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.
