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For being 25% of the world's population, South Asians have really poor representation in videogames
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As someone from the North Caucasus, we have Imran Zakhaev and that "yob tvoyu mat" dude from MGR. That's it.
Yeah. Mapuche (Chile/Argentina) inclusion in Civilization VI was pretty surprising. Even when we can discuss their historical accuracy, the general feeling was done right.
This speaks to me on so many levels.
It think there needs to be a more defined understanding of what people mean by representation-
- Is it representation of a specific non white person and his/her/their culture and nationality like Symmetra? Or
- Is it representation of a PoC entwined with western culture with south Asian heritage like Chloe and Ajay Ghale?
If it is the former then it is a highly unlikely things would change from western developers because not only the level of onus to the latter vastly different but the amount of research and potential cultural pitfalls that would need exploring would make it an expensive proposition for every game. For this to be mainstream, it would take game development houses pushing games with home grown characters within south Asian countries in international market; somehing japan has essentially mastered.
If it is the latter then it is essentially us, citizens, children of immigrants saying something akin to "no taxation without representation". Feature us like one would feature African American or American Latinx etc. The bar for accidentally offending on the basis of cultural oversight may also be significantly lower because of cultural amalgamation.
I guess this is why "generic white guy" has its appeal- can fit almost anywhere in anyway with the lowest margin for causing offence.
I didn't realise she wasn't white but that just goes to show how dumb "racial classification" is.
Weird how people in the middle east can be as pale as Europeans but aren't classed as white. Weird that central Asia has a ton of white skinned people but they probably wouldn't be classed as white. Skin tone can vary a lot even in Europe.
White is most likely just another fancy way of saying "European Christian". Which is actually how Europe in the old days distinguished itself from other regions.
I think in Western Media in general.
I'm not South Asian myself but out of all the major minorities they by far have the least representation and are always stereotyped.
I'm not South Asian myself but out of all the major minorities they by far have the least representation and are always stereotyped.
Brazil representation is really bad outside of fighting games, 5yh largest country in size and population and the only time we are remembered for is because we are good at martial arts.
It sure hurt so see a mexican god instead of a brazilian one wear a carnival costume
Mh. I wonder why the group that makes up 70% of the overall population and possibly an even larger percentage of the buying customers (not to mention of the developers) tends to get most of the market focus.
I can too. Most of the time they're naked women or green monkey men. Wow, i feel so much better!
Sometimes little representation is better than perpetuating a bad representation.
yeah, it was the same as, for example, the Souls series where the audio is in english even in the japanese versions of the games.
That you and others are defaulting to white when you think of America is the whole problem.
It's always Egypt lol. Not that I can't think of one or two African characters in games that aren't Egyptian, it's just I feel like you usually get Egyptian characters due to the popularity of Ancient Egypt.
No, we actually get fairly decent representation these days. South Americans, Polynesians and East Asians like Thai, Vietnamese and Phillipinos have it way worse.
Ubi games will end up having an Indian character or something Indian in pretty much all game somewhere.
-Syndicate had Jaydeep Mir or Henry Green as he goes by in that game who was the Grandmaster of London Order and also the love interest of your main character. A few other Indian character sinnthe game though not as prominent.
-Farcry 4 had Ajay Ghale and was set in North India/Nepal with a majority of chatacters being South Asian and voiced by South Asians.
-Watch Dogs 2 had Sitara who's Indian.
-Beyond Good and Evil 2 is a multicultural game with a city called Ganesh City that has a huge statue of Hindu deity Lord Ganesh as a prominent structure in the city. Game also has murals of Lord Shiva and tons of usage of devnagri script.
- Even something like Rainbow Six Siege has a British Indian operator (mute)
Then of course you have Rani Laxibai in Order 1886 and a few other games that I either can't instantly recall or are smaller titles (like AC Chronicles India). Hitman 2 had a level set in Mumbai, that in itself is a representation too.
Ubi games will end up having an Indian character or something Indian in pretty much all game somewhere.
-Syndicate had Jaydeep Mir or Henry Green as he goes by in that game who was the Grandmaster of London Order and also the love interest of your main character. A few other Indian character sinnthe game though not as prominent.
-Farcry 4 had Ajay Ghale and was set in North India/Nepal with a majority of chatacters being South Asian and voiced by South Asians.
-Watch Dogs 2 had Sitara who's Indian.
-Beyond Good and Evil 2 is a multicultural game with a city called Ganesh City that has a huge statue of Hindu deity Lord Ganesh as a prominent structure in the city. Game also has murals of Lord Shiva and tons of usage of devnagri script.
- Even something like Rainbow Six Siege has a British Indian operator (mute)
Then of course you have Rani Laxibai in Order 1886 and a few other games that I either can't instantly recall or are smaller titles (like AC Chronicles India). Hitman 2 had a level set in Mumbai, that in itself is a representation too.
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I'm not sure why that's surprising. Look at how long the Hollywood film industry has been around, and then think about how bad minority representation has been for decades -- two of the biggest Hollywood headlines last year were specifically about the surprising box office success of movies with predominantly non-Anglo casts (Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians). Video gaming is still in its infancy by comparison.
Plus mixed race kids can end up looking like anything. I know two sisters half white and half Indian. One looks Indian the other looks white...so go figure lol. It's stupid stuff
A couple games with South Asian representation most people haven't played -
Agni: Queen of Darkness (PC) - It was a conversion of Irrational Games' cancelled project, The Lost. It felt kind of incomplete but I liked playing through it. I think I wrote the only review of it in English back in 2008 but it's gone now. There's some Hindi in it but it's an action game and totally playable without Hindi knowledge.
And Maharaja for the Famicom is a neat adventure/RPG. It has some 8-bit grinding to deal with but it's worth checking out and has a translated rom.
Agni: Queen of Darkness (PC) - It was a conversion of Irrational Games' cancelled project, The Lost. It felt kind of incomplete but I liked playing through it. I think I wrote the only review of it in English back in 2008 but it's gone now. There's some Hindi in it but it's an action game and totally playable without Hindi knowledge.
And Maharaja for the Famicom is a neat adventure/RPG. It has some 8-bit grinding to deal with but it's worth checking out and has a translated rom.
You meant NORTH AMERICAN, right? America, the continent divided by three subcontinents (south, central, north), it's mostly represented in video games and in general by the northern society and culture.
Mostly is a vague representation of Central American culture with Mexico. And don't even start with South America minimizing all the cultures to the Brazilian.
I wonder if I'm the only one who got a little annoyed by Wonder Black in The Wonderful 101. They said he was Indian and slapped a bindi on him, but basically everything else about him suggested that they were thinking of a black American; they even made it a point that he was going to school in America so he wasn't even stationed in India despite being the Indian guy. The entire game was playing with cliched and stereotypical characters, so that made it come across to me either that they couldn't think of anything interested to do with Indian stereotypes, or they weren't confident enough that the character they came up with Wonder Black broke enough away from the stereotypes to be acceptable.
Yes, I did.
As basically ANYONE does when they say "american", at least where I come from. Otherwise it's usually "South American", "Latin American" or just the name of the Country you are referring to.
Thread - "25% of the worlds population has maybe .5% representation in video games."
Era dude thinking this is wokelympics - "You know this other group has even less......"
Era dude thinking this is wokelympics - "You know this other group has even less......"
Just wanted to jump in to say, as a South Asian, yeah representation really sucks. It'll get better with time, is my hope anyway. There's upcoming games like Indivisible where the protagonist, Ajna, is heavily inspired by Hinduism and that is really cool imo. Christianity have so many different interpretations of their religion, so it's just nice to see people having fun with and respecting my religion at once.
I'm not looking for proper representation of me or people like me, not that I wouldn't like to see an actual cool Tamil character in like anything, but I'm just looking to see parts of my culture represented in fun and respectful ways, I guess. And I will continue to hope that it'll get better soon.
I'm not looking for proper representation of me or people like me, not that I wouldn't like to see an actual cool Tamil character in like anything, but I'm just looking to see parts of my culture represented in fun and respectful ways, I guess. And I will continue to hope that it'll get better soon.
I too would appreciate these discussions not being framed as competitions, pitting marginalized groups against one another. And it'd be great if people didn't respond to threads that way.
On mobile, apologies if this was said before already but I believe Final Fantasy X is set in a fantasy land inspired by southeast asia. I believe the characters are southeast asian as well. See Tidus and Wakka, and a bunch of NPCs.
Apologies if I'm being ignorant.
Apologies if I'm being ignorant.
Some time ago I found there are actually two Peruvian fighting game characters.
https://infamouskarl.wordpress.com/...es-characters-around-the-world-south-america/
Yeah I can't think of a single main character off the top of my head. Even Chloe, I just thought was white in UC2 (it's been 10 years though) until Lost legacy came out and I read she was half Indian.
The gap really is crazy when you compare population on this planet :p
The gap really is crazy when you compare population on this planet :p
As someone who isn't an FF fan, I never would've guessed lol. I see Tidus' model is pretty brown according to Google Images, but his artwork is very fair-skinned and he has blond hair. Might be because of the anime aesthetic that they were chasing, but the character doesn't look South Asian anyways. That doesn't mean it's bad representation or that it doesn't count, but it does mean some people probably didn't catch on.
And that explains everything lol. Thanks.
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Dorian from Dragon Age isn't explicitly south Asian since yanno it's not set on earth but the devs have confirmed he's the same ethnicity as his actor who is Indian.
I am not trying to be offensive with this comment but do you think African-Americans have just been more vocal about transformation and representation in Western Media than South Asians, Latino's etc. ? I just feel that is the case and that is why threads like this are necessary as an exercise in social consciousness.
Sorry didn't know we couldnt have both. Guess we will suck it up!
Fuck off
Put yourself in someone else's shoes. Imagine never playing a videogame where someone who looks like you is the main hero, or shown in a positive light except in the form of a stereotype.
I believe FFX was actually inspired by Okinawa? I remember reading Nobuo Uematsu specifically went there to find inspiration to write Suteki Da Ne.
Tidus, Wakka looks nothing like South East Asians.
Yup, I thought the same. There really was no indication in the games (except, apparently, Lost Legacy). The way media works, is audiences like us are conditioned to think of white and straight as the default. We need overt confirmation otherwise to think that way. It sucks.
I'd say this is right. My parents weren't ever advocating for better representation because they were immigrants just hoping to find a place in Canada. As someone born and raised in Canada, I actually care. And so it's something I'll discuss and advocate for, but I probably never would have if it wasn't for threads like these helping me to realize I don't need to be silent. That I can ask for better.
Yeah I never understood that. Why people from the US call themselves americans instead of other adjectives like Canadian, Colombian, Chilean, Danish, ecuatorian, etc.
Ok, did my research this time. Final Fantasy is indeed set in an inspired by South East Asia, Thailand, and Japan setting. From the wikipedia itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spira_(Final_Fantasy)#Concept_and_creation
Bonus points because it also represents Central Asia, in particular Zanarkand being inspired by Samarkand in Uzbekistan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samarkand )
Wakka is apparantely austronesian, at least according to the FF wiki: https://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Wakka#Personality
In summary, FFX was a pretty big game (still is, and is about to come out on Switch), and it's an example of south(east) Asian representation.
As some one from South Asia myself, I honestly dont care that much, but it would be cool to see nonetheless. FarCry 4 and UCLL had south asian settings. Hitman 2 has a Mumbai level.
Maybe if you knew the country's name?
United States of America.
Lol WTF.