You're gonna get tan women in your S-Links and that's it. Expecting a Black lead for the Self-Insert MC isn't happening anytime soon.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Nintendo, can we get some black male characters?
- Thread starter Sea lion
- Start date
You're gonna get tan women in your S-Links and that's it. Expecting a Black lead for the Self-Insert MC isn't happening anytime soon.
I don't have any problem with diversity. I just don't think japanese companies will be the ones where we'll be seeing more people of color because of motives that I said before on the thread. I expect that to happen more on western companies than japanese ones because of our background, influence and culture of black people than them which have no such thing, which is also why west companies do that more.
Remember Me protag is other one. I don't know if you guys would consider her black but here in brazil she would be.
I think that it will be difficult to have a black person as a protagonist from Nintendo in a big-budget game; not because of racism---purely because Nintendo's strategy for future IPs aims at player's customization while old IPs have such iconic characters that they will hardly change.
Nintendo's new IP are centered around multiplayer and aren't story-driven. This means that new characters will be user-generated avatars. Traditional Nintendo IPs, instead, have white characters (Mario, Link) and they won't be changed because they are iconic. We might see black co-protagonists perhaps and I think ARMS and Pokémon are doing a great job in this.
Anyway, if Nintendo will ever develop a big-budget single-player story-driven game I think they will surprise us. Nintendo isn't scared to innovate (Samus Aran docet).
Nintendo's new IP are centered around multiplayer and aren't story-driven. This means that new characters will be user-generated avatars. Traditional Nintendo IPs, instead, have white characters (Mario, Link) and they won't be changed because they are iconic. We might see black co-protagonists perhaps and I think ARMS and Pokémon are doing a great job in this.
Anyway, if Nintendo will ever develop a big-budget single-player story-driven game I think they will surprise us. Nintendo isn't scared to innovate (Samus Aran docet).
I don't think you're wrong, but I don't think it's wrong to expect a platform holding publisher to have a single black male protagonist that isn't reduced to "A win screen on smash bros" or "a club exclusive DLC game reward" like Doc. Again, we're not even talking about the 'main' character, Nintendo doesn't even have secondary black male characters in any major role.
Like, again, I think it's mostly kind of gross that people come in here INTENT to disprove somehow that they can improve on this front and should. It's not like they're suddenly bad people over there at Nintendo or that their current games aren't good, so why do people take it as a personal attack.
Even from the user generated avatars you typically pick one combination to put on your box art so using those to better represent the player base would be a good start. To give some credit they've started to do this with Splatoon and I think they did that with ever oasis though I haven't played the game.
yeah, I think all the companies could stand to do a little better.
A new big IP from someone where a really obviously afro culturally inspired character (and not really ethnically ambigious) is the lead would be interesting to see.
Like, actual lead. Not co-star, or part of an eclectic ensemble or whatever, (i.e. a cast like Until Dawn, etc) Someone who rides or dies with the franchise and is the clear face.
say if Control was announced, but obv she was black.
Well, for sure. The Inkling girl on 2 is black and I would say the main one.
I liked Pillars of eternity: 2 deadfire because like 90% of the cast is black or Polynesian/african inspired but there's still all sorts of dodgyness in that game.
I mean, from the consumer's point of view they're effectively first-party I guess, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, and they're not actually the same thing.
No, it means that the term don't exist as official. And being second or first party don't matter because those are all owned by Nintendo and published by them as well so it's first party, much like Sony and Insomniac games.
That's a good point.
Most of the newer Nintendo IPs (at least the big ones) haven't been story focused, and have been multiplayer. Sometimes with customization options.
I do think a single player IP will be announced in the next year or so. So that will be interesting to see.
This thread IS reminding me that Lab Zero (makers of Skullgirls) are making a game where the first major area is based on Southeast Asia, and were rejected by at least one publisher partially on the basis of "having a brown-skinned girl protagonist is ballsy."
Indivisible is looking awesome by the way, the backer beta's been great.
Indivisible is looking awesome by the way, the backer beta's been great.
Hell yeah there's good variety in the Splatoon 2 promo art, if not necessarily the cover itself (I think the cover girl looks darker-skinned in promo art than on the cover).
Oh, that's cool. Haven't played.
you do feel like there are pretty easy missed opportunities at times.
Like, no one really cares about the Starlink cast I assume. That's not going to make or break sales. So you figure a developer could have liberties a bit.
so when I saw it I was like "this is cool.....oh he's the main character? eh"
I know there not black but for a PoC MC how about a Zelda spin-off where you play as the first born male Gerudo since Ganondorf?
Could probably squeez some cool stuff out of that.
Could probably squeez some cool stuff out of that.
Yeah that's certainly true. It feels weird in games with such high numbers npc's you interact with and see walking around how little liberties some developers tend to take. The number times I've gone through an rpg and have counted the number of non white npc's on two fingers if that is absurd.
Well, for sure. The Inkling girl on 2 is black and I would say the main one.
where? are you sure you're not mistaking shadow tones for dark skin because shes pale
Well, for sure. The Inkling girl on 2 is black and I would say the main one.
No, that girl is white as fuck!
Where?Well, for sure. The Inkling girl on 2 is black and I would say the main one.
Well, in a globalised world where almost everyone in developed countries has access to the Internet (and Japan sure as hell isn't behind a great firewall like mainland China), at least has some notions of a second language and Japanese companies sell their products and export their media and trends all around the world that excuse doesn't hold up. At the very least it shouldn't hold up for much longer. It's a bullshit excuse in this day and age IMHO.
A'ight, so here's the render used on the Splatoon cover.
But here's other renders of her.
And HERE'S her hand-drawn art.
But here's other renders of her.
And HERE'S her hand-drawn art.
Maybe? It's because I would consider her a black girl much like this person:
The majority of Japan is made of japanese ethnicity along chinese and korean with westerns coming later and the minority of those being actual black or more dark skin people so yeah, there's no such thing as diversity on that front at least for people of color much like black as well as in China and South Korea.
And yes, you're right that devs don't see it in that way because beyond the fact that their society is pretty homogeneous on that front, there's no need or incentive to that movement to exist.
Iirc She's supposed to be the 5th from left skin tone.
The lighting makes her look fairer than she's supposed to be. Might be the middle one, don't have the amiibo with me right now to check.
A'ight, so here's the render used on the Splatoon cover.
But here's other renders of her.
And HERE'S her hand-drawn art.
Here's her in-game on the left:
Don't check the figma though.If we're going by the Inkiling's amiibo, she's definitley not white.
Again, this is a super weak defense when the games sell 70-80% of their copies outside of Japan. Nintendo is not blind to this, and we've clearly seen them take strides in other areas. It's not a bad thing to ask for more.
They don't have a firewall but you really underestimate the effect of a language and alphabet barrier and how easy it is to stay in your language/cultural bubble if most services and imports have a localised version. It's like a parallel internet.
This is not a "in this day and age" problem if Japanese people at large don't have any use for good english. Globalisation is lead by key people who are interested in selling foreign culture (or selling to foreign culture), not by the masses. So it's still slow.
In the other examples sure. They sure weren't displaying that on the cover art.
Umm yeah they were just look at the inkling boy in the same boxart.
One of the main characters of Splatoon 2 is Queen Marina, unless you're making this the fact she's an Octoling.
Just to clarify, I'm in no way defending them, I'm just coming up with ideas why they don't have particularly diverse characters.
I sold Arms shortly after beating it single player. But I never knew the Arms characters had... you know, Arms? Real ones?
could be. Literally could be just about anything. Or be nothing.
as a black guy, I don't really care much about random tint or shader options as a mark for diversity. They're neccessary options to have in a game of course, but a silder isn't what I look towards first as a mark of diversity
I'm personally interested in characters that have real world cultural or ethnic influences.
ARMs characters have clear cultural influences in appearance or look. Or for more realistic, Nadine. Or a create a character having culturally influenced options for hair, etc.
Splatoon skin slider? eh. It's great to have, but as a black guy it doesn't move the needle in terms of industry diversity.
It's all indistinct at best. What would you call the Ever Oasis character? Just....dark. That's all you could really say. Trying to claim the Ever Oasis character as one thing or another is pointless.
It's dumb to argue over.
Yeah, inkling girl is definetly meant to be vaguely brown skinned. I dont know why she was brough up in the first place
White girls if you're including TLOU2 and Horizon, though The Last Guardians kid certainly wasn't.
UC4 Lost Legacy the two main characters were not white nor male either, and not just skin tone sliders like Splatoon.
Last edited:
Nintendo needs to make new characters period. I would hope they can get minorities in there, and I would hope a new franchise or something.
Skin color is a spectrum (there's no "on/off" gene, it's a variable quantity of mixture of pigments), when characters don't display any form of cultural personnality there's not much to go on about.
The whole discussion is about perception and how to change it rather than trying to uncover mystical facts.
Isn't the story behind this that the guy is a celebrity there, and that's why they reacted as such?
I think Nintendo have used different skin tones on different marketing images.
In the main box art she looks tanned, not black, Asian, or mixed raced:
Here she looks Latina:
In the Amiibo, she's Latina or mixed raced:
But she's no Marina:
I'd say she's either the 3rd or 4th for from the left, based on the marketing images.
In the main box art she looks tanned, not black, Asian, or mixed raced:
Here she looks Latina:
In the Amiibo, she's Latina or mixed raced:
But she's no Marina:
Iirc She's supposed to be the 5th from left skin tone.
The lighting makes her look fairer than she's supposed to be. Might be the middle one, don't have the amiibo with me right now to check.
I'd say she's either the 3rd or 4th for from the left, based on the marketing images.