So, after the resounding clusterfuck that was the original last year, I thought I'd start this thread up again since it's been a while and we may have some new games to pull from. With the push for equal and well-researched representation in gaming, from sex to nationality to gender to orientation, there's been a lot of discussion on the subject online, particularly on GAF. This thread's primary purpose is to find examples highlighting the prevalence of the hetereonormative - the cishet, straight white male, usually buzzcut and militaristic, or "dudebro" - but with examples that actually use context in their games to justify their circumstances, whether those are ethnic, regional, etc. While the last thread took a little bit to unify some actual qualifications, this time around I'm broadening the possible spectrum of answers: this time it's not just about protagonists, it's about characters in general. What we're looking for here are characters that have an actual purpose to their majority representation. When I say purpose, I'm talking about a character whose whiteness, or straightness, or however specific you want to get actually has bearings on the plot or mechanics in a way that other cultures would not.
Couple of very important details to consider here:
Explain and / or justify your case on a character-by-character basis. One at a time, that is. Stick to specific characters - if you want to explain your reasoning on why you think Doomguy or Cryguy or Calladuty Corpsman #239 are acceptable, that's totally fine. Don't just say "it's understandable that most protagonists are hetereonormative because infantrymen have buzzed hair and are mostly white," because that's not justifying a single character, it's band-aiding a recurring trope. On a broader note...
Discuss the games, not the developers. More specifically, don't drive-by post "it's just my opinion, and i'm not a racist or anything, but i really don't see why it's a problem that most protagonists are white males, it's just how it is." Likewise to "most game developers are white males, they write what they know." And, finally...
Keep an open mind. This also isn't the place to say "I can relate to white males better." All balanced humans are capable of empathy. While you may not be able to relate to CJ because you're not about that life, you can still understand concepts such as loss, grief, and things getting away from you (like damn trains). While you may not understand why wizard is sad because he need food badly and why he doesn't just conjure up some food, you can still relate to him because you've probably been hungry at some point in your life.
Now, to establish some reasoning behind possible choices:
There's not a fine line between "good white" and "white good." As a whole, someone like Marcus Fenix or whoever's headlining the next Call of Duty title are bad examples because you could change their race and no difference would be made. Now that examples are beginning to become more codified, examples of "white characters who are good, but contextually justify themselves" can fall into two major categories:
A character is wholesome or good, and being (or not being) a white male would subject them to different repercussions in-universe. Examples:
- BJ Blazkowicz has an emotional crutch in that his family is Jewish and is being directly targeted by Nazis.
- John Marston, on the flip side, is white in an era where not being white is a dangerous game. However, Marston is progressive and is overall still a good character from the viewer's perspective. A bad example would be Doomguy or Duke Nukem, because they could be virtually anyone going through a testosterone-poisoned power fantasy and it wouldn't change the game.
- Adding to this, keep in mind a variety of game universes barely even touch the ideas of human-on-human prejudice or are pretty clearly established as being "post-racial." There's too many opportunities for "black and white to gang up on green," where the idea of a cultural majority is dissolved in favor of having racial politics focusing on, well, races (species). A character like Samus is a good example of a post-racial character, but a bad example for this thread. Clearly white, albeit raised by bird-people, there's nothing about Samus's circumstances - or the universe's, for that matter - that would make her story much different if she were Latino or gay. It's very much focused on the machinations between races and factions, in particular the Galactic Federation and the Space Pirates.
A character has unique or otherwise breakout design, from looks to personality, and defies their expected genericism. They are, in some way(s), flawed. Examples:
- Michael De Santa, while old, white and gun-toting is still interesting because he has downsides and from a legal perspective is still a piece of shit. Consider his circumstances: washed-up guy who was pulling jobs before "the big accident" and had enough good connections to get himself holed up in none other than scenic Vinewood. That, coupled with his age, makes it safe to say that his race is pretty important, e.g. a black character that got pulling jobs in the same universe probably wouldn't be so lucky as to get a slap on the wrist and cushy retirement witness protection.
- Likewise, Max Payne is more of a subversion because while the actual character design starts off as being pretty homogenous, he's battling plenty of demons from taking so many people out and his age is catching up with him. Max Payne 3 also capitalizes on this, expanded on below.
- Even Professor Layton works (as one of the weaker examples) thanks to the setting: he's a stereotypical English gentleman.
- A bad example would be Aiden Pearce, because while he's still admist a conflict as the plot demands, he's still falling victim to not really pushing the envelope from a design or narrative perspective and is, overall, pretty one-dimensional.
- A good place to consider the line's midpoint - blurred, rather - would be Kratos. Known for getting as dudebro as they get, he does have a foothold in that he's Greek, originally a Spartan captain, and his mission of wiping out a caricature of a parthenon is explicitly due to his Greekness. Bonus points for the developers clearly wanting to establish his character and not simply be a "blank slate," like Master Chief originally was.
Here's some examples, just in case we're still not on the same page:
Max Payne is an excellent example. While his beginnings were fairly homogenous, as aforementioned, by Max Payne 3 his whiteness is actually used for juxtaposition, further compounding the fact that he's the foreigner now. From the prior thread:
Originally Posted by Screaming Meat
While he could ostensibly be the poster boy for the standard white, bald, male action hero/power fantasy, I see him as more of a subversion.
He's old, he's fat, he whines about everything, he's battling all kinds of addictions, is utterly self-absorbed and suffers from a bad case of the PTSD from murdering so many people over the course of three games. You don't look up to this guy. He's not a hero in any real sense, he's a charity case with a bad haircut and an even worse temper.
Originally Posted by DireStr8s
The game made me feel uncomfortable. His interactions with the locals, like just stumbling through that street party, the bar scene, the "I don't speak your fucking language" line. Rockstar crafts these awesome mechanics, makes Max stick out like a blazing white sore thumb, and then has you decimate poor people: stereotyped Italians too, of course. I felt they did it on purpose and the effect would have been lost had Max not been white.
John Marston is probably one of the examples with the strongest ties to the racial element of it all. An adult in the early 1900s roaming the American frontier, he lives in a time period where being anything other than a white guy is bad news. While the player can make some... objectionable decisions for him, like tying women to railroad tracks, the plot-relevant escapades of which he partakes are all about politics - federal encroachment, gang violence - and aren't ever explicitly tied to the nationalities behind those ideals. Marston himself is a fairly progressive guy for the 1900s, with some good points made by posters in the last thread.
Originally Posted by META
The epitome of family, duty, and honor in the 19th century American West. Highly progressive in his views on slavery, love, and snake oil salesman (and necrophilia, for that matter), Marston was far more intelligent than his criminal history might suggest.
Although he is a man of few words, he personified the stoic listener; taking in everything and doing what he deemed was right for himself, his nation, and his family.
Sure he had his yeehaw moments, but Rockstar created a highly memorable character in Marston.
I would someday like to see R* cross universes and have the Marston bloodline present in a future GTA game.
Originally Posted by META
To continue with my choice with Marston...you couldn't have had another nationality with similar characteristics to Marston in a game like RDR. Considering the time period, Marston needed to be white in order for his character to be worth a damn in that time period in America. Even then he was hated by a lot of people because of his prior connections, but his sense of honor and duty would not have been as impactful if he were any other race in that time period.
Jorge-052 is a bit of a lighter example. Not in the sense that he isn't a good character, just that the actual context behind his circumstances aren't pushed to the forefront of the game's plot. I thought I would throw this one in for two reasons: to get blood flowing on the non-playable character examples (since the last thread had none), and to illustrate that, while rare, you can make individual ethnicities stand out even if your game is on as broad a scale as man versus alien. To expand on this, Jorge comes from Bungie's last Halo title, Halo Reach. The game revolves primarily around a Spartan-III named Noble Six, another blank-slate character along the lines of the Master Chief. Jorge was born on the eponymous planet Reach and considered it his home, with its colonists having a primarily Hungarian background.
Some of his squadmates have more obvious heritage: the fairly homogenous Noble Six is of Western influence and Emile has a similarly rudimentary background, albeit obfuscated by him "becoming the mask." On the flip side, Jun and Kat have decidedly Eastern influences, and ones that are much more ambiguously "500 years of cultural melting pot" than the others. The reason Jorge's heritage comes into play here is because Reach is a character all its own, defined by the landscapes and the war for which it's waged. The Covenant don't have a beef with any particular human nationality - bringing down Reach is of strategic importance, not cultural motivation - but Jorge just barely fits the bill by being a white character whose race makes his experience with the fall of Reach all the more tragic. Jorge is largely seen as the most sympathetic character of Noble Team, essentially being the team dad, looking out for his squadmates overall. His heritage also clearly comes into play throughout the story, which is something that hasn't been seen in the games very often; Sergeant Johnson had his heritage (being born in Chicago) expanded on in a novel in the EU, but nothing comes close to Jorge's presentation in terms of actual gameplay. He speaks Hungarian a few times throughout the campaign, such as "a nivem Jorge" ("my name is Jorge") when comforting a civilian and "Megszakad a szivem..." ("My heart breaks...") when seeing his planet being bombarded from high orbit. This example is particularly interesting because Halo has largely been set in a "post-racial" universe; for humans, anyway.
The Jorge example also throws a little alien into the mix of this thread, which is something that wasn't touched on in the last one. While the examples probably won't be too commonplace, if there are characters contextually justified in sci-fi / fantasy titles where humans aren't the only ones around, by all means, include them.
Now, finally, here are some things not to post:
- Characters that are white, that just happen to also be good characters. This is about their culture actually defining them to an extent. Even if it's a franchise where a difference between white characters and nonwhite characters is established, e.g. The Legend of Zelda with the Hylians and the Gerudo, those would not be good examples because Link's Hylian background doesn't have explicit bearings on the plot the way Max Payne's does. The conflict between Ganondorf and Hyrule is generally based around power, not race. Likewise, someone like Nathan Drake is a bad example because he could be an adventure of virtually any other sex, nationality or orientation and it wouldn't affect the overall plot in the slightest.
- "Why does a character's race, gender, or sexual orientation have to be 'justified?'" It doesn't have to be - modern game design is evidence of that - but this thread is to particularly discuss hetereonormative characters that do justify themselves. The reason being is that, 9 times out of 10, if a character isn't white, male and straight, it does have to have an explanation. JC of GTA:SA had to be black: not to live the lifestyle was living, but to be reacted to in the way he was, in-universe and out. When GTA:SA media first started pouring out, there were all sorts of people saying it would "never sell," they "couldn't relate," etc. You don't get that a whole lot of the time with homogenous characters. And even when a white character is doing something ostensibly awful, like the protagonist in Hatred, there isn't just criticism - there's controversy. While Hatred's original media was being met with cynicism, there were just as many coming out to defend it with "games as art," "don't tread on me," etc. You can see where the divide lay.
- Why does it have to be white males? Can't we just talk about decent characterization in games in general? I don't doubt that GAF can, but this thread in particular is to discuss this particular topic. If you find yourself wanting to discuss good characterization in general while reading this thread, start a new thread and I'm sure there will be plenty of good discussion to follow in it.
- To be honest, I can't really fathom a white male done 'wrong'. In this case, a white male done "wrong" would be one that doesn't actually justify their circumstances via heritage or culture, e.g. Marcus Fenix, Nathan Drake, etc. Of course that doesn't automatically make them "wrong" characters, it just means they're inappropriate for this discussion.
- I don't really understand the topic, if we're interested in having more diverse characters in order to send positive messages to minority players, isn't suggesting that white males are "generic" and boring by default just sending NEGATIVE messages to white male players, which is the exact opposite goal of diversifying? This is not a thread to unashamedly bash white male characters or white males in general. It's one to celebrate those that have made the effort to ground themselves just as effectively as the fellow minority characters that did so before them. Hetereonormative characters being the "default" protagonist is in and of itself worth discussing in this thread.
- It's not about race, it's just business. (post linked is discussing that point, not supporting it) Trying to excuse it as a "harmless business practice" ultimately just goes to further institutionalized bottlenecks that make it more difficult to get diverse characters in the limelight. When was the last time you heard someone in gaming be called the "token white guy" or "token straight guy?"
