Heh, opposing black zombies in Africa basically is a pass to ignore everything you say. So if this person is basically angry to get reactions, IE trolling, why are we paying attention?
Square Enix Responds to "Racist" Deus Ex Character
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
I didn't like the zombies in RE5, they did offend me just a tad, but this I'm okay with. I think it's mostly laughably bad voice acting more then anything else, but hey, I'm from Canada and so far removed from that kind of accent I kind of find it hard to believe it actually exists. I remember the first time I heard a brooklyn accent. That was cool. The first thing I thought was "Just like in the movies".
Nope. It means that idiots will always try and look for racism where it doesn't exist.Sober Thal said:
So ya know what I say?
"FUCK IT!" I'm done with this racism issue, because no matter how much logic or rationality you speak to them, they'll always find some reason to claim a particular personification of a character is racist.
THANK YOU F*CKING AMERICA!!!
The only thing annoying me is the southern accent. I really, really dislike southern american accent. That character could've been of any race or gender and I'd still cringe at the accent. Don't know why but I borderline hate it.
I guess I don't take any offence seeing as I'm a european or I just happen to be insensitive... although I do react to overplayed stereotypes. And that sentence more or less contradicts me but I haven't actually encountered many (or any) black people with deep southern accent.
Change her voice to something less (in my opinion) mind-grinding and all will be fine, for me at least.
I guess I don't take any offence seeing as I'm a european or I just happen to be insensitive... although I do react to overplayed stereotypes. And that sentence more or less contradicts me but I haven't actually encountered many (or any) black people with deep southern accent.
Change her voice to something less (in my opinion) mind-grinding and all will be fine, for me at least.
The point here is that only one of the black people in the game has this accent. It is totally possible for one person to have an outrageous, hilarious accent. It is not indicative of their entire race, and Deus Ex doesn't suggest it is.
Funny, I was so enraged by being misrepresented I was going to go and do the same, but I'm too busy getting into fights outside a pub.Ragsnstitches said:
I don't think it's racist, it's just a character and people are looking too deep into it. Sad thing is I live near Detroit and MANY people do talk like that whether they be white, black, or anything else.
Hell, put this Lady/Man/I don't know into a game and see the public respond, it's not a stereotype, it's just how the person is it would be racist if EVERY character of African decent was like that in the game but just one makes a character.
<youtube=C0lLsEM-knA>
Yes, this is taken off the local news in MY town. Living near Detroit is weird.
Hell, put this Lady/Man/I don't know into a game and see the public respond, it's not a stereotype, it's just how the person is it would be racist if EVERY character of African decent was like that in the game but just one makes a character.
<youtube=C0lLsEM-knA>
Yes, this is taken off the local news in MY town. Living near Detroit is weird.
Really? I honestly... Hang on.Hyperactiveman said:
*smashes chest high wall*
I honestly never noticed any more bums being black than white, and as for influential characters... I'm not too far in, but Van Bruggen seemed fairly important to the plot. It sure couldn't have continued if he wasn't
Intelligent enough to keep security footage of Zhao as an insurance policy.
I don't know why that's any more offensive than the portrayal of Zeke Sanders or the Chinese traders in that game. Narcisse seems to me like the kind of guy who'd object so someone over-emphasising an accent or using ethnic coloquialisms. I'll remember not to say "bro" or "chur" around him.
What about this one?Bribase said:Hmmn... 2000?Carlston said:
On topic, i don't really think there's much offensive about this, i see the chinese characters as more racist even.
Why would you get upset over a game.
I laughed...I laughed a lot at that. Good god...Drakmeire said:
Look, at this point people just pick and choose where they want their racism to be. Everything is racist to somebody, especially in this god forsaken land we call America. I say fuck it all and we start making games just like the Boondocks (the animated cartoon/former comic strip) and just load a game to the brim with racism. If they want to nitpick everything and call it racist, we'll give them more racism then they can handle.
People are acting like the complaint is that the character speaks like a black person but that's really not why anyone is complaining. The problem is that the character speaks a dialect that is essentially shorthand for "stupid negro." Zeke speaks in understandable ethnic colloquialisms while the Chinese characters speak like normal Chinese people; the character in question, however, speaks in a certain way that most Americans associate not with regional/cultural African American dialect but with the traditional stupid black person stock character. If there had been only one homeless character with substantial dialogue and it had been a clearly gay man who spoke with a ridiculous lisp, or a Chinese woman who spoke like Charlie Chan, then people would complain about that too. When you have a piece of media with very few minorities, and one of those characters happens to sound like a poorly-voiced minstrel show dropout for no particular reason, you can't be surprised when people complain. Is this vicious KKK racism on Square Enix's part? Of course not! But it certainly is a continuation of the utilization of the "stupid poor black woman" character that has no place in any work of fiction, video game or not.
How would you feel if you played a video game where almost every character was a woman, and the one man you encounter was a mouth-breathing rapist? Or if everyone was straight, and the one gay character was an effeminate queer? The fact is, the character people are upset about was not even remotely believable and instead relied on a clearly racist stock persona - no one in arguing that everyone at Square Enix hates black people, they're just saying that we've moved past a time where "dumb *insert race*" is an acceptable way to define a character.
How would you feel if you played a video game where almost every character was a woman, and the one man you encounter was a mouth-breathing rapist? Or if everyone was straight, and the one gay character was an effeminate queer? The fact is, the character people are upset about was not even remotely believable and instead relied on a clearly racist stock persona - no one in arguing that everyone at Square Enix hates black people, they're just saying that we've moved past a time where "dumb *insert race*" is an acceptable way to define a character.
And people wonder why most video games just tint the caucasian character models brown and call it a day. Sheesh.
Right off the bat, the video starts, and the first thing you see is a black woman digging through a trash can. Taken out of context, I can see how that would seem offensive. Most non-gamers aren't going to realize that there are other black characters in the game, or that the game features rich white people digging through the garbage too, because it's kind of a major plot point that everyone's suddenly poor because of the drug company conspiracy.
(Not a spoiler, it was in the trailers.)
In general, I don't think giving a black character a southern accent, in and of itself, is any worse than giving an aggressive character a New Jersey accent, a mob kingpin an Italian accent, or a blonde character a Californian accent. Which is to say, it's stereotypical. Handled well, it could be used to create a character that averts or subverts the audience's expectations, creating a three-dimensional and believable character that audiences can identify with and respect. Maybe even aspire to be like them some day.
This particular character does none of the above in the scene shown in the youtube video. She's just a typical NPC, there to advance the plot and add flavor to the world. I don't think the developers intended for the game or even this scene to be racist, but watching the video by itself, I can't help but feel a little squeamish. Once when it opens and she's just digging through the trash, and then again later when she starts laying on the Jar-Jar talk a little thick, and then again when I realized the player wasn't going to pay her for any of the information, despite several prompts to do so, her overly agreeable attitude no matter what her situation is or what bad news she's discussing, even the way she was holding her hands towards the end... I just... ugh. Yeah, I can see how this could make people uncomfortable.
I should point out that I haven't played the game, either. So if she gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome later in the story if you pick the right path, or even if it turns out she's some kinda badass operative or something and this is just her cover, well... then it might be a different story. Either of these would put the character into the realm of subverting the sterotype, rather than playing it straight, as in this video.
I'd like to know, who wrote this dialogue? Were they black or white? Are they from a southern city where everyone talks like this? What prompted the voice actress to choose that particular accent? Was she just improving? Did they do several takes and they kept prompting her to make it more like that? (Is it possible she was doing the part even more stereotypically, until they asked her to reign it in?) Was it written up that way even all the way back in the Design Document?
These questions explore the *intent* of the game developers. Everyone involved in this scene from the voice actress to the writers to the modellers and texture artists were all involved in creating this character and bringing her to life. Presumably they were aware that the work they were creating would touch upon themes of race. Statistically speaking, many if not most of them were probably white males. I find it difficult to believe that the developers weren't going for this character archetype. The trouble is, they nailed it a little too well, and the fact that she's digging through the trash when you first see her dumps a shitload of fuel on the fire.
I could imagine a scenario where everything in this video was designed by committee. Some guy drafted a sheet full of possible NPCs to fill this slot in the game, and the Art Lead decided he liked the look of the really dark-skinned one. (You don't see a lot of people with that skin tone in mainstream media, the only black celebrity I can think of with skin that dark is Michelle Obama, and surely she's as far away from a harmful portrayal of blacks as you can get, right?) The voice acting would probably be done next. Maybe the dialogue was written neutrally and the voice actress jazzed it up for one of the takes. Maybe the white guys in the studio were even standing around uncomfortably and asking "Is this all right?" And the actress was like "Don't worry about it, this is how my neighbors talk." (Obviously this is all just speculation on my part. I don't even know the name of the actress, let alone where she's from. Presumably she's in the credits, and this will all come out and be archived in a wiki somewhere in a few weeks.)
Naturally the sound lead would pick the take that made her stand apart from the rest of the NPCs, if there was more than one take to choose from. I don't know for sure but the sweater she's wearing looks like it was just some stock NPC clothing option... maybe the level designer chose the combination of parts that would make up this NPC. The animation, I'm not sure about. It's extremely jittery, which might be part of the effect they were going for, or it might indicate random jitter in the game engine to mask a very heavily compressed animation. Was mocap used for this?
If this entire thing was captured as some sort of digital performance, like in L.A. Noir, that adds a whole new bunch of questions. Was the actress trying to do something specific with the role? Just following orders? Trying to make a political statement? Deliberately trying to manufacture the controversy we're currently discussing? Attempting to produce Oscar Bait? She certainly sounds like she's done this accent before. How do we know that everything seemingly racist about the whole performance wasn't the actress's input into the role? I'm not arguing that it's likely, I'm just wondering if it's possible. Actually knowing for sure would require learning the nuts and bolts of how this scene was put together.
What I'm saying is, it's possible this was just the Perfect Storm. That nobody intended this character to come across as racist as she looks in the youtube video with the context of the game is stripped away. Obviously I don't know the whole story. I wasn't there. My point is, we don't know.
But that said, the developer's intentions don't matter, and 100% of what I just said is moot, if the average black person finds it offensive. The real tragedy here isn't a bunch of racist people making a racist game at a racist games company. It's that nobody called them on it during quality control. This scene was seen and heard by artists, developers, and playtesters. Even accounting for tunnel vision, you'd think someone would have noticed it. Hell, I'm the most insensitive prick I know, and even *I* was uncomfortable when she started really laying on the Jar Jar Binksisms towards the end. So it's not like white guys are incapable of noticing this shit.
I would love to hear more about the development process and the actress involved in this scene, but sadly those details are pretty obscure and probably not very likely to come out, even among the wiki-nerds. I'm pretty sure the actress is black, though, and so I would be very interested in hearing her take on this scene and what it was like recording it. Escapist, maybe you could make that happen? Make some phone calls.
Moviebob says this better than I can, but there's been a lot of racism in the past, and it continues to this day, but in the past it was way worse. My distant ancestors did a lot of horrible, shitty stuff to Michelle Obama's distant ancestors. Rationally, I know that *I* didn't do any of that stuff, so it's not my fault. And if it's not my fault, then obviously it's not my job to make up for it, right? Collectively, though, white culture has done so much damage to black culture throughout history... destroyed or overwritten so much that can never be regained. And there are still people alive who lived through the tail end of some of the worst of it. So just seeing a performance like this one that hits enough of the right notes (regardless of whether intentionally or accidentally,) is enough to trigger all sorts of bad memories.
Hell, it made me feel uncomfortable, and I was born in the 80's.
That said, please forgive the hardcore gamers flooding this thread with straw-man arguments, flimsy excuses, and claims of double-standards. They're not saying what they're saying because they hate blacks or because they don't know their history. They're saying what they're saying because they are gamers, first and foremost, and they don't want someone else's politics to come along and ruin their game.
It's a panicky knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat, which is a shame, because the other people in this thread are actually making an effort and discussing the issue of race. Which I think has probably got to be healthier than keeping quiet and trying not to think about it.
Sorry this post is so long. It's 2:30 in the morning so I'm not exactly 100% right now. I don't think the game as a whole is offensive, but I think this scene in particular was pretty insensitive. I think it was probably an honest fuckup, but I'd love to know more about how it happened and why, and what people were thinking. And also, what context from the game about this character might I be missing which could further inform this scene and maybe hint at what (if anything) they were trying to do with it.
Right off the bat, the video starts, and the first thing you see is a black woman digging through a trash can. Taken out of context, I can see how that would seem offensive. Most non-gamers aren't going to realize that there are other black characters in the game, or that the game features rich white people digging through the garbage too, because it's kind of a major plot point that everyone's suddenly poor because of the drug company conspiracy.
(Not a spoiler, it was in the trailers.)
In general, I don't think giving a black character a southern accent, in and of itself, is any worse than giving an aggressive character a New Jersey accent, a mob kingpin an Italian accent, or a blonde character a Californian accent. Which is to say, it's stereotypical. Handled well, it could be used to create a character that averts or subverts the audience's expectations, creating a three-dimensional and believable character that audiences can identify with and respect. Maybe even aspire to be like them some day.
This particular character does none of the above in the scene shown in the youtube video. She's just a typical NPC, there to advance the plot and add flavor to the world. I don't think the developers intended for the game or even this scene to be racist, but watching the video by itself, I can't help but feel a little squeamish. Once when it opens and she's just digging through the trash, and then again later when she starts laying on the Jar-Jar talk a little thick, and then again when I realized the player wasn't going to pay her for any of the information, despite several prompts to do so, her overly agreeable attitude no matter what her situation is or what bad news she's discussing, even the way she was holding her hands towards the end... I just... ugh. Yeah, I can see how this could make people uncomfortable.
I should point out that I haven't played the game, either. So if she gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome later in the story if you pick the right path, or even if it turns out she's some kinda badass operative or something and this is just her cover, well... then it might be a different story. Either of these would put the character into the realm of subverting the sterotype, rather than playing it straight, as in this video.
I'd like to know, who wrote this dialogue? Were they black or white? Are they from a southern city where everyone talks like this? What prompted the voice actress to choose that particular accent? Was she just improving? Did they do several takes and they kept prompting her to make it more like that? (Is it possible she was doing the part even more stereotypically, until they asked her to reign it in?) Was it written up that way even all the way back in the Design Document?
These questions explore the *intent* of the game developers. Everyone involved in this scene from the voice actress to the writers to the modellers and texture artists were all involved in creating this character and bringing her to life. Presumably they were aware that the work they were creating would touch upon themes of race. Statistically speaking, many if not most of them were probably white males. I find it difficult to believe that the developers weren't going for this character archetype. The trouble is, they nailed it a little too well, and the fact that she's digging through the trash when you first see her dumps a shitload of fuel on the fire.
I could imagine a scenario where everything in this video was designed by committee. Some guy drafted a sheet full of possible NPCs to fill this slot in the game, and the Art Lead decided he liked the look of the really dark-skinned one. (You don't see a lot of people with that skin tone in mainstream media, the only black celebrity I can think of with skin that dark is Michelle Obama, and surely she's as far away from a harmful portrayal of blacks as you can get, right?) The voice acting would probably be done next. Maybe the dialogue was written neutrally and the voice actress jazzed it up for one of the takes. Maybe the white guys in the studio were even standing around uncomfortably and asking "Is this all right?" And the actress was like "Don't worry about it, this is how my neighbors talk." (Obviously this is all just speculation on my part. I don't even know the name of the actress, let alone where she's from. Presumably she's in the credits, and this will all come out and be archived in a wiki somewhere in a few weeks.)
Naturally the sound lead would pick the take that made her stand apart from the rest of the NPCs, if there was more than one take to choose from. I don't know for sure but the sweater she's wearing looks like it was just some stock NPC clothing option... maybe the level designer chose the combination of parts that would make up this NPC. The animation, I'm not sure about. It's extremely jittery, which might be part of the effect they were going for, or it might indicate random jitter in the game engine to mask a very heavily compressed animation. Was mocap used for this?
If this entire thing was captured as some sort of digital performance, like in L.A. Noir, that adds a whole new bunch of questions. Was the actress trying to do something specific with the role? Just following orders? Trying to make a political statement? Deliberately trying to manufacture the controversy we're currently discussing? Attempting to produce Oscar Bait? She certainly sounds like she's done this accent before. How do we know that everything seemingly racist about the whole performance wasn't the actress's input into the role? I'm not arguing that it's likely, I'm just wondering if it's possible. Actually knowing for sure would require learning the nuts and bolts of how this scene was put together.
What I'm saying is, it's possible this was just the Perfect Storm. That nobody intended this character to come across as racist as she looks in the youtube video with the context of the game is stripped away. Obviously I don't know the whole story. I wasn't there. My point is, we don't know.
But that said, the developer's intentions don't matter, and 100% of what I just said is moot, if the average black person finds it offensive. The real tragedy here isn't a bunch of racist people making a racist game at a racist games company. It's that nobody called them on it during quality control. This scene was seen and heard by artists, developers, and playtesters. Even accounting for tunnel vision, you'd think someone would have noticed it. Hell, I'm the most insensitive prick I know, and even *I* was uncomfortable when she started really laying on the Jar Jar Binksisms towards the end. So it's not like white guys are incapable of noticing this shit.
I would love to hear more about the development process and the actress involved in this scene, but sadly those details are pretty obscure and probably not very likely to come out, even among the wiki-nerds. I'm pretty sure the actress is black, though, and so I would be very interested in hearing her take on this scene and what it was like recording it. Escapist, maybe you could make that happen? Make some phone calls.
Moviebob says this better than I can, but there's been a lot of racism in the past, and it continues to this day, but in the past it was way worse. My distant ancestors did a lot of horrible, shitty stuff to Michelle Obama's distant ancestors. Rationally, I know that *I* didn't do any of that stuff, so it's not my fault. And if it's not my fault, then obviously it's not my job to make up for it, right? Collectively, though, white culture has done so much damage to black culture throughout history... destroyed or overwritten so much that can never be regained. And there are still people alive who lived through the tail end of some of the worst of it. So just seeing a performance like this one that hits enough of the right notes (regardless of whether intentionally or accidentally,) is enough to trigger all sorts of bad memories.
Hell, it made me feel uncomfortable, and I was born in the 80's.
That said, please forgive the hardcore gamers flooding this thread with straw-man arguments, flimsy excuses, and claims of double-standards. They're not saying what they're saying because they hate blacks or because they don't know their history. They're saying what they're saying because they are gamers, first and foremost, and they don't want someone else's politics to come along and ruin their game.
It's a panicky knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat, which is a shame, because the other people in this thread are actually making an effort and discussing the issue of race. Which I think has probably got to be healthier than keeping quiet and trying not to think about it.
Sorry this post is so long. It's 2:30 in the morning so I'm not exactly 100% right now. I don't think the game as a whole is offensive, but I think this scene in particular was pretty insensitive. I think it was probably an honest fuckup, but I'd love to know more about how it happened and why, and what people were thinking. And also, what context from the game about this character might I be missing which could further inform this scene and maybe hint at what (if anything) they were trying to do with it.
I'm more offended by false champions for equality making sensationalized stories, trying to confuse readers to what is and is not racism. That's what offends me. That and I couldn't fully get past Adam looking like a bro-y douche who sounded like a wannabe Batman
i am offended that people like narcisse does not recieve psychiatric help. there is an obviuos mental problem, and your not helping.
this is really going into the movie racism ideology where if you have no black characters - its racism. if you have few black characters - its racism because "its only few" and if you have majority of black characters its also racism because nto all black people are portraiyed as angels.
so then majority of white people in, say, alabama is "stupid negros"?
this is really going into the movie racism ideology where if you have no black characters - its racism. if you have few black characters - its racism because "its only few" and if you have majority of black characters its also racism because nto all black people are portraiyed as angels.
Black people who portray a certain negative role in a game?
OMGZZHAXXORZ IT'S RACIST.
To quote Foreman: "Some people don't know the difference between racism and everybody get's screwed"
OMGZZHAXXORZ IT'S RACIST.
To quote Foreman: "Some people don't know the difference between racism and everybody get's screwed"
Seriously, I just want one of these guys to come out and say "Oh alright, it's offensive to you? We'll just get right onto patching it so he becomes a fat white dude."
I encounter people who speak like that on a daily basis.
I encounter people who speak like that on a daily basis.
I have never been to the American South nor even the United States at all, yet EVEN I know that such accents actually exist to varying extents for both European and African Americans. Has this guy ever spoken to anyone outside of New York?
She doesn't fit any racial stereotypes apart from being poor which is not really a fair stereotype in either DXHR or REAL LIFE where abject poverty and forced vagrancy can be a fact of life from people of all backgrounds.
I think this is a product of people in northern cities only ever hearing a black southern accent in the context of racism and assume that the accent itself is racist. The actual content shows her as thoughtful and rather enterprising yet Evan Narcisse seem to automatically assume it is for "humour" to the point of accusing outright racial intimidation with her mere depiction.
The thing is she is just another weird character who should NOT BE JUDGED SUPERFICIALLY!
That is what is being done here, he is being prejudiced.
I wonder would this man treat REAL black women having the same voice with the same derision? Or would he deny that they even exist?
I wonder would he consider this racist:
Hmm, they're talking in "broken english" therefore Steven Spielberg and Alice Walker are RACISTS!
I don,t really see a problem with it.
it might sound racist but I,m sure some afro-Americans talk like that way (some not all) like some Caucasians talk like rednecks.
it might sound racist but I,m sure some afro-Americans talk like that way (some not all) like some Caucasians talk like rednecks.