Boris Stoke

Far Cry 4: A grenade rolls down everest

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What? Video games address tough issues all the time, usually by pretending that they don't exist.

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I was more just jokingly referencing the IGN article posted earlier in which a racially ambiguous but handsomely smirking pink-suited villain is presented as somehow representative of the "tough issues" that video games should be tackling these days.

Video games can be as serious or silly as they want to be, of course, but I hate so much that the culture surrounding them is still so insecure and immature that the response to "This offends me" is as often "Well, here's why you're wrong, so shut up" as "Wow, we're so sorry, that sucks."

Ah... I guess I just ignore most things from IGN because I'm a bad person (???). Anyway, sorry if my posts last night were awkward. That's what I get for posting in bed from my phone as I'm falling asleep!

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Video games can be as serious or silly as they want to be, of course, but I hate so much that the culture surrounding them is still so insecure and immature that the response to "This offends me" is as often "Well, here's why you're wrong, so shut up" as "Wow, we're so sorry, that sucks."

 

What ends up bugging me so much is the reaction to even an acknowledgment of "I can see why this is problematic for some people."  Which is how I feel about the pink non-white dude.  It doesn't personally offend me.  Yes, I can see Asian features.  But also yes, I can see Caucasian features, and can very easily see how someone who doesn't scrutinize that photo can just see a white guy.  And I can see how people from various cultures/religions can have a problem with this imagery because of the prevailing (almost uniformly) way that their groups are treated by games, movies and television.  I can see how it is clearly drawing on imagery of native subjugation at the hands of an outsider (for what it's worth, even if pink dude himself is a native, he's still clearly presented as an outsider), which inherently ties into the history of Western imperialism in this area with repercussions that continue to modern day. 

 

This is all interesting stuff to talk about, and I think the kind of discussions we ought to be having about games and their marketing, given how culturally blind our hobby has historically been.  But the opposition to this often seems to resort to plugging their ears and screaming, "Nuh-uh" over and over.  And that is if they are being polite.

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If that's true then why wouldn't you lead with it in your initial marketing? If you're considerate enough to include a non-white character as your protagonist, then I hope you'd also be considerate enough to look at that promotional art and gauge what most reactions will be. Unless they wanted to go for that first shock and outrage so they could later pull out this protagonist and say to their detractors: "See, we're not racist! You are!"  

 

Given the financial scale they're looking at, and the hundreds of people who's hands are in this, they're probably just thinking about maximum coverage, and not at all considering political implication. I'm assume the plan was "here is a cool colorful psycho, like our last cool colorful psycho that sold millions of copies."

 

I mean "you're the REAL racist" double whammy isn't exactly valuable marketing, right?

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What ends up bugging me so much is the reaction to even an acknowledgment of "I can see why this is problematic for some people."  Which is how I feel about the pink non-white dude.  It doesn't personally offend me.  Yes, I can see Asian features.  But also yes, I can see Caucasian features, and can very easily see how someone who doesn't scrutinize that photo can just see a white guy.  And I can see how people from various cultures/religions can have a problem with this imagery because of the prevailing (almost uniformly) way that their groups are treated by games, movies and television.  I can see how it is clearly drawing on imagery of native subjugation at the hands of an outsider (for what it's worth, even if pink dude himself is a native, he's still clearly presented as an outsider), which inherently ties into the history of Western imperialism in this area with repercussions that continue to modern day. 

 

This is all interesting stuff to talk about, and I think the kind of discussions we ought to be having about games and their marketing, given how culturally blind our hobby has historically been.  But the opposition to this often seems to resort to plugging their ears and screaming, "Nuh-uh" over and over.  And that is if they are being polite.

 

I think we all can agree that there are some really tone-deaf assholes objecting to any claim of racism or insensitivity, etc. Sometimes (often, even) they seem like the majority, which is why I generally don't like commenting on stuff like this, because I don't in any way want to seem to be supporting that side. But (I think) there is a reasonable and nuanced objection to the type of reaction we saw to the box art.

 

I completely acknowledge that the art bothered some people. But my response is: so what? Not in the "I don't care what you think" sort of way, but what are we, or Ubisoft, supposed to do about it? Should they just not make games portraying cultures beyond Montreal where offense could be taken? Should they water down their marketing materials not to be evocative of any historical conflicts that some people are sensitive about?

 

I think it's reasonable not to want games to needlessly evoke problematic issues when they aren't using them for good ends. But often these critiques end up feeling to me like attempts to sand off the edges of everything that doesn't come from trusted, sufficiently liberal sources. Yes, Ubisoft doesn't have a stellar track record in producing nuanced/responsible stories, but does it not at least seem like they're trying to be sensitive and deal with interesting topics? In the last game, they got a lot of flack about the white savior stuff. In this game, they have corrected that. In Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry, they tried to deal with slavery, abolitionism, and violent revolt, even though it was a pretty shallow examination. Though the stuff they did with

, is a genuinely interesting take on public perceptions and reactions based on gender, race, and class.

 

The Act of Killing was in no way a sensitive movie. It was a brutal quasi-reenactment of an anti-communist purge that killed 500,000 people, as told by a mostly unrepentant leader of one of the death squads. Do you think the movie would have been made better by watering it down to tell the story in a way that would be less likely to upset people? Some of the most important art to me is impactful precisely because it is so upsetting. 

 

I do not think games as a medium are improved if there can't be a story which deals with "native subjugation at the hands of an outsider".

 

And the response to me is also: so what? Should people who find parts of games problematic just shut up? No, clearly not. Having a wide variety of perspectives is a definite benefit to the medium. I don't know, I just wish that things were allowed to be a little messier without triggering condemnation. More than anything, I wish we wouldn't judge a game by it's box art.

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Terri, I understand your points, but I don't know if I like where your argument is going. Ubisoft has a right to try to tackle difficult issues with games, but we as their audience and market have a right to tell them when they fail and to scrutinize future attempts more closely because of those failures. What you talk about when you talk about Ubisoft's history are all games with big ambitions but at best shallow outcomes. In that case, since there have been few examples of Ubisoft doing something good with themes of historical and social issues but many examples of Ubisoft doing something facile or misguided with them, some skepticism is definitely warranted and Ubisoft should be aware of and prepared for that. They should be prepared to sell us on their game's premise and respond sympathetically to valid concerns. That's what they should do, not this clumsy radio silence, only broken by the occasional "nuh-uh" about certain important elements of their game. I mean, the perfect example for me is this:

 

More than anything, I wish we wouldn't judge a game by it's box art.

 

If they wanted us to judge it by more than its box art, they should do more than release just the box art. Every detail about this game beyond the box art has improved my opinion of the game that said box art poorly represents, so I think it's really perverse that the box art was released, people reacted accordingly to the problematic imagery on it, and only then did the creative director start making vague statements about what the game actually is. It's almost enough for me to buy into Argobot's conspiracy theory of intentional controversy-baiting.

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I think we all can agree that there are some really tone-deaf assholes objecting to any claim of racism or insensitivity, etc. Sometimes (often, even) they seem like the majority, which is why I generally don't like commenting on stuff like this, because I don't in any way want to seem to be supporting that side. But (I think) there is a reasonable and nuanced objection to the type of reaction we saw to the box art.

 

I completely acknowledge that the art bothered some people. But my response is: so what? Not in the "I don't care what you think" sort of way, but what are we, or Ubisoft, supposed to do about it? Should they just not make games portraying cultures beyond Montreal where offense could be taken? Should they water down their marketing materials not to be evocative of any historical conflicts that some people are sensitive about?

 

I think it's reasonable not to want games to needlessly evoke problematic issues when they aren't using them for good ends. But often these critiques end up feeling to me like attempts to sand off the edges of everything that doesn't come from trusted, sufficiently liberal sources. Yes, Ubisoft doesn't have a stellar track record in producing nuanced/responsible stories, but does it not at least seem like they're trying to be sensitive and deal with interesting topics? In the last game, they got a lot of flack about the white savior stuff. In this game, they have corrected that. In Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry, they tried to deal with slavery, abolitionism, and violent revolt, even though it was a pretty shallow examination. Though the stuff they did with

, is a genuinely interesting take on public perceptions and reactions based on gender, race, and class.

 

The Act of Killing was in no way a sensitive movie. It was a brutal quasi-reenactment of an anti-communist purge that killed 500,000 people, as told by a mostly unrepentant leader of one of the death squads. Do you think the movie would have been made better by watering it down to tell the story in a way that would be less likely to upset people? Some of the most important art to me is impactful precisely because it is so upsetting. 

 

I do not think games as a medium are improved if there can't be a story which deals with "native subjugation at the hands of an outsider".

 

And the response to me is also: so what? Should people who find parts of games problematic just shut up? No, clearly not. Having a wide variety of perspectives is a definite benefit to the medium. I don't know, I just wish that things were allowed to be a little messier without triggering condemnation. More than anything, I wish we wouldn't judge a game by it's box art.

 

 

Shooters are often bombastic power fantasies featuring over the top murder sprees for which the player should revel and enjoy the mutilation that is visited upon other humans.  Herein lies the problem.  In that context, the opportunities for nuanced views on difficult subject matter are very, very fucking limited.  Certainly there are games that are trying.  Spec Ops: The Line, Far Cry 2 and The Last of Us all do interesting things with challenging themes. But these are the incredibly rare exceptions.  I'm going to look with skepticism first at any shooter that someone claims is handling tough issues, as the very nature of the genre is limiting. 

 

The comparison to something like The Act of Killing is...poor, I think.  That's a pseudo-documentary/biography exploring one of the great atrocities of the last century, and part of the intent of the film was to bring to light something practically unknown in the rest of the world and to explore how the perpetrators and their political descendents are still forces to be reckoned with.  It was an act of bravery to make that film for the locals involved, as many of them risked death to assist in the production.  What possible analog is there in video games for something like that?

 

I don't think that someone should be restricted to making content that only falls strictly in their cultural or geographic basket.  BUT, I do think you have a responsibility as a creator that if you're going to work far outside of your area of knowledge to work with people who are knowledgeable about the subject matter.  With films like The Act of Killing or any movie dealing with a modern atrocity (last 50ish years) , it's not uncommon to either have people who were survivors or witnesses as part of the process at some point, or even the driving force behind the project.  People may ultimately criticize the work for being skewed, but you can't criticize it for completely ignoring the people most directly involved with the subject matter.  Do you think Ubisoft brought in Himilayans to consult regarding the challenges and fears of modern life in their country?  Do you think they sent a research team to Nepal to spend a few weeks hanging out?  I doubt it.  But if they did, I'll be happy to retract all this, apologize, and be thrilled to see what they made. 

 

Multiple video game devs have been very proud to promote how they have brought in police officers, military specialists or survivalists as advisers on a project.  But how many have ever brought in the victim of a war crime?  Or talked to a war criminal?  Someone who survived a murder attempt?  Someone who's parents were slaughtered in a purge?  Someone who was gang raped and left for dead?  Someone whose grandparents had all their land stolen by foreign businesses?  Someone who was a slave? What do you think those people would tell a video game developer about their project?  Those are all things that can and have come up in video games, but I doubt the game creators have had any interaction with people who actually have to live in a world where those things are a reality.  And I do not think you can create an honest piece of work exploring the themes that shooters often deal with if you keep cultural blinders on the way that most game publishers seem to. 

 

I'm kind of rambling here, and not sure I'm really engaging with all your points in the best way.  But I'm trying to get out the basis for my inherent skepticism of things like this. 

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 Do you think Ubisoft brought in Himilayans to consult regarding the challenges and fears of modern life in their country?  Do you think they sent a research team to Nepal to spend a few weeks hanging out?  I doubt it.  But if they did, I'll be happy to retract all this, apologize, and be thrilled to see what they made.

Why would you doubt this? They're spending tens--if not hundreds--of millions of dollars. Many AAA games budget for location scouting for reference material (didn't Campo Santo recently do this as well for Firewatch?). Is it really so impossible to believe that Ubisoft might have sent a small team from Shanghai to Nepal? Even if they didn't actually visit Nepal, I'm sure copious amounts of research was done.

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Why would you doubt this? They're spending tens--if not hundreds--of millions of dollars. Many AAA games budget for location scouting for reference material (didn't Campo Santo recently do this as well for Firewatch?). Is it really so impossible to believe that Ubisoft might have sent a small team from Shanghai to Nepal? Even if they didn't actually visit Nepal, I'm sure copious amounts of research was done.

 

Please, go ahead and educate me about the history of any AAA dev speaking to the kinds of people I named, because I'm not aware of any.  Not just doing a bit of location research, but actually talking to the kinds of people most affected by war and violence. 

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See, this is what rubs me the wrong way--the open hostility, not the negative reaction. You're not willing to give a millimeter at all, so why should I?

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What about my reply is hostile?  You've previously decried people making unfounded statements based on assumption, I invited you to back up your unfounded statement.  There is nothing hostile about my post.  I've spent most of my adult life paying attention to the video game industry, and I have no knowledge of any dev ever engaging in that kind of research.  If you know about any, please, share it.

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Please, go ahead and educate me

You led off with sarcasm. At this point, it's just a circuitous argument, and of what use is it for me to spend time researching who at Ubisoft might have talked to someone from Nepal about the recent 10-year civil war? Does MachineGames need to speak to victims of the Holocaust to properly contextualize Nazism in Wolfenstein? I have zero interest in even attempting to respond to your flippant rebukes.

 

You said this in the MGS V thread:

But yeah, I'll get around to it and form my opinion on the actual game eventually.

Why is Far Cry 4 different?

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flippant rebukes.

 

*Looks back at your color swatches and twitter replies.*  Uh huh.  Who started with flippant rebukes?

 

 

You said this in the MGS V thread:

But yeah, I'll get around to it and form my opinion on the actual game eventually.

 

Why is Far Cry 4 different?

 

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ON A CRACKER!  Thank you for pulling that quote completely out of context.  What I said in that thread is completely consistent with what I've been saying here.  The previous post I made in that thread, and then the one you partially quoted:

 

 

I've been looking forward to this, as I'm also a huge MG fan and apologist, but this stuff is turning my stomach.

 

Philosophically, I agree with you.  But I don't feel like games get an automatic benefit of the doubt anymore that they are going to handle with care sensitive subjects, and not just exploit something traumatic or terrible.  Not even MGS.  There are too many examples of games doing it wrong, and very, very few examples of games doing it right. 

 

But yeah, I'll get around to it and form my opinion on the actual game eventually.

 

Where have I ever said in this thread that I wouldn't judge FC4 by what it is when it's released?  Try looking back at what I've said here, and see what I'm actually saying.  I'm saying that it's fine for people to criticize a game's pre-release marketing if they have a problem with it.  I'm saying that devs/pubs need to be more sensitive about particular topics and how they handle them.  I'm saying that I sympathize with how historically maligned or disempowered groups are treated in western media.  I'm saying that I would like to see devs deal with these issues by including the people actually affected by them in their development process.  Let's look at what else I've said here about how I might judge FC4:

 

Do you think they sent a research team to Nepal to spend a few weeks hanging out?  I doubt it.  But if they did, I'll be happy to retract all this, apologize, and be thrilled to see what they made.

 

Replying to the rumor that it will be a Indian/Nepali protagonist:

 

That's actually cool, and I hope that it's accurate.

 

You are straight up misquoting, misconstruing and ignoring everything that doesn't fit your preconveived notion about what I have said in this thread.  I'm sick and fucking tired of it.  Gee, I wonder why there is any hostility now, when you do something like completely remove the part of a quote that wouldn't support your incorrect accusation about what I've said.  Try replying to the posts I've actually made. 

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See, this is what rubs me the wrong way--the open hostility, not the negative reaction. You're not willing to give a millimeter at all, so why should I?

 

People have given kilometers over and over in this thread. I have personally said that I am excited to see a game with a non-white protagonist and antagonist, even though I still find the imagery of the game itself problematic. You, on the other hand, have never shown any interest in acknowledging the validity of any position that doesn't resemble your own. Apparently, people aren't allowed to make assumptions about what Far Cry 4 will be based on its marketing... unless they're like you and make only positive assumptions about it. That's great, but I'm really not invested in the typical "oh wow, this game will be awesome" dialogue that always surrounds a game pre-release, not when there's something more interesting going on.

 

I really have no idea why you're so defensive about people reacting negatively to the marketing for a video game that you know nothing about. What would you gain by shutting people like Bjorn up, besides a emptier and more boring forum?

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I respectfully disagree with your assessment. My primary problem is the fact that there is so very little to contextualize what we've been presented that I'm reluctant to pass judgment one way or the other. I have agreed since the beginning that Ubisoft has a long road to hoe, but I personally feel that the violently negative reaction seems a little hypocritical when the fact that the game is about murdering people for a pleasurable effect. There is absolutely nothing wrong with questioning what we, as a maturing gamer culture, are being given. But I am curiously bemused to see that Far Cry 4's box art is more controversial than the rampant racism, misogyny and classism of Grand Theft Auto.

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I respectfully disagree with your assessment. My primary problem is the fact that there is so very little to contextualize what we've been presented that I'm reluctant to pass judgment one way or the other. I have agreed since the beginning that Ubisoft has a long road to hoe, but I personally feel that the violently negative reaction seems a little hypocritical when the fact that the game is about murdering people for a pleasurable effect. There is absolutely nothing wrong with questioning what we, as a maturing gamer culture, are being given. But I am curiously bemused to see that Far Cry 4's box art is more controversial than the rampant racism, misogyny and classism of Grand Theft Auto.

 

I don't think it's been violently negative, to be honest. I do think it might seem that way, because it's been a whole lot of people giving a moderately negative reaction to a piece of key art for a game that could give someone a winning bingo card for the "problematic things to show in an East Asian context" raffle. I also don't really like the Far Cry games beyond the second, so I don't find myself to be terribly hypocritical, but even if I am, being a hypocrite does not invalidate someone's argument. It's called a "tu quoque" fallacy.

 

Speaking of, I strongly suspect that there's a lot of messed up stuff in Grand Theft Auto V as well, but I've always thought that about GTA games and so I don't play them. Anyway, none of it is displayed on the box, which is actually quite subdued for all that people say is going on inside, so I can't speak to it at all.

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My question is why you think it's okay to murder fake people, but not have a fake character subjugate them?

 

Because murder isn't a chronic and systemic societal problem that has been normalized and is being perpetuated knowingly and unknowingly in my city, in my country and all over the world right now. Because no one besides someone who is mentally ill looks at a fake character getting shot and finds their beliefs being confirmed, but many people look at a fake character getting subjugated, oppressed, brutalized, or discriminated against and find their beliefs being confirmed. Murder and bigotry are apples and oranges when it comes to video games. Is it really that hard to understand?

 

And ugh, talk about a loaded question. No, I don't think murder in games is "okay". I don't know why you'd phrase it that way.

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Actually, yes. That's so out-of-orbit to me, I don't even know where to begin.

 

How many people go out and murder someone because their character killed someone in a game? How many people go out and use a racial slur because their character used one in a game? Based solely on those numbers, rather than some abstract rubric of relative severity, which is a more pressing issue in games about which we should raise awareness?

 

To imply that I shouldn't object to racist and imperialist imagery in a game because it also contains murder is a mix between a tu quoque fallacy and a fallacy of relative privation. Yes, both are bad, one more than the other, but the other has more direct societal consequences and thus deserves our attention as much if not more.

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I don't have any statistical data to back up either scenario, so I honestly don't have an answer to any of those questions.

 

You've totally lost me at this point.

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I don't have any statistical data to back up either scenario, so I honestly don't have an answer to any of those questions.

 

You've totally lost me at this point.

 

I'll try to make it easier, by asking the same loaded question of you. Why do you think it's okay to subjugate fake people? If the answer's that it's just a game, we might be done here.

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The answer is I don't feel comfortable declaring one way or the other until I have enough information in front of me to make an informed decision.

 

Is it really that hard to understand?

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The answer is I don't feel comfortable declaring one way or the other until I have enough information in front of me.

 

Is it really that hard to understand?

 

Yeah, it is. You have a picture right in front of you. A picture is all the information you need to have an opinion about said picture. Do you really have nothing to say about what the picture itself shows, with an East Asian in a Western suit sitting on a Buddha draped in bullets and with his foot on its severed head while he uses a more traditionally dressed East Asian as an armrest? Does that really evoke no response at all from you? If it doesn't, we probably ought to agree to disagree.

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