Escapism vs Racism

[EHCB]

So these post apocalyptic worlds are meant to be tough, gritty places where all the ugly elements of humanity pour out of the cracks and shoot each other, but the fact that in Fallout you can be any race, gender or sexual orientation you want and still achieve the same as any other player without an NPC so much as commenting on it kind of makes it feel like a nicer place to live than our own planet. Pretty rainbows and sunshine, actually.

I understand people play games primarily for escapism and these issues have a very real chance of striking too close to home and ruining their fun but since this is just a forum why don't we have a thread discussing how these more true-to-life problems could be woven tastefully into a game and why so few games tackle them. Would humans really stop judging other people by skin colour just because there were a few mutants wondering around to divert their attention, would it be kind of beyond screwed up to allow players to roll a character that looks like them only to have certain quests barred to them by racist NPCs and just what are the Ku Klux Klan up to in post-nuclear America? Folks want to know.

[TΛPETRVE]

Who knows, this discussion might actually be more expedient than the "gay characters" thread. Or maybe not. Let's see.

[Keaton]

tastefully

I think this word is out of place here, we're talking about Wasteland 2.

Would humans really stop judging other people by skin colour just because there were a few mutants wondering around to divert their attention

In a world of make-believe everything can work. Very simple answer, I know. But I don't like the rigid rules usually emerging from threads like these.

would it be kind of beyond screwed up to allow players to roll a character that looks like them only to have certain quests barred to them by racist NPCs and just what are the Ku Klux Klan up to in post-nuclear America?

The main problem could be that they would have to add a lot of content that entirely depends on the race of your characters.
What if your chars don't meet the criteria?
But then again, since you have at least 4 characters in your party it would be very likely that you get to see much of that content. So the additional workload would be worth it.
...
I'm all for racism ...
I mean in the game.

edit: But barred quests because one of you chars has the wrong skin color? Hell no! Better just change the quest, make it available through other means. For example help the guys that racist pig would want you to screw if all of you had his skin color.

[TΛPETRVE]

The main problem could be that they would have to add a lot of content that entirely depends on the race of your characters.
What if your chars don't meet the criteria?

What criteria? It's as easy as choosing your character's appearance in the beginning .

[Keaton]

Criterium then.
Just for once I wanted to make a well-rounded argument and then you come along!
The important stuff comes after the sentence you quoted.

[Emmy Lou]

Would humans really stop judging other people by skin colour just because there were a few mutants wondering around to divert their attention

This is an interesting question to ponder. It can be looked at a from a few angles. Sure, the apocalypse wouldn't completely wipe some of the cultural beliefs of people as there are obviously survivors who remembered the world before (otherwise there wouldn't be a game!) But you do have to wonder how much of our society's views of race are based in environment, history and up-bringing, and thus how much of this would survive into the post-apocalypse.

When you remove society, the class structure, money and 95% of the human population from the equation after the nukes drop, I think a lot of people would be able to put perceptions about whether someone is "ghetto" or "honky/gringo" or "illegal" or whatever one might apply to race and see people as fellow survivors. The bombs don't play favourites. Who survives or not is essentially a lottery that scrubbed the world of those who didn't have winning tickets. And especially in a mixing pot type society like America, that means the idea of "minority" might go right out the window as the population pool is suddenly and quite harshly adjusted. So if you are looking for someone to lean on in the wastes, even if you have perceptions on race carried over from the old world, you'd have to be dangerously stubborn to refuse help from someone who bleeds the same red when your choices have suddenly become so limited.

However, not everyone is looking for someone to lean on, so whether they see follow survivors as a possible source of support or as a dangerous element competing for resources depends on the individual, no matter their colour.

And as a final Game Mechanic point, I doubt there will be much room for racism written into the game (towards PCs at least, who knows about NPC relations). Reason for this is, in FO3/NV you picked your "race" because the nature of an FPRPG where you can see your character close up and things like bone/eye/nose structure matter if you don't want everyone to just look like white people painted to look ethnic. But in WL2, it may not be necessary because you just pick a portrait and then get a tiny lil in-game isometric model. If I pick a portrait of someone of ambiguous tan colour, they could be hispanic, light african, dark european, native american, thai. Really, whatever I choose them to be. And it would be a bit unfair if we had to pick our race from a list, since it would be hard to represent every possible human type. What if I were from, say, India or the Middle East and wanted to make a Ranger of my ethnicity only to find the options of "White, black, asian, hispanic"? Seems hardly fair. Best to avoid it all together.

So no, while I don't think Brian Fargo is one to shy at all from sensitive topics, I do think it would be fine if race were something that never came up in WL2. And if it does play a role, I trust it to be done with good reason and handled well, and not just as some excuse to suddenly insert the Klan into southern California.

[Signal]

Would humans really stop judging other people by skin colour just because there were a few mutants wondering around to divert their attention

I'm cynical enough to believe that, nope, if they were bigoted before the bombs dropped then mutants wandering around is just one more "race" they can hate along with whomever they already hate.

That said, I really don't blame any developer or publisher from side-stepping this issue. No matter how you handle it, somebody is going to get offended and cry foul, or explode into a nuclear ball of rage because you didn't handle the issue well enough. Same goes for a number of "hot button" topics.

[TΛPETRVE]

I'm cynical enough to believe that, nope, if they were bigoted before the bombs dropped then mutants wandering around is just one more "race" they can hate along with whomever they already hate.

That's not cynical, that's an absolutely realistic assessment. Cynical would be, if you expected them to preferrably go after mutants of black origin rather than hating them equally as a whole.

[Gearhead]

I imagine wastelanders would be more regionalistic than racist. That, and they'd have utter contempt for people they saw as greenhorns and weaklings.

[Phelot]

This sounds like it would be incredibly difficult to implement despite maybe being a good idea, but I assume the best that could be hoped for would be having certain quests or locations locked out due to race or gender and that doesn't sound particularly fun especially if it turns out it's optimal to just play as a white male. Who wants to pick a black guy just to find out "LOL UR BLACK GTFO" when you try to do a quest? Yeah yeah, it'd be real sweet to be able to call "Dat's racist!" and overcome ignorance and bigotry and form a Wasteland million man march, but again, implementing all of this would be a lot of work for something that isn't really a main focus of the game.

I think racism could be shown in the game, but I just hope it isn't used to show why this or that NPC is an asshole or that your character hulks out if he hears the "N" word.

[Prosiak]

Brothers will fight each other but team up to fight neighbours
neighbours will fight near by families
near by families will fight further flung families and so on.

Look at football hooligans and what happens at the international competitions and locally.

I think it should be as it is in real life and all characters/people have different degrees of prejudice to all manner of things of course only a limited number would be represented in game terms, i think reputation should factor in heavily but also visually lol if you came upto someone dressed in a robotic suit with visor its different to being dressed like a crook/thug/rouge or a regular joe of that culture.
If a character reacted differently when first encountered wearing say defaced ranger attire to me thats as interesting, all these things were in the fallout games like san frans "Funny round eyes" if it was darker though i'd find that pretty interesting i wished there were stipulations for the reno families/gangs it was a different game though but if you had some like blistering ghoulification/fugnal virus leprosy type shit from like living in a hell hole region it would be cool if some people wanted nothing to do with you but there should be a work around.

Racism is a prejudice if i was the top cat in the local cut throat "civilization" i'd be sceptical if some rag garbed goon tried to seek my employment i'd probably tell him to fuck off, if the place was more civilized maybe i'd have my actual goons shoot at him in a humiliating manner or break his limbs.
Some people dont care about race, look at communists tell them your anything but that and they will hold some distane but they couldnt give a hoot about race same as muslims, not mormans minds and other people its if you resemble the guy who fucked their wife or beat them up in a drunken brawl

[Punky]

As a person of color, I deal with racism every day. I think that even nuclear apocalypse, people are still going to be racist AS HELL. It might even get worse. I think it has a place in the game. Racism isn't a big downer for me in a game unless the game is inadvertently racist through shitty storytelling (COD: Modern Warfare, I'm looking at you).

Exploring racism as a theme of the game could be powerful and very interesting.

[TommyGun]

I think there should be no censorship in the game. There should be homosexuality, racism, violence, insults & all kind of stuff.
This makes the game more realistic. You could say "Yes well but then there will be a rating problem when the game is released and less people will buy it", like Tim Cain explained about Fallout 1 when they had to remove the children from the game.

I think the context here is different now, Wasteland 2 already has its customers guaranteed, even better, they already supported they game and bought it in advance! So I believe the game could have any type of content the community wants it to have.

[Interloper]

Being barred from quests because of your race/gender for no other reason than prejudice doesn't make the game any more fun, so there's no reason to include it. NPCs insulting you then you get to wipe the smug looks off their face with a Proton Ax is a different story.

[stonetoes]

I posted in the gay characters thread some time ago the possibility of exploring themes of racism and discrimination through fantasy races, rather than real ones. The fallout games had ghouls and tribals, the witcher games had elves, as did the dragon age games. The mass effect games had space aliens. You can explore themes that will resonate with people of colour without making things too personal.

The point that it's a party game is a good one too. I know when I can make a party I generally make it as motley and varied as possible, including in terms of gender and ethnicity. Any quest that bars a party for having a certain ethnicity or whatever else is going to bar me every time.

A middle ground could be having to split up your party. I never did it, but supposedly Wasteland 1 let you split your party. Having to leave behind "undesirables", similar to leaving party members outside vault city, could provide a mechanism that displays bigotry but doesn't cut game content. It will just make it harder when I have to leave behind half my rainbow patrol.

This topic does make me wonder if inXile has any non-white writers on the team. If they're going to have out and out racism then it would seem a bit off to have it written by white people.

[YoungFreud]

I think it would probably less problematic if racism was isolated to culture or heritage. I always wanted the heritage thing in Wasteland to have some sort of effect on whether certain groups welcomed you or hated you. Like, a group of survivalists would not talk to you if you came up to them with a Russian or Chinese character, but would be more welcoming of a Ranger born in the U.S or Mexico. Or, you come across some sort of foreign Macguffin and need a Russian-descended Ranger to translate it.

[Lucky]

Personally, I think that racism is one mature theme this game can do without. However, prejudice needs to be included.

[Crazy Wolf]

...The main problem could be that they would have to add a lot of content that entirely depends on the race of your characters.
What if your chars don't meet the criteria?
But then again, since you have at least 4 characters in your party it would be very likely that you get to see much of that content. So the additional workload would be worth it.
...
I'm all for racism ...
I mean in the game.

edit: But barred quests because one of you chars has the wrong skin color? Hell no! Better just change the quest, make it available through other means. For example help the guys that racist pig would want you to screw if all of you had his skin color.

If this mechanic was introduced, I wonder if it'd take into account clothing choices? Could a party with some dark-skinned members trick a Klansman by explaining away their choice to wear concealing clothes as "sensitivity to the sun" or something? If you'd be going to the trouble of including racism, then you might as well include ways to counter that racism.

[suz]

If this mechanic was introduced, I wonder if it'd take into account clothing choices? Could a party with some dark-skinned members trick a Klansman by explaining away their choice to wear concealing clothes as "sensitivity to the sun" or something? If you'd be going to the trouble of including racism, then you might as well include ways to counter that racism.

As long as additional mechanic of giving him a 20 gauge buckshot in the face as a means to complete/advance the quest is introduced I don't mind any additional mechanics

[TΛPETRVE]

You want to think twice before using buckshot. It leaves quite a mess - and said mess won't come out of the back of your target's head.