I am feeling alienated and offended by Bioware

[Krion_Vark]

Hells bells, point missed moving on.

What exactly is your point then all I see is someone whining that in a piece of FICTION their country has joined with a country they seem to deem as a piece of shit. You have not really made any good points onto why it WOULDN'T happen while complaining and saying that someone has missed the point and shouldn't bother replying to the thread anymore.There is a great topic here but you are killing it by replying to people and then dismissing everything they are saying because it does not go up with your views on the situation that my friend is an immature brat throwing a tantrum finding out that Santa isn't real

Ok here we go, one of the general ideas in my post is Canada does not represent itself enough in videogames, I am not asking to shove it in people's faces, advertise it, or focus on it solely. I just want our own industry to realise it has a home that it has made no attempt to acknowledge, something that I find detrimental for a variety of reasons. If I am dismissing valid points other people make then I am not apologising to you, I acknowledge that this may have happened more than once but I have received some incredibly stupid comments that really are taking a drain on me and thus it becomes hard to differ between the two. I apologise to them.

So then how do you feel about Ubisoft being the main people that made the deal with the Tom Clancy name to make the Splinter Cell games?
Hell I am American and seeing as how the way people see America in the world they make good protagonists or antagonists because it is one of the worlds BIGGEST SUPERPOWERS. Hell if someone decided to have America get nuked off the face of the Earth I really wouldn't care much because its a work of fiction and how someone said it on the third page I believe:

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
-Albert Einstein

OP, I've played tons of games where America gets the shit kicked out of it. Never cared. If it was annexed by Mexico, I still wouldn't care. At all. Do you know why most people think Americans are obnoxious? Because they have a tendency to feel superior just because they were born here; it doesn't look good on them, and it doesn't look good on you. It might be time to stop identifying so much with the slab of land you were born on, and start working on an individualistic point of view, because as it stands, you seem like the type of person that, if born in a southern American state, would petition the government to let you fly the rebel flag next to the interestate.

By the way, it probably has a lot to do with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA_superhighway
If you think you're mad now, just wait until it actually happens.

 

[Aureli]

EDIT: I guess only a couple of people saw what I was saying and gave a thoughtful comment in oposition or agreement. The rest are just too dismissive to the topic to take seriously. Thankyou for the comments but I did not get out of this what I hoped for.

So basically you don't want to hear someone's opinion because it doesn't match your own?

Interesting. I worked on the game for two years years and didn't even know that. I suppose that shows how much it mattered to us development-side.

As in "not at all."

It shouldn't come as any surprise, really. Even we can joke about the comedically "inevitable" annexing of our own country. My question is: if we can laugh about it, why can't you?

By the way, we have plenty of cultural identity. We're just humble enough to not have to shove it down everyone else's throat. Please try not to mistake humility for a lack of identity. Not everyone needs to scream patriotism from their roof for a country to have a strong sense of self.

I agree with this guy. Why should it matter what country a character comes from? Honestly, it's not going to change the gameplay whether the character is from America, Canada, New Zealand, Zimbabwe,China or Timbuktu. "Oh, this character isn't from the same country as me. I can no longer associate with him and no longer enjoy this game." Think that way and you're seriously going to limit what games you can play without getting offended or bored. For videogame characters, relating to them is based on your humanity and compassion, not what nation you call home.

 

[Brikson]

From reading what you and a few others seem to be saying, Canada has a huge cultural identity problem. Yal make it sound like its always someone from an another are saving the world and never a Canadian. I can see that being a problem if all yalls media does this.

A question though, what prevents Commander Shepard from being Canadian?

 

[Unia]

I can kind of relate to you OP. Maybe if the wording had been more along the lines of "Canada, United States and Mexico merged into the great nation of Irrelevance" it wouldn't sting so much?

Finland has some game developers but I can't think of a single mainstream game set in Finland. Can't blame them, really. Your average action game would largely take place in samey pine woods and you'd run out of people to shoot few hours in. I still find it funny how Remedy went through so much trouble to set Alan Wake somewhere in Washington, though.

 

[Snake Plissken]

You know what Mass Effect needed to give a better representation of Canada? A soundtrack by Propagandhi...

 

[Saulkar]

P.S. I did not forget money is a key factor, but that excuse can only hold for so long.

You could have just posted this. It's the reason. It will sell better with the American target audience and most Canadians aren't so immature as to care about the setting or the flag on the protagonist's coat.

And this is a perfect example of why you should just realize it's not a big deal. We Americans get mocked all the time, but you don't see me at least whining about it.

Read the post! Find out why it hurts first!

I did, it's still not that big a deal.

It is to a Nation with a weak sense of identity in the current generation.

Maybe you think that, but since I've never heard anyone but you complain about Canada's cultural identity, it's probably just you being overly patriotic like backwoods rednecks are here. By the way, one of my cousin's entire nuclear family is Canadian and I never hear this from them.

Not patriotic, concerned (Patriotic sounds too jingoistic from a personal point of view). This is an issue because a culture is an indentity of a group. When you fail to acknowledge it has the potential to show other cultures that you do not care for it. This is on the PERSONAL LEVEL. While it has no real political influence, it affects how the goverened body feels about itself deep down. Using one family instead of a studied group holds little merit. Not to be offensive.

It's a bigger sample than what you've got, which is just you.

My Sample?
Work (a super market and all its employees and customers)
School (1000+ Students and teachers (vote cast had a 93% support for Canada as being where we would have prefered to be born))
Extended Family
And last but not least a city with a wish to see more Canadian media from our own nation, even if it never crosses the border.

Still a very limited consensus but you cannot argue against 80% to 90% of 18,000 people.

It doesn't seem like they were polled on their opinions on the specific concern you have. Preference to where your're born (and those results don't surprise me, you'd probably get similar results from just about everywhere) isn't really the same question. Or is that just the school poll and it's throwing me off of what you're trying to say?

The school was polled, but the town has a 80 to 90 percent participation rate in commiting acts openly supporting the existance of Canada and 20% to 40% on its global image (depending on how busy the year is (these are educated esitmates from active observation of active professions and community spirit ), i.e. Helping in the maintanence of the Western development museum without getting anything in return to ensure people get the truth, rather than what comes through the media (but nothing is unbiased). At work everyone voices their love of Canada and I often talk to people while stocking the produce shelves and have heard very little that would say that they are satisfied with how Canada represents itself. General idea, we want people to know who we are without ramming it in their face. Even though having an subtle Canadian videogame protagonist would have more of an emotional response from Canadian audiences and give us a sense of who we are, it would at the same time give a positive image of Canada if done right.

 

[Blind Sight]

I am all for Quebec keeping their culture but they need to allow more culture in, Canada is built on letting culture in, building a unique one all in itself. I want culture to enter Canada and add to it, not dominate it.

As for Afrika, I am not a history or social major so do not quote me on that. Inform me, that is a request.

Well put it this way, American culture is already very commonplace in Canadian society, it hasn't really dominated it or anything either. Canada being a mixed culture society has its advantages, its diversity makes it far harder for a singular cultural aspect to dominate.

Well African cultural practices have actually been fairly well protected, but that's because African governments have never really openly identified with the cultural values of all its people. If you look at a map of Africa that divides culture based on ethnic group, language, religion or social structure, there's often dozens or even hundreds of diverse cultural groups in one country. This is because during the European imperialism of the 19th century, the borders of African countries followed lines based on colonial claims, not cultural values. Thus, when decolonization occurred, many of the nations kept the same borders. A lot of the conflict in Africa mostly comes from the technological and social kick-in-the-ass the Europeans gave the Africans in the past few hundred years. African culture was primarily tribalistic before then, with some citystates, the rapid acceleration to the nation-state in the past fifty years has somewhat taken a toll on outdated cultural practices from a different time (stuff like witchcraft, voodoo, etc.).

 

[BENZOOKA]

ranting_reply

Any Finnish game (that tries to reach international success, or success at all) most probably has an American protagonist.

Big deal. It's fictional.

But I bet there are Finnish films about Finnish people having Finnish problems and solving them with Finnish solutions while speaking Finnish.

We are used to American/British (therefore foreign) TV and movies, they're as familiar as our own and therefore actually not that foreign.

A game with a Finnish protagonist solving Finnish problems would barely sell big even in Finland. It wouldn't get adequate funding, because it wouldn't be expected to sell well. Also, there aren't that many major Finnish game developers, as you probably know or at least can imagine.

Then, let's take a look at Max Payne. A comic book -like American tough guy protagonist. He's shooting bad guys with akimbo uzis in slow-motion. Sounds a little better than a stoic Finn crudely asking if the bad guys could return his kidnapped girl, or whatever it was they did wrong.

Yes, I know they could've made the protagonist/surroundings/whatever Finnish, but it wasn't their idea to do so. It also could've been a risk, making the game unconvincing, or making less players to relate to the game or the protagonist, for that matter; jeopardizing the possible success of the game. But more so making a game that more people would enjoy, than just playing it safe.

Usually games are created from the ideas: what would be cool/fun/rewarding to play. That idea does not necessarily have got to do anything with their culture.

Are video games art, or are they fiction or are they products?

In my view, video games are mostly interactive entertainment. They usually include a lot of creative content and some games even make it possible for the user to use their own creativity in the game to create or make something unique happen. They are a form of art, through some controversy, but in my opinion they are.

Are they products? They are advertised, sold in quantities, are a huge business and they have a price. You can get one from a store, just like a carton of milk. Perhaps costs more, but nonetheless, they are products.

They often contain fiction, but they do exist so they are not fiction. I assure you.

Compartmentalization should not have a say in this though. It's just a label.

How seriously you take the medium as an art form should be right up there with how much you expect them to reflect or impact culture.

I disagree. That's not always the case.

I take music seriously. I don't expect it to reflect my or any other person's culture. It most probably just reflects the artist's feelings, thoughts and views. Whatever they might be.

/ranting_reply

 

[Ekonk]

I'm Dutch. My country is never even mentioned in video games. I was ecstatic when it was referred to in World War Z. Suck it up.

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What? At least being annexed is being recognized. Besides, it's hardly ever displayed as a good thing. In Fallout 3 America is portrayed as a shell of it's former principles (which it actually is today), and while not explicitly noted in-game, the annexation of Canada is portrayed as being a bad thing.

Not sure how it is in Mass Effect though. It's not like they support it, either. It's just their version of the future. Not necessarily the way they'd like it to be. It's called a dystopia.

And don't ever face-palm me again.

 

[blindthrall]

This comes from a well respected and totally serious governor, so you have to respect it:

Or he WILL annex you, even if he has to tear through Oregon and Washington like Sherman to do it.

 

[Felix 'Solomon' Hultgren]

Oh no not another whiner, it is not even real, get over it, suck it up butter cup!

Yeah, suck it up. You have no idea what you're talking about. You wonna hear my sob story?
The two swedish companies that has done any success outside Sweden is DICE who has done the Battlefield series and Mirrors Edge and Massive Entertainment who did World in Conflict. Now, if you have played or even just heard of any of those games, you know that Sweden isn't exactly well represented in them. In fact, the closest that any of these games come to Sweden is a NORWEGIAN character. I wouldn't assume that you know this, but we Swedes have pretty much the same relationship to Norwegians as you Canadians have to Americans. Funny that you took Norway as an example, btw. Oh yeah. And DICE is now owned by EA and Massive Entertainment is owned by Ubisoft.

Also, do I have to remind you of all those who feel alienated by being the enemies in every single fucking game? Namely Russia and Germany. And Germany even produces games where the enemy is German. Messed up.

 

[Saulkar]

EDIT: I guess only a couple of people saw what I was saying and gave a thoughtful comment in oposition or agreement. The rest are just too dismissive to the topic to take seriously. Thankyou for the comments but I did not get out of this what I hoped for.

So basically you don't want to hear someone's opinion because it doesn't match your own?

Interesting. I worked on the game for two years years and didn't even know that. I suppose that shows how much it mattered to us development-side.

As in "not at all."

It shouldn't come as any surprise, really. Even we can joke about the comedically "inevitable" annexing of our own country. My question is: if we can laugh about it, why can't you?

By the way, we have plenty of cultural identity. We're just humble enough to not have to shove it down everyone else's throat. Please try not to mistake humility for a lack of identity. Not everyone needs to scream patriotism from their roof for a country to have a strong sense of self.

I agree with this guy. Why should it matter what country a character comes from? Honestly, it's not going to change the gameplay whether the character is from America, Canada, New Zealand, Zimbabwe,China or Timbuktu. "Oh, this character isn't from the same country as me. I can no longer associate with him and no longer enjoy this game." Think that way and you're seriously going to limit what games you can play without getting offended or bored. For videogame characters, relating to them is based on your humanity and compassion, not what nation you call home.

People have disagreed with me and I respect that, but I have received shit comments that make it hard to tell the difference between a good one and a bad one. The problem is that too many personalities are replying at once. I now understand that this is an intellectual deathtrap. The more you reply, the more your credibility dgoes down the toilet.

 

[Tsaba]

Isn't Shepard an "earthling" and constantly being referred to his race (ie: Human Race), not a country? I don't understand why your so upset that he doesn't blatantly represent Canada, do you need him to represent you that much that it keeps you up at night and before you say we don't get it, the problem is that it's a "video game", it's not "real." So wine and cry and put people down because they don't agree with you, all your doing is making your self look like a fool.

 

[Saulkar]

From reading what you and a few others seem to be saying, Canada has a huge cultural identity problem. Yal make it sound like its always someone from an another are saving the world and never a Canadian. I can see that being a problem if all yalls media does this.

A question though, what prevents Commander Shepard from being Canadian?

I did not say that he was not, I goofed up there, thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Faladorian]

Shut up. Who cares?

 

[PrototypeC]

I understand where you're coming from... I mean, I was a little annoyed that in the Fallout games, a number of popular war games and even futuristic games like Mass Effect all think it just makes sense for Canada to become the USA 2, because that's pretty much how they see it now. You'd have to be some sort of idiot to think Canada would just agree to become more of the United States in real life.

You ever see the episode of Fairly Odd Parents when they look at a map of North America? Canada is like a sliver at the top of the screen while the U.S. is basically the whole map. Mexico is about twice Canada's size. That shit's not even subliminal!

Do I feel like you(OP) have a valid point? Well yes, but if you asked me whether I thought you were overreacting a bit, I'd have to say yes too. Our cultural identity is weak, that's true, and all the "funny" jokes at our expense by the American media can really get under the skin, but I don't feel like Bioware "caved into pressure" or don't have any pride in their country. Show me an article where a Bioware employee says, "Well of course that's what would really happen", and then I can get worked up too, but right now I think it's a bit much.