It actually is somewhat of a wish come true for me that The Witcher became somewhat important globally. I remember reading those books as a child, thinking that there is no reason this approach to fantasy shouldn't appeal to just about anybody (except racists, nationalists and warmongers of various ilk, it's definitely not for them). But how? How could this thing from my backwater country get though on the global market? And somehow, through determination and hard work of the guys at CDP, it managed. People can recognize quality if you let them.

Now it's time for people to recognize that the best SF writer in history (much better than Sapkowski in relation to his genre) was actually Stanisław Lem. This guy's worlds are really something else guys.

@qrdl said:

Oh I love Cyberiada, Lem's approach to SF is certainly a curious one, but imho bit harder to digest for the masses than Sapkowski (I remember staring at that one chapter of Solaris like wtf is going on I need to re-read it). For Witcher If I remember correctly then only the first short stories collection came out in English but didn't really catch on, it probably resonates differently with Western public. The first Witcher game originally didn't sell very well outside of Europe too. I'd say the 3rd game was what really did it for the series internationally, the sales are nice to look at (but even now they are still missing 2 books from the saga o_O)

I find it amazing that it caught on and that CDP created the game so true to the spirit of the books, but at the same time in such a grand scale it's really kinda overwhelming.

(Now I want Jara Cimrman point-and-click :'D gosh now THAT would never work)

@sirpsychosexy: No they don't. Nobody says "White privilege" and means Somalis

@theht: I don't have anything to add as you are right.

At the what do we do question, I'd just say that talking about it is already doing something. I don't think any piece on The Witcher (well, none that I read) is forcing diversity in the game.

I think writing talking about diversity is as productive as a great game with great and diverse cast.

@onemanarmyy: I'm really torn on that 'faithful to the source material' angle. On one hand you're right, there's not much we can do if the source material is clearly white and is based during a time and place where people were predominantly white; but on the other hand if author is willing to compromise on the historical source material and include mythical beasts, is it really that much of a stretch to include people of multiple ethnicities?

This might come as incredibly ignorant, but: Is skin color not a physical trait? Please blame it on English being my third language if that's insensitive. And I'm not trying to imply that racial profiling/segregation etc. should be a thing. I'm not implying anything at all beyond the question.

Also, why The Witcher out of all the games you could tackle? I think this game handles heavy topics like discrimination of all kinds better than just about every other AAA game out there.

Heya,

No worries! It's an important thing that lots of folks don't have a handle on because it isn't taught in especially deep way. As always, my time is way more limited than I wish it was but here's the key takeaway:

The process of racialization often references physical differences between groups, but that difference is not always skin color. It can be the appearance of other physical traits like hair color, facial characteristics, eye color, etc. It's often--but not always!--tied to lineage or birth region. Historically, there is a huge range of factors that determine "race," but again and again we see that these lines are incredibly blurry. The range of "black" skin tone is incredibly wide and varied, and there are whole discourses around black skin color!

We've also talked (in this same thread!) about how different European groups have shifted from "X race" to "white"--or how some groups shouldn't be just tossed in with "white" just because of their skin color.

One easy to read resource on this stuff is the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is among my largest influences. Check out his post here on Race as as Social Construct.

@cabelhigh: But you have to realize it's not CD Project Red that injected mythical beasts. The polish writer made the witcher world, and included witchers and their quests to hunt monsters. Drowners, Magic, Monsters, Silver swords, all those things come straight from the books. CD Project Red is just using that world created by the author, making a game about it.

I totally understand that you're torn on it, because i'm too. If this game was 100% created by CD Project Red, and they had free reigns to craft a world just like Mass Effect / Fallout / Baldurs gate / Elder Scrolls / Dragon Age, i would side with you. But because this game is an adoptation of a book, in similar vein how a LOTR movie is based on Tolkien books. Therefore i think The Witcher isn't the right battle to pick.

This belongs on the front page of the site, tbh. So glad to have you as a presence on Giant Bomb, Austin.

@austin_walker: That was incredibly informative and succinct. Thank you.

A few days late for the blog post, but yeah, this is just fantastic writing Austin, Love your work so far on the site. Keep at it.

As for the topic at hand, I didn't notice the fact that there weren't any colored people in The Witcher 3. This can stem from pretty much any reason but I'll list the most obvious:

Either: I've been taught to not look for them, because mainstream games usually feature white characters as "the normal".

Or: This just isn't a issue for me, because as everybody knows "If it ain't happening in my backyard it doesn't concern me". (That's not to say that I don't care, But as a Norwegian of Germanic descent, the struggle for racial equality isn't something I've been all that exposed to, and that might be why my eyes aren't trained to look for it. I am very sympathetic towards the cause though)

Or: Having read the books, I kind of knew this as "par for the course". Sapkowski's work doesn't, to my recollection, contain any direct references to the amount of colored people on the continent, but none of the characters involved in the stories, are remarked upon as having colored skin either.

For instance there is several social events our hero grudgingly is forced to attend throughout the short stories and the book series. While Geralt's companion, whether it be Triss, Yennefer of Queen Calanthe of Cintra, usually points out some of the "people of import", they just can't describe every person in the room as that leads to some very dull reading. Now, the people who are pointing out that "there aren't any colored people in the Witcher novels" can do so, because Sapkowski hasn't provided evidence to the contrary, but he never excludes them either, as far as I remember.

I for one read a "Market square full of people" as people of every heritage, whether they be from Cintra, Skellige, Redania, Temeria, Nilfgaard, Zerrikania, Touissant or Kovir.

Should CD Projekt Red have read into it like I did? Perhaps, but the story they were telling is one their lead writers have full authorship over, not something Sapkowski wrote, and they are free to write it as they see fit, within the constraints of the universe provided to them.

I'll probably write a more extensive post about this on my on blog, Hopefully I get it out before everyone is tired of reading about this stuff. I know my voice isn't the most nuanced, but I hope some of you will read it anyways,

Plenty of confusion in these comments arising from the discussion of race from varying perspectives. As race is a social construct and not a biological one the way people experience and think about race will vary from country to country. As you said Austin, this topic is quite complex.

As for me I have not played a single Witcher game but I'm aware it's based on Polish source material. That being evident, I don't expect the games to feature very many "blacks/latino/asians" as understood by Americans (although I can't imagine it would be unheard of to have some Mediterranean/North Africans sprinkled about here and there) but it would be nice to see some different ethnicities within the slavic umbrella and other ethnic groups in the region. Why not Roma or Tartars or Lithuanians or Jews etc., or their fantasy equivalents, in the game to spice things up and make the world seem more organic? Like I said though, I've never played these games or read the books, they may very well have other Eastern European ethnic minority groups in there and I wouldn't know. I'm just saying that's what would make sense to me. Of course from an American perspective, especially the perspective of non-white "other" groups, these varying ethnic groups are all "white enough" for there to not be a meaningful distinction.

Oh, okay. Democracy was restored. It makes sense, actually, that people who once lived in a Democracy would want to restore it since so often it seems like nations that never had democracy are far less welcoming to it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

It still rubs me the wrong way when part of the argument is something like: Well we aren't forcing developers to change. When you're a writer of a blog, you're absolutely right, but when you have certain websites that deduct points from a game because it offends their political sensibilities, you are at least trying to coerce them into something.

I've enjoyed reading what you've written and I realize this is a minority of game sites but it's kind of an elephant in the room that people don't want to talk about.

I think talking about good Kid, m.A.A.d City is especially interesting, because it brings up an interesting point. Given that a huge majority of the gaming public is white, I think much of the backlash is white gamers (especially young white gamers), feeling like minority content won't be "for them", their pool of games and entertainment shrinks. I've seen this argument intoned before and it always struck me as odd.

Now as a white person who absolute;y loves good Kid, m.A.A.d City, but can't relate to the black experience it portrays at all, I find this argument to eventually fall flat. Nothing is stopping a white person from enjoying, and learning from, minority oriented media. I will never relate to many of the trials and tribulations Kendrick Lamar is talking about on the album, but I can still appreciate the art.

In the end, experiencing media like Kendrick's album, and other minority focused media, has grown my empathy as a human being. It's made me a better person, and at the same time the experiences were still profoundly entertaining. Just because someone goes out and makes a video game focused heavily on the black or Latino experience doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. In fact, you should enjoy it and use it as a chance to grow.

But that's what criticism is, it's opinion. It's not a robotic numeric run down of pre-defined bullet points. Movie critics are allowed to interject their political views in to their criticism all the time, why aren't game developers? If anything, this is a sign of the game criticism business growing up. You know what critics have similar opinions to you, and the ones who don't. If a particular website is worried about a particular political issue you're not, ignore that sites reviews.

Most critics will stay neutral, as they have with movies and books. In the end, you're making a slippery slope argument based on a tiny minority of people in a business based on opinion. It's not, in the end, overly compelling.

I agree that the lack of diversity in video games is terrible, I wish there were video games that were more representative and that more people from different backgrounds would make games. When Austin talks about his feelings of "exclusion" it speaks to me because I still to this day have feelings of not belonging where I am.

That said I don't agree with the use of Kendrick Lamar as a goal for that. Kendrick raps about his own experiences and I enjoy his work because he gives me insight into a culture that I've never experienced and will never truly understand, I can relate to it somewhat but his world is still very different to mine.

The Witcher is the same to me as I have never had the experiences the cultures of the Lechites. The issue at hand is why praise one for it's representation of his or her culture and criticize the other for doing the same thing?

When I watch a Japanese or Iranian film, I find those films usually are completely filled with Japanese or Iranian characters dealing with things unique to those environments because that is what they understand best and can represent. The ones that aren't usually centre on this particular character being in an environment different to theirs and takes up a lot of the story because it is a major thing. Is it wrong that a Polish video game be filled with representations of "Polish" characters in things relating to Polish issues? Would it make sense for Kendrick to rap about Polish issues? No, he raps about what he understands best and CD do the same thing.

The real issue is that games being made by people of different backgrounds aren't being made and they should. Support and promotion of developers from different backgrounds is the key, not the criticism of developers for make a game drawing from their own culture and understandings.

@cornbredx: It's possible that GB has a style guide that allows for more casual use of grammar, even if these habits did start in his own writing. I was an editor for a tech site at my last job and had to actively un-train myself to correct every sentence by a contributor that began with a conjunction, because it was allowed by the style guide there (of course, that was fine, but God forbid you miscapitalize "WiFi" or "Internet").

I worked at another site before that where the editor (a well-known journo and PR person in the indie games world) above me would insert needless fluff into my writing because that was just how he thought the site should read.

This is my roundabout way of saying that experience has taught me the fruitlessness of comments like yours. Not to say that it's a bad comment; it would actually be quite helpful in a more receptive context (like a college classroom). Frequently, though, comments on grammar tend to go unnoticed or are disregarded because writers cannot or have no desire to change the way they write, at least not at the behest of a random dude on the Internet.

FWIW, though, pointing out typos (in a not-snarky way) is ALWAYS appreciated.

----

Anyways, this post was awesome. Austin is great at explaining the dynamics of racism in a professorial and pleasant way. I wish he had been around when I was younger and growing up around a father with dubious racial politics ("oh, they can have a black history month, but God forbid anyone ever celebrate a WHITE history month"), as he would have made my transition from ignorance into knowledge so much easier. I'm not interested in debating the post, just wanted to voice my support for Austin. You're doing good work and you're a better addition to the crew than I could have imagined.

#fuckyeahaustinwalker

@harveydanger: I know from coming to this site for years that Giant Bomb doesn't really have a style guide- not like most places. They prefer to just look over each other's work, but there isn't much more oversight than that. There is no one that is going to rewrite, or edit, Austin's work before publishing. That's just not the way Giant Bomb operates.

Anyway, this is just something Austin wrote off the cuff- I do understand that. As a writer I know that the best way to break bad writing habits is to try to not ever do them even when you're not writing something high profile (for lack of a better way of putting it). Sometimes, though, you may not even notice you're doing it. It happens to the best of us.

When I write, though, I try to take in all advice- even if I can't use it. I suppose you are right in saying this is more of an exception to the rule, but I don't feel it makes it less worth trying to be helpful. It's a shame it comes with such baggage. I guess I know it does, but sometimes I can't help myself. Usually I wouldn't say anything.

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate getting one to this particular comment that was constructive. =)

Well, how about the representation of slavs and other eastern europeans in American-developed games?

You mean all those bloody Russians or Prague getting blown to bits in CoD:MW3? :D

Can't say for Eastern Europe but for West Slavs (Central Europe) there's some, mostly when they need exotic but still European mission for military shooters.

(Though they say that Blazkowicz was originally supposed to be full-on Polish instead of American-Pole)

It becomes even more complicated when you consider cultural distinction between West, East and South Slavs. Because I'm doubtful that many West Slavs would consider Russians/Soviets to be very representative.

In criticizing The Witcher 3 relevant to American cultural context, critics have drawn a line in the ground so many leagues away from the game that my hope is the developers will ignore it and continue to enjoy the praise they deserve for it's other achievements.

But my greater hope is that instead, players will appreciate and empathize with the problems around culture and concept that it does shine a light on, and in turn become better for it, regardless of the pigment of their skin.

European and Slavic experiences, culture, religions and environment are all different, and race runs deeper than color. The Witcher 3 does not include a character with my skin tone, but already covers a great deal of discrimination relative to it's own environment, fantasy or otherwise. The game is certainly diverse by other standards.

Why would I feel any more left out than a "White American" when looking at the characters in this game? How is it any less worthy of applause for the diversity it does promote?

@brainling: "Interjecting criticism" and trying to harm sales because it's against your political beliefs are two different things. You didn't even begin to address the coercion aspect I was referring to.

Here's the difficult thing for me: When you talk about "race" are you talking about skin color, or about culture?

If all we're talking about skin color, then what you're talking about is essentially palette swap right? The characters would behave generally like all other characters, in a manner appropriate to the world, but look different, yes? While more facial variety wouldn't be unwelcome, it's a complaint that, like the actual change, seems a little superficial. I mean that's in the same realm of "I wish there were more hot chicks, or fat people, or guys with sweet mustaches" isn't it? I realize that skin color is considered a bigger difference in our culture than those other physical traits (and shouldn't be) - but ultimately it is simply a physical trait and the culture of the world of the Witcher isn't the same as our culture. So if the "wanting to see more diversity in games" sentiment boils down to wanting a little model variation, well sure that's fine, but if that's all "diversity" amounts to, giving it this much attention seems to be making a mountain out of a hill.

If we're talking about culture, how should "black culture" (which I know is an utterly ridiculous term because obviously people don't behave and believe the same things homogeneously based on their skin color - but I'm not eloquent enough to get the point across more succinctly that using that short cut) be represented in the world of the Witcher? As said, it's not like the culture of the world of the Witcher particularly represents modern "white culture" either and if it's being pegged that way simply because the people are white, I'd say that's a bit hypocritical.

I'm pretty sure most people are talking about everyone in the world not being white in a fantasy game. Dragon Age did a better job than Witcher in that area, since Viv is black, Josephine is Indian (or Arab?), and there are fantasy creatures in your party, which helps with diversity. I'm over 30 hours into Witcher and I've seen like 2 elves, 8 dwarves, and only white people. Much like with Game of Thrones and LOTR, people saying "this is based off Europe" isn't a good defense IMO. Since their creators could've chosen to add Asians, Hispanics, black people, and so on like Dragon Age slightly did. It's a choice to keep it all white or nearly all white. It's not like Europe was all white anyway, since Mongolians invaded/ruled from the east at one point and Moors (blacks and Arabs) ruled southern Europe for awhile, plus a ton of trading with other lands.

Everybody should be obliged by law to read at least three last pages of comments before adding his. This I think we can all agree on.