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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

#71

Post by throwanem »

rosmax_1337 wrote: post #57
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…

How about letting storywriting itself be the most important thing for games in fictional or pseudofictional settings. Adding racial quotas or gender quotas does not improve the writing of the story (or gameplay for that matter) automatically at all.

Bold of you to imply that quality of story is something AAA game companies ever care about, like, at all.

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

#72

Post by shusson »

torginus wrote: post #37

Vikings invade England, pillage and massacre the English, yet they are still seen as the good guys. I wonder if the people who made this game have some historical resentment towards the English.

What do you mean by "English", in a modern day sense or in a 10th century sense? I'm not even sure there was a concept of "English" in the 10th century.

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

#73

Post by rosmax_1337 »

himinlomax wrote: post #20

> But given the relative size of video-game markets, it isn’t hard to see why that decision might have been made [to include anachronistic ethnicities] Is anyone seriously believing that the lack of Africans limiting the market of, say, Samurai games? Why would it limit the market of Viking games?

I don't think they make decisions like this based on market-analysis. Rather, they toe the ""party-line"" set by shareholders in some cases, but more often the news media outlets.

I suppose not getting good response from shareholders or receiving less cooperation with various media outlets is tangentially a market-analysis, but it's not a consumer based analysis in any case.

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

#74

Post by forest_dweller »

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.

There are loads of games with characters from every corner of the planet as playable characters. Why do people always pretend they don't exist?

Just having a cursory look over my collection on steam:

* Streets of Rage had black, white, asian, men and women.

* Street Fighter had every nationality on earth represented.

* Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Almost all the characters were black.

* Grand Theft Auto V - One of the main playable characters is Black (there are 3)

* Sleeping Dogs which is set in Hong Kong so they are Chinese.

* Yakuza Series - Japanese.

* Prey (the first one) you play a Native American.

* Prey (the new one) you appear to be of Asian decent (probably chinese if I were to guess as the surname is Chu).

* Assassins Creed - Altair is a Arab.

* Assassins Creed 3 - Ratonhnhaké - Mixed Native American and White.

* Kratos - Greek

* King Pin - Black

* Aladdin - Arab

* Loads of Micheal Jackson games (Black)

The Grand Theft Auto series on its own has sold million and millions of copies.

I am still not including all the games where you can literally design your character to be anything you want. Or all the strategy games where you can choose your historical factions such as Age of Empires.

> If I were nonwhite I think I’d want to be included in some games, yes.

Have you ever thought that other people don't judge or identify characters in their entertainment on what race they are? I couldn't give a monkeys the race of a game protagonist. It literally doesn't enter into my mind. Why are you soo pre-occupied with it is the real question?

It only seems to be rich white people in the US (nobody cares about this shit in Europe btw because our identities are based on our nationality) seem to care about it.

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

#75

Post by Kaze404 »

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…

As a minority, I agree with OP. I've been playing video games for my entire life and the only Hispanic main character I can think of is that guy from Shadows of the Damned, which had potential to be great since it was made by my two favorite directors, but it's just awful. The character (along with every other) is terribly written and their qualities, like his origins, only come up to be played for cheap laughs. Horrendous.

That said, I really enjoy Lucio from Overwatch in every way I can think of.

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

#76

Post by narrator »

sergj wrote: post #3

This is the problem with historic games. Either you acknowledge the bad and good things, or you white wash the past. As the author notes at the end: „As I have argued here many times, fiction is often how the public conceptualizes the past and that concept of the past shapes the decisions we make in the present.“

"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past… The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it." - From George Orwell's 1984.

What's weird is that this was meant to shock, but here we are in 2020 and this seems to be a good idea to a lot of people for some reason. 1984 was influenced a lot by Orwell's observance of Stalinism, where they would edit out people from old photos who had been executed and so forth. Stalin took a close interest in editing screenplays, editorials and even fiction produced in the Soviet Union to make it fit the narratives of Marxism. Why did he spend so much time on all of this? You have to make the whole ideology hang together if you want to transform society. The ruler must remove all contradictions everywhere so that all voices sing in unison one unifying vision and that includes popular art and media. There must be no contradictions!

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

#77

Post by ReptileMan »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #10
serf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there that's the same conclusion that the author came to; they just presume there would be a higher ratio of African origin individuals rather than Asia due to trade-route proximities.

But the Vikings traded via Russia down to Persia, so Asian representation not less likely?

Barbary coast, Spain England via sea vs Sweden, Finland, Silk Road ....

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

#78

Post by billyoyo »

shusson wrote: post #72
torginus wrote: post #37

Vikings invade England, pillage and massacre the English, yet they are still seen as the good guys. I wonder if the people who made this game have some historical resentment towards the English.

What do you mean by "English", in a modern day sense or in a 10th century sense? I'm not even sure there was a concept of "English" in the 10th century.

it was precisely the 10th century when the concept of English emerged, with Athelstan being regarded as the first king of England.

the ideas of a unified Anglo Saxon people started to emerge at the end of the 9th century I believe, with leaders like Alfred the Great

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

#79

Post by spoopyskelly »

bsanr2 wrote: post #16
MatekCopatek wrote: post #11

Lovely article. The conflict between making a videogame (or any bit of popculture really) enjoyable and inclusive vs. historically accurate often comes up and both sides have a fair point. My personal solution is to both enjoy the content and then try to educate myself through articles like this one.

The fact that foreign traders are present in a game that, produced a decade or so ago, would very much not have had them means that the tension is less between "inclusivity" and "historical accuracy", and more between "contemporary, preconceived notions" and "historical accuracy". It turns out that "inclusivity" is more historically-accurate when compared to what we would have gotten in the past. In the end, it reall…

Slave traders, but woke, because they are diverse!
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