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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

#151

Post by benrbray »

forest_dweller wrote: post #74
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.

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…

> It only seems to be rich white people in the US seem to care about it

I do think there is a kernel of truth to what you're saying, but I don't think it's right to dismiss entirely the fact that representation IS important.

Historically, "rich white people" have been in control of the media, so it's great to see this group becoming more self aware. Sure, from time to time there is some overcorrection, but eventually things will settle down and the world will be better for it. We should let people with compelling stories tell their stories! Now that streaming is the norm, there's room for everyone, now that we're not limited to only the stories which are marketable for primetime.

Speaking from my own experience, I have been so so happy to see so much positive representation of LGBTQ characters in mainstream television / movies lately. As a kid, I had no positive examples of LGBTQ adults in my life, so I had no choice but to struggle by myself. Whether we like it or not, many children learn about the world through television.

It would be difficult to express in words how deeply moved I was to learn that Disney Channel aired a children's show ("Andi Mack", [1]) with a gay main character, whose relationship with another male character was a major plotline. Shows like this give LGBTQ kids characters they can relate to, and gives non-LGBTQ kids a positive story about someone who is different from them. That children today might not need to deal with the same pain and isolation that I felt as a kid makes me so incredibly happy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andi_Mack#:~:text=Andi%20Mack%....

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

#152

Post by tarsinge »

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.“

The problem is more with the positioning of the game. They want the "Historic" label, but in reality it's Fantasy. Modern fantasy is a fertile ground for fun, diverse and "history inspired" stories. But trying to rewrite history with the excuse of "but it's fiction" is wrong, and I agree with the author, irresponsible and dangerous. But I guess the marketing is too tempting, AC:Valhalla should instead be positioned as Skyrim, not as a "moderately historical accurate game with more diversity".

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

#153

Post by siltpotato »

criley2 wrote: post #90
mam2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>> 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. As a white dude, I've found that "not caring about it" means "only white male characters are allowed" I've noticed that folks who "don't care about it" actually care A LARGE AMOUNT, A VERY VERY LARGE AMOUNT, when a non-male or non-white protago…

That sexuality of a character in a game is even known is problematic; this implies the sexuality is being acted on. I wish developers would stop exploiting the four Fs to induce us to buy, and sadly my minimal consumption of video games is only a splash against the tide.

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

#154

Post by rgblambda »

goatinaboat wrote: post #96
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.

Vikings invade England, pillage and massacre the English, yet they are still seen as the good guys. It's curious that what is now Britain has been invaded and its people enslaved many times over the centuries but no modern day British person harbours any resentment for it towards present day Italians, Scandinavians, French, Moroccans...

Moroccans? Think you mean Dutch. Unless you're talking about the Barbary pirates.

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

#155

Post by julianmarq »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #121

> > Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities. > This statement is making ... implicit [claims] (our diverse team means this game was produced in a careful, sensitive way) For everyone who isn't aware of the history of this statement, it was a way for the game to include…

I fail to see how that in any way justifies the decision. Seems like the implication is that christians (specifically catholics) should just be okay with having their religion insulted if the decision was made by someone of a different cultural background.

If anything, that just makes it more offensive instead of less, IMO.

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

#156

Post by galangalalgol »

rosmax_1337 wrote: post #51

[flagged]

Yeah, it has both left and right wing neurosis represented. Probably because rather than generate something coherent and new, it mashed together whatever trended highest on the big data culture combiner thing AAA game houses use to theme their re releases of the same game over and over. The games are garbage but maybe the meme concentrator engine used to create them could be useful as a warning for us to stop being nazi sympathizing social justice warrior misogynists.

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

#157

Post by pferde »

shusson wrote: post #83
stupidcar wrote: post #5

> Now, do I think that the developers set out to create a sanitized defense of colonialism (much less an apologia for Nazi race ideology)? Of course not. But they ended up doing it anyway. I agree with the article's main points, but I think the author gives the game's creators too much credit here. You could tell from the first trailer that this game was going to engage in historical revisionism of the "the Vikings w…

> but this game is an entirely intentional attempt to defend _Viking_ colonialism specifically. And they will have been perfectly aware that this played into neo-Nazi tropes. I think they just optimized for a wide audience. They romanticised the viking age from the perspective of a modern day person in the shoes of a viking. I don't think they had an agenda to defend viking colonialism.

It's not about what their agenda was, it's about what the perceived message is. The article clarifies it in great detail.

Let's compare this to the recent PC brigade efforts of banning "master/slave", or "blacklist/whitelist" terms in software. Whoever introduced "master/slave" terms into e.g. database software certainly did not have an agenda to defend slavery, yet people still got mad.

And if something as minuscule as a simple word can spark so much outrage, then a mainstream, ridiculously popular game doing such blatant and heavy-handed history whitewashing of an entire culture is a veritable powder keg waiting to explode.

("Whitewashing" is also a potentially dangerous word, I hope I did not trigger someone here.)

But you are correct in one thing - Ubisoft, being a greedy corporation, optimized for getting the most money, even at the expense of making the game's "made by diverse team" disclaimer a sad, tone-deaf joke.

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

#158

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Kaze404 wrote: post #89
seibelj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the opposite of a Marxist but they get class critique correct as the major difference between people. A privileged white male who went to private school and the Ivy League has tons in common with a privileged black woman who went to private school and the Ivy League than he does to a poor white man in a rural area. Celebrating success based on identity means a lot less through the class prism.

I personally don't think it means less, it just leads to different conclusions. While I still see class as the predominant factor, I still believe everyone would benefit from seeing "different" people in more spaces, regardless of class. For example, a rich black man still has things to add that a white man doesn't, for example, simply because of how being black influenced their own experiences which in turn mold the…

So someone black is just different enough to admitted to these spaces, but someone poor isn't?

Economic apartheid isn't just endemic in the US, it's a core value and seen as a positive thing.

And gender/race identity politics are not a serious threat to it.

Because it means corporations can carry on being corporations as long as they have a couple of privileged middle class women in the boardroom.

It's an improvement of sorts, but only in a very limited way. Time and time again in the US we've seen this does nothing to alter the predatory values that make corporations so toxic.

Ultimately it's not about tribal identity at all. It isn't even about class.

It's about values. Is your culture driven by generosity, maturity, open-mindedness, and curiosity, or is it motivated by greed, narcissism, selfishness, competitive snobbery, and naive tribal identification which is relentlessly hostile to out groups?

Identity politics without value politics is a superficial band-aid which can't fix the political and economic hemorrhaging caused by the unaddressed underlying condition.

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

#159

Post by throwaway894345 »

bluGill wrote: post #124
quietbritishjim wrote: post #6

> > Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities. > This statement is making ... implicit [claims] (our diverse team means this game was produced in a careful, sensitive way) Ah, I think that's a misunderstanding of why the statement is there. It's not to claim that the gam…

Considering the anti-christian tone of the game I think they were completely missing Christians. (I haven't played the game, so I'm taking the article's word on how it portrays Christians as fact, which might or might not be true) You cannot claim diversity if you are missing a faction - even if the faction is one you consider against your beliefs.

In light of the parent comment, we should presume that the team had Christian representation and those Christians were fine with it, not that there were no Christians. There’s a lot of media that uses caricatures to vilify Christians (“Easy A” comes to mind), but there is relatively little uproar from Christians about it. They don’t seem to be very sensitive apart from a small handful that our society cherry-picks as the basis for our stereotypes (e.g., the Starbucks Christmas cup fiasco was literally one guy and Buzzfeed ran that story like it was a nationwide Christian movement).

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

#160

Post by pferde »

rosmax_1337 wrote: post #73
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.

Yes, they're essentially minmaxing their income, consumers be damned. They know that people will buy their games no matter what, so they don't even bother optimizing for them.
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