Race In RPG Maker Games

[RATED-RKOFRANKLIN]

For many years I noticed members of the RM community has complained about the lack of racial diversity in the RTP. Enterbrain answered the call with the ACE character generator. You can make different races with the generator. Lately I've used it to make some NPCs.

In my opinion I don't think the character generator has helped much in this issue. I don't see too many ACE games using this program to make diverse races in games. Many games lack African Americas, Native Americans, Mexians, etc.

I like reading members' cirques on members' games. I've never seen race mention in any cirques. I find this to be a bit interesting. Race has never been a standard in RPG Maker games. It has come to standard that it isn't a big issue.

What are your opinions about Race In RPG Maker Games?

 

[Des]

Most games take place in pseudo-European medieval fantasy settings. There isn't always room for other races in such settings.

 

[Usagi]

I've never really considered the race, or the sex for that matter, of the characters in the games I play. I play games for enjoyment, and really don't care whether I am black, white, male, or female - provided the game is fun. I feel the character should fit the game, they should look like they belong in the world, and belong in the role they are playing - skin colour or background shouldn't matter at all.

 

[tevak]

Many RM games lack an africa or a mexico for 'african americans' and 'mexicans' to hail from. Race is trivial at most, and many people won't go out of their way just for there to be a couple other skin colors on the screen. It's not an important detail.

 

[Espon]

My games don't take place on Earth. I'll give humans different skin tones to diversify characters a bit more, but there is no actual Asians, Africans, Caucasians, etc. Humans only occupy a single continent which doesn't leave much room for people to originate from. Majority of the other races in my games are actually non-human and don't even have typical skin colors.

 

[Usagi]

Currently, I have a fantasy game where there are different races such as orcs, elves, humans, etc. However, it shouldn't matter, but the sad fact is that the 'neutral' choice in video games is a human white male. If you ever have a female central character, she's often a piece of eye-candy for male gamers, and if you have a character who's black or Latino or Asian, they usually have a bunch of stereotypes that come along with them.

I think everyone likes to have the opportunity to customize their characters that they are going to be watching and playing as over the next few hours and see themselves reflected in the games they play. I have to admit I enjoy games such as Oblivion where I can spend a few minutes choosing the gender, race and appearance of the character I play.

 

[PK8]

This reminds me of the Female Characters in RPGs thread, so I'll just go ahead and quote myself from there.

I would much rather play a lead (be it male, female, straight, gay, white, black) that is fitting to the game's setting rather than a token minority lead (let's say either female, gay, black, or some/all of the above) that was shoehorned into the game for the sake of having a token minority lead.

 

[randomuser]

I think races are important. When done right they can add a lot of detail and culture to your world. Do you think Final Fantasy XII would be better off without Viera, or Final Fantasy for that matter without Moogles? Some of the WoW races are very memorable for me as well.

You can at least have humans, elves, and demons in an RTP game.

 

[Robin]

You're asking two things at the same time.

For many years I noticed members of the RM community has complained about the lack of racial diversity in the RTP. Enterbrain answered the call with the ACE character generator. You can make different races with the generator.

In my opinion I don't think the character generator has helped much in this issue. I don't see too many ACE games using this program to make diverse races in games.

It did help with the issue. The issue was a lack of racial diversity in the RTP, which no longer exists with the ACE character generator. The issue of whether people use the ACE character generator to make diverse races is clearly a separate issue.

Nonetheless, fantasy RPGs tend to use fantasy races.

As for "cirque", I'm not sure what you mean by that. Perhaps you mean "critique"?

 

[RavenTDA]

For me personally I always thought working with one skin color just makes mixing and matching, and creating sprites a lot easier. In the first game I was working on I had like 8 different skin tones (although race & discrimination played a major role). While it looked very visual pleasing it was a lot more work than it was worth. In the game I'm working on now, everyone was supposed to look a weird pink tone to just be neutral about it, but I raged pretty hard seeing it looks typical white on my husband's screen. Makes me wonder how it looks on other people's monitors.

Plus with the lack of the generator, we only had access to the default color. So because of that, people are going to be using ready-made-resources still for those that can't make their own. Plus ACE hasn't been out that long. It takes a while to make a game, there's probably plenty of people making games like that it's just they're not finished yet. I have however seen a lot more diversity in the newer games.

As for what I prefer to play...? Well it doesn't matter much to me what the character looks like, as long as the story rocks. Besides most times we are playing someone beautiful no matter what their race and gender is. How about we play someone ugly?

 

[RATED-RKOFRANKLIN]

Most games take place in pseudo-European medieval fantasy settings. There isn't always room for other races in such settings.

That's not true. A person with an open mind can add any race to the settings. A games not have need to reflect our real world.

This reminds me of the Female Characters in RPGs thread, so I'll just go ahead and quote myself from there.

That's interesting for a main character. I have added some different racial major and minor characters. What are your thoughts about a game's general racial population?

 

[RyanA]

I think as long as it makes sense in the story and fits with the lore of the world the game is set in, it doesn't matter. You can have a world full of all white humans or all black humans, all elves, all cat people, whatever!

It's nice to put in a mix of everything, but if they don't fit in the story and don't match the lore, then there's no point putting them in.

 

[Levi]

Some people seem to think that it is some terrible injustice when a game comes out that doesn't have an ethnically diverse cast. I don't really care. Race is unimportant to me.

A game could have all white, all black, all blue, mixed.... It doesn't matter. Skin color is the last thing that I'm looking at.

The reason I say that is because skin color doesn't really mean anything. Skin color doesn't affect whether a person is Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Mormon etc. Whether you could be a beloved king, a hated tyrant, a thief, a professor. Skin color is very rarely relevant to the story. So that's why, unless it serves some purpose to the story (be it regional variation, race war, what-have-you). it doesn't matter me.

What I find more interesting/important, is varying cultures.

 

[Indinera]

It mostly depends on the settings of the game. In most cases people associate fantasy to european medieval times, ie white people.

Personally, I've made a series with very different races as I like diversity. It's interesting to note the term "race" can mean something entirely different in fantasy (ie be referring to elf, dwarf etc.)

 

[Indrah]

Races mean jack **** to me in games (and in real life, because psh, the internet alone is full of weird peoples regardless of gender or race). CULTURES on the other hand play heavy roles in fantasy games, and I'm all for seeing different towns and areas is much more itneresting that "races".

This is a bit different for monster-human races, but they twnd to suffer the same fate as human races in games: they're stereotypical and, worse, boring.

Races in games are usually one trick ponies. They have ONE thing they represent, and besides that they do nothing, sure, you may think the same about real life races, but that probabl meants you see races as tourists do towns: they have one thing of interest you remmeber and choose to ignore the rest. In games, it's "Drarves are diggers, get drunk and wield axes". "Elves are great archers, mystical, and long lived". "The XXX YY skin tinteted humans live in X area and worship Y deity".

This would be fine if every area had a race with a fleshed out culture to visit. But rpgs are usually divided in the "common race" everywhere, and a few scattered minority races you can visit.

Frankly, I have nothign against races, but the way they are implemented usually feels silly and useless "oh look! an elven/dwarven/etc village! and they onyl have ONE in the world world and have like 7 villagers, but theyre an ancient and powerful culture anwyay". A more elegant solution is to treat the races like just sligthly differnet people. That's fine. In fact, it's much better than making them exaggerated stereotypes without a solid base and background.

In short. Race in games is usually just a tag added to the A STEREOTYPE OR SPECIFIC TRAIT, added as bonus and taken as a "personality" or "character", when they're not.

As a background setting element for charatcers, well done, they're just fine. But they should never serve to DEFINE characters. Much less "being of X race" should be what a character's whole role in the game is.

As for games not using racial diversity: why should they? Most rpgs are not set in earth, they have no reason to have african americans or mexicans or whatever. If the ingame cultures and races are one and the same, how does that hamper the game? So long as the gameplay does not rely on those elements there is no fault there. (Also resource making for many different races is simply MORE WORK).

 

[RATED-RKOFRANKLIN]

Races mean jack **** to me in games (and in real life, because psh, the internet alone is full of weird peoples regardless of gender or race). CULTURES on the other hand play heavy roles in fantasy games, and I'm all for seeing different towns and areas is much more itneresting that "races".

This is a bit different for monster-human races, but they twnd to suffer the same fate as human races in games: they're stereotypical and, worse, boring.

Races in games are usually one trick ponies. They have ONE thing they represent, and besides that they do nothing, sure, you may think the same about real life races, but that probabl meants you see races as tourists do towns: they have one thing of interest you remmeber and choose to ignore the rest. In games, it's "Drarves are diggers, get drunk and wield axes". "Elves are great archers, mystical, and long lived". "The XXX YY skin tinteted humans live in X area and worship Y deity".

This would be fine if every area had a race with a fleshed out culture to visit. But rpgs are usually divided in the "common race" everywhere, and a few scattered minority races you can visit.

Frankly, I have nothign against races, but the way they are implemented usually feels silly and useless "oh look! an elven/dwarven/etc village! and they onyl have ONE in the world world and have like 7 villagers, but theyre an ancient and powerful culture anwyay". A more elegant solution is to treat the races like just sligthly differnet people. That's fine. In fact, it's much better than making them exaggerated stereotypes without a solid base and background.

In short. Race in games is usually just a tag added to the A STEREOTYPE OR SPECIFIC TRAIT, added as bonus and taken as a "personality" or "character", when they're not.

As a background setting element for charatcers, well done, they're just fine. But they should never serve to DEFINE characters. Much less "being of X race" should be what a character's whole role in the game is.

As for games not using racial diversity: why should they? Most rpgs are not set in earth, they have no reason to have african americans or mexicans or whatever. If the ingame cultures and races are one and the same, how does that hamper the game? So long as the gameplay does not rely on those elements there is no fault there. (Also resource making for many different races is simply MORE WORK).

What you said is very disgusting and racist. African Americas, Native Americans, and Mexicans cannot live on other planets besides Earth? That is the most illogical comment I have heard since Kobe Bryant said the 2012 team can beat the Dream Team. RPGs' worlds or planets do not determine what race lives on the planet. A gamer developer can create any race on any planet.

A racial character is not a one trick pony. Look at Lee from The Walking Dead. He is no one trick pony. There will be more to his character in the upcoming episodes.

How is making different races of people more work? The character generator does it a minute.

 

[RyanA]

African Americas, Native Americans, and Mexicans cannot live on other planets besides Earth? That is the most illogical comment I have heard since Kobe Bryant said the 2012 team can beat the Dream Team

Well...they can't. Just like British people can't, French people can't, Germans, Swedesh, Americans, Japanes, Chinese, Vietnamese, Egyptian, Spartan and every other type of human that lives upon planet earth. I've not seen mention of a british person, or any of the others I've mentioned, in any game that's not set on earth. 3:

 

[Levi]

edit: Removed

It's not good to jump to conclusions.

How you see Indrah's post is the exact opposite of how I see it. You're waaaaaaaaaay off. People have to understand that 10 people will likely have at least 9 different views of the same post... so to assume that you know what a person has meant, and then get aggressive, is foolish.

Also... posts involving "Race" shouldn't be allowed. Oversensitive folk, who are looking for any possible tint of racism, clawing and gnawing for an excuse to white-knight all over the place , will always lead these threads to destruction. It will never end well.

Some people are clearly looking for a fight.

 

[BigEd781]

What you said is very disgusting and racist. African Americas, Native Americans, and Mexicans cannot live on other planets besides Earth? That is the most illogical comment I have heard since Kobe Bryant said the 2012 team can beat the Dream Team. RPGs' worlds or planets do not determine what race lives on the planet. A gamer developer can create any race on any planet.

Ummm... it's quite logical, seeing as Africa and Mexico reside firmly upon Earth and nowhere else...

Here's my problem with forced diversity; it makes us think in terms of race. "Oh, I had better add a <insert non-Caucasian ethnicity here> person or I'll be tagged as racist". Isn't the whole point to stop thinking in terms of race? Any decision you make based purely upon race is, by definition, racist, regardless of whether that decision harms someone, is discriminatory, or inclusive. It still keeps people thinking in terms of skin color.

Also, a fair bit of warning; RKO, you like to start controversial topics and then take offense/get all riled up when someone disagrees with you. I see it happening here already and I'm not going to let it go on. Everyone, let's keep our tempers... erm, tempered, or this is getting closed. Keep it constructive.

 

[PK8]

What you said is very disgusting and racist. African Americas, Native Americans, and Mexicans cannot live on other planets besides Earth? That is the most illogical comment I have heard since Kobe Bryant said the 2012 team can beat the Dream Team. RPGs' worlds or planets do not determine what race lives on the planet. A gamer developer can create any race on any planet.

I fail to see how that's racist. At all.