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Well then, go play more SWtOR and less WoW, or some other thing.
Also Doitre, you failed the Horde.
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If you squint really hard and look at something sideways with a bright light in your eyes,
Everything can be seen as racist by someone. And WILL Be…
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Overanalysis: The Thread
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That’s impossible. There’s no such thing as “new world” that’s not “a copy of the real one” because all fiction is based on something else.
The CLOSEST such thing is James Cameron’s Avatar. And even that, can be dissected down to the root elements of the Countless Sci-Fi works that came before it.
Ah yes totally overanalysis to say this
Is based on North American Natives.
Man shut up lmao
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Then they’re amateurs and idiots who don’t know how to differentiate proper use of cultural motifs from actively using a known racist trope.
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I’m not denying many themes in WoW are inspired by the real world.
Attributing racism to Blizzard’s game direction though is a different issue.
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Nobody is assigning intent to the devs. Using a racist trope in your writing and design makes what you created a continuity of that racism. Simple as. Regardless of your intent.
If Tolkien and Lovecraft can recognize they wrote racist tropes into their works (Tolkien without malicious intent, Lovecraft with malicious intent), regret it, and hope people can recognize that racism and reject it while enjoying their works, so can you do the same for WoW.
Driving your head in the sand and pretending the tropes aren’t there helps no one.
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Baal sees racism in every corner.
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I’ve actually discussed a myriad of ways in which the story uses cultural motifs properly rather than relying on racist tropes in this thread but you can continue being bitter rather than better
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You have a chip on your shoulder.
I would love to see a story by you. I guarantee people would find problems with it you don’t think are there and never intended.
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You spent all that time typing for this response lol okay
And that would be fine.
Because you know what that leads to?
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Not all criticism is valid. I’ll end with that.
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Criticism on material that invokes IRL racist tropes is always valid. Go in peace.
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Considering much of what he writes on these forums is quite racist already and he doesn’t even seam to understand that, I doubt he’ll even notice or care.
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Lol you’re still trying with this.
By all means bring up the alleged points again so you can be corrected a tenth time by everyone, and your posts reported yet again.
Racism - the use of “evil”, “bad”, “imperfect” actions / qualities associated with culture, appearance, actions of people belonging to a group.
Cultural motives - the use of “good”, “heroic”, “equal”, “superior” actions / qualities related to culture, appearance, actions of people belonging to the group.
Right?
Russian
Расизм - использование “злых”, “плохих”, “несовершенных” поступков/качеств, связанных с культурой, внешностью, действиями людей, принадлежащих к группе.
Культурные мотивы - использование “хороших”, “героических”, “равных”, “превосходящих” поступков/качеств, связанных с культурой, внешностью, действиями людей, принадлежащих к группе.
Верно?
Which section does the “group portrayed as victim” refer to?
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Former is Racist Tropes. Not so much about imperfections but rather IRL caricatures based upon an ethnoracial group.
Eg the Goblin Hooknosed Short Greedy Banker Antisemitic Trope.
Latter is Cultural Motifs* (not Motives, Motif is more synonymous with themes). It’s not about superiority. Cultural Motifs also rely on stereotypes but non-disparaging stereotypes.
Eg WoW Dwarves are good at mining without being dominated by Greed. Dwarven mining in Tolkien was tied to cultural greed because they’re based for him on Antisemitic tropes, while WoW INTENTIONALLY distances their Dwarves from being obsessed with Wealth.
Both Goblins and Dwarves are products of Jewish stereotypes, but the former is just a copy paste of a thousand years of Antisemitic Tropes while the latter is a “cleaned up” Jewish stereotype inherited from Tolkien.
The above is what I mean when I said:
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I think there’s an argument to be made that in this case, to crusade against the idea of racist depictions is misguided. I think it’s attacking one symptom while the disease festers.
Most would agree that there’s little case to be made that any racist implications are deliberately made that way by Blizzard. Blizzard are simply not inserting their opinions on race into the game by casting non-white-coded characters as villainous or untrustworthy or what have you. That’s just not happening. At the very least Blizzard seems weak enough to social pressure to not incite that wrath on purpose.
Some would say more charitably that it is out of ignorance, that it just hasn’t occurred to the writers how things would come across while they’re writing it. So then it’s a matter of just giving Blizzard the information it needs to understand the issue and it will happen less in the future. In such a case then theoretically you could write a dissertation on the demerits of how Blizzard has handled race adaptation on social media, and there’s a world where it could gain enough traction for Blizzard to take notice and correct the issue.
I personally think it’s neither. I think the simple fact is that the people in charge of making decisions that control the direction of the game, just flat-out do not care enough about anything, except what can directly and measurably affect the next financial quarter (and no further). They simply are not putting in the mental effort to parse through their handling of race and make it into something without any obvious offenses, because to them it is just one thing in a big pile of things that they have no reason to put any care towards. All the diatribes in the world will not be able to use information to punch through the haze of apathy on the matter that reaches to the highest levels of the corporate structure where moral quality of the product is a tertiary concern at best.
The problem is, I cannot think of any recourse for this case. Perhaps that’s why I simply have not engaged with the game at all since the latter half of BFA. It’s just utterly demoralizing when you can see something you love erode away and there’s nothing you can do to even slow it down because the people who can, do not see it as worth the effort. I’m sick of Blizzard not being prepared to care about the things that I still care about. I’m sick of Sylvanas. I’m sick of obvious retcons being handed out like new cars from Oprah. I’m sick of the new biggest bad in the omniverse who we’ve never heard of before but he’s the biggest bad ever so that must be engaging. I’m sick of systems designers throwing out workable systems they just spent two years polishing so we can have a new dung system that incorporates none of the lessons we the players suffered through and paid money to learn. I’m sick of them promising more later only to decide that the half-baked WIP we already have is enough. And I’m sick of the world they built, that I fell in love with, slowly being sanded flush by the inconsideration of the people driving it, to the point where a setting that was once nuanced is now accused of increasingly perpetuating racist tropes.
They just do not care to handle race in a balanced way that doesn’t imply unfortunate things, the same way they don’t seem to care about a lot of things lately. Or if they do, those people are not being given the time or the leeway to accomplish those things. That’s the problem that needs to be solved. And while I don’t think it will be, it’s likely to only get worse, I’m confident that if anything solves it, it isn’t going to be a call to end the game’s problematic depictions of race. Beyond merely treating an effect rather than the cause, it’s more likely to provide Blizzard an easy way out of changing their actual behavior. Rather than actually beginning to care, they could mollify much of that outrage with a token gesture of sensitivity that doesn’t have to mean anything for the future. Probably won’t even broadcast it on their Chinese PR accounts.
It’s worth examining exactly why people might find WoW’s writing with regards to race to be offensive or distasteful or unsatisfying. But I think at this point it’s a merely academic concern. We didn’t dig through the ruins of Pompeii to try and bring those people back from the dead after all.
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