People from the US. "Americans" is a bit vague...apparently "United Stateser" is used in part of South America, but that's a bit long. And "spam" or "seppo" might get me in trouble.Treblaine said:
Africa in gaming. An example from CoD MW3...
- Thread starter KwaggaDan
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It's not ambiguous at all. It is painfully obvious that "American" in this context means "A citizen of the United States of America"thaluikhain said:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/american
You know what IS incredibly vague? A term like "USAliens"! Why the hell is the "A" extended to "Aliens"!!?!?! They were born there weren't they? They grew up there? They are integrated into the society of the country? Why Alien? Because they are white?
Bullshit.
Mr Patel who lives down my street isn't white, but he's as British as they come. He was born in UK and so were is parents. To even suggest he is alien would be incredibly offensive. The idea that he "didn't belong".
Just call Americans... get ready for this... "Americans". Why are yo being so pedantic?
Does anyone remember the Russian attack bears in Red Alert 3? Or the alcoholic Russian in Mike Tyson's punch out?
These are all just stereotypes that no one really needs to get worked up over.
These are all just stereotypes that no one really needs to get worked up over.
Where's that video of M-Bison shouting "YES!!! YES!!!"
I'm just gonna watch the negative reviews for a while and put that on loop in the background. Finally, a CLEAR sign from gamers that they demand quality! Hopefully this trend continues.
I'm just gonna watch the negative reviews for a while and put that on loop in the background. Finally, a CLEAR sign from gamers that they demand quality! Hopefully this trend continues.
I don't remember being attacked by Hyenas in Resi-5...unless my TV is just THAT bad. I thought it was just the same dobermans only with a weird head deformation. Still, I've yet to play MW3 but I'm sure it's better (ie: more tolerant of Africa and, those who dwell therein) than Resi-5 which had you attacking mud-hut dwelling, grass skirt wearing humans who attacked with spears. Granted, those aren't the only Resi-5 enemies and they are a bit more accurate than Caucasian special forces with laser-scoped laser-firing death weapons. Of course they could have just used more giant spiders and other such insects...KwaggaDan said:
It implies that because Africa is "exotic", that the only animals there are exotic, and therfore they have exotic "equivalents" to "normal" animals like dogs and cats and cows. The Nepal thing is completely irrelevant, you might just as well have talked about sand desert cultures finding it racist to depict them surrounded by sand dunes.Zero47 said:
BTW. Isn't it great how you can just ignore when someone makes an actual point, and you don't have a defence, by picking on a secondary point? (Not that it worked out)
Legitimate complaint in the OP.
Whole bunch of people missing the point with "Well, there are stereotypes about the US, too!" and "CoD isn't meant to be realistic!"
Things are goin' well!
Whole bunch of people missing the point with "Well, there are stereotypes about the US, too!" and "CoD isn't meant to be realistic!"
Things are goin' well!
Tin Man said:
The number of times I see 'You sir," like we're all pleasant English gentlemen or sommat, is driving me crazy. Anywho, good to see another amateur psychologist in the works on an internet forum, but just so you are aware, YOU ARE COMPLETELY [I put a bad word here, and realized it wasn't very nice of me, so I've taken it out]ING WRONG.
Since I'm running short on time, I'm gonna summarize: I understand the time, patience, and hard work that video game designers put in to their product. When I first played GTA4, I was like, "oh my god, this city is the most detailed virtual environment I've ever seen in a game, or even digital simulation before!", but at the same time, I didn't like the story, and I wasn't a fan of the actual game-play bit. But every second that passed by, I'd see evidence of a design team that worked their asses off to create something so detailed and astoundingly realistic that I couldn't help but go 'wow!'
Just using that as an example of how I can respect a game, but not like it. Now let's look at Modern Warfare 3 and an introduction via it's predecessors. Call of Duty 4 brought new life to FPS gaming--after the standard of Quake/Unreal Tournament style games was introduced, and with the popularity of Counter-Strike riding high, and Battlefield 2 somewhere in there, and Halo having graced the market with its own at-the-time revolutionary take on the ol' humans-versus-aliens plot device--Call of Duty 4 came along and gave us an extraordinarily face-paced action game that really got the blood flowing. It had a unique (at the time) story, some truly shocking set pieces (at the time), brilliant customization that let you play what you wanted to play in multiplayer, and was extremely nice to the PC Gamer crowd with mod support, mapping tools, developer console, dedicated servers, etcetera. It had detailed environments and terrific effects, but most importantly, it balanced itself by having a thrilling single-player story, and at the same time a fiercely competitive and action-filled multiplayer portion. It was strong on both sides.
Then Modern Warfare 2 came along. With the success of Call of Duty 4 riding high, developers began saying, "Let's take some ideas from that game, and integrate them into our own!" This became apparent in games such as Battlefield Bad Company, which took it's basic Battlefield premise and made it more about run-and-gun action. This is most easily represented by the removal of a prone ability--going prone allows you to move slow, maintain a location for a long duration of time without being spotted, and is generally recognized as a more patient form of tactic in games such as Battlefield 2, ARMA 2--any large scale combat game to a degree (this isn't one of my stronger arguments, so if you pick this one to rip apart, you're very silly). Anyway, removing prone or whatever, my point is Bad Company 2 was an attempt at earning a share of the profits being taken in from gamers with fast, action-oriented games that focus less on tactics and patience and more on excessive amounts of gunfire.
Note that I'm still not criticizing the games yet--Bad Company and Bad Company 2 I thought were okay games, I just prefer the slow tactical ones personally. But they had great destructible environments and good effects, so in terms of action, yeah, they did well. But when Modern Warfare 2 hit the road, here's where I started to develop a pessimistic attitude towards games being developed.
One, Modern Warfare 2 basically took CoD4's story and had it re-written by someone who was completely bonkers. The concept of supplementing a fast-paced action shooter with a good story seems to have been tragically lost, and the result was a ridiculous story, a tiring amount of references to The Rock (a good movie though it was), and a rather weak presentation for single-player in general. When you play a main character (or characters who every fifteen minutes or so get pulled to their feet by an aging general, get predictably found out, betrayed and then shot, get predictably betrayed again, shot, and then burned alive, AND THEN falls out of a boat, off a cliff, lands in a sandstorm, gets sucker-punched by that aging general who stabs them/you, and only finally dies after having a knife thrown into his skull like he's some kind of zombie--well, let me just say Modern Warfare 2 didn't make me feel so much like a soldier of fortune as it did a wimpy mentally-handicapped goofball, who has the ability to slaughter countless numbers of soldiers in a way that makes genocide look like a quaint get-together on the weekends, and yet is unable to recognize even the slightest hint of suspect from individuals around them...well, it made me feel like Modern Warfare 2 was giggling at how foolish I was to be playing it.
The graphics were good (though easily re-creatable in CoD4; just put in r_contrast 4, r_brightness -1, r_specularcolorintensity-something 1.7 or so in the console; ANOTHER thing that MW2 lacks), the sounds were intense, and in general it was a very well-polished game, but lacking in many key features. For one, no modding or mapping support, and no developer console. For two, they completely destroyed the community aspect of online gaming via their match-making service that does as much for socially-inclined PC gamers as an arsenical omelette does for improving one's ability to live. The multiplayer customization was still fun too, but all sense of enjoyment was lost for me, when I'd join a server and hear a bunch of people I'd never played with before yelling at one another calling each other a variety of derogatory terms that I'm not interested in repeating here. Oh, and having to 'unlock' Hardcore mode? That made me begin to -really- dislike the game.
So a silly story, over-rated popularity based on the sales figures it achieved for essentially a game whose primary focus was a) multiplayer and b) selling lots and lots of copies, a lack of acknowledgment to the PC gaming crowd, and a generally unlikable anti-community are among the reasons why I lost interest in Call of Duty as an enjoyable franchise. After the insane popularity of MW2, other games attempted to replicate it as well, just as they had done to a certain degree with Call of Duty 4. The result was a succession of first-person shooters dealing with hectic firefights, shallow single-player stories involving nukes at some point, and an emphasis on competitive multiplayer. Because of this repetition invoked by the big-name video game developers, I grew tired and disinterested in games that were being designed for consoles, in particular first-person shooters, because they really all felt the same. Some touted unique features, but in essentials, it was all so similar. You run, you shoot, bad guys die, you watch some huge explosions, you set off or defuse a nuke, you win, you play multiplayer to make up for the four-hour long singleplayer portion of the game.
Ooookay, I said I was short on time, and now I really am, so I'mma conclude quickly: when I first saw MW3, it looked exactly like MW2, just instead of ''shock and awe'' taking place in the US, now they've taken it to a variety of international locales--and I'm not impressed. I want games with depth, with interesting characters, a unique plot, a clearly defined objective, minimal use of moments where your experience is suddenly interrupted by your character being horribly molested while you sit there tapping your fingers waiting for the actual game bit to resume. Half-Life 2 did a good job of this.
Modern Warfare 3 is like a Christmas present that your uncle gave you last year--it adds nothing unique to your collection, you already have it, but the only difference is that this year it came in different wrapping paper. And that's what I don't like. That's why I was jokingly saying I was going to watch negative reviews. Because big-name developers have been at this for over four years. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released for PC November 5th, 2007--we're five years in the future now, almost to the exact day, and what have they done? They've released the same damn game, but now it's old and stale, and for me personally, the wrapping paper doesn't distract from that fact.
I don't like Modern Warfare 3. I haven't even played it, but I don't like it. Does that make me a hypocrite? Sure. But you know what, I'll be damned if I pay $60 for something I've already bought and paid for twice before, and wasn't very happy with in the end.
Yeah, I agree. The Chernobyl section should of had attack bears. Wheres my bear cavalry!KwaggaDan said:
To be honest, they were probably so pleased with themselves that they thought of hyenas that they couldn't bare to not use the fuck out of the idea.KwaggaDan said:
What's the matter with exotic? Exotic is interesting, compelling and exciting!DanielDeFig said:
That is not derogatory. That is not offensive.
Americana is exotic. Parisian chic is exotic. And I'm quite sure to some, English castles and country manors are exotic, this is great that people could be so interested in us.
And you know what, Africa IS exotic! They have hyenas and elephants and huge stampeding herds of wilderbeast, vast river valley and savana plains. It's an absolutely extraordinary continent...
The worst you can say is simply through a weasel pun imply it is perverse to like such things from how "exotic" as interesting and unfamiliar and "exotic" as in strip-teases are the same word. But that's two completely different meanings and only someone of extreme immaturity would try to conflate the two.
What i meant is that, if the only positive or interesting thing about Africa you can come up with is that it's "different" (BTW different from what exactly? To ppl who live here it's normal), then you should probably do more research before presenting your product. There are far better themes and issues that can best be tackled by using African countries as a backdrop: Corruption, Famine, Post-Colonial countries, severe ethnic diversities in a unified state, etc.Treblaine said:
While it's certainly different here, it's not interesting simply because they have Hyenas and Lions, because then we might just as well use Swedish Moose as the main attraction to present Swedish culture to anyone outside of Scandinavia (or Canada). All those animals are no more a part of the cultures within Africa than in any other country, and simplifying the wonderful continent that is Africa into simply the wildlife and landscape is offensive, since you don't include the actual people. You can't have a country with borders without humans agreeing (Pretending) they're there. Constantly ignoring the actual people who live there, that make up the cultures here, is what's offensive.
The cultures here are different from western cultures, and presenting that would be interesting, and definitely something I would look forward to being presented to western game audiences. But simply presenting it as "Hey they got animals we don't", is NOT presenting interesting African cultures. It's just coming up with an animal within Africa that could replace the standard COD attack dog.
The fact that that's all they could come up with, is what pisses me (and the OP) off, they might just as well have had actual dogs, or had the level somewhere else and used dogs. If this was a rare occurrence, I wouldn't be bothered (Just one level in COD: MW3). But the fact is, Africa is a very rare topic in gaming, and even rarer is games presenting it well.
And once again you fail to address your horribly incorrect use of an an american racial stereotype, to all dark.skinned people. When in Africa, most people have never even heard of KFC, and certainly have no way of understanding this racial stereotype.
(Exactly why I don't "get" racial stereotypes. How can you claim all "black ppl" enjoy KFC, if most of them can't even afford it?)
Yes and Africa being "exotic" is not a negative issue, neither is it derogative towards Africans. My example is just as irrelevant as your example or the issue on hand. Before you can call something stereotypical it would have to be an established stereotype, like how the Dutch are associated with windmills. I'd be slightly annoyed if a game played in the Netherlands with old ass windmills everywhere and everyone walking on clogs, this is different, this is an established stereotype.DanielDeFig said:
I'm done with this discussion to be honest.
Soooo, you're saying MW3 has no references to - in the part set in Africa, Sierra Leone in particular - famine, corruption, post-colonialism and ethnic tension? I don't see how presence of exotic animals or any exotic elements are mutually exclusive with those themes.DanielDeFig said:
"we might just as well use Swedish Moose as the main attraction to present Swedish culture to anyone outside of Scandinavia"
Australia. Kangaroos. Deal with it.
>admire flora, fauna and landscape
>FUCK YOU! SO YOU THINK ALL THE PEOPLE ARE SHIT, HUH? YOU LIKE MY HOUSE? THAT MEANS YOU MUST HATE ME AS A PERSON WWUURRRRAAAAAAHH!!!
Sorry, I do find the flora and fauna interesting, that doesn't mean I disregard all the people who live in those countries, I'm not one to pry on people's personal affairs. I think people deserve their privacy. I.e. I'd be flattered if some foreigners wanted to see the historical, landscape, flora and fauna of my area but I'd frankly be creeped out if they looked at us. I return the sentiment to them, people are not to gawp at.
"The cultures here are different from western cultures, and presenting that would be interesting"
This is modern warfare 3 we are talking here... you're going to run through, shoot a few dudes then get-to-da-choppa. This isn't The bloody English Patient. African warlords and roving gangs of insane bandits make for compelling bad guys, but it's a whistle-stop tour, you're not going to get the entire socio-political history of Sierra Leone in that time, not of the entire nation, just a depiction of the rebel groups who haunt that part of the world.
"But the fact is, Africa is a very rare topic in gaming, and even rarer is games presenting it well."
With the unfair complaints that come from every time the country is depicted you can tell why. Set a game in Nepal, China, Iran, ANYWHERE but Africa... it's not worth the bullshit.
FYI, Africa is a continent, not a freakin' country! Just something terrible happens in one particular African country doesn't mean it's occurring in every nation in Africa.
Yeah, I know that. The problem is so few people do, I can't reacall the game's name now, but I remember in one section you simply went to Africa (it looked like Central Africa btw). Africa is normally seen as a single country, as much as that sucks, or the problems can be linked together for most of the sub-saharan countries...shadow shogun said: