Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[SturmChurro]

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I won't get too detailed on these forums, but basically, yes, I do believe it is pretty racist in general.

It's not like I think having more diversity is a bad thing, but this is like taking it to some absurd and downright creepy levels.

It's not, when it's done right. It's just usually ham-fisted, and done for 'the sake of 'diversity'. It's done like it's a scoreboard of how many diversity 'points' they can get. As an example, of ways it's done right, I like how races in Elder Scrolls are done. It's diverse, and it makes sense in the setting. I'd rather they celebrate any particular race's culture, rather than appropriate.

[Kolsykol]

I won't get too detailed on these forums, but basically, yes, I do believe it is pretty racist in general.

It's not, when it's done right. It's just usually ham-fisted, and done for 'the sake of 'diversity'. It's done like it's a scoreboard of how many diversity 'points' they can get. As an example, of ways it's done right, I like how races in Elder Scrolls are done. It's diverse, and it makes sense in the setting. I'd rather they celebrate any particular race's culture, rather than appropriate.

Something that always bothers me a little too is how often they erase real historical people and just change the race of other characters...
Like why does Memnon and the Ethiopians keep being erased from the Siege of Troy lol?
Why make Achilles black when you literally have an entire army to depict?

And also how one-sided it is, you have whether it's historical or fictional people that are clearly based on medieval Europe and they're more representative of modern day USA.
But then you have another people in the same setting set in the Middle East or Africa and they're all dark-skinned.
I don't even have a problem with mixing in fictional settings, but ffs make it consistent then???
It's just bullshit when it's totally one-sided.

But yeah I actually think it'd be really interesting to get more movies for example dealing with history from other regions of the world.
It'd also feel more fresh and new, but instead they just take the same stuff that has been done a billion times and recast.

[Lauront]

I won't get too detailed on these forums, but basically, yes, I do believe it is pretty racist in general.

It's not, when it's done right. It's just usually ham-fisted, and done for 'the sake of 'diversity'. It's done like it's a scoreboard of how many diversity 'points' they can get. As an example, of ways it's done right, I like how races in Elder Scrolls are done. It's diverse, and it makes sense in the setting. I'd rather they celebrate any particular race's culture, rather than appropriate.

It's as good a sign as any to me to keep away from a game, when it lazily begins copy/pasting this tokenistic push to "diversity" from the real world, which even then is something that is sloppily and inconsistently championed as an ideal. In a fictional setting, it must make sense within the game's writing for me to take it seriously, and then should be done so as to intrigue me.

That's the price of doing business in America. ActiBlizz isn't the first and won't be the last. You can do just about anything and if you prove that you are trying most people will forgive and forget.

And honestly the fact that we can at least Whistleblow here is a good thing. People tend to not know that most Eastern(Japan included) countries have laws in place that even if you are telling the truth, that if you bring a negative light on a company they can sue you for Defamation.

Something that stuck out to me whas this thing is I recall occurring at a previous employer - during a call advertising recruitment for some roles, without being too specific, the hiring manager was a gentleman from Asia, and at some point he was asked how they try embed "inclusion" into their hiring for the role. His response was he does not care for that sort of thing, his concern is merit and ability to do the job, and not whether you're caucasian, asian, male, female etc. This was immediately followed up with some damage control PR-style response from one of the HR staff on the call, making sure to repeat as many of the usual nice-sounding buzzwords as she could. I found his approach refreshing by comparison to this stale tokenism. Obviously I think workplaces should be harassment free etc., but this painting by the numbers approach many corporations now take is repulsive to me, and glosses over many valid reasons for differing demographics within a position, purely fixating on whether X% in the broader population is exactly reflected in their role distribution... there are many reasons why this sort of approach is misguided, at best.

Apparently it‘s getting already incredible backlash online.

Good.