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The Melting Pot and the Salad Bowl: Why the Witcher 3 is a step forward for ethnic diversity in games

6/6/2015

35 Comments

 
I watched an Akira Kurosawa film the other day. It was good, but it was too Japanese. 

No, not really. But I did read a Forbes article today titled "Yes, I'm Colorblind about The Witcher 3, and Yes that's a problem". The author responds to an article by South African writer Tauriq Moosa that criticises The Witcher 3 for its lack of non-White characters. Moosa complains that it's symptomatic of a general tendency for games to ignore minorities.

I sympathise with Moosa, and agree that diversity in games is generally pretty dismal. But in targeting The Witcher 3, I believe that Moosa was wrong-headed, culturally insensitive, and has inadvertently attacked the very diversity he seeks to promote. I have no doubt he has good intentions, but I find his article personally offensive. 

First, let me clarify where I'm coming from. 

I'm no reactionary or anti-political-correctness crusader. I'm what many people would call a bleeding-heart liberal. I've never voted for the Labor or Liberal parties (the Australian equivalents of the Democrats and Republicans, respectively) because I find them both too conservative. I've always voted for the very liberal Greens instead. 

I am, for example, generally a fan a Anita Sarkeesian, and have no tolerance for her army of hateful detractors (the mere existence of people who call themselves 'anti-Feminist' strikes me as incredible).

I'm also no stranger to racial diversity. My wife is a dark-skinned South African woman who grew up under Apartheid. We delight in our mixed-race daughter, and we're raising her with dual influence from both our cultures, and in both of our native tongues: English in my wife's case, and Polish in mine. 

In 2010, something very special happened to me. After decades of playing computer games, I played - for the first time in my life - one that was for me. It was a first-time game from a young Polish developer called CDProjekt RED, and it was called Wiedźmin. I was enthralled. The people in this game looked like me. They spoke my language. They emanated a Polishness that at once resonated with my own. 

You might think, as Moosa would seem to: "Pffft, big deal - you're a White guy, so you've been playing games about yourself all your life." But that's a very myopic way to look at ethnic identity. I find the notion that a person's identity might be defined by their skin colour to be patently horrific, not to mention inaccurate. There are a thousand physical and cultural idiosyncrasies that can make up a person's ethnic identity, of which skin colour is, at most, one. 

When I grew up watching White Americans in Hollywood movies or big budget games, I never felt like I was seeing a representation of myself. They were from the other side of the world to me, their roots were different to my Slavic ones and, with their square jaws and rectangular heads, they didn't particularly look like me either. I imagine that a similar thing would be felt by an olive-skinned Venezuelan watching movies about olive-skinned Italians: they would see foreigners, whose coincidentally similar skin colour would be mostly irrelevant.

Sure, I had American heroes, but they were as likely to be Hispanic (Lou Diamond Phillips' Chavez in Young Guns) or Black (Mr T) as White (Val Kilmer's Madmartigan in Willow). I just saw them as cool guys, rather than 'guys like me'. 

I felt increasingly out of place in the predominantly Anglo-Saxon society I was growing up in. Very rarely in a threatened or hostile way, but just like I never quite fit in. I'd grown up in a Polish household, and Polishness was a large part of my makeup, though I almost never saw this part of myself reflected in Australian society. It was a part of myself that felt fundamental to who I was, but existed mostly quietly inside me, lonely.

As I grew older, I discovered Polish cinema, and fanatically devoured every Kieślowski and Wajda film I could find, among others. These films felt like home. Sure, they weren't exactly about me, since their protagonists hadn't spent most of their lives in Australia. But they spoke intimately to that part of me that had hitherto remained unspoken to. 

And then in 2010, I played Wiedźmin ("The Witcher"). Here was a huge, 50-hour game that was unashamedly, profoundly Polish. I played the demo, was at once entranced, and hurried out and bought the full game. At every step in its sizeable world, I would encounter people who looked like they could be my relatives, or even looked like me. 

The high cheekbones. The small triangular jaws. The heads that were wide and flat at the back. The lean forearms. Here I was among my own people. I found elements of Slavic mythology and Polish history (both old and recent). The world was covered with Polish folk art and architecture, and I recognised the world's alphabet as a variant of the ancient Slavic Glagolica script. I noted in Wiedźmin's world the twin pulls of Romanticism and Positivism that had so defined the various ebbs and flows of uprisings throughout Polish history. 

And then there were the less tangible things: the humour, the melancholy, the colourful profanity, the earthy philosophising - it was all so familiar. I spoke to old women who sounded like my grandmother. Zoltan the Dwarf reminded me of family friends. I mean, drinking vodka and getting blind drunk was actually an important gameplay mechanic! Playing the first Wiedźmin game remains one of my most cherished memories in three decades of gaming.

This wasn't just the rosy-eyed romanticism of a culture-starved ex-pat talking. In the DVD that accompanied the Collector's Edition, the creators positively beamed as they spoke proudly of their singular achievement: the bringing of a piece of Polish pop culture - the Wiedźmin books by Andrzej Sapkowski - onto the world stage. 

No one had achieved this since Chopin. Sure, Poland produced some renowned art film directors, jazz musicians, and a few Nobel Laureate writers. But these were 'high art' works that never really seeped into global mass culture. We never had, say, an Abba or a Björk. The average Westerner was likely to have read just one Polish book in her life, if any - and it was about as un-Polish as a Polish book can get: written in English, by an ex-pat with an Anglicised name, about Africa (Heart of Darkness).

But now, CD Projekt had done it. They had made a game by Poles, for Poles, and placed it upon the world stage. By doing so, they opened up a window through which the world could glimpse a slice of Polish popular culture. Sure, Sapkowski's world borrowed liberally from Tolkien's, which was based largely on Germanic, Nordic and Finnish mythology. But Geralt of Rivia's world was still unmistakably steeped in Polish culture, history and mythology. 

It was a modest achievement. The Witcher could at best be described as a "cult hit". Sales were good for a first-time small studio, but technical issues marred the game, some juvenile sexism had crept into the otherwise mature narrative, and reviews were mixed. In many ways, The Witcher 2 was a quantum leap forward. It was graphically and artistically stunning - at times peerless - and with writing that was almost universally praised for its complex and believable characters. Though it too was not without problems, and its limited scope still made it feel like a little brother to a Skyrim or a Dragon Age: Origins. 

The Witcher 3 changed all that. It's a truly AAA title;  it arrived with bombast and grandeur and promptly raised industry benchmarks. It was sprawling, ambitious, and well-made. Critics praised CDPR's refusal to take shortcuts that must have been tempting when making such a huge game. Care was taken to ensure the scores of NPCs felt like believable people, and almost all of the numerous quests feel like solid stories, their many possible outcomes intertwining meticulously with the narrative whole. 

There have been AAA games by Polish studios before, but they weren't really Polish Games per se. Think Bulletsorm or Dead Island. The latter, incidentally, contained an Aboriginal character who looked absolutely nothing like a real Aboriginal person, but like a Black American. This is absurd, given the tens of thousands of years and vastly different genealogies that separates those two groups. But no one in the media seemed to pick up on this - as long as the skin colour matches, that's all that matters, right?

Anyway, one of CDPR's achievements that hasn't been mentioned much is how they managed to make such a gigantic game without watering down its inherent Polishness. By now, the Polish market must be a small fraction of CDPR's target audience. They could easily have watered down the cultural elements of the game to make it more suited for an American and/or global audience, which was far more instrumental to its commercial success. This happens routinely with Hollywood movies. But they didn't. Witcher 3 is as Polish as Witcher was. This is a great thing, for everybody.

As it stands, The Witcher 3 is Poland's finest export of popular culture in living memory. CDPR have produced a world-class game that would not have been the same if it had been produced anywhere else on the planet. It is a unique gift to the world that only Poland was qualified to give. The French gave us Asterix, Hong Kong gave us Bruce Lee, and with The Witcher 3, Poland has finally made its contribution to global mass culture too. It's a win for Poles like me who rarely get to see themselves in a game, but it's also a win for pop cultural diversity in general.  

But for writers like Moosa, a Polish game like The Witcher 3 is unacceptable - it's too Polish.

Of course, Moosa would surely never say that the game is too Polish. For him, the issue is much coarser than that: it's simply too White, and that's that. No need to look deeper than skin-deep.

Well, yes. Of course everyone in The Witcher is White. It's a Polish game, made by Polish people, based heavily on Polish history and Slavic mythology. And so everyone in the game - whether Human, Dwarf, or Elf - tends to look.....surprise surprise......Polish. 

Poles, like most Northern Europeans, almost all happen to be White - this paleness helps our skin get more vitamin D from the scarce sun. The largest non-White ethnic minority in Poland are the Vietnamese, who comprise less than 0.1% of the population. Not surprisingly, there were even fewer Vietnamese people in medieval Poland, and fewer still in ancient Slavic mythology.

For me, the saddest thing about this whole thing is that people like Moosa have clearly missed the cultural uniqueness of The Witcher 3. Some Polish critics praised the game's Polish elements, yet optimistically predicted that the game might be even more interesting for outsiders than for Poles, since it would contain elements that were exotic for them. But for people like Moosa, the opposite seems to have occurred: all he saw was just another Western game. 

It's not just another Western game. It's the first ever AAA game that portrays Polish people and Polish culture. This is our game. The Polishness of this game is special to us, because it's the only one we've got! 

I get it - there are no AAA games with all Brown or Black characters. I wish there were; I would eagerly play them too. But to Moosa I say: please understand that until The Witcher, there were no AAA games about Poles either. Although we're a smaller and tighter group than you, we finally got our game. I hope that you finally get yours too. But you have no right to begrudge us ours.

I kind of get the misunderstanding. For one, much of the historical and cultural nuance would have been lost on Moosa, who obviously isn't well acquainted with Polish and Slavic cultures. He can hardly be blamed for this. Though the irony is that he'd be better acquainted with them if he'd paid attention to the game he just played with a grain of cultural curiosity, instead of choosing to dismiss it all as frivolous nonsense. 

Thus he calls any attempt at historical accuracy in the game "nonsensical" because "accuracy and realism flew out the window with the harpies." Really? Greek and Incan myths were as outlandish as Slavic ones - does that mean that insisting that the humans in them be portrayed by people who look like Greeks and Incans is also "nonsensical"?

Also, Moosa would have played the game with English dubbing, complete with American and British accents. I always played through the games in Polish, but I briefly switched to English out of curiosity, and it does indeed feel like a very different game. The voice acting seems solid enough, but the dialogue feels heavily watered down, and much of the nuance is lost in translation.

So I can see how an American, Briton, or South African might fail to grasp the cultural content of the game, and instead look through it through his own cultural lens (especially since many other fantasy games are entirely fictional, without real world cultural meaning). I think this is a lazy and crass way to view a cultural product from another country, and I'm not excusing it - but I do find it at least understandable. Especially if that cultural lens happens to contain an obsession with skin colour, as the South African and American lenses tend to.

For this is a key point: Poles aren't anywhere near as obsessed with skin colour as South Africans Americans seem to be. Nationality or ethnicity? Yes. But skin colour? No. 

We have no reason to. Unlike South Africans during Apartheid, we were never conditioned to see the world in terms of skin colour. Unlike the British, we never colonised distant lands. And unlike the Americans, we didn't take part in the African Slave Trade (though, if you're Anglo, some of your ancestors might have owned some of my Slavic ones, before they owned the ancestors of present-day Black Americans, since that's where the word "Slave" comes from). 

So, without colonisation or African slavery, we don't have a resulting large Black population, and we don't have any White Guilt, because there's nothing to feel guilty about. White Guilt is largely an Anglo-Saxon and Afrikaner problem - please don't project it onto us. 

This is of course not to say that Poles have any kind of moral superiority to Anglo Saxons or Afrikaners. Like every nation, we have a checkered past with too many atrocities to count. It's just that our traumas are different to your traumas. In your case, the wronged parties were frequently people of colour. In our cases, they tended to be Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Jews, and Czechs, to name a few.

If playing a game where everyone is White makes you feel uncomfortable because you're American and you live in a country where most people are White but 10-15% of people is Black, then go play a game where most people are White but 10-15% of the population is Black. It's called Skyrim. It's American, and was clearly made with an American demographic in mind.

But if you play a Polish game, please don't complain that there are too many Poles in it, and that you'd like the demographics to be a bit more similar to that of your own country's. That's like walking out of the airport in a foreign country and angrily saying "Where are all the McDonald's!?"

Broadly speaking, there are two ways of looking at multi-ethnic harmony. One is the Melting Pot, and the other is the Salad Bowl. The Melting Pot is by far the more commonly understood metaphor, but it's also by far the least desirable of the two.  

A Melting Pot is a crude furnace that assimilates everything into a single, homogeneous pulp. Some melting pots are mindless, producing whatever random gloop happens to remain at the end of the melting process. Some, as in the case of a metal alloy, use a recipe, and carefully discard and select elements accordingly. Neither is a particularly desirable conception of multiculturalism.  

A Salad Bowl is a harmonious and exciting environment where the unique qualities of every single ingredient are honoured and celebrated. The lettuce is green and crispy, the tomatoes are red and acidic, the oil is mellow and fatty, and together they make for a sumptuous dance of flavours and textures. No one demands that the tomato be more green and crispy, or that everyone become a little more acidic. The only requirement is that they get along harmoniously. When they do, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. This is multiculturalism at its best.

A world where a Polish dev isn't allowed to make a fully Polish game is the world of the Melting Pot. It's not a more diverse world. It's a less diverse world. It's a world where everyone is asked to become a little bit more similar, and the unique demographics of any one culture must be downplayed. It's a world where the smaller cultures of the world get smeared into incoherence by the normalising wooden spoon of conformity. It's a world that's not likely to produce many culturally diverse games. 

I want to live in a Salad Bowl. I want to be able to play a game where I can see my own people, in all their glory, uniqueness and imperfection. And I want to be able to play games where I can see other peoples in all of theirs.



35 Comments
Radek
5/6/2015 06:20:21 pm

My big Thanks to author.
As a Czech (grew up in Ostrava – less than 50 km to Poland) and passionate player of Witcher and also reader of all Witcher books (several times) I felt depressed when I saw, that most of last 24hours witcher news is about not having non-white characters. World has gone mad – the Forbes authors even admit an error not pointing it out right away..
And now what – public opinion will force CDPR to add some “foreign travellers” in next DLC, release new “school of the panther” and “school of the elefant” DLC? They will do anything to please just about everyone who wants to make this game also “his game”? Or refuse to do this and be ostracized, crucified ?

This article said what I wanted to say, just much better. I too wish to live in salad bowl. ;)

You know – there is Czech studio already enduring similar “anti-racist” campaign coming from anglo-saxon culture and issues – Kingdom Come : Deliverance. Medieval simulation, placed around Czech countries and from time, when if someone encountered non-white person, he would just run away scared .. Not because he knew that non-whites are bad but because he never saw anyone like that in his whole life and therefore he would think he saw a devil. (were very religious and uneducated too)

Now let’s hope, that at least some of these crusaders read your article and at least think a while about it.

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Chung link
5/6/2015 06:28:25 pm

Great article! As an asian growing up in Canada, I can't help but notice a lot of games and movies aim toward the "white" population which I can't relate to, but the Witcher series are not one of them. I really don't understand the hate it gets about racial diversity and sexism. Both topics are important issues in the games. The games explore them beautifully and realistically. Just like you said, i feel a lot of critics only scrapped the surface of this beautiful world and didn't really look at the depth of it.

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Jan P
5/6/2015 07:52:03 pm

"And unlike the Americans, we didn't take part in the African Slave Trade (though, if you're Anglo, some of your ancestors might have owned some of my Slavic ones, before they owned the ancestors of present-day Black Americans, since that's where the word "Slave" comes from). "

You are completely wrong about origins of word "Slavic".
Please correct it Dave, and cease spreading old german propaganda myth about Slavs.

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Andrew W
5/6/2015 08:34:38 pm

Actually Jan, you are incorrect. Here, let me please direct you to the etymology of the word slave. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=slave

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RAdesign
15/6/2015 09:23:14 pm

Actually Andrew, you are incorrect.
What you post is a XIX c. reference.
Made up by cheauvinistic "sciencists" a.k.a. "rule britannia" / WASP snobs.
Perhaps you would also like to quote Hitler, he also wrote some books with racial theories.

Ss
12/5/2016 12:36:05 am

You are wrong there...it has its origins in the word slav

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Arghast
16/11/2018 12:28:40 am

In Polish "Slavs" is "Słowianie", and in other slavic languages it is very similar.

The root noun is "słowo" (again, very similar in many other slavic languages), which means "word", hence "Słowianie" means something along the lines of "The people of the word", AKA people you can communicate with. It goes back to early middle ages, when all Slavic peoples used roughly the same language (Proto-Slavic language), so there was no any language barrier.

Interestingly enough, "Germans" in Polish (and, again, most if not all other Slavic languages with a mere difference in pronunciation) is "Niemcy", a word derievd from the root adjective "Niemy", which means "being unable to speak", because Germanic peoples spoke completely different language than Slavic peoples.

bamm69
5/6/2015 08:26:11 pm

Its funny we can have homosexuality in a game but not different raves. ..really

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Sean
6/11/2015 11:23:44 am

I'm thinking you mean "races," but this is a stupid statement. Many, many games have different races and not many of them at all have LGBT characters. Witcher really has practically no homosexuality in it at all. However, this is a game based on Slavic/Scandinavean Europeans in the Medieval age, so no it wouldn't be smart to put a bunch of non-whites in it. It would make no sense.

The recent expansion has a few Muslim-like characters who come from "far away."

I'm so sick and tired of this politically (in)correct bullshit. It's a game. If you want a game about African folklore, make one.

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Zach J
6/6/2015 06:29:43 am

I enjoyed reading this piece, though as an American of mixed Italian, Polish (!), African-American and Native American origin (and potentially more), I'm still left feeling a little cold. Perhaps it's because I'm not of a particular background/too many backgrounds, or the fact that being a proud American makes one seem nationalistic (or even imperialistic) to foreigners. In essence, I don't know how to deal with this whole issue of race and national identity. I don't want my sole purpose for existence to be a lesson in racial co-mingling and acceptance, so apart from that I can only hope for people to start being more colorblind. That, unfortunately, is not always compatible with those who do have strong cultural stories to tell.

Of course, I care not about the race/culture/color of others, even if I may be left out of it. People should be free to make whatever art they want to make. People should also have the right to write articles saying how "problematic" they find these pieces of art, but I unfortunately believe that they are only adding fuel to the fire of racial/gender/sexual difference. They feel the need to speak out about injustices faced by fictional characters in a video game instead of injustices visited upon people in the real world. For example, the idea that the developers of "The Witcher 3" are somehow racist for not adding in non-white characters.

The problem is, to some of these detractors, being "too white" is racist. Unfortunately, it's also racist to only have a few non-whites in games, or to have a non-white person die early on, or to have them as the "bad guys". You eventually realize that you can't please everyone, and you shouldn't have to. Unless we see some evidence that game developers want to make non-whites look bad (which to me is *actual* racism), we should not shame them when they do whatever they want with their own game. If we don't like it, because we have nothing worse going on in our lives, we can make our own games or find another game to play. As far as I see it, however, non-whites are not being kept out of the industry, we are not being silenced, so some individuals have been led (I say brainwashed) into believing that oppression has taken another form. This leads me to believe that all they can see is race (or gender/sexual identity/sexuality etc.) and disharmony where none exists.

How on earth do we fix the problem with representation in video games? Have quotas for non-white characters? What about female leads? What about handicapped, or gay, or transgender, or atheist, or Muslim, overweight/underweight/tall/short leads (this list goes on and on)? This would require the entire industry to work together to create symmetry based solely on the characters' superficial aspects. It would become painfully obvious that people of so-called "marginalized" groups were only included to fill quotas and so as not to offend easily-offended parties, erasing the characters' personalities and creating an environment of hyper-awareness of outward appearances. Oh, and don't you dare have a non-straight/white/cis/male characters as a bad guy when you start including more people!

Regarding more "diversity" in video games where it makes sense, such as racially-diverse environments? Sure, why not, it's not as if a large or even decent number of people would complain. The only time people do complain is when it's done to shoehorn in an individual from a marginalized group in order to gain brownie points (no pun intended) with minority groups. As for me, I'm not all that bothered by seeing white men as protagonists, and a change of pace (i.e. a different kind of hero than this) should be given as a nice suggestion for something new and interesting. It shouldn't be done because some say "the video game industry is full of white men, making it inherently racist and sexist, so we need characters who look differently otherwise the KKK wins!" If there's nothing wrong with a black guy as a hero, there's nothing wrong with a white one either: for to me that sounds like equality, no?

As for the Melting Pot vs. Salad Bowl analogy, I'm not sure how to connect it to myself. I'm not like any one ingredient in the bowl (perhaps something odd, that most people don't recognize and usually consume without a second thought?). The only identity I have is a loose "American" identity which itself is a watered-down version of a mix of Anglo-Saxon heritages, even though I'm not ethnically Anglo-Saxon. As I said before, I don't mind this, and if I really care that much about getting my *own* story out their, I have ways of doing so. I do absolutely agree that skin color is only one very small way of viewing the world (most people would probably think I'm Hispanic or Middle Eastern, which I am also not). To me, that means that we have to get beyond culture, which is not very compatible with people who do have a strong cultural identity. Perhaps we can all just try to get along?

I apologize for my long di

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Zach J
6/6/2015 06:34:21 am

As I was saying, I apologize for my long diatribe. I always try to keep these things short but they never end up that way. I just never get to talk about these issues, so I thought I'd jump at the opportunity. It''ll definitely be shorter next time haha

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Anon
8/6/2015 04:26:42 pm

Don't worry about it being too long, it was interesting to read a perspective from someone like you. I guess the main problem is that people still view culture as tied to genetics. Of course, it partially is, but that view is really misleading and potentially offensive. It results in people like you feeling even more excluded. The truth is that our upbringing has infinitely more impact on our personality than our "race".

If you were born and raised in the US, you can identify as an American and there is nothing wrong with that - don't let anyone tell you that. In fact, it should technically be easier in the US since it's a relatively young country that was made by immigrants.

Moreover, you can have a cultural identity without being a nationalist. I personally still identify with the place I'm originally from (I still use the same first language, eat the same foods, etc.), even though I am an expat like the author, but at the same time I absolutely despise the government of the old country and don't consider myself a patriot. :P

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ThirteenthLetter
6/6/2015 09:49:06 am

"I have no doubt he has good intentions"

All folks like Moosa do is slander, bully, and censor. They don't create; they just bark orders and direct the howling mob at the day's latest target. What can you possibly point to as evidence of good intentions?

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toko
6/6/2015 09:14:50 pm

"I have no doubt he has good intentions, but..."

Based on what? Expecting all the world, especially art, to cater to ones personal political and ideological needs and crying when it doesn't, is a behavior of a spoiled brat, rather than of a caring, well-intentioned adult.

Not to mention the ignorance and the arrogant cultural imperialism, but this has been taken care of in the article.

No, we don't have to apologize that we are ("unashamedly", sic!) Polish, Japanese or Irish, we don't need to explain ourselves for that in front of anyone and pretend anyone having problems with that has legitimate, well-intentioned reasons of outrage and criticism.

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Derp
7/6/2015 12:28:28 am

I really disagree with you about Sarkeesian and the people more coloquially reffered to as "SJWs", and that as someone that also identifies as socialist, is generally very left-wing and has been born in the previous Eastern Block under Soviet rule. I also usually vote for the "Green" or otherwise very leftist and personal freedom-based parties.

"Diversity" as it is often used is very sophomoric and always skin-deep and doesn't make much sense. If the new Hollywood blockbuster features a black person or if a TV series features a sexual minority it's suddenly "diverse" and thus apparently "good".

Somehow what they never refer to when they talk about "diversity" is cultural diversity or diversity of thought. So while Thor or Avengers 2 or whatever the newest Blockbuster is gets a "diversity bonus", the same doesn't seem to be true about say a film about Romanian culture with mostly white people in it like "Aferim!" or an interesting Korean film like "3-Iron" or a typically Australian movie like "Red Dog", let alone are they ever ready to for instance mention that in 2011 in comparison to the ~800 movies produced in Hollywood there were ~1250 movies produced in India and ~1000 movies produced in Nigeria, which to everyone's surprise are almost exclusively about Indian and black people and their culture: https://www.statsmonkey.com/sunburst/12969-total-number-of-national-feature-films-produced-in-world.php

They also don't bring up video games made in Iran or the UEA (like Atajrubah), South America, China (it has a very flourishing browser games market for instance) and so on because that would be too much effort.

Where is the press reporting on these products and giving them attention? They'd always rather try to destruct something a lot of sweat and effort went into and many people hold dear than build something up on it's qualities.

To the contrary, instead we often have to hear how the "Japanese gaming industry is dying" in articles teeming with almost childish glee (or hear it from Phil Fish).

They also always take the most recent big release that everyone is talking about and playing and has general media attention to shit on whether that's Tomb Raider, GTA, God of War, Hitman, Assassin's Creed, Star Craft, Far Cry, The Witcher or Metal Gear Solid because they need said attention. And I am getting sick and tired of this cycle. They are like fun-vampires that have to crap all over and badmouth someone's creation to cause controversy and get some clicks by making a political point about "diversity" out of it.

And it's like this act generates a sense of pleasure and catharsis out of doing it where everyone that agrees can pat each other on their backs.

In this case it is especially infuriating, since this ain't EAs newest run-of-the-mill Blockbuster production, it shows a general lack of respect and self-awareness that is beyond remarkable especially given what this game means to many Polish people, The Witcher 2 having been gifted to Obama during a state visit and him having spoken about it during his next state visit there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-PDQsetTE8

When the game released the Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz visited CD Projekt RED personally and told them “you did us proud”: https://www.premier.gov.pl/en/news/news/prime-minister-ewa-kopacz-visits-developers-of-witcher-3.html

This is what they are attacking.

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NiK
7/6/2015 10:02:39 am

Not that it has much bearing, bit I've heard it as Melting Pot vs Gumbo, gumbo being a new Orleans style stew dish. I've never heard of salad bowl instead of gumbo. XP

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Pisthetaerus
8/6/2015 03:59:40 pm

Salad bowl is a more recent analogy that purports that while cultures do mix together, they don't melt down into a single homogenized culture.

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Michael Frank
8/6/2015 12:17:48 am

Now the Poles have finally what we Germans have since Gothic. A game that is deeply based on the own heritage and culture. I'm happy for you guys.

That being said I can identify with the Witcher world more than with pretty much every Anglo-American work in the field ever created so far. It seems that the Polish mindset isn't al that different from my German one.

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Anon
8/6/2015 04:36:06 pm

It's not all that surprising since we have been neighbours for centuries! :P Although I do personally think Poland as a whole has much more in common with Belarus and Ukraine (to a lesser extent Czechia and Slovakia too) than with Germany, it nevertheless varies with each region - I'm sure someone from Szczecin probably feels he or she may have more in common with Germans than Ukrainians, for example. However, the Gothic series is dearly loved in Poland and I'm sure its gameplay was one of the key inspirations for W3. :)

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Lithuanian
11/6/2015 04:27:18 am

Given how Poland was part of Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth for centuries, I am appaled by the lack of cultural references to Lithuania especialy knowing the fact that Lithuania was the last country in europe to become christian and that most of "paganism" in the game is not actually polish (just has names "polonised".

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Dave link
11/6/2015 05:43:52 am

This is the sort of criticism that I think should be taken more seriously.

My understanding of the Commonwealth was that the Poles tended to be somewhat chauvinistic in terms of assigning themselves higher ranking in the feudal hierarchy, the Jaggielonian dynasty notwithstanding. I think this kind of chauvinism is present in the game, even if specific references to Lithuania are not. But then again, I haven't seen any specific references to any other nations (Germany, Ukraine, etc.) either though those nations definitely have some sort of presence there (I think the Elf freedom fighters have many parallels to Ukrainians fighting Polish rule, for example).

However, remember that the game takes place in an essentially pre-Christian Europe, long before the Commonwealth, and before either the Poles or the Lithuanians were Christianised.

And of course, the Slavic pagan mythology in the game has ancient roots that predates the Polish language, so naturally the Polish names aren't their original ones.

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RAdesign
15/6/2015 09:49:36 pm

"Polish rule". heh...
It was hardly a "rule". You must think of "Ukraina"/"Kresy" as it is named - "a borderland.
It was more like "Wild East", a vast, unruly land, where one can escape and start a new, dangerous life.
People who loved freedom, criminals or refugees of many different backgrounds settled there. There was hardly even a nation, there were 3 major cultural influences - The Crown, Muscovy and Ottomans.
There were siches - "Cossack bands of brothers", but they were exclusive communities of mercenaries.
Also, any settlers required constant protection - not to be kidnapped by Tatars (Ottoman vassals)
There was hardly anyone to rule there....thus an alias "Dzikie Pola".
So please, spare the 'polish rule" myth.

Wojciech Wasowicz
10/7/2015 09:15:04 am

"(I think the Elf freedom fighters have many parallels to Ukrainians fighting Polish rule, for example)." That is basically ahistorical thinking - the earliest you can say about Ukrainians is XVII century Chmielnicki rebellion .. before that starting XIII century (the Genghis Khan hordes) it was from Novgorod to current Lithuania to Kiev and Moscow .. all Ruthenians - nationality coming from fallen Rus country, further united under Lithuanian and Muscovites rule further separated by different fate ..

Wojciech Wąsowicz
10/7/2015 09:22:52 am

"I think the Elf freedom fighters have many parallels to Ukrainians fighting Polish rule, for example" on second thought there is a race / nation that suits much better to that fate - see 'Old Prussians' in Wikipedia

Wojciech Wasowicz
10/7/2015 09:06:41 am

Go make yourself your Lithuanian game about XIV-XV century paganism (basically Renaissance age) & let Polish have their about XII-XIII century paganism (Medieval) - when they have no problems or contacts with Lithuanians.

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Fabian Ahn
12/6/2015 11:57:11 pm

I have a different take on race and diversityin the game.

I actually think the third game in the series - especially the urban phase in Novigrad, offers players a very realistic exposure to prejudice, putting the player into the role of a recipient of bigotry. There is racism aplenty in The Witcher 3 - against nonhumans, mages,and witchers, and this aspect is very well handled. On first arriving in town, the main character is greeted on his arrival by the bonfires of intolerance, nearly every third citizen has a racist comment for him, and assaults based solely on race and other personal characteristics are quite common. In one case, an elven woman is being mistreated by two thugs. If the Witcher intervenes, the thugs agree to leave but the woman then tells the Witcher off, explaining that when he's gone, she's going to have to live with the same bigots he's just thoroughly antagonized.

The city really let's you experience what being the object of racism and prejudice is like... And frames it in the context of a vicious pogrom. You don't need skin colors akin to 21st century America to teach important lessons about diversity and racism, and the Witcher 3 game deals with prejudice very we'll, IMO. It creates a fantasy environment where very realistic experiences of both prejudice and privilege may be experienced first hand by a player.

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RAdesign
15/6/2015 09:35:01 pm

@ Dave
Please have a look at research about Slavic roots, this time from our, Anglo-Saxon perspective.
We had hard times developing independent science, because in times of great discoveries we were under occupation.
Thus, what is predominant in anthropology, archeology and similar sciences, is exclusively based on anglo-saxo-germanic cheauvinism of XIX c.
To get a bigger picture :
https://bialczynski.wordpress.com/slowianie-tradycje-kultura-dzieje/dzieje/o-pangermanskim-szowinizmie-i-nacjonalizmie-o-nieustannych-probach-naciagania-faktow-i-anglo-niemieckich-manipulacjach-przy-y-dna/

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Kilo
17/6/2015 12:52:06 pm

Dave, thank You very much for this elaborate. I am happy to know that this game managed to get through to You. I do not play computer games at all but watched the entire custscenes' movie and it left me speechless. This is how I would like "Wiedżmin" to be filmed.

That said, I think You would know better that in South Africa many Poles have changed and some become just whites during their assimiliation. It was apparent in the '90s in Poland when many expats from '70s and '80s came to visit old friends. And these friends were surprised by how much Poles in RPA (South Africa in Polish) have changed, many turning into racists literally.

I remember several times hearing the argument:
"You know what was happening here, You fled it and yet You now speak of those other people as "czarnuch", "asfalt" or "misiek"? You were prosecuted in the '80s in Poland and now You support that in RPA?". Of course these friends had no idea how it was in RPA at that time and that there was a strong communist movement there, too - which to many Poles seemed probably a worse threat than racism itself, because they remembered what they fled from.

This was not only Polish case - Russians, Czech's and all the other who managed to flee the Eastern Bloc and were (obviously) white were changed in SA. I have no idea if SA changed people that way or they were internally raised as racists.

And then there is a case of Janusz Waluś who murdered Chris Hani in 1993. Individual Poles did have impact on South African's modern history and it was not only positive (although some refineries were built, too). I can understand if mr Moosa looks at "Wiedźmin 3" from the perspective not available to most people, including Americans. He is black and he is from South Africa - cannot expect anything but. (symptomatically he did not state his ethnicity, just race - a construct that has proven to be invalid for human classification yet is still used by both proponents and oponents of racism).

There is anger, irritation and probably hate in this approach but it is to some extent understandable to me. I respect the fact that he tries to solve this issue peacefully in his mind, however imperfect. That's something he learned from Nelson Mandela I hope, even if it doesn't go smooth. From a Pole's perspective and having lived in PRL (People's Republic of Poland) before '89 I viciously object whenever someone tries to tell me what to think and how to see the world in the name of social justice - I have seen too many notions like that used as facades for worst crimes. Mr Moosa however will never understand it, because he grew on the opposite side of the world where problems were so completely different it is impossible to compare them even.

Still he already plugged himself into "wiedźmin's" fame and became popular using the only argument he could find, so no harm will come to him. ;)

I only wonder if he knows which group he comes from and if he can recall his legends. Perhaps one day he could write a game about, say, Xhosa or Zulu tribes, with all their legends and stories integrated and visualised, with all characters black (I wouldn't expect a single white person there) and speaking their dialects (with subtitles). I would love to see a game like this, just make a cutscenes' movie for me please because playing computer games is a sheer waste of time.

I write this because I want to point out one thing - many misplaced and naive articles or voices come recently from SA regarding social justice and race. Think some messages in "District 9", "Elizjum" or "Chappie" - they do seem naive at times, especially to those who lived under "communist" regimes. I think this is because the tough history of this topic in SA. This is not even an American promotion of "melting pot", it is a struggle to invent some form of coexistence in a racist country like SA. Because let's face it - it is racist or at best - post-racist. And the fact it looks for the way to put this hatred down is probably the reason for many different voices on the topic, sometimes exaggerated in demands like mr Moosa's one.

Luckily there are also voices like Yours, too.

Pozdrowienia z Gdańska.

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Windy
1/7/2015 03:18:43 am

Moosa isn't black. He's a South African ex-Muslim, of maybe Indian descent (not sure about him personally, but there are some famous Moosas in SA that are of Indian descent.)

Indians and other South Asians in SA are still seen as relatively privileged compared to the black majority, so it's interesting that Moosa wants to lump all the "PoCs" together for the purposes of his argument.

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ania
3/7/2015 12:36:08 am

Hej,
Ciekawy art, mam tylko jedno "ale" nazwa słowianie nie pochodzi od słowa niewolnik, a w każdym razie jest to tylko jedna z teorii(ze względu na jej łatwość najczęściej powtarzana). Badacze skłaniają się raczej do twierdzenia, że pochodzi od słowa dawniej oznaczającego błoto lub bagna. Przyznam, że trochę przeszkadza mi ta ignorancja, nasza historia jest bardzo często upraszczana lub zakłamywana więc myślę, że przynajmniej Polacy powinni dołożyć wszelkiej staranności aby nie powielać tych błędów.

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Dave link
3/7/2015 04:24:30 am

Hej Ania,

Nazwa Słowianie pochodzi od słowa niewolnik?! Nigdy by mi takie coś nie przyszło do głowy, i napewno nic takiego nie napisalem!

Mi się wydaje w miarę oczywistę, że "Słowianie" (Sloveni, Slav, itp.) pochodzi od słowa "Słowo" (Slovo, itp.) Słownianie byli ogromną i różnorodną grupą, a łączyło ich spólny język.....czyli Słowo.

Nawet z innym takim plemionem czy narodem można było się dogadać, bo byli to ludzie naszego 'słowa'.....czyli Słowianie. A na przykład z plemionami Germańskimi raczej nie można było się dogadać, bo oni nie byli ludzie naszego 'słowa'......czyli byli "Niemcami".

Co ja mówię jest to, że Angielskie słowo "Slave" pochodzi od Angielskiego słowa "Slav". To raczej nie ulega kwestii.

I to ma sens, bo w tamtych okresach, dosyć dużo Słowianów było niewolnikami. Zrestą, większość tych Słowianśkich niewolników było łapanych i sprzedawanych przez innych Słowianów, w czaszie wojen lub bitw, i sprzedawane na zachód lub południe. Powtarzam, że Słowianie to byli ogromną i rozmaitą grupą, i Słowiańskie plemionia często byli wrogami.

Więc,to nie jest tak że Słowianie byli jakąś tam 'klasą niewolniczą'. Po prostu było nas w Europie bardzo dużo, dużo się biliśmy, i często ci co wygrywali brali przegranych i sprzedawali na targach.

Nie widzę w tym, żadnego powodu do wstydu, tak jak nie widzę żadnego powodu dlaczego Czarni ludzie dzisiaj by mieli się wstydzić że wśród ich przodków też były niewolnicy.

Każdy przecież wie że tamte wieki były ogólnie brutalne i moralnie ochydne, i taka historia po prostu jest. Fakt że te wieki są dawną historią, to jest zwycięstwo pokazające jakdaleko wszyscy przeszliśmy.

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ania
3/7/2015 11:14:48 pm

Ach, rzeczywiście odwrotnie zinterpretowałam to co napisałeś. Wciąż jednak upieram się przy swoimXD Przede wszystkim istnieją różne teorie wyjaśniające etymologię słowa "slave" np.pochodzenie greckie "łup wojenny"(skylao), gockiego- mruk, milczek(sklawan) etc., dodatkowo w czasach, o których mowa (najprawdopodobniej) wyraz słowianin nie istniał bądź nie był rozpowszechniony, a słowian nazywano Wenedami, Scytami, Antowami itd. Istnieje tyle teorii co ludzi, którzy się tym interesują, a nie istnieją żadne dowody, które łączyłyby te dwa słowa. To tak jakby stwierdzić, że łac. serv pochodzi od Serba, a Włoch to napewno jest włochaty- proste i sugestywne, ale takie zabawy do niczego nie prowadzą i nie należy ich traktować jako faktów dopóki sie tego bezsprzecznie nie udowodni.
We wczesnym średniowieczu uprowadzano ludzi z terenów słowiańskich, nadbałtyckich i Finlandii, którzy sprzedawani byli głównie do krajów arabskich. Na pewno jest w tym trochę prawdy i słowianie uczestniczyli w tym handlu, być może nim nawet zostało ufundowane państwo polskie, ale np. miejsca w jakich znajdowano drahmy świadczą przeciwnie, w 2016 mają zostać przedstawione wyniki badań prof. Oxfordu na ten właśnie temat, więc się przekonamy. I nie uważam, że jest to coś czego powinniśmy się wstydzić, a wręcz przeciwnie należy o tym pamiętać, ale nijak ma się do etymologii słowa slave.
Jeśli zaś chodzi o murzynów, to chyba nigdy nie zrozumiem dlaczego akurat oni są kojarzeni z niewolnictwem, przecież w czasie gdy czarnych wywożono do obu Ameryk w państwie islamskim sprowadzano chrześcijańskich niewolników, w Indiach dopiero Wlk. Brytania zakazała niewolnictwa, przykłady można mnożyć. Może należy winić Stany Zjednoczone i traktowanie czarnych obywateli jako ludzi drugiej kategorii, może słabo rozwiniętą cywilizację czarnych Afrykanów, która narzuca takie skojarzenia?
"Każdy przecież wie że tamte wieki były ogólnie brutalne i moralnie ochydne, i taka historia po prostu jest. Fakt że te wieki są dawną historią, to jest zwycięstwo pokazające jakdaleko wszyscy przeszliśmy."
Ach, optymista, ale przez ostatnie 15 tys. lat historia w kółko się powtarza, a natura ludzka jest niezmienna, ale to nie miejsce na takie rzeczy. pozdrawiam
P.S. Mam nadzieję, że nie przeszkadza Ci, że napisałam po polsku?

Histon
17/6/2016 10:07:48 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stEuQamTLXw

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Arghast
16/11/2018 12:31:36 am

In Polish "Slavs" is "Słowianie", and in other slavic languages it is very similar.

The root noun is "słowo" (again, very similar in many other slavic languages), which means "word", hence "Słowianie" means something along the lines of "The people of the word", AKA people you can communicate with. It goes back to early middle ages, when all Slavic peoples used roughly the same language (Proto-Slavic language), so there was no any language barrier.

Interestingly enough, "Germans" in Polish (and, again, most if not all other Slavic languages with a mere difference in pronunciation) is "Niemcy", a word derievd from the root adjective "Niemy", which means "being unable to speak", because Germanic peoples spoke completely different language than Slavic peoples.

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Andrew Lace link
11/1/2021 10:00:22 pm

Goodd post

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    I'm Dave Bleja. I quit my career to make one the most immersive, deeply crafted platformers of this generation. 

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