The alt-right attack on the Netflix Witcher makes me feel a bit uncomfortable about CDPR

[NewDonkStrong]

https://kotaku.com/netflix-witcher-writer-tries-to-smooth-unfounded-racial-1825960625

"I will not deviate from the books' races and cultures, which means I WILL include minorities," she said to one fan. "People saw the writers' room picture I tweeted and railed 'Why so diverse?! Why no Europeans?!' … the staff includes someone who was born in Europe, someone else who's spent half her life in Central Europe, and someone whose family is Polish. But no one actually asked that — they simply took note of skin color and assumed I was filling quotas." She went on to say that the author of the Witcher books, Andrzej Sapkowski, told her himself that recognizing the diversity in her show would be honoring his intentions as a writer.

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I feel like the majority of the people attacking the showrunner became fans of The Witcher through the games, which as we all know, feature zero non-white people(in the base game). I've always known that Andrzej Sapkowski doesn't like CDPR for a multitude of reasons(like, in his opinion, not being properly credited as the creator), but I can empathize with his dislike of CDPR if they took a world he imagined to be diverse and just lazily made everything white.(except for a couple sex demons)

Yes, The Witcher games focus heavily on racism and injustice, but at the same time shitty people champion them for being all white stories about great white heroes, much in the same way Kingdom Come: Deliverance is. CDPR will never comment on their shittier side of their fanbase, but I wish they would.

 

[Rzarekta]

Interesting - I definitely see CDPR in a different light after understanding this a little more.

 

[Spinky]

I'll still play TW3 eventually, but not gonna lie, this has me way more interested in the books and the show now.

EDIT: By the way, I'm not saying "fuck CDPR" or whatever. I'm not informed enough on the subject. Just have a bit more interest in the franchise outside of the games now.

 

[Deleted member 511]

I've been meaning to read the books because they seemed a lot more interesting and now I might actually check out the show because of this.

 

[Ushay]

It's interesting because one of the core elements in Witcher was actually racism and intolerance. Yet they managed to tell that story in an all white culture.

Hopefully Cyberpunk will shift from that entirely.

 

[TheDkmariolink]

Let's see how it's handled in Cyberpunk 2077 since that features an abundance of races and ethnicities.

They cant screw that up, right?

 

[Zacmortar]

I'm glad the Netflix show is actually trying to be diverse. The only real diversity in Witcher 3 is the gay werewolf at the very beginning and Ciri being implied to be bi/les(i think?), which, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty much just throw away lines in a 200 hour game, which is still really nasty.

 

[Wagram]

I've never seen a writer more bitter than Andrzej Sapkowski.

 

[Ein]

People in Witcher 3 threads always make the original creator out to be some sort of bitter asshole but he seems like a really level headed thoughtful person.

 

[Deleted member 42]

I call this The Earthsea Conundrum since the author of that series had similar thoughts about the world they created

 

[Deleted member 35618]

I'll still play TW3 eventually, but not gonna lie, this has me way more interested in the books and the show now.

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Me too! I played The Witcher III, and have just started NG+ but was never really that invested in the world outside of the game's plot.

But the series has become a must-watch for me.

 

[Vagabond]

Makes me wonder if I will get some representation in Witcher 4. Could CDPR change the ethnicity of characters without stirring the pot negatively?

 

[Zacmortar]

People in Witcher 3 threads always make the original creator out to be some sort of bitter asshole but he seems like a really level headed thoughtful person.

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Besides how extremely bitter he is towards the games, despite the games being the only real reason his books are any popular. I still don't like him because of that, but this gives me more respect.

Nothing beats the Metro author's response to that bitterness, though, lol. That dude's amazing.

 

[Hailinel]

I've never seen a writer more bitter than Andrzej Sapkowski.

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CDPR made their name and reputation on the back of his work, and many people don't even realize that The Witcher games are based on his novels and characters. I'd be curious to know the terms of the agreement he signed with CDPR and how much control he has over what the developers are allowed to do in adapting his work.

 

[Prine]

https://kotaku.com/netflix-witcher-writer-tries-to-smooth-unfounded-racial-1825960625



I feel like the majority of the people attacking the showrunner became fans of The Witcher through the games, which as we all know, feature zero non-white people. I've always known that Andrzej Sapkowski doesn't like CDPR for a multitude of reasons(like, in his opinion, not being properly credited as the creator), but I can empathize with his dislike of CDPR if they took a world he imagined to be diverse and just lazily made everything white.(except for a couple sex demons)

Yes, The Witcher games focus heavily on racism and injustice, but at the same time shitty people champion them for being all white stories about great white heroes, much in the same way Kingdom Come: Deliverance is. CDPR will never comment on their shittier side of their fanbase, but I wish they would.

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There is a bunch of mystic, but powerful magic tribe that come across as Arabs in W3. But still, this is very very troubling to hear about CDPR, I know Poland has a worrying reputation of intolerance (right wing and backwards ruling party, white superiority marches) but I naively believed those working in engineering and sciences are progressive and tolerant. Hope that is true and will wait for more info about CDPR before making up my mind.

Edit here we go:

 

[Luxorek]

I feel like the majority of the people attacking the showrunner became fans of The Witcher through the games, which as we all know, feature zero non-white people. I've always known that Andrzej Sapkowski doesn't like CDPR for a multitude of reasons(like, in his opinion, not being properly credited as the creator), but I can empathize with his dislike of CDPR if they took a world he imagined to be diverse and just lazily made everything white.(except for a couple sex demons)

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You haven't played the games and read the books, haven't you?

1. Emboldened is not true.
2. Sapkowski's beef with CDPR has nothing to do with the way they adapted the world and everything with the fact that the games are far better known worldwide than his books [at least for now]. He is a grumpy old bastard, always has been.
3. Sapkowski is properly credited at the end of every game [first thing you see at the end credits] and CDPR has approached him many times to consult on the games.
4. Sapkowski's books aren't particurarly diverse. Like most writers of fantasy he doesn't describe the race of his characters, defaulting to white and only does so when he wants you to specifically notice someone is non-white. His brand of diversity is reflected in ethnic tensions between various fantastical races inhabiting his novels, which was faitfully adapted into the games.
5. Sapkowski was offered royalties for the rights to the Witcher video games. He refused, since he thought the games would flop and took a big one time payment. It's been eating him ever since.

 

[Sylmaron]

https://kotaku.com/netflix-witcher-writer-tries-to-smooth-unfounded-racial-1825960625
I feel like the majority of the people attacking the showrunner became fans of The Witcher through the games, which as we all know, feature zero non-white people.

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That's not entirely correct. Have you forgotten about the Ofieri runewright salesmen?

 

[Soony Xbone Uhh]

Include people of color and you get flack.
Don't include people of color and you get flack.


Great times we live in...

 

[Ahasverus]

The backslash against CDPR is the most stupid thing I swear. Sometimes you can have a work without a black dude. It's not the end of the world. There is no glamour to be found in the world of The Witcher, it's a horrible world. I fear for whatever new character they create, black or not, it's gonna have a horrible time.

And they did add a black race and it was probably the only "good" one in the whole series so there is that.

 

[NewDonkStrong]

That's not entirely correct. Have you forgotten about the Ofieri runewright salesmen?

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Yeah, I forgot about that Heart of Stone questline.

 

[Bizzquik]

That's not entirely correct. Have you forgotten about the Ofieri runewright salesmen?

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Thank you!
And he's probably one of the people that Geralt shows the most respect and deference to throughout the entire game. Their conversations are quite engaging, actually.

 

[Deleted member 11093]

Witcher 3 is literally loved by almost EVERYONE who plays narrative focused video games. It's no surprise that shitty people also happen to love the game. The game is insanely popular.


Granted, the lack of colored people in the games sucks, but Geralt's "good" dialogue options in the third game are progressive as fuck, so I find the idea of an alt right loving it kinda amusing, you can't turn Gerlat into a sexist, evil, racist asshole like you could in the Mass Effect games or DA Origins, which I'm sure some alt rights adore.

 

[CenturionNami]

He was also really sympathetic towards that gay hunter. Don't know why people see Geralt as problematic just cause he's thirsty all the time

 

[HyGogg]

I once looked up the black population of Poland. It was 80 people. In the whole fucking country.

So it always made sense to me that they wouldn't represent diversity of skin-tone. That said, both the books and the games do a great job of dealing with race, it just isn't distinguished by skin color in the way it is in America.

But because it so prominently dealt with race issues, it's weird to me that anyone would see it as a game about a homogenous ethnostate either. It's imposing our sense of race on a world that understands it very differently. But of course the alt-right is not the brightest or most thoughtful bunch.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

This is the most stupid thing I swear. Sometimes you can have a work without a black dude.

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That was your take away from this eh?

 

[Amnixia]

Lmao what are these assholes on about.

It's clear the thing they don't like is the amount of women on the writing team.

Prolly afraid that the show will have some substance instead of Gerald banging Shani/Trish/Jeniffer/goats every few minutes.

 

[Deleted member 8196]

I don't see the problem.
So according to some people every developer should put every race/etnicity in their games because...? I just don't understand that.

And we had a black merchant on TW3 HoS expansion.

 

[Dragoon]

Who cares what the writing team looks like? How dull are peoples' lives when they worry about this dumb ish? If the writer is of top quality, that's all that matters. Don't care if all are women, men, whatever color.

Anyway, from little that I know of this, it gives me a lot more hope then I had before

 

[Murfield]

I doubt it was deliberate, if the game has heavy themes of racism in it.

It could be simply that Poland is not racially diverse as a country. Wikipedia says that 94.83% of the population is of Polish ethnicity, the rest mostly come from other Slavic countries.

I think it is similar to under representation of black people in a lot of Japanese games. Looking back I can only think of one black character in all the souls games I have played.

I would like to see more racial diversity though.

 

[Kthulhu]

Makes me wonder if I will get some representation in Witcher 4. Could CDPR change the ethnicity of characters without stirring the pot negatively?

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People will get angry and lie that they're mad because it's different from the book

See also: racist Harry Potter fans getting mad at a black Hermione in a stage play and racist Hunger Games characters getting mad when they found out a character was black.

 

[sredgrin]

This is the most stupid thing I swear. Sometimes you can have a work without a black dude. It's not the end of the world. There is no glamour to be found in the world of The Witcher, it's a horrible world. I fear for whatever new character they create, black or not, it's gonna have a horrible time.

And they did add a black race and it was probably the only "good" one in the whole series so there is that.

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What are you even on about?

Do you just hear the word game and diverse and automatically spew some copy pasted rant? Barely anything you said is even relevant to the discussion. It's about the fact the writers are women and PoC and people, like you, are automatically assuming a ton of horseshit for no reason at all.

 

[IronicSonic]

Looking forward for Witcher series. Witcher games were a slog

 

[Kenzodielocke]

It's so weird to me that people argue against PoC in fucking fantasy games with elves, dwarves and monsters.

 

[kaftan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but books don't feature many if any people of color. One is mentioned in conversation or something, I think, and that's it as far as I remember. Sapkowski is beyond a shadow of a doubt a left leaning person. He touches frequently on women's issues in books, who are featured prominently and many others progressive topics like climate change etc.. Racism is very important element of the stories as well - but that is more centered on racism that was common and relevant to Poland at that time - that is one focused mainly on nationalities. The racism against "other people" is portrayed entirely with fantastical races like elves or dwarves. CD Projekt's been very faithful to the source material so every single "well, I'll never look the same at CDPR" in this thread seems very silly to me.

Basically all of this:

You haven't played the games and read the books, haven't you?

1. Emboldened is not true.
2. Sapkowski's beef with CDPR has nothing to do with the way they adapted the world and everything with the fact that the games are far better known worldwide than his books [at least for now]. He is a grumpy old bastard, always has been.
3. Sapkowski is properly credited at the end of every game [first thing you see at the end credits] and CDPR has approached him many times to consult on the games.
4. Sapkowski's books aren't particurarly diverse. Like most writers of fantasy he doesn't describe the race of his characters, defaulting to white and only does so when he wants you to specifically notice someone is non-white. His brand of diversity is reflected in ethnic tensions between various fantastical races inhabiting his novels, which was faitfully adapted into the games.
5. Sapkowski was offered royalties for the rights to the Witcher video games. He refused, since he thought the games would flop and took a big one time payment. It's been eating him ever since.

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[Deleted member 8196]

It could be simply that Poland is not racially diverse as a country. Wikipedia says that 94.83% of the population is of Polish ethnicity, the rest mostly come from other Slavic countries.

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Exactly this, even in Metro games i don't recall black people and they are made by Ukranian developers, so calling devs racist or games racist because they don't include PoC is disgenerous.

 

[Riviakn]

She went on to say that the author of the Witcher books, Andrzej Sapkowski, told her himself that recognizing the diversity in her show would be honoring his intentions as a writer.

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There are literally only 2 Black Characters in the whole book series, Téa and Véa, 2 Zerrikanians that only appear one chapter

Edit: I've seen a lot of people claiming Sapkowski is angry because CDPR made their reputation on the back of his work, what he actually complains about is Publishers using Witcher (Mostly 2) Assets for the Covers that not only have nothing to do with the book content but also make people think the Books are actually based on the Games. Ex:

 

[DarkFlame92]

CDPR made their name and reputation on the back of his work, and many people don't even realize that The Witcher games are based on his novels and characters. I'd be curious to know the terms of the agreement he signed with CDPR and how much control he has over what the developers are allowed to do in adapting his work.

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Lmao dude,what are you talking about? You make it sound like the put a pistol in his mouth and forced him to give the book rights to them completely free. It's called a bussiness deal and he was an asshole to underestimate gaming as a medium and the capability of CD Project on delivering such a big commercial success. He was a known writer in Poland,but after the Witcher games he has sold literally thousands of books due to the Witcher's success

 

[Amnixia]

On a side note. They should get Idris Elba to play Geralt. Just to get these guys even more pissed off. He has the grit for it IMO.

 

[Deleted member 4976]

One of the villains of the first game was actually a minority.

TW3 actually regressed in representation.

 

[BossAttack]

This is a bad thread. And, you should feel bad. Also, Andrzej Sapkowski doesn't like CDPR simply because he could've gotten more money from them since he never believed they'd make a profitable game, as well as the fact that the games have gotten so popular that many people think of them first and his books second. It has less to do with diversity. If you've read the books you know they ain't exactly described a wealth of different skin colors in the people.

And, CDPR are the ones making a cyberpunk RPG created by a black dude who has been heavily involved in crafting the game. And, I doubt he's going to let them "white wash" his baby. Not that TW3 didn't have darker skinned people (see Hearts of Stone).

 

[CaviarMeths]

I should really check out the Witcher books.

 

[Xaero Gravity]

Include people of color and you get flack.
Don't include people of color and you get flack.


Great times we live in...

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The world we live in is more divided than ever before. It's utterly disgusting and depressing. I almost got into a fight when I went to see Black Panther opening night because some asshole was giving me shit for being white and "taking a black man's seat due to buying a ticket".

I don't understand why people are even upset over the fact that the series might include minorities. It's a fantasy game for fuck's sake, it's not like it's relying on some historical accuracy.

 

[Deleted member 8196]

And, CDPR are the ones making a cyberpunk RPG created by a black dude who has been heavily involved in crafting the game. And, I doubt he's going to let them "white wash" his baby. Not that TW3 didn't have darker skinned people (see Hearts of Stone).

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Thanks, this is the best comment here.

 

[Sylmaron]

Thank you!
And he's probably one of the people that Geralt shows the most respect and deference to throughout the entire game. Their conversations are quite engaging, actually.

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True. If I remember correctly some of their gear is also some of the best in the game.

 

[Bjones]

The Witcher 3 was only white people? Why do I remember non white people? Maybe I'm going crazy?

 

[Ahasverus]

Do you just hear the word game and diverse and automatically spew some copy pasted rant? Barely anything you said is even relevant to the discussion. It's about the fact the writers are women and PoC and people, like you, are automatically assuming a ton of horseshit for no reason at all.

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People are saying CDPR are racists because they didn't include black dudes in The Witcher.. that's racism by substraction, which I'm not sure it can exist. That the writer from the series is writing explicitly black or minority characters is really great and commendable, that doesn't mean CDPR ARE RACISTS

 

[Tibarn]

CDPR made their name and reputation on the back of his work, and many people don't even realize that The Witcher games are based on his novels and characters. I'd be curious to know the terms of the agreement he signed with CDPR and how much control he has over what the developers are allowed to do in adapting his work.

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IIRC it was his fault because he thought that the videogames wouldn't earn enough money and he choosed to obtain a (small) fixed amount instead of a %.
I do love the Geralt books, and yes, some people here even said that the game's characters and lore "are not that related to the books and improve on them a lot", which IMO is BS.
Sapkowski is a little bit salty because he was wrong, and his comments can be pretty annoying, but his talent as a writer is real and how CDPR created the world and stories being heavily influenced by him is real too.

 

[sredgrin]

The Witcher 3 was only white people? Why do I remember non white people? Maybe I'm going crazy?

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They were added in one of the DLCs.

 

[Zacmortar]

I once looked up the black population of Poland. It was 80 people. In the whole fucking country.

So it always made sense to me that they wouldn't represent diversity of skin-tone. That said, both the books and the games do a great job of dealing with race, it just isn't distinguished by skin color in the way it is in America.

But because it so prominently dealt with race issues, it's weird to me that anyone would see it as a game about a homogenous ethnostate either. It's imposing our sense of race on a world that understands it very differently. But of course the alt-right is not the brightest or most thoughtful bunch.

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Id argue the concept of a fictional world where only white people exist in various forms being an allegory for race/racism is itself racist, because it's using the real world plight of non-whites in a way that avoids having to actually represent non-white people.

I'm not a PoC, but if something was using a weird dodgy equivalent to homosexuality but with straight people, I'd consider that actively disrespectful and homophobic, as well. It doesn't really matter if its fiction or not, real people are affected by it, and white people aren't the only media consumers.

Books can be easy to just imagine characters as other races, because the majority of the time their skin color isn't mentioned. But the problem comes when it's adapted and everyone is just white.

Or you're Tolkien and you blatantly write your savage evil army as transparently super racist caricatures of black people lmao

 

[OrdinaryPrime]

I doubt it was deliberate, if the game has heavy themes of racism in it.

It could be simply that Poland is not racially diverse as a country. Wikipedia says that 94.83% of the population is of Polish ethnicity, the rest mostly come from other Slavic countries.

I think it is similar to under representation of black people in a lot of Japanese games. Looking back I can only think of one black character in all the souls games I have played.

I would like to see more racial diversity though.

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The issue with Poland isn't just that they have such little diversity, I traveled with a friend of mine to Poland who is black and they react like they've NEVER seen a black person. The issue is the country wants that to continue and is ruled by a religious zealot and has marches for white supremacy. And yet visiting concentration camps such as Auschwitz leads me to believe that there are many people that do not want people to forget how horrible the Holocaust was. I thought it a really odd country. Then again I only spent like two weeks there.