Diversity Representation in MU*ing
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@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@silverfox It's not simply about being our escapism. It's about being our place to do our thing, within the confines of whatever setting we're in.
If I choose not to deal with a certain kind of story, so long as it's reasonable within the confines of the overall game story, then I have the expectation to have that choice simply accepted and everyone move on. The same goes for those that want to explore the intricacies of race, or culture, or whatever else.
I really hope that I'm not coming across as bigoted or bullying here, as that's not my intent. Gaming is an excellent tool to explore all kinds of things, I just don't care to be told that I must think about X, Y, or Z all of the time always or else I'm a bad person.
Ah, my sleepless babbling might've come across less clearly than I might've hoped, then. I think we're less in disagreement than it might seem.
You're saying it could be valuable, but you don't want to be forced to do it; that's certainly reasonable.
I'm saying, I think there's value in doing it, but I've noticed sometimes there's a sort of subtle cultural pressure to "stick to what you know" in making characters, or sometimes an unspoken implication that making a character who differs from you can only be because of ulterior motives, be it fetishism or 'forced social justice' or whatever else. I think that pressure not to step outside your own iRL/offline viewpoint for "fear of getting it wrong" is counterproductive, both narratively (because more diverse elements in well-rounded characters leads to a richer world and a better story) and in terms of trying to break us out of ingrained unconscious biases.
Aside from it discouraging players trying to widen the viewpoints they're willing to examine the world from—be that world fictional or otherwise—I feel like that "don't try to step outside of what you know, and if you do, you probably have ulterior motives" mindset also reinforces barriers between groups (by ethnicity, culture they were raised in, sexuality, whatever) that contibute to many systemic 'isms' and 'phobias' of various forms—racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. After all, if it's not worth trying to see a fictional story from that viewpoint because you might get it wrong, there's that unconscious association that it's not worth trying to see real world new stories (or anything else outside of fictional worlds) from that viewpoint because you might get it wrong.
So when I say that's something we as a community could work on, I mean we could work on doing away with that sort of pressure you sometimes bump into that "if you are going to make a character who isn't white, you must have an ulterior motive" or that it's somehow wrong/weird/bad to do so. Granted, that pressure is more common in anything set in the modern-day world, as opposed to fantasy worlds, but I'd argue that the modern-day world is where being willing to expand your viewpoint is actually potentially important to things outside of pretendy fun-times internet story games. Since we aren't experiencing widespread and systemic real-world racial oppression of elves, or werewolves, or Togruta, or anything else mythical or purely fictional.
(At least not last I checked; I grant I have run out of spoons and have not read the news in a day or so.)
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I'm a POC IRL.
There are a lot of white people who can sympathize with POCs, but most cannot empathize with POCs.
Please stay in your lane and don't try to play a POC just b/c. If you don't know the life experiences of what it's like to be a POC, then just play an interesting white person. No one will begrudge you for it.
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Let's not speak as if we embody the will of our tribes, yes?
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While I was sitting thinking y'know, I've played a fair number of non-white chars and I've been fortunate to not encounter OOC racism on games, someone called my Native American PC 'chief' on chan and
I'll just go sit over here and
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I can only really speak to Arx, as that's the only game I've had any input on the policy/world of. We wanted people to have representation without having to recreate struggles they face in life. That's why the Platinum Shift (the thing that helped human society in many ways, including the mixing in different skin colors and traits to the point no one would think of discriminating that way) happened in the past. That's just the way things are, now. You can be from Bastion and be very dark skinned, pale, or anywhere in between**. You can be of any gender or sexual orientation, and there's no built in discrimination that accompanies it. We went so far as to bend lore-creation to the purpose of enabling these things. No, it doesn't always make perfect logical sense to us in the framework of our experiences, but I mean. There are crazy elves who ride giant spiders. None of it makes perfect logical sense. It doesn't have to.
** just not of the East Asian characteristics for clarity because that IS a homogenous group that exists elsewhere in the world.
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@Kanye-Qwest And it worked out so well for me.
In creating Ephrath my thought process was basically 'Ok, I'm making a jeweler. I want her to be black. I also want her to be really into snakes. .... I wonder if I can find a PB that fits this theme.' And then I found the image I did and she's gorgeous and snek and silver eyes and I was like ermg yes this is perfect for me and it is Arx where black girl with silver eyes would be totally acceptable DONE.
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since people are upvoting i'll double post instead of edit to add: but that works because it's a fantasy game. I'm not saying all games should be that way. We aren't invalidating anyone's real life experiences in Arx, any more than we are recreating or exploiting them, BECAUSE it's a fantasy.
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@Kanye-Qwest I kind of think of it, like -- sometimes I want to watch media of women kicking sexism's ass and taking names. Overcoming and being awesome. Sometimes I want to watch media where I just don't have to think about sexism at all and it's just people being people. They both have places for me, just depends on my mood.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
since people are upvoting i'll double post instead of edit to add: but that works because it's a fantasy game. I'm not saying all games should be that way. We aren't invalidating anyone's real life experiences in Arx, any more than we are recreating or exploiting them, BECAUSE it's a fantasy.
The feedback I've heard about this from folks is good. It worked! I mean nothing is perfect, but by and large mission accomplished. It definitely doesn't DIRECTLY apply to non-fantasy games, but I do think it's valuable to examine if we can apply parts and pieces of your approach. Maybe? I don't know.
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@Roz said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Kanye-Qwest I kind of think of it, like -- sometimes I want to watch media of women kicking sexism's ass and taking names. Overcoming and being awesome. Sometimes I want to watch media where I just don't have to think about sexism at all and it's just people being people. They both have places for me, just depends on my mood.
^ All of this.
I am down with playing either. I just don't want to ever have to worry about it OOC on a game.
IC is a story. OOC? Kill it with fire.
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I am of German-Japanese descent. But I very rarely play biracial people on games because tbh especially with part asian folks they tend to be fetishized or I will get comments about how exotic or mixed people/babies are prettier.
It's not something I really want to deal with in my fantasy life, tbh. I heard it and experienced it enough. (Imagine being amerasian with auburn hair and also hanging out in game stores in the 90s. I heard/experienced a lot of gross stuff from "they're just awkward" men, though granted just having tits would have done it I'm sure. But a lot of those comments were very specific to my appearance and a lot of people making them were very proud of themselves for not just being into 100 percent white people.
I do not have an issue with people playing what they want, I've played male and female PCs of various cultural and racial backgrounds.
But sometimes the reasons why one might not want to play a female POC in particular may also stem from unwanted ooc behavior in the past, too. Or cringeworthy behavior on the part of others playing a brown or black PC to go on an exotic adventure.
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@Sunny said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
since people are upvoting i'll double post instead of edit to add: but that works because it's a fantasy game. I'm not saying all games should be that way. We aren't invalidating anyone's real life experiences in Arx, any more than we are recreating or exploiting them, BECAUSE it's a fantasy.
The feedback I've heard about this from folks is good. It worked! I mean nothing is perfect, but by and large mission accomplished. It definitely doesn't DIRECTLY apply to non-fantasy games, but I do think it's valuable to examine if we can apply parts and pieces of your approach. Maybe? I don't know.
It depends what you want, naturally.
The more... verbose people in this thread seem to want a place to actually explore the reality of being a POC. Which, unfortunately, requires at least a historic series of events that Arx specifically set out to avoid.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
The more... verbose people in this thread seem to want a place to actually explore the reality of being a POC.
I haven't gotten that impression, but if it's true, that strikes me as exactly opposite of something that would make RL POC comfortable/feel included.
ETA: Bunch of white people 'exploring' what it's like to be a POC? "My culture is not a costume."
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@Sunny said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
The more... verbose people in this thread seem to want a place to actually explore the reality of being a POC.
I haven't gotten that impression, but if it's true, that strikes me as exactly opposite of something that would make RL POC comfortable/feel included.
I haven't gotten that impression, either. I've seen @Sparks be verbose on this, but my takeaway from her stuff was "It was really valuable to my perspective to branch out in making my characters on MMO dark-skinned," not "I want to play stories in game about the effects of racism, not stories where race isn't an issue." (For one thing, I know that she enjoys Arx's setting. Enough to staff there!)
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I don't get the impression people are talking about exploring.
I know I'm not willing to 'challenge myself' as a writing or thought exercise when the cost of failure isn't egg on my face, it's a slap to someone else's.
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We're literally talking about people playing things outside of our experience and having our conceptions challenged.
Not having those conceptions rendered inert by a fantasy/fictional setting, challenging them.
How can you challenge your OOC conception of a POC's experiences without any of the impacts of what being that race entails?
He/Him
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@Tinuviel I think you're conflating a few things. One, having a fantasy setting decide to basically forego racism as part of the theme doesn't mean that all the players and the OOC experience will suddenly be free of bias, because OOCly we're all still brought up in this system.
Second, I think you're conflating "this experience was valuable for my personal learning and I think others could find it valuable, too" with "all games must provide this specific experience in the same way." I mean, I already don't think that the MMO examples are going to apply the same way to MU*s for all of the reasons that have been mentioned on this thread already. (The visual/graphics component being the most relevant.) But it does remind me of the instances I've heard of where a male player has decided to play a female PC and experienced, for the first time, how the OOC tone becomes different. And how that helped them better appreciate and empathize when female players would be frustrated at being targeted and harassed by creepers.
I felt like the overall message was just, as I said, "I found this illuminating in regards to better understanding some small piece of the difficulties those different from me face." Honestly, I don't think you have to play out IC stories of oppression to experience some benefit of broadened horizons. A lot of the time, deconstruction of these internal biases start with just experiencing more stories with diverse characters at all. It helps to break down our default assumptions.
A setting wherein racism and sexism don't exist may not be educational on the ways in which these forces work in the real world, but they do provide a place to explore characters as equitable players in a common story, and that in and of itself is valuable.
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Even within the fantasy post-racism, post-sexism, post-isms-in-general (except maybe nationalism and some classism I guess) Arx world I still find myself having to think critically about questions related to this thread.
Ex.: Katarina, for the folks who don't know, was born in the Dune Kingdom, a strange and mysterious land across an ocean from the setting of Arx. When I applied for her off of the roster, I outright said that I saw the challenge of playing the character as doing so in a way that isn't lazy isn't-she-exotic cod-early-20th-century-Orientalism. There's nothing WRONG with her profile as written on the roster, but it would be very easy to take what's there and just kind of play her as the descendant of any number of capital-E Exotic characters from fiction that don't necessarily speak to any particular truth, whether Lovecraft's Arab mystics, Disney's Jasmine, Dejah Thoris from Barsoom Which Is Totally Not Meant to Represent the Middle East or Darkest Africa Honest You Guys Really, Storm from the X-Men, whatever.
I still end up trying to find ways to set her apart as being Not From Around Here because I think it makes for a good character beat in a game where bloodlines play a significant part in determining who has the power, but I do my best to do so in ways that reflect that kind of post-isms vision of Arx -- she has a strong accent and her cadence and word choices are a little weird, as opposed to something stupid like showing up to a dinner party naked and smiling knowingly while trilling, "ah, but you Compact people, you still cling to these barbaric textiles?"
Ember, too, has her backstory where she's the first woman to directly inherit a barony in her fealty, instead of having to rule by technicality or regency. I can't imagine playing her as anything but intensely proud of that fact and ready to bring it up constantly until people are sick of hearing about it, and that pride determines how I travel other aspects of her character (e.g. not taking the always-ready-for-a-war "Bloody Baroness" and making her a force for conservatism in her fealty; if she was conservative, she wouldn't be baroness).
So, even though Arx has the built-in "guys, people just aren't racist or sexist here, so leave that shit outside," it still presents ways to question that kind of stuff -- just without the playing-with-fire aspects that people might perceive about real-world identities or cultures.
I mean, if I'm just talking out of my ass, please tell me.
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There are also a variety of things being discussed. One of those things is 'how to provide a safe and inclusive play space'. Removing sexism and racism from the game's theme are big here.
That's different from 'how to realistically portray a real world minority in a mostly-realistic modern game world without causing offense to players of that minority RL'.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality
Yeah, I also think a lot of us play different types of characters for different reasons. I don't see myself and why I make the PB choices I do reflected in a lot of the posts in this thread, but that's aite, we all play the characters we do for our own reasons.
