Comments on: Do Game Designers Have A Social Obligation?

By: Erik Hanson

Erik Hanson — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:04:24 +0000

I’ll say this here so I don’t derail January’s Context Clues before I even publish it, so please excuse me for venting.

An artist is responsible for the social context of a creative work every bit as much as a shooter is responsible for what’s in the chamber and where the gun is pointed.

But then, I sort of love context.

By: Thefremen

Thefremen — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:24:33 +0000

The last time there was a black character in a FF game he was Mr. T with a chaingun grafted to his arm.

By: Bakka

Bakka — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:55:35 +0000

Wow, really? That line is frightening.

I think you are absolutely right, Jeffrey, just as important as not relying on default-white-straight-cis-men is not relying on other kinds of default-stereotypes, too. This just seems like principles of good writing.

By: Jeffrey L. Wilson

Jeffrey L. Wilson — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 06:17:14 +0000

As a black male who has been gaming since age 10 or so, I have to say it’s always remarkably refreshing to see someone that looks like me in a video game that doesn’t involve sports.

There is, however, a second issue: what happens when such a character -does- appear. Will s/he be treated with as much care and respect as other characters, or will stereotypes emerge. I’m eager to see how the black character in Final Fantasy XIII is received. This Wikipedia line has me somewhat concerned:

“Sazh has a pet baby chocobo that lives inside his afro.”

Really……?

By: Dungeon Keeper

Dungeon Keeper — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:44:24 +0000

Completely. And art criticism is brutally unforgiving. Yahtzee’s most venomous rant has nothing over the most casual art critique. What was cutting edge at one show may be unforgivable kitsch the next time it’s viewed. Even established artists (hell, even the Renaissance masters) get their works racked over the coals. I’m not sure games have the substance or mindset for that kind of critcism. Master Chief and Mario just don’t have the stuff to last where the David and Bach take a beating.

Don’t get me wrong, I think with work and time games can be art, but like art, they need to grow, change and evolve beyond ‘stuff we build cuz people give us money to make them’ and do things that art does like represent zeitgeists, stand as timeless memorials to a culture at one instance, capture human experience in a universal way, express things that are intangible yet vital. I think we have moments like that in games but they are moments that happen the same way they happen in other media like film and theatre and are using old visual art rules to make it happen. Video games will have to develop their own unique way of being art and that will take a lot of time and courageous innovation. It won’t happen by doing the same thing over and over again.

By: Lake Desire

Lake Desire — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:12:50 +0000

It’s funny how some of the folks who argue that games are art get pissy when games, like art, are subject to social criticism!

By: Lake Desire

Lake Desire — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:53:42 +0000

Islamophobia is rampant. My uni’s newspaper recently published an article about some Muslim student activists campaigning against hate crimes and there are 200 comments full of Arabs are terrorists comments. (The haters think Muslims and Arabs are always the same people.) This is in a newspaper that usually gets a handful of comments in response to articles. I was shocked and appalled.

By: koipond

koipond — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:09:04 +0000

In short, yes. As a designer, though not for video games, I believe that we have to do more to make sure games include a wide as spectrum of people as possible.

Prime example of this and how easy it is, using a card game as an example, is Cheap Ass Games’ Give Me the Brain. In the game, any gender reference is ‘he’ rather than alternating or ‘she or he.’ This was awkward for me because I ended up playing this game at a homeschool group where I was the only man playing.

Back to the inshort answer. Yes.

By: Dungeon Keeper

Dungeon Keeper — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:47:05 +0000

I find it amusing they try the old “The ARTS never worry about this so if video games want to be ART, neither should we!!!!1!!”
Haven’t they heard of the Guerilla Girls? Other arts forms face the same forms of criticism over how they portray women, POC, stereotypes, cultural appropriation, etc. If video games want to be considered an art form, they’ll have to take the same criticism as the rest of the arts.

By: 8mph Ansible

8mph Ansible — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:10:44 +0000

That sadly reminds me of whine-fest for the Justice League comic books a while back when there was going to be more than just two token Black (one female one male) characters on the team.

(Almost exclusively) white fans pissed and moaned and complained about it. And in time some of them, along with having so many of “those people” on the team, that it was exclusionary and even racist because it pushed out all the other minorities. Yet none of them bothered to advocate for less/more than just white folk in the Justice League, even when this was pointed out to them and that the majority of the JL would still be made up of white people both after the new roster and if the comic team gave it to a Superfriend’s Tokenism concept.

Was so~ headdesky

-Ani8