Topic: Add Black Character Creation in Games

Here is a solution for the people this bothered, and this is literally the only way to change it:

ONLY buy games that offer black characters that are acceptable to you. Then let the developer KNOW why you didn't buy their game, or why you did.

Here's an exciting piece of news for some of you guys: Companies ONLY care about making money, if you hurt their wallet, they will change. But if COD 10 keeps making 5 billion a day, with all white guys leading the show, then better black characters aren't a priority. I've noticed in the gaming community, most of the people don't have any willpower and just buy stuff because of HYPE, feeding the industry until it's become the disgusting monster we have today (DLC's, Collector packs, loot boxes etc....)

Either take a stand and DO something, and I mean something real, not posting a comment on a site that maybe 5k people will see. Or consider yourself part of the problem. Now I don't see a problem so I will continue about my life just as I always have and not be triggered by imaginary characters not being good enough for me.

@Goatman willpower is often useless as well. I have never owned a single COD game in my life, I have never even tried one, just like I have never even owned a single FIFA game, but that does not make them less succesful. Willpower belongs only to individuals, and individuals have no real power to do anything. People matters only as groups but that way anybody's own will don't matter at all. Sad but true.
I mean, it is true that one should buy only what he really wants not let someone else hype drive his decisions, but don't expect anything more than just saving your money for the things you really want this way. You aren't going to change anything else anyway.

Can someone list 5 mainstream games with full character creators that don't let you change the skin colour? International games obviously, not Japan only stuff.

I'm not even sure this "problem" exists in the first place.

My whole point was that the rest of the world almost always get an american ethnicity selection that looks like this:

1. White
2. Brown (Mexican looking)
3. Black,
4. Possibly Asian (if they remembered to put it in)

So, if you are Turkish you get told "just pick the brown Mexican dude, same [removed] different name". Because American games don't cater to every ethnicity it's very weird when black Americans complain about their ethnicity it's being catered to by Asian games.

It's by far more useful for Asian games to add various ethnic groups that are in Asia, before they add ethnic groups on other continents.

@Dezzy can you name 5 RPGs on Nintendo with black characters? I think that is OPs complaint is that he likes RPGs and he likes Nintendo, but all the RPGs on Nintendo are too white..... and arguably I would say Nintendo is a brand that hasnt been at the forefront of representing ethnic diversity in gaming.

@Agriculture

@Inertiacreep OP makes it not clear enough if he talks about just character creation tools or games without them too. If he talks about games with customization options he is right, if he talks about games without customization options I believe that is wrong if you want games to have this social task. Games are already ruined enough by money, this would be something that would damage them in a similar way that money does.
You start by forcing developers to think about being representative for every possible people out there and soon you find yourself with boring moral indoctrination lectures instead of games.
I don't like Dante and I don't Buy Devil may cry games because of this. There are things in the first DMC that I could have liked but it's not enough and I sold it soon and never played it again. I don't like Kratos either but I love God of war 2 so much that I don't care if I don't like Kratos, I just want it and love to play it.
Of course I would like characters that I like more in those games, but I don't think that they did something wrong making characters that I don't like for those games. If something is not customizable of course there will be someone who will not appreciate it.
On the other hand I was very disappointed when I saw that in Fantasy life there was no way to make your character older than a child and there were almost no beard options at all. That was a bad thing because customization is all about giving people to choose anything they want. If you add customization option and someone don't find what he wants then at this point is actually your fault.

@LuckyLand I know that me and you not buying something doesn't matter, but my hope is that the gaming community as a whole wakes up (we have to start somewhere, so individuals is the first step) and forces change on the companies so that they are gamer friendly again. So if enough people like me and you, convince our friends who then tell their friends.... I know it is unlikely, but hope is important lol.

@dezzy what is "too white"? Is something bad if it's white?

@Inertiacreep

That's not what the thread title was. It said "character creation".

But that's pretty easy to do all the same. I once again have to suspect you're imagining a problem that doesn't exist.

Again you do not know for sure what rpg's they are referring to. It's possible the only reason they named Japanese games is because the site you're on is centered around a Japanese game company. It's funny you bring up Guacamelee considering when it came out people couldn't decided whether to be offended or not. I mean if the game that spawns comments such as "As a mexican, it was like playing speedy gonzalez. It does not represent the mexican culture." Is what you want to use as your source of representation from a White developer be my guest. Don't get me wrong being able to use Black skin tones is games is something I appreciate, but I have my doubts Devs from a country where only 1.5% (2015 data) of the population is foreign born. And from that an even more minuscule amount is actually considered "Black" would be able to consistently create an accurate representation of my race. And to answer your question if representation is not done right, it does indeed harm me.

@Agriculture you do know that Mexican people are about as varied in color and origin as people from the US right?

A "brown" character option doesn't make it Mexican looking. It just makes it brown.

(Glares at thread) Ok let's keep this thing civil, and etc.

@Meowpheel You're in Mexico, are you from Mexican descent? And if you are what you do you think about Guacamelee's representation.

@Nintendoforlife I'm in Mexico and my family is about as Mexican as it's possible.

Guacamelee is just another luchador, day of the dead inspired thing. I believe most people here find that kind of thing amusing.

I liked several of the visual references, but didn't really think much about it otherwise.

You can't catch every ethnicity simply by having shades from white to black skin, then throw in northern Asians on top of that. Just like Mexicans have varied tone, so does for example Thai people. So, if you have a game developed in Asia, you can't just expect them to include black people in the character creation when they have so much else to include. Such as varied skin tone on Asians, and adding other ethnic groups like Turks, Arabs, and so on.

If anything is to be said about all this, it's the fact that virtually no American game ever made let's you make either an Arab or Indian character, while lots of Asian games let's you make black characters.

I don't like games with character creation. They feel lazy to me. I always pick the default option. I personally couldn't care less if the playable character doesn't 'represent' me. It's a very superficial thing anyway IMO.

I don't think careful representation of all of the possible small differencies of every ethnicity should be mandatory for a character creation tool anyway, because what you guys are saying is the demonstration that even the colours of skin could become a problem this way. Things sound so complicated that it seems a tool so much accurate could become too complicated even for a gamer when it's time to use it. Creating your own character is fun but spending more time in the editor than in the actual game is not. I think that giving the player a good balance between wide variety and simplicity/approximation would be the best thing.
Gaming cannot become a study in physical features of ethnicities. That's true I'm not black and I also usually don't like games set in the real world so probably I don't know, but I don't think you need an official certificate of a character's ethnicity when you are using an editor. I don't think it is reasonable to go as deep as some post here seems to go

@Octane I usually like games with character creation but usually I don't create characters that look like me. If I wanted a character that look like me I could as well play first person games and don't even bother with an editor.

I think the problem was with generalizing brown skin as "mexican looking". I'm a mexican too, and I don't think there's such a thing as "mexican looking" (much less looking like one just for having brown skin), and this applies with most ethnic groups, if not all. It just applies to the stereotype people have in mind.

Personally I don't have much trouble with character customization, and most games use a certain "style" like the cartoonish one from Pokemon or Monster Hunter Stories, which won't allow to replicate any ethnicity in a faithful way and don't need to, to be honest. This applies to everyone so no one should feel offended as there's not one group represented in a realistic way, because the game doesn't try to do that.

Then there are the ones that use more realistic apperances. These are the ones that some people expect to allow them to recreate themselves in a more faithful way and here it's more understandable. Personally, I think that the character customization from games like Mass Effect 3 are the more adecuate for these cases: You have some different basic appearances that you can choose, then after choosing one you are allowed to modify the facial features, body and skin tone to your liking, without calling any part something like " asian eyes" or anything, just "type 1", "type 2", etc. You just combine every option to manage to recreate the character as faithful as possible and that's it.

This isn't true at all. Mexico is incredibly mixed, with most people having descendants from both the Spanish and native Americans. You can't compare Mexico to for example the Middle East or India where each ethnic tends to stick to themselves and as a result have a distinct appearance. Just look at Afghanistan and you'll find one ethnic group that is clearly Asian looking with epicanthic fold and another that looks closer to Arabs.

To then tell all those people "here, you can settle for this brown skinned character because we only think people can be white, brown or black" doesn't really work (this is how many American games work, it's not an accusation against anyone).

So because of all this, you have to select some ethnic groups for your game, unless you have the resources to do them all. Sometimes in Asian games, black people will be skipped because there aren't that many black people in Asia.

Okay, guys. Please be calm down when discussing about this Sensitive topic. I know this topic can so serious when someone talking about skin color.

And @LinkxPeach , be grateful if you still able to play games that let you use Dark skin characters. If you still wondering why there aren't any games with Dark Skin Only character as playable characters to play, just don't take it so seriously.

I'm asking to you, are you happy if you play with Dark Skin Only characters with less Options about other Skin Tone colors ?
Btw, are you Dark skin people, because i'm Indonesian people with Asian skin tone color and have no problem at all if the games lack of specific skin tone color. It doesn't matter if you Black or White, just be happy with your games.

@Goatman so you are against healthy discussion amongst peers?