Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[Miste]

Maybe we should campaign to get more hairstyles more often...I noticed they seem to have slowed down in releasing new ones, maybe I am seeing it wrong, but it just seems that way to me since SB released.

[FeliAiko]

I'm sure SE are working on their next straight hair variant as we speak.

[kikix12]

But on the flip side of this, many people have been clamoring in this thread that there is no reason to bring RL into the game. That argument just makes me scratch my head as there are SO many things inspired from real world things (not just in Stormblood), but heaven help you if you're asking for slightly more diverse character creation options as that is obviously stepping over the line.

You see, there's a slight difference in these two things. Namely...who draws the inspiration.

In the case of Kugane and other in-game stuff, it was the developers drawing inspirations to match their story, its aesthetics.
In the case of skin color, it's the people that want to implement THEIR OWN aesthetics into the story.

Now, there is nothing wrong with suggestion whatsoever. The game is a business. We're being told painfully clearly that this game is not made for any reason other than to earn a buck by all sorts of things, sometimes more directly. As such, following clients suggestions that increase their satisfaction without really harming much at all is reasonable.

However, one needs to still remember that the aesthetics of the story are a significant part of it. The reason why we don't have these options may be because of technical difficulties, a result of cutting on budget or because they don't really match the story in its makers opinion. Then there are also options like them simply not thinking there would be demand for it, forgetting about it or thinking that the currently available options would have been satisfying.


So it's not the problem with the suggestion, but with the form. Clients simply don't have the right to demand real-world inspirations and existence of such in a story is no excuse.

I won't name the game, but I guess most everyone will know. There was a game that was aiming for a significant realism of a certain part of history of a region of the world that, at the time presented, had virtually no non-white people. Like, if there WERE any, they were so few that majority of the region wouldn't ever come across them (heck, living pretty close to that region now, having nearly 30 years, I saw maybe a handful of non-white people with my own eyes in real life where I live!). And organizations of "people of color" were literally clamoring about the studio being racist because there are no non-white people in the game. They demanded a significant presence.

Ironic, really. What does "people of color" really mean?! Seriously, "black" is lack of color, while "white" is a compilation of all colors in one. That phrase itself seems to be more racist than most of the stuff that many of the people crying "discrimination" claim, seeing as it suggest that white people are "colorless", from which one can derive "empty". Now, do you see how that works? Should I now make demands that I want this or that because I'm in the minority of the world (it appears that Caucasian people constitute about 33% of the world, while Mongoloids about 31% of the world...then there are other in-between etc.)?
Of course...the offense part is an add-on, but I really do have issues with the term "people of color".


In other words...As I said before, if someone wants new variations of face structures and skin tones, no one would have any issue with those suggestions (except possibly saying that the developers time would be better spent elsewhere, which is what pops-up with basically any glamour suggestion ever made). Yet no one seems to be interested in making such a thread. One that is strictly about the essence of the suggestion.

This one will NOT work. It will die out very quickly or random people will pop-up and bring up the racial stuff once again. It's natural. People will NOT care that it was hammered for 50+ pages. Most will read only the original post and maybe few past that (some don't even read past that) and it'll be good if few of the last posts. They will skip all that was said before and will bring the tone back to the flames.


Remember. We pay, but we are not entitled to demands. Square Enix offers a product, not their servitude. Customers don't hire Square Enix, we pay them for a product that comes as-is. Any thread or post made needs to reflect that fact.

[Rokke]

Ironic, really. What does "people of color" really mean?! Seriously, "black" is lack of color, while "white" is a compilation of all colors in one. That phrase itself seems to be more racist than most of the stuff that many of the people crying "discrimination" claim, seeing as it suggest that white people are "colorless", from which one can derive "empty". Now, do you see how that works?

Going by the American use of the word, its generally accepted as a reclamation of the word “colored”, which had been used as an derogatory term for non-white people (predominantly those of african heritage, essentially separating them by degrees of skin tone) till the American Civil rights movement. It has nothing to do with light spectrums.

[Melichoir]

Going by the American use of the word, its generally accepted as a reclamation of the word “colored”, which had been used as an derogatory term for non-white people (predominantly those of african heritage, essentially separating them by degrees of skin tone) till the American Civil rights movement. It has nothing to do with light spectrums.

[IMG]

In american parlance, the descriptors for those of african decent has evolved over the decades. At one point in time, "colored" was not a derogotory term (the NAACP has it literally in their name), same with "negro". Over time, however, it was used more as a slur, and thus new descriptors were created over time to describe those of african decent.

The newer term of "People of Color" is, from what I have observed most frequently, not a means of reclaiming the word colored, but rather an all encompassing term to refer to non white groups (this being asian, hispanic, black, etc). Ive seen a few people argue that it is exclusively people who are of a specific skin tone, and would exclude white-hispanics, some asians with paler complexions, and whites.

Problem with the term "PoC" is that it is not used consistently among activist organizations and political groups. This is probably because what qualifies as 'brown/black' enough tends to get subjective to certain groups.

In any case, broadly speaking, not all these terms last long term. Afro-american and its derivation of African-American (or black-american in some communities), have had some pretty long standing usages fairly consistently as being fairly politically correct and inoffensive. Meaning, new terms get invented, but people over time keep going back to African American.

[MaloraYuki]

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that SE has taken some pretty big inspiration from Japan as well as Eastern culture in general with Stomblood. Of course the game has it's own lore, but then we see Japanese housing structures all over, kimonos, Vietnamese clothing / food options, and I'm sure plenty of other items I'm neglecting to mention.

Inspiration is inspiration in the end it’s a game with seperate lore from IRL. You can not look at kugane and say it is Japan it doesn’t work that way. How do you look at dreads in a game and say that’s black? It’s a game. And all this talk of what a black face looks like. What does a black face look like? White face? Asian face? Ect... because I don’t know. I have not seen people IRL who have the same face or even facial features people are defining as black I have seen on people of other races. What’s wrong with posting a suggestion thread like everyone else and not screaming race? It has nothing to do with race it’s just a limited character creation. Post a picture of the hairstyles and say “I would love to see something like this added” or ask for fuller lips in character creator. Don’t start a race war about it for no reason when it’s 100% unneeded to bring that into a game that doesn’t have IRL races. But I guess you do you. Enjoy the GAME!

Ps. I feel the heavy Asian culture references in this game might have to do with the fact it’s a Japanese game. I could be wrong but seems pretty common when a game comes from a specific area, you copy what you know.

[Melichoir]

Inspiration is inspiration in the end it’s a game with seperate lore from IRL. You can not look at kugane and say it is Japan it doesn’t work that way.

Ill just reiterate a point I made way earlier in this thread:

"All 'races' in FFXIV are mix and matches of features in real world races with an anime slant, and are not designed to be a direct representation of any single particular race. You can pretty much get this by actually looking at the stock facial features (ignore skin color for the moment) of the races and even with tweaking, you cant get a 1:1 "this is an European/Asian/African/Etc" person. You can get close, but things will be slightly off or 'mismatched'. Now, throw in the fact that virtually all races can come in the almost entire gamut of skin colors, and you can end up with interesting combinations as a result. You can drive this point home by looking at teh lore of all the races. You cant really pin it to any specific ethnicity/nationality. Theyre all mixes of a few cultural elements from different societies."

When talking about places in this game, theyre not "This is Japan, This Is China, This is Germany, This is England, This is Ethiopia, This is Saudi Arabia". Theyre mix and matches of all sorts of things and places to create a new look and feel, as mentioned in the quoted post. Its the same for the 'races.' There is no 1:1 here, and there isnt supposed to be.

[MaloraYuki]

Ill just reiterate a point I made way earlier in this thread:

"All 'races' in FFXIV are mix and matches of features in real world races with an anime slant, and are not designed to be a direct representation of any single particular race. You can pretty much get this by actually looking at the stock facial features (ignore skin color for the moment) of the races and even with tweaking, you cant get a 1:1 "this is an European/Asian/African/Etc" person. You can get close, but things will be slightly off or 'mismatched'. Now, throw in the fact that virtually all races can come in the almost entire gamut of skin colors, and you can end up with interesting combinations as a result. You can drive this point home by looking at teh lore of all the races. You cant really pin it to any specific ethnicity/nationality. Theyre all mixes of a few cultural elements from different societies."

When talking about places in this game, theyre not "This is Japan, This Is China, This is Germany, This is England, This is Ethiopia, This is Saudi Arabia". Theyre mix and matches of all sorts of things and places to create a new look and feel, as mentioned in the quoted post. Its the same for the 'races.' There is no 1:1 here, and there isnt supposed to be.

Well yeah I mean kind of my point it’s a game with different lore. Inspiration is different from IRL. As I said you can’t look at kugane and say that’s Japan because it’s not. And you are right it isn’t suppose to be. Can’t look at a highlander and say they are meant to be black because they aren’t suppose to be. Technically they can be any color. Lyse, yda, and minfillia are highlanders by lore, they are on the wrong model but they are highlanders with a lighter skin tone. The facial features and hairstyles people want just need to be added with the long lists of requests from everyone else. Or I mean if you have artistic talent enter contests.

[kikix12]

It has nothing to do with light spectrums.

I know it have nothing to do with lights spectrum and I did know what people mean by "people of color". Though I did not have any idea on where it originated from, so that's good to know.

My point is that this fancy little term uses very clearly defined words, then twists them into something nearly completely irrelevant to the origins of the word, THEN makes exclusions to that, fancy themselves prideful in being that (as part of a majority), while accusing the minority (if we consider the "people of color" as a group, that group constitutes ~67% of the world population) of them being discriminatory.

The whole concept there, the premises, are wrong. What's wrong with using non-white, non-Caucasian etc?! Seriously. Fighting fire with fire works, but fighting a bomb with a bomb does not.

[Rokke]

I know it have nothing to do with lights spectrum and I did know what people mean by "people of color". Though I did not have any idea on where it originated from, so that's good to know.

My point is that this fancy little term uses very clearly defined terms, then twists them into something nearly completely irrelevant to the origins of the word, THEN makes exclusions to that, fancy themselves prideful in being that (as part of a majority), while accusing the minority (if we consider the "people of color" as a group, that group constitutes ~67% of the world population) of them being discriminatory.

The whole concept there, the premises, are wrong. What's wrong with using non-white, non-Caucasian etc?! Seriously. Fighting fire with fire works, but fighting a bomb with a bomb does not.

Im no linguistics expert and thar be some buzzwords sprinkled in, please bear with me**: Historically it was used to unify “other” people, which why I think it continues to encompass a larger group of people. When you break “other” groups down into smaller groups you have a lot of folks vying for attention to their own cause which makes smaller groups goals less likely. Even amongst minority groups some are over represented vs others (a whole 'nother can of worms) but as a whole they tend to be underrepresented across various mediums of entertainment. I think people wanting to see themselves in [insert a thing here] is natural. I don't think it works in every situation, nor do I think demanding an insert in everything is the way to go, but I get the wanting.

a tl;dr: its Complicated™ because words, meanings, and racial relations all evolve over time.


** Personally, I don’t disagree with the fact that this is SE’s game and ultimately they can put whatever they want in their own game. Applying rl demographic breakdowns to a game where Genghis Khan’s stand-in is a 7 foot tall lizard man that rides a giant purple parrot is kinda moot, but at the same time I don’t think adding cornrows as a hair option would be particularly lorebreaking. But we're getting waaaay off topic here, so I'll end this with a picture of hair I'd want :)