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Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

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Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#61

Post by pas »

mansion7 wrote: post #30
hackerbabz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because I’m white and I can play a million games with white protagonists. I don’t need to be included in every game. If I were nonwhite I think I’d want to be included in some games, yes.

Are nonwhites incapable of making games to represent themselves?

They are capable, but market forces were creating a monoculture which made it harder for them to make them, and some people voiced their concerns regarding this phenomena. (The regular systemic inequality problem, which means the status quo is hard to change, because the advantages/disadvantages are propagated.)

Okay, and how big the videogame representation aspect of this problem is? Yep, good question, but even if it's small, it doesn't invalidate it.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#62

Post by throwanem »

notahacker wrote: post #45
throwanem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one takes the Simpsons Movie as representative of real history, though. You absolutely do find people doing that with games in the Assassin's Creed series. Whether the developer intends that or not - and I'm sure they don't; whatever the intentions of anyone working there, Ubisoft collectively cares only for money - that it happens still makes it worthwhile for someone to criticize the work from a perspective know…

> No one takes the Simpsons Movie as representative of real history, though True, Assassin's Creed is certainly marketed as having more attention to realism than the Simpsons Movie. It's more like a Dan Brown book though: people might find the stock goodies and baddies narrative, historic/mythologic references and attention to detail with symbols and places all too believable but it's certainly possible to overanalys…

People make the same mistake with Dan Brown books, too.

The point is that for the player character and allies to be killing large numbers of NPCs - well, killing small numbers and enslaving large numbers, more accurately - would itself constitute a nuanced representation of that period in history, this being very much what the historical viking raiders actually did. The major flaw Devereaux finds in the text is that it discards this nuance.

That Ubisoft's motivation in making the game they did is to make a lot of money, and only that, does not vitiate the value of the analysis with respect to history, both that of the 9th century CE and that of today. Devereaux makes clear enough, I think, that it's not about authorial intent, but about the meaning of the work in context - which is to say, the style of textual analysis he's using is the one that has been solidly doctrinaire for many decades now. To call this "overanalysis" seems to me to miss the point.

It's not to say anyone shouldn't enjoy the game as a game; Devereaux says right up front that he does enjoy it for its own sake, and isn't trying to detract from anyone else's enjoyment either. He's a historian knowledgeable of the period the game purports to represent, and so he analyzes it from that perspective. Anyone who does not want to partake of that perspective or that analysis is, it seems to me, at perfect liberty not to do so.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#66

Post by poisonarena »

hackerbabz wrote: post #26
himinlomax wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel excluded by samurai games?

No because I’m white and I can play a million games with white protagonists. I don’t need to be included in every game. If I were nonwhite I think I’d want to be included in some games, yes.

I think the problem, is because if I can't play a black guy in a Japanese samurai game, its okay, because it is a samurai game, and its normal to think that. But if you hold that view to medieval europe games set in Poland or northern europe, that added artificial diversity so there are less whites and more representation thats a good thing. It is like a double standard I guess, and if you even question it, you are not progressive or fair. I never see articles on Rock Paper Shotgun saying JRGs or Samurai games are needing more diversity.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#67

Post by dagw »

himinlomax wrote: post #41
dagw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a fine argument as long as your game actually is historically accurate. The 'problem' (if you believe it is a problem) is once game companies are happy to "lie" about one aspect of history without any concern while at the same time refusing to "lie" about another part of history because it would 'ruin the historical accuracy'. If your samurai game includes werewolves and machine guns you don't get to turn aro…

> That is a fine argument as long as your game actually is historically accurate See, that makes some sense if you're doing high fantasy and shit that's set in a wholly fictional world. But just because some parts of a game are not realistic does not mean you should just forget about even trying. It makes no sense. > If your samurai game includes werewolves and machine guns you don't get to turn around say you didn't…

but if the setting is the middle Ages it would be just stupid and lazy

And here is the crux of our disagreement. I see it simply as an aesthetic choice. An art director got bored and thought adding some different looking knights might be fun.

Personally I'm far more 'offended' by overly unrealistic weapons and combat in my 'historical' games than I am by an unrealistic number of women soldiers.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#68

Post by pas »

himinlomax wrote: post #33
hackerbabz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because I’m white and I can play a million games with white protagonists. I don’t need to be included in every game. If I were nonwhite I think I’d want to be included in some games, yes.

I must point out two problematic assumptions in your reply: First, you're assuming "minorities" (and just that word is a problem, as it's utterly US-centric) are insecure and hypersensitive, which is quite patronizing. Second, this is the line of thinking that has led privileged American influencers to accuse slavic developers of neo-colonialism when they just wanted to represent their own otherwise underrepresented…

Probably the smart move is to make the playable character customizable (so you can be a black samurai girl with pink hair or whatever).

(Though naturally there will be some people who will feel that's just not enough. But that doesn't mean that these voices are right. Creators/publishers/developers have the right to make whatever game they feel like, with as much "accuracy" as they want.)

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#69

Post by Kaze404 »

mam2 wrote: post #44
xalava wrote: post #38

The most relevant point of this article is not about historical accuracy, but on the contradiction of claiming cultural sensitivity by including gender and origin diversity while totally missing the point on deeper issues. I've grown up in a period when pop culture didn't care much about cultural sensitivity. With proper education anyone can compensate and treat them as pure simplistic fiction, but I do think that th…

> I've grown up in a period when pop culture didn't care much about cultural sensitivity. Same, and as unpopular it may be, i firmly believe it's kind of better to not care. Because the opposite is precisely what happens here, which is caring only about a specific set of 'aspects' that are currently fashionable in the society, while failing to cover for the large majority of inequalities that are not "visible". It's…

Sorry, but you're just not looking for it. I'm personally a part of many social circles that talk about discrimination and diversity from Marxist lenses and it seems to be exactly what you're talking about. The people tweeting about More Female CEOs might be the majority in the US but fortunately they're far from the only group that talks about these issues.

Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications

#70

Post by shusson »

> I think the problem can be neatly summed up in just one thing about the game: the game will ‘desyncronize’ you (meaning produce a game over) if your character kills civilians

While I agree this broke immersion completely for me, I don't think you want 10 year olds killing civilians.

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