“Generic white dude video game protagonist.” How does this trend/phrase make you feel?
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I've gotten more, I guess the word is "annoyed," by it as I've gotten older. The world's different now and diversity definitely helps. Personally, I'm ok with games going the Mass Effect route and having a "generic white dude" (whatever that means) be the default character as long as people get to make their character look the way they want.
generic gruff white dude it's everywhere in books, movies, games, sitcoms...etc
This has probably been mentioned before in the topic, but calling someone 'generic' based on their skin colour and their looks, without spending a minute to listen to their story, is at least offensive and borderline racist.
Creating alt accounts just because you're too much of a coward to post with your real one is pretty lame, man
I'm not sure what you are trying to say but we need more people to make content with other characters. Roots comes to mind, that was a great TV series but it's so rare to have something like that. It is so rare to have a show about a topic such as that and isn't it like 30 years old? Its strange how there's been nothing similar since but we've had dozens of detective shows with generic characters.
You're sure it's an alt?
Account created the week ERA went online, only 28 posts, coveniently decides to hide posting history, goes into a topic acting like this is racist at all. Sure smells like an alt.
Exactly. It is like most people in this thread don't get that. I am a dark-skin black Male and most of my favorite heroes from any media are white. I don't care and never will. I love them because of their character, not skintone.
Honestly I always wondered how different Spec-Ops the Line would have been as the main character originally seemed more middle eastern inspired vs the purposefully generic American soldier of the final game.
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Well you may have a point, but none of the people I was referring to are white. In general I think some people tend to see Mediterranean people as less classically "white" because they don't usually have pale skin, or light hair, or blue eyes.
Feel free to ask the mods to check me then. Not everyone can spend hours browsing and writing on here. :)
Wow.Honestly I always wondered how different Spec-Ops the Line would have been as the main character originally seemed more middle eastern inspired vs the purposefully generic American soldier of the final game.
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I didn't know he wasn't white at the beginning. I am happy we got the current Walker as he fit the story much more but it would indeed be interesting to see how different the game would be with the original guy.
In general, the generic white dude protag is just fuckin' boring. Have some flair and pizzazz. Dante and Nero from DMC 5 (and 4 as well) are both white dudes but manage to have personality in their clothing designs and due to their anime white hair (and also their actual personalities). Being a white dude doesn't instantly make a character boring, the same way an anime protagonist having brown hair doesn't instantly make them boring, but the vast majority are lame everymen that are designed to be as generic as possible to reach the widest market.
With this trend of historical RPG/action games, I'd kill for one set in the Mongol conquests playing as a Mongolian warrior. Maybe during Subotai's incursions into Europe, so we'd get to play as the minority kicking the shit out of European cultures for a change
With this trend of historical RPG/action games, I'd kill for one set in the Mongol conquests playing as a Mongolian warrior. Maybe during Subotai's incursions into Europe, so we'd get to play as the minority kicking the shit out of European cultures for a change
I think it's an option that is the most pragmatic during the current climate; worth being criticised for a lack of diversity than risk genuinely offending other groups for employing stereotypes/insulting cultural characteristics. I find it difficult to criticise a studio for making a choice like that when it seems a lot of studios in the west have people from mainly "white" backgrounds.
I'm from an ethnic and religious group that has almost no representation (which is a particularly large group). I wouldn't want either to be used as a selling point to demonstrate some values that have been adopted in order to make it more sellable.
I also wouldn't expect a western studio to be able to do "justice" to what I hold so dearly about my identity.
I don't understand how people square this circle - if a studio is so "unskilled" in making a generic white character, one that doesn't do anything but make people roll their eyes, why would I then think the studio would be skilled enough to make a character of another background that doesn't feel like it's being used solely as a marketing point?
Does feel like we're in this weird space when it comes to identity.
I'm from an ethnic and religious group that has almost no representation (which is a particularly large group). I wouldn't want either to be used as a selling point to demonstrate some values that have been adopted in order to make it more sellable.
I also wouldn't expect a western studio to be able to do "justice" to what I hold so dearly about my identity.
I don't understand how people square this circle - if a studio is so "unskilled" in making a generic white character, one that doesn't do anything but make people roll their eyes, why would I then think the studio would be skilled enough to make a character of another background that doesn't feel like it's being used solely as a marketing point?
Does feel like we're in this weird space when it comes to identity.
I asked a similar question and people responded to me that's actually just about skin color. The actual character is not really important in this context.
So the thread title should be "why are there so many white characters in games?"
Well, I'd just say "generic main character" myself. Of course, if you want to point out that they have the generic white guy appearance, go forth. Anybody has the right to complain about whatever they feel is lacking in a game.
That might be a fair question - do companies need to think about diversity more?
Are they really considering candidates from other backgrounds, do those people having a real opportunity to progress into positions of influence and power?
Are they then given the scope and support to make decisions like this?
I'm Black and my stance on this has always been I care more about gameplay and content more so than who the protagonist may or may not be.
That said, if a game gives me to option to choose or create a character, they will be anything but White if possible.
That said, if a game gives me to option to choose or create a character, they will be anything but White if possible.
It's not the color, it's all about the personality. It's just that all generic protagonist share the same personality and color.
Let us take Locke from Halo 5. The dude is black, but his personality is the same as any other protagonist from the dawn of video games, making him really uninteresting.
Let us take Locke from Halo 5. The dude is black, but his personality is the same as any other protagonist from the dawn of video games, making him really uninteresting.
It gets boring for sure, but a white protagonist isn't boring just because they're white. There's way more depth to Joel in TLOU than Cole from Gears, for instance.
Characters need to be diverse in their representation, not just diverse in terms of their skin colour or gender.
It's getying better and I think it'll continue to get better, but it's going to be slow unless people are proactive with it.
Characters need to be diverse in their representation, not just diverse in terms of their skin colour or gender.
It's getying better and I think it'll continue to get better, but it's going to be slow unless people are proactive with it.
It's really dull. Perfect example for me is Uncharted. Just, stop. I'm not going to play this. It's dull as fuck. Video games are way behind in terms of protagonist diversity and that's not ok.
I generally dislike when the player protagonist is a blank slate character with no personality. I'd rather play as Lara Croft or Nathan Drake or Kratos than a generic character where I don't have a chance to inject my own personality through things like dialogue choices and actions. Character creators allow me to inject my creativity to make a character I like.
Game developers should consider choosing more diversely ethnic protagonists and by that I mean also considering Asian ethnicities (which covers more than "Japanese looking").
Game developers should consider choosing more diversely ethnic protagonists and by that I mean also considering Asian ethnicities (which covers more than "Japanese looking").
John Marston is widely regarded as one of the best characters of last generation so you are wrong
True, lol. I'm completely willing to accept I'm in the minority on this one. I used to be more on board with R*'s general quality of storytelling, but I've started to drift away in recent years. I think they should be capable of more, and I think we should expect more.
Dan Houser is good at writing characters, its just he's not really good at general stories
This place is obsessed by race. There is a good mix of characters in western gaming these days.
For some reason I've always associated the 'generic white guy with short brown hair in AAA games' with shooters (or at least games with large amounts of gunfire), probably as last gen there were a lot of such games. Now, with the move towards more open-world, RPG-elements etc, there seems to be a bit more variety in the AAA space, whereas many of the more popular online games at the moment don't have dedicated white male lead characters, or even campaigns at all.
I don't know, I'm not sure whether studios have actually noticed that more variety is more creative and can lead to fresh, original characters and stories. Or that, on a more cynical note, it just gains more press coverage and online discussion/visibility. Or that 'military white macho guy' was partly down to everyone wanting endless CoD/Gears-type games (and thus the major influence being war films led by white guys) a decade ago. Maybe it's a mix of the three.
Before last gen, it felt like major studios were far more likely to lean on cartoony animals etc, whereas once we hit the HD era, the muted natural colour palette arrived with natural skin tones that developers interpreted as 50 shades of white guy.
I just wonder whether such genre/tech shifts (combined with devs making the the same stuff as the media they consumed as kids) influence the 'generic white guy' as well as the social influence?
Maybe I'm wrong here- obviously there were shitloads of white protagonists before the HD era too, but it's the 'generic' sense of homogenous stubbly macho guy design that seemed to have reached a kind of industry-wide accepted idea of what a leading man in a shooter needed to look like last gen, when shooters were the big thing. Which is strange considering there's been white dudes as leads in licensed action film games since the 80s, but it's not like the sprites all looked similar, perhaps down to tech/colour limitations. In the artwork too, there's been some great threads pointing out the influences of box art design from action films over the years.
I don't know, I'm not sure whether studios have actually noticed that more variety is more creative and can lead to fresh, original characters and stories. Or that, on a more cynical note, it just gains more press coverage and online discussion/visibility. Or that 'military white macho guy' was partly down to everyone wanting endless CoD/Gears-type games (and thus the major influence being war films led by white guys) a decade ago. Maybe it's a mix of the three.
Before last gen, it felt like major studios were far more likely to lean on cartoony animals etc, whereas once we hit the HD era, the muted natural colour palette arrived with natural skin tones that developers interpreted as 50 shades of white guy.
I just wonder whether such genre/tech shifts (combined with devs making the the same stuff as the media they consumed as kids) influence the 'generic white guy' as well as the social influence?
Maybe I'm wrong here- obviously there were shitloads of white protagonists before the HD era too, but it's the 'generic' sense of homogenous stubbly macho guy design that seemed to have reached a kind of industry-wide accepted idea of what a leading man in a shooter needed to look like last gen, when shooters were the big thing. Which is strange considering there's been white dudes as leads in licensed action film games since the 80s, but it's not like the sprites all looked similar, perhaps down to tech/colour limitations. In the artwork too, there's been some great threads pointing out the influences of box art design from action films over the years.
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What a strange post you've made.
If only you would have some kind of self reflection to come to the same conclusion after writing your posts.
I'm Asian and personally I am fine with it.
Also since when is white ''generic''? Isn't that kind of racist?
Of course I want more people of color in video games but calling white people ''generic'' is just mean imo.
Also since when is white ''generic''? Isn't that kind of racist?
Of course I want more people of color in video games but calling white people ''generic'' is just mean imo.
Recently yes, there has been better diversity... which probably would never have happened if it weren't for people "obsessed by race" as you put it (aka just asking for better representation in a medium obsessed with the default angry white guy protag). Plus in the age of gamergate bullshit (you know those people that overlap with white supremacists because they actually are obsessed with race), there has to be vocal positive reinforcement and further encouragement to continue the trend, lest the shitlords gain too much influence over how devs cater to an audience.
While I would really like to see more non-white protagonists in games, I don't think it would be enough to simply change skin color to make a generic character non-generic.
With that said - not sure how you can tell that RDR2 and Days Gone protagonists are going to be generic just from the trailers/gameplay segments. Not saying they won't be, but I'd wait to see the actual games. Especially the RDR2 character, other than a few short narrative sequences and some gameplay videos - we don't know much about him and I expect Rockstar to make a good personal story. He may end up to be a complex character.
So, if your only gripe with them is skin color - I agree we should have more non-white protagonists in games. However, other than that, I don't see how you can judge if they are generic or not at this point.
I never cared what race or gender the character is, but I think to use this statement as a detractor to something is a shallow argument, the artist needs to make whatever their vision is.
I'm good man. You however decided to attemp some sort of appeal to popularity even though you were the first and only response to my post that was immediately after mine. So it was kind of a fail on 2 levels.
If you have some sort of actual substance to discuss, feel free. Otherwise don't @ me.
It's not being white that makes them generic, it's the similarity of the characters. Particularly gruff guys with guns, brown hair (or bald in the case of soldiers/space marines), brown eyes, military kit, 30-something, muted colour palette. I mean, I'm a white guy, and I can see it. It doesn't even touch the variety of what even white guys look like, let alone everyone else on the planet.
This might be a bit out there, but in terms of generic character design, it's also perhaps not helped by the realistic tone brought in by the HD era. In games set in the real world, and combined with the relatively unchanging nature of men's fashion and uniforms in recent times, it leads to outfits that are either casual jeans-and-tshirt or festooned with military webbing, which then combined with the gruff-white-guy-short-hair look to provide a template that's hard to break from.
In terms of space marine characters like Shepherd, you've not only got the issue that they could have led with the female variant, but also that, in sci-fi armour even more so than regular clothes everyone looks to the head to see something recognisable, and what they recognise on the box is a generic stubbly, gruff white 30-something military guy. You can use the character creator to make various Shepherds look like however you want (criticism about crap hair and skin tone options aside), but the art they chose to lead with on the box was as 'safe' as possible, and it's that industry definition of 'safe' meaning 'gruff white military man/action film lead' that is under criticism as 'generic', not necessarily whiteness itself.
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I don't think people should necessarily be equating the word generic with boring (although protagonists being generic or stereotypes can make them feel dull). It's more that there are so many white protagonists and, especially last generation, so many 30 something white male with short brown hair and designer stubble protagonists, that those characteristics have come to define a common, generic trait in games in general.
This doesn't touch upon the narrative at all - purely the visual design. All things being equal. we know the industry has had/has a problem with minority characters playing the lead in narrative driven games. That is slowly changing but there is still the veneer that a character being white and male is the default and anything other than that is some kind of special case. The worst form of this is when characters that are female or ethnic minorities are only written "if it makes sense for the story" - you see that line from consumers a lot.
This doesn't touch upon the narrative at all - purely the visual design. All things being equal. we know the industry has had/has a problem with minority characters playing the lead in narrative driven games. That is slowly changing but there is still the veneer that a character being white and male is the default and anything other than that is some kind of special case. The worst form of this is when characters that are female or ethnic minorities are only written "if it makes sense for the story" - you see that line from consumers a lot.
This place tends to lean to the American perspective.
Personally, I take issue with bad and/or generic character design, but I don't care that much about gender, race, etc. From that perspective, I like the designs of characters like Aloy, Geralt, Corvo/Emily more then for example Nathan Drake, because he's a bit more middle of the road/generic in design. I love what CD Projekt is offering with Cyberpunk. When a game offers character customization, I'm usually all over the place and something like gender depends more on the VA quality then anything else. Always female Shepard in Mass Effect because Jennifer Hale was so much better then Mark Meer.
Generic, uninterestingly written character does not become interesting just because he's given a black skin. So the phrase is idiotic. But if you want to complain about shitty writing, go ahead, by all means.
I am also a bit alergic to "strong female protagonist" where "strong" actually means "perfect, without any flaws". Whoever uses that phrase and then writes perfect unflawed characters is a hack too. Looking at characters like Jade in Dying Light, who had awesome visual design, but was a cardboard cut-out otherwise.
I am also a bit alergic to "strong female protagonist" where "strong" actually means "perfect, without any flaws". Whoever uses that phrase and then writes perfect unflawed characters is a hack too. Looking at characters like Jade in Dying Light, who had awesome visual design, but was a cardboard cut-out otherwise.
I think you have to divorce narrative and characterisation from visual design in this instance.
You can have visually interesting characters written generically and you can have generically designed characters written well.
When talking about racial representation or indeed any minority representation or just interesting, unique design in general, you are talking about the way a character looks, not how they are written. Both can be criticised independently.
EDIT: Regarding "strong female character", I always assumed the "strong" equated to "written well", not necessarily equating to physical strength of perceived lack of flaws. Anyway, agreed on poorly written characters of all types; all interesting characters should have flaws. Without them, they cannot grow.
Agree with you on writing characters, but in terms of visual design, a gruff white guy with short brown hair is perhaps a poorer start if you want to create something that hasn't been used for years as the industry standard for 'safe' visual character design to appeal to as many customers of shooters as possible.
I also think there's a double standard in terms of 'strong' (not perfect) characters in that, almost by default, male leads can be extremely driven, insanely capable when massively outnumbered in combat, witty in exchanging barbed comments with npcs, smart in problem solving, lucky when in danger etc and there's no need to call them a 'strong male character' because those elements are associated with being a lead character in an action game. If a female lead character is described as 'strong', it might just be that she's a rounded lead with all that often implies as opposed to a damsel in distress, such as having a goal and working to achieve it independently, not always having to take shit and threats from npcs, can defend herself and is not being kidnapped and then rescued (to remove her agency) all the time. Somehow that hyper-capable level of self-reliance as a PC is occassionally described as being irritatingly perfect for a woman, when it's pretty much the default for male leads. Again, I agree that good characters aren't perfect, but I feel that women are often held to different standards where being fantastically lucky, smart or otherwise capable is described as unrealistic in an industry where men shrugging off gunshots to the head, surviving landslides and walking away from vehicle crashes several times a day is seen as perfectly normal.
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Yeah, the finished product seems so well constructed piece by piece even down to casting a va for his "generic" voice that developed throughout the game.
I can't even picture what it could have been about.
The color of your skin doesn't dictate how interesting you may or may not be.
I consider the 'space marine' archetype one of the most boring ones in videogames, and there's plenty of PoC in those kind of games besides white dudes, and they're equally yawn inducing.
I understand why people would relate white protagonist to 'generic' tho, there's a huge number of them to choose from after all.
I consider the 'space marine' archetype one of the most boring ones in videogames, and there's plenty of PoC in those kind of games besides white dudes, and they're equally yawn inducing.
I understand why people would relate white protagonist to 'generic' tho, there's a huge number of them to choose from after all.
