Why would that amaze you? Have you seen Twitter? That’s a full-time hobby/job for some people.
I’ve been really enjoying Waypoint’s writing and podcasts. We don’t need another bland consumer advocacy style review site. Waypoint has an entirely different raison d’être and they execute on it really well.
Just chiming in to say that Telefrog is absolutely right. Twitter is nearly insufferable these days because of all the “Twitter activists”. Sigh.
I don’t know how white Bohemia was in the 1400s, I do know that the multiple arguments against it being white revolved around there being black people in other parts of Europe that were thousands of kilometres away and had had strong links to north africa/middle east for centuries anyway. Looking at the medieval POC blog, they’re almost entirely Italian art works, or art from other European countries depicting events outside Europe.
I can see that the designer is a bit of an asshole, but I think people underestimate just how different Eastern European societies today are, particularly in the areas of race, sex and gender. Also, PoC are still incredibly rare in Poland, Czech Republic and Lithuania. So rare as to have people stopping and staring.
It’s idiotic either way. There were people of color in that part of the world at that time, but probably not prominent. The Holy Roman Empire can attest to that. You also can’t play as a woman, which is to be expected in a historical sense.
The big issue with a lot of these people is the reaction when people ask. At the end of the day, developers, much like celebrities, should shut the fuck up about shit if they don’t want to alienate people. No one is persecuting him because he’s the little guy - he reacted poorly to criticism and then kept it up. Otherwise, why would anyone write a clarification/apology letter directly before the release of their game?
I like the game. I thought about whether to get it or not based on his reactions and decided I could live with it. He’s just someone I disagree with. I buy stuff from much worse people, I’m sure.
That’s an unfounded assertion, just as his assertion that there were no black people is. Both are just as historically (in)accurate. Im not sure you’re away of how the HRE at that time functioned, being mostly independent states with little migration between them. When Wenceslaus the third controlled Bohemia and Hungary, they were ruled as separate fiefdoms. The only significant migration in medieval Bohemia was that of the German Eastward Expansion in the…14th? century. Bohemia was sparsely populated compared to the south, the west and the north and the trade routes that ran through it were east to west and not well populated.
It was quite literally a hinterland at that time, so I never understood why the claim by the developer got so much prominence either way.
As @Jason_McMaster pointed out, the main reason people flipped wasn’t due to the official Warhorse response. People lost their minds because Vavra was a huge dick about it.
The same initial sector of people gave CDPR shit about The Witcher 3’s paucity of POC, but that went away relatively quickly because CDPR didn’t rise to the bait. They made a quick statement about it and moved on. Vavra just couldn’t let it go. He purposefully egged people on about it.
His response coupled with his pro-GG history was all people needed.
Sure, I don’t have a magic ball that transports me to 1403 Czech Repbulic. I used a touch of hyperbole and gave my opinion.
I’m obviously not from the Czech Republic, but I know better than to make grand claims that “because I’m Czech, I know better about the history of my country than anyone else” and “there were no black people here. Period,” is the kind of statement that makes people react. That and claiming some amazing historical accuracy while doing some really weird shit.
He claimed to be consulting with historical experts (one of whom later said Vavra was happy to ignore her when it suited him), no?
Also, Bohemia is (largely) modern day Czech Republic. I’m not sure where Poland came into it.
So saying there were people of color in medical HRE is inaccurate, as is saying there were none. Got it.
I mean we have rock solid proof that the Scandinavians conducted business/ raids with people as far as southern France and the Black Sea. Arabic inscriptions have been found on coins in Scotland and Norway. Roman outposts existed in south eastern India, and many artifacts exist.
Also seeing first century Roman gladius’ and amphora in India was really fascinating.
Hell, there was a pope in the third (4th?) century that was from Africa, and possibly black.
Basically the case for people of other nationalities and skin colors being present across Europe is lock solid. Common? No. But even in the art and literature of the time they are present. The legend of King Arthur, about as white as you’d possibly get, right? Wrong. One of the major knights, one of the most honorable, is Palomides the Saracen. Aka a knight who, likely, is of moorish descent.
Now would I boycott a game set in medieval Europe, or a fantasy analogue, that doesn’t contain persons of different ethnicities? Nah. Do I think it misses out? Probably. Would it be nice to see that historical cultural exchange more readily depicted, since so few are aware of the global culture of the past? Absolutely!
Oh, that’s my bad. I don’t think it changes my point, but that is my mistake.
Americans went to the moon therefore they’ve been to other planets in the solar system? I mean, that’s the gist of your argument.
An assertion isnt historically accurate because it’s an assumption, it’s accurate when there are primary sources (or enough secondary sources). Absence of evidence to prove the contrary also doesn’t somehow render something historically accurate. If there were contemporaneous accounts of e.g. bohemians travelling to a cosmopolitan city and being astounded at their first ever sigth of a PoC, that’s a small piece of evidence that Vavra’s claims are historically accurate.
Talking about sea traders as if that’s relevant to a hinterland in Europe surrounded by mountains and away from any of the trade routes that led to non-white countries isn’t a particularly compelling argument. It’s actually a really poor one. Migration in Europe has been incredibly rare for most of its history, as has been travel beyond trading and royalty/nobility.
No, it isn’t, and your analogy is awful.
PoC went to other parts of Europe so they have to have gone to all parts is quite literally his argument. Thanks for your valuable contribution though, well reasoned and well argued as ever^^
Err, there was still quite a bit of bloviating for The Witcher 3. No one just drops social issues these days. The questions come up again and again.
I haven’t noticed much more noise about this game, so maybe it’s restricted to the dark corners of Twitter. The save game controversy was a bigger story!
Sure. Like I wrote, some people make social media outrage their lives. Nothing stops that. But I think the difference between how CDPR was forgiven by most and how Warhorse is still a bitter pill for many is stark.
Here’s something similar, going the opposite way. Watch the Twitter video for the whole scene:
This in Assassin’s Creed Origins’ new Discovery Tour mode. This particular bit is showing how the Ubisoft team took the illustration on the real vase and used it to model the NPCs in-game holding their own dancing class. The scene explicitly says the devs changed the gender makeup of the students to have some girls to be more inclusive for female gamers.
Guess which side is losing their shit over this?
RPS brought it up in their recent review, and deleted a bunch of comments (the quality of which I know not).
They also brought up the bigger issue of how Women are treated and the nonsense of having macho bonuses/whatnot. But that was only a footnote while the stuff over PoC was a large part.
Not gonna argue it wasn’t more common, perhaps just regular common, in sea ports and trade routes.
But it was not limited there, however it is the one I have the most knowledge about.
But here are a few historical figures I can show existed away from the major trade centers, such as this German philosopher
Or this musician who was born in Poland
Or this Russian poet
Or Russian general
The point being that, yes, even away from trade routes and sea ports there were people from different cultures there. But also mostly in major cities, I’m not gonna try and claim your average German farmer ever saw someone with darker skin. Perhaps they did, but I have no direct evidence for that.
My point is that, if you are interested to look, you can very easily find evidence of people of African, Middle Eastern, and often Chinese or Indian descent in almost any area in history. Certainly this tended towards cities and not rural areas, but with all the evidence of travel, trade, and, yes, slavery bringing people of African descent into most places it is pretty hard to argue that any area was completely absent of this exchange.
So it is entirely reasonable for any game featuring a major medieval city to have more diversity. In fact making them 100% white is likely more ahistorical.
Yes, even in Germany.
I’d be flipping out too if it was the army of the early Roman Empire or something, but I can’t see this as an issue in a rural area north of the Alps in 1403. At that time the only contacts between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean were down the Nile or across the Sahara. You don’t make that journey just to hang out with some farmers.
I also have trouble taking this seriously when there are Cumans in the game. Do asians not count as PoC? There’s all kinds of people who were actually coming in from the steppe, so why would you need someone from Africa for it to be diverse?