Hyrule Warriors has this issue with the characters Lana and Cia. They were originally one person but she was split into her good and evil halves. Can you tell which one is which?
I know ya'll not really trying to argue facts as clear as day in a medium plagued by whiteness and its proximity. Much less to a Black woman that took the time to lay out the facts.
You're literally perpetuating the shit Black women often talk about regarding their experiences where we don't believe them.
If that's what your takeaway is from everything I said about how black women in general are portrayed as hyper aggressive and how harmful that is then like...I don't know what to tell you. I'm not criticizing this one example on it's own but how it contributes to harmful stereotypes regarding black women as a whole. Multiple people in this thread can barely think of non-aggressive black women in video games which only furthers the point.
I don't think your example was that great and short of arguing this kind of character can't exist as a black women, I don't think it really works. Nothing in that scene felt to me like it was pushing the limits of acceptable portrayal. Don't say you weren't criticizing this one example because you definitely were. If you were just arguing for more black women not in this (IMO overly broad) stereotype of "aggressive" you wouldn't have brought up the specifics of the scene composition or contrasting her with Chloe.
You have to separate 1) the in-universe justification for why something plays out the way it does and 2) the Developer decision / justification for why a certain scene needs to play out the way it does. Let's assume the way the scene plays out is justified in-universe...the Developer still chose to frame the story, characters, and situation in such a way that led to the sequence of events in the video. In this case, the scene plays into a very common stereotype for Black women. When you already have very few examples of Black women being represented in games at all, a conscious Developer making a decision to improve diversity needs to be very aware of the types of harmful stereotypes they should be avoiding.
In terms of your comment...a character can easily be shown to be the antagonist in a story through smarts or cunning for example (outsmarting Drake somehow). Or they can be portrayed as such through use of resources (calling guards or calling in favors to apprehend him later). Show of force isn't exclusively how you can portray someone as an antagonist. The developer could have adjusted the scenario and overall story to show conflict between characters in a way that avoids harmful stereotypes. Now lets say show of force is still used, there is a lot you can do with lighting, shot framing, and the length of the scene to adjust the impact as well. Assuming showing strength is the only way of establishing someone as an antagonist (which I'm saying is definitely not the case, but lets assume for argument), I'd say throwing Drake and having the table break or throwing him out of a window is too excessive to get that message across. Especially given the stereotypes OP highlighted. There are ways of practicing restraint to mitigate potential comparisons to harmful stereotypes that were definitely not taken in the scene.
I can't argue against the idea that Naughty Dog could've chosen to put Nadine into Rafe's shoes and Rafe into Nadine's or some other formulation of characters and avoided the list of stereotypes they could've otherwise applied to a black female character, sure.
But if we start from the baseline that Nadine is the "muscle" in the story I heavily disagree with the idea the scene was excessively playing into harmful stereotypes. Just looking at past Uncharted "muscle" antagonists Nadine is pretty much in line, if not restrained. Lazarević was portrayed as pretty much subhuman in the way he dealt with the main characters and tried to get information, etc. from them. He killed a cameraman for virtually no reason other than to scare Drake. I don't think throwing Drake back and a table breaking or getting thrown out a window to get him to the next set piece really registers on an Uncharted player's mind.
And was Nadine not also shown to be feared in her ability to manage this private army or hers? She's not like a bumbling Eddie Raja that is so aggressive he gets taken out by a zombie he couldn't help but scream at.
I don't really agree with your criticisms of Nadine, particularly the bolded. In this scene we're meeting a major antagonist early on in the game, so of course there's going to be incentive to portray her as really strong and overwhelming. That's just plainly an effective way of getting you engaged in the rivalry and the conflict (though it didn't work super great for unrelated reasons).
Megan the Stallion literally goes over that in the NYT video. Black women being expected to be strong or black women being expected to be aggressive.
Nate tried to shove his way past her and we can assume because of her relationship with Raefe she knew exactly who she was dealing with, not just some average dude who she can get something from without socking him in the face. If Nate was just a nobody to her and she went in on him that physically and aggressively, then I think you'd have a point.
It was already laid out from the first interaction Nadine has with Drake, though. You can interpret as a significant scene is about to happen, but the whole scene is a black women thrashing some white man around. It is a complete portrayal of what Celes is saying rubs her wrong.
Thank you for making this thread. It's something I've noticed in games (especially Japanese games) for a while & it's been bugging me for someone. Hopefully this is changed going forward, especially as black characters become more common in Japanese games.
From my pasty white point of view, the biggest series that comes to mind that's gotten at least kind of decent about this is Pokémon, inasmuch as it's light on characterization at the best of times. The series has thankfully never leaned into the evil=dark skinned trope, even in the one case where someone actually had a dark transformation.
Not exactly a shining star given how narratively thin the series is, though.
From my pasty white point of view, the biggest series that comes to mind that's gotten at least kind of decent about this is Pokémon, inasmuch as it's light on characterization at the best of times. The series has thankfully never leaned into the evil=dark skinned trope, even in the one case where someone actually had a dark transformation.
Not exactly a shining star given how narratively thin the series is, though.
Fire Emblem came up empty, too. There's Flavia, the Khan of the Warrior Realm of Ragna-Ferox. Do I even have to spell out what her personality is, or does "Khan of a Warrior Realm" say enough?
Yeah FE's lack of diversity is really bad at this point for me. The over reliance on generic western European type settings, countries and characters is becoming a liability and questionable choice for such a long running series. Even just in terms of variety. There are so many rich and interesting cultures and settings that they could draw inspiration from, even ones that were adjacent to and in direct contact with medieval Europe, but they choose to wallow in mostly bland faux European ones that usually lack any real identity between them. Three Houses was just weird with how little development or real identity they gave to the countries, especially the peripheral countries outside of the main three lord's, which were made to feel more primitive or primal than anything else.
It was nice to get Flavia and Basilio as clearly black characters in Awakening when at the time the only other ones in the series were Devdan and maybe Fiona, even if they weren't perfect as noted above. But unfortunately Awakening went in pretty hard with colorism and coding elsewhere with regards to its antagonists all being noticeably darker than the protagonists. Validar, Aversa, Gangrel, Walhart all have noticeably darker skin, same goes for the vast majority of their flunkies. And Aversa definitely plays into the hyper sexualized angle too. There's probably around 600-700 playable characters across the series at this point and you could likely count the number of brown or black ones on two hands, maybe more if you're being really generous and counting anyone with what could be considered to have more than just a decent tan.
They need to really step up their game. Tellius games are still the best developed setting and most diverse, but even then most of their diversity comes from fictional beast races which comes with a whole slew of potential issues and connections having them make up the majority of non-white characters.
Listen, I don't care what you think of my example. I don't care if you think it works. I'm not going to have a man tell me, a black woman, how I should feel about a black female character written by white people. Like...no shit I was criticizing her, half of the OP is me criticizing black female depictions that have been shown to be harmful in real life because the point is that you cannot look at these characters in isolation. Also colorism is literally a lighter skin person shown in a better regard than a darker one which was the point of me bring up Chloe and Nadine. I really doubt you're in this thread because you care about the subject here. If you actually cared about this, you wouldn't call the angry, aggressive black woman 'overly broad' when it's a subject that's been written and talked about by actual black women multiple times.
If you want to stan Naughty Dog blindly, go do it somewhere else. People derail every thread whenever someone criticizes how ND handle black people and you aren't about to do it here.
I know ya'll not really trying to argue facts as clear as day in a medium plagued by whiteness and its proximity. Much less to a Black woman that took the time to lay out the facts.
You're literally perpetuating the shit Black women often talk about regarding their experiences where we don't believe them.
It's honestly laughable. My OP literally touches on people invalidating the feelings and perspective of black women and a dude really just waltzed in here and ignored every aspect of the OP just to cap for Naughty Dog who has bad representation for black people anyway.
The Zelda series is full of colorism as well. Most of the villains are dark-skinned, while the protagonists are nearly all white. It's always annoyed the hell out of me.
Edit: I do want to point out that a lot of fanart of Dark Aqua before the game even released had her drawn with brown/darker skin. While even if her actual skin color hadn't changed within the game, being corrupted by darkness = having brown skin had become so engrained into people's minds due to harmful ideas related to colorism KH pushes that people just assumed she had dark skin.
Yeah that was back when people believe she became one of Xehanort vessels instead of falling into the darkness which is what happened in the game, in that case it's understand able people would draw he with dark skin since that's how the series has been
like I said I 100% get what your saying I just wanted to point out what actually happens in the series in which the yellow eyes are are the sign that some one has has fallen in with the darkness
Currently playing FFXIV, and another thing I notice constantly is, in spite of some regions featuring more black NPCs like Ul'dah, the game still struggles to reproduce phenotypes that represents more kinds of black facial features. Mostly the characters will be locked in the faces developed for white skin.
Not only that but the only prominent black character (so far, I'm mid Heavensward), Raubahn, also fits the stereotype of angry black person. Which is unfortunate, I love the character so far, but it does have a negative impact when no other character around him (all white people) don't act the same or even close to his aggresion. Something that also happened with Barret in VIIR by the way.
And yeah, it's sad that we never have diverse expressiveness from black women in gaming, it's always a caricature, and even for characters that I love like Tanya and Jacqui in Mortal Kombat, it's always about the sass or the agressiveness. I mean, I love these characters but it's about time developers wake up to the fact that black people are not a single dot in a spectrum, they can occupy any place in it.
Yea Fire Emblem is really behind the times. There is no reason why we can't have an entire cast of all dark-skinned characters given the cross-country wars the series deals with. The games constantly refreshes its cast of characters. It doesn't make sense for it to continuously be dominated by fair-skinned characters. With Three Houses, I don't really see why Almyra couldn't be brought into the fold as a House instead of being "othered" to the point of not being good enough to be a part of Hogwartz. The same themes of racism that some of the supports explored could easily (and more richly) be explored through an entire cast of students going through these struggles.
There's probably around 600-700 playable characters across the series at this point and you could likely count the number of brown or black ones on two hands, maybe more if you're being really generous and counting anyone with what could be considered to have more than just a decent tan.
Oof this is very true and very damning. I mean, Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses have been better about it but it still ends up being a handful of POC characters, and the latter does lean into certain problematic traits with them (Petra not speaking correctly, Dedue being a white boy's bodyguard).
One game that I am replaying that I thought was a big ass yikes as far as imagery goes is God War (2018). The dark elves and light elves in the game are so bad in this concept. Two sub-races of Elves and the Dark Elves are shown to be big, buff ass elves that are able to take on Kratos. It also doesn't help that they were what could be as seen as barbaric clothing and just look evil.
Light elves are seen as victims, though the commentary from Kratos is on some "I see no color" type, but they are not the aggressors as you progress through the land seeing the dark elves fuck up everything the light elves have going on in their home. And their depiction is just them being peaceful elves that you couldn't bother to hurt.
If there is anything Santa Monica must do for the next GOW, they definitely should just ignore bringing this lil piece back up unless it is to right their wrongs on the imagery here.
Can't have people of marginalized backgrounds represented well in mediums because? (In this case dark skinned Black women as well written human beings...)
If, say it with me:
If they aren't involved or in positions of leadership of the medium in which they are featured.
Good thread, OP. One of those situations where I was aware of the issue but it doesn't affect me directly, so I miss some of the nuance. It's good to see it explained more thoroughly like this.
Thank you for this thread. I'm not black, but I do think it's super important to have more active discussions about how minorities are represented in games. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have noticed some things that you said (I also missed them while playing some of these games). Structural racism sucks and the only way we can be better is by being mindful of these things.
Do you know any characters that are good representations of this?
Not within the games I play unfortunately. I love Mass Effect but I think the most prominent brown and black female characters I can remember at the top of my head are Samantha Traynor and then the 'villain' in the Citadel DLC. The woman Shepard could punch in interviews in every game was also a brown woman. :/
I remember seeing people excited for the black female gym leader in Pokemon Sword and Shield but I still haven't played my copy of it. I haven't heard any bad things about her but as someone said earlier, pokemon tends to have thin characterization so there's probably not much 'there'. I honestly can't think of any black female characters in video games I like and that just makes me really sad if I'm being honest. I mostly get satisfying 'representation' through character creators which feels kind of pathetic to admit.
Honestly, I would be really honored if that happened! I'm just glad it has been received so well, I was honestly kind of afraid of how this thread would go.
I remember seeing people excited for the black female gym leader in Pokemon Sword and Shield but I still haven't played my copy of it. I haven't heard any bad things about her but as someone said earlier, pokemon tends to have thin characterization so there's probably not much 'there'. I honestly can't think of any black female characters in video games I like and that just makes me really sad if I'm being honest. I mostly get satisfying 'representation' through character creators which feels kind of pathetic to admit.
Nah it definitely is pathetic. When we get table scraps of representation and are excited to be excited and grateful I'm like nahhh Black people been here forever. Being casually racist is just a business issue and affects their bottom dollar now.
Black capital is often left on the table as all these business continue to not create works that don't appeal to us.
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Hyrule Warriors has this issue with the characters Lana and Cia. They were originally one person but she was split into her good and evil halves. Can you tell which one is which?
As a brown skinned black man who's married to a chocolate colored black woman I could not have said this better myself. My wife too has suffered from the "your pretty for a dark skinned / chocolate girl" colorist bullshit herself. Well done celes on bringing attention to the matter.
Speaking of FFXIV, on top of everything that OP listed, two things that always bothered me were that Lyse's father, and most Ala Mhigans are dark skinned, yet Lyse is extremely pale.
I'm currently playing FFXIV and this....this bothered me so much that I dreaded going through the rest of that storyline. I'm thinking, finally I get to see one of the few regions populated by dark skinned people...and Lyse, in my opinion one of the most boring characters, is leading them.
The Zelda series is full of colorism as well. Most of the villains are dark-skinned, while the protagonists are nearly all white. It's always annoyed the hell out of me.
Great thread/write-up Celes! Some of the related issues like 'Black women are exotic' and 'skin grows darker as I'm evil now' we've looked at as isolated examples in the odd thread here and there but it's good to see such a variety of the ways it manifests compiled together with such insight.
An example I know was bothering people was from Persona 5 Strikers.
At one point you fight a Shadow Copy of Joker, this is what he looks like.
Compare to the cognitive copies in Persona 5 itself who just look like the person proper.(or some distorted version but the skin color was still unchanged)
I remember seeing people excited for the black female gym leader in Pokemon Sword and Shield but I still haven't played my copy of it. I haven't heard any bad things about her but as someone said earlier, pokemon tends to have thin characterization so there's probably not much 'there'. I honestly can't think of any black female characters in video games I like and that just makes me really sad if I'm being honest. I mostly get satisfying 'representation' through character creators which feels kind of pathetic to admit.
Funny thing is that Nessa isn't the first black, female gym leader in Pokemon. That was Lenora and this was her design:
For those who don't know, Lenora's look invokes a very racist stereotype and caricature of a black maid or slave that served white families usually referred to as a "Mammy." Most people would probably be familiar with the Aunt Jemima brand which used this imagery throughout its history.
And some people might think maybe it's just a mistake? A coincidence. Or maybe the Japanese designers just didn't know it was offensive? Well... in the Japanese version of the game, Lenora's gym leader title is literally "Natural Born Mama." In an interview published in the Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream, Yusuke Ohmura one of the designers says this about Lenora's design:
"If I was going to sum up Lenora with just a few words, I'd say she's a mother with a lot of spirit. There was talk during Black & White's development about wanting to focus on the inclusion of a multinational and multiracial vibe. So with that in mind, we came up with this black woman, and we'd received orders that she should have a strong sort of body type and some motherly qualities. So we added the apron when thinking about this motherly concept, but actually, the apron made Lenora give off the impression that she was just an average mom. So because she works as the head of the Nacrene Museum, discovering fossils and stuff like that, we tried incorporating elements of a kind of 'work apron' that could be useful in dealing with such a wild kind of job. We hadn't had a Gym Leader that wears an apron before, so we figured that was another good reason to have Lenora wearing one."
This is the sort of thing where you have to ponder, "why the fuck did no one say anything about how fucked up this is during the design process?" It was only after the game came out and people pointed it out that they updated her artwork. Here's what it looks like now:
So they just... had her sling the apron over her shoulder? They just couldn't bear to get rid of it? How utterly lazy. She even is carrying it in Episode 13 of Pokemon Generations:
Like, ok Game Freak/Pokemon Company/Nintendo. You KNOW it's an issue at this point. This was like 5-6 years after Black and White came out, what's your attachment to it? Just get rid of the apron. She actually looks pretty cool without it. Even then, all this doesn't change the fact that her apron design could not be changed in the actual game because it was too late at that point.
And yes, she still has this sprite in Black 2 and White 2, after they already knew it was a problem! Like come on, Game Freak!
The worst part about all of this is that Lenora is actually a really cool gym leader. She's an archeologist who owns a museum. She's shown to be really smart and capable and she has an active role in the part of the story she is in. And for all the intents of the designers to show her motherly traits, Lenora isn't even a mom?? I don't think she is anyway. She has a husband but I don't recall any mention of kids, it's not a focal point of her character. Her design could have been focused more on her being an archeologist but the designers basically went "black woman = strong body/motherly." I'll never not be pissed about this.
Funny thing is that Nessa isn't the first black, female gym leader in Pokemon. That was Lenora and this was her design:
For those who don't know, Lenora's look invokes a very racist stereotype and caricature of a black maid or slave that served white families usually referred to as a "Mammy." Most people would probably be familiar with the Aunt Jemima brand which used this imagery throughout its history.
And some people might think mayb it's just a mistake? A coincidence. Or maybe the Japanese designers just didn't know it was offensive? Well... in the Japanese version of the game, Lenora's gym leader title is literally "Natural Born Mama." In an interview published in the Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream, Yusuke Ohmura one of the designers says this about Lenora's design:
This is the sort of thing where you have to ponder, "why the fuck did no one say anything about how fucked up this is during the design process?" It was only after the game came out and people pointed it out that they updated her artwork. Here's what it looks like now:
So they just... had her sling the apron over her shoulder? They just couldn't bear to get rid of it? How utterly lazy. She even is carrying it in Episode 13 of Pokemon Generations:
Like, ok Game Freak/Pokemon Company/Nintendo. You KNOW it's an issue at this point. This was like 5-6 years after Black and White came out, what's your attachment to it? Just get rid of the apron. She actually looks pretty cool without it. Even then, all this doesn't change the fact that her apron design could not be changed in the actual game because it was too late at that point.
The worst part about all of this is that Lenora is actually a really cool gym leader. She's an archeologist who owns a museum. She's shown to be really smart and capable and she has an active role in the part of the story she is in. And for all the intents of the designers to show her motherly traits, Lenora isn't even a mom?? I don't think she is anyway. She has a husband but I don't recall any mention kids, it's not a focal point of her character. Her design could have been focused more on her being an archeologist but the designers basically went "black woman = strong body/motherly." I'll never not be pissed about this.
Viera are never consistently portrayed. I think the FFXII Viera are skin-toned, but the Tactics Advanced games have them covered in fluffy fur. Then the FFXIV versions split the difference and give them a very thin fur texture. To continue with FFXIV, they do need some darker-skinned folk in the main cast of characters. There's like... Raubahn on the side every now and then. And like... M'Naago way further down the line. Definitely a huge blind spot given all the other stuff they tend to get right.
One of the common tropes uses in the racist depictions of black people is red (and often exaggerated) lips. While yes, it's most likely red lipstick, it's still jarring in the overall context of the depiction and its relationship to the Mammy stereotype.
"there's no need for dark skinned people in the main cast"
Really please tell me why. Outside of the fact the developers made an active choice to have main characters be white or rather Asian in appearance? Please enlighten me on your choice of words here.
One of the common tropes uses in the racist depictions of black people is red (and often exaggerated) lips. While yes, it's most likely red lipstick, it's still jarring in the overall context of the depiction and its relationship to the Mammy stereotype.
Yeah, I'm thinking it is lipstick due to how it's drawn and the way other black characters in Pokemon look (they're never given different colored lips) but you're right. It just does not help when it's added to the overall context of the design. You have to question it when they made all those other design choices.
Pokemon Black and White missed a lot on this. Despite the region being based on New York City, there's barely any black people in the game. You have Lenora here and then there's Iris who is pretty good and has nothing problematic about her from what I recall. Besides that there's three new trainer classes, the Dancer, the Linebacker and the Hoopster...
I mean... in a vacuum, nothing is wrong with it but when you don't see black characters anywhere else in the game I can't help but feel Game Freak just google searched black stereotypes for their inspirations this gen. I'd be less bothered if random trainer classes not tied to stereotypes happened to be black. To give them credit, they're a lot better about this nowadays but man...
Great post, OP. I even shared it around with some friends, something I almost never do with Era threads. I never noticed how ingrained that stereotype of aggressive black women is
Lenora is an interesting case in GF trying to broaden their inclusion but ultimately not having a good grasp on it, her redesign when/if we get to gen 5 remakes will be interesting to say the least. I agree with the poster above saying she's a good character despite all this stuff but the design and certain traits cannot be ignored.
Lenora and Nessa are not the only black gym leaders by the way, Grant I think was mostly fine (I haven't played past him in XY since ages ago so I might have missed something)? Iris in White version now that I think of it too
Yeah, I'm thinking it is lipstick due to how it's drawn and the way other black characters in Pokemon look (they're never given different colored lips) but you're right. It just does not help when it's added to the overall context of the design. You have to question it when they made all those other design choices.
Pokemon Black and White missed a lot on this. Despite the region being based on New York City, there's barely any black people in the game. You have Lenora here and then there's Iris who is pretty good and has nothing problematic about her from what I recall. Besides that there's three new trainer classes, the Dancer, the Linebacker and the Hoopster...
I mean... in a vacuum, nothing is wrong with it but when you don't see black characters anywhere else in the game I can't help but feel Game Freak just google searched black stereotypes for their inspirations this gen. I'd be less bothered if random trainer classes not tied to stereotypes happened to be black. To give them credit, they're a lot better about this nowadays but man...
I remember reading somewhere about how Twintelle from ARMS was developed with a lot of input from NoA and NoE. I'd hope that whatever process was used there would be repeated for more Nintendo games. It's not hard at all to nip the racist design elements if you involve the right people.
Not disagreeing with the original thoughts on the FFXII Viera designs. The Tactics Advanced designs are completely different from all the other depictions of them though. This inconsistency with their own designs happens a lot with Square Enix based on Y'shtola from ffxiv and her dissidia designs (even both her designs in dissidia are different skin tones somehow) and 2P. Always wondered how this happens.
"there's no need for dark skinned people in the main cast"
Really please tell me why. Outside of the fact the developers made an active choice to have main characters be white or rather Asian in appearance? Please enlighten me on your choice of words here.
Not disagreeing with the original thoughts on the FFXII Viera designs. The Tactics Advanced designs are completely different from all the other depictions of them though. This inconsistency with their own designs happens a lot with Square Enix based on Y'shtola from ffxiv and her dissidia designs (even both her designs in dissidia are different skin tones somehow) and 2P. Always wondered how this happens.
I will say, personally I hope that once the current "arc" ends with Expansion 4 (or Patch 6.3 to be more specific assuming it holds the same formula as it has), that they're more willing to let some characters rest and others step up to the forefront. There hasn't really been a shake up in the main cast.
I love these characters, I do think they're the best cast in all of FF... But we've also been with them for literally hundreds of hours. We could go for awhile with seeing some new ones.
To anyone that thinks some examples are simple conjecture, or possibly just clutching at straws? Even so, there's a point where there are so many, that you should probably ask yourself why that is.
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