Sorry, but this is bullshit. If the people of other ethnicities were extremely rare, it could be historically inaccurate to make the game with even one. It's a crazy thing called math, more specifically probability, that would determine that. Since we don't have the statistics on the ethnicities/races of the people living in that area in that time, we can't really draw any conclusions. Just because there was a POSSIBILITY of non-whites living in some area of that country at that time, that doesn't mean that there is a significant enough PROBABILITY that a sample of that country's population would contain a non-white individual.
Their lack of other ethnicities/races in their game in no way contradicts their goal to achieve historical accuracy. Just because they don't represent every possible permutation of human being that existed during that time does not mean they are denying history. That is where your argument fails.
Were they extremely rare? If so, how rare? If we're to believe Warhorse took their stance based on hard statistics, they can present their research. If they don't have any to show, what do we believe? Should "very very rare" count as hard statistics? At what point is something too rare to consider to place in a game? You state the importance of statistics but provide none, and even if you did and you proved there were no non-whites in medieval Bohemia, it still wouldn't change Warhorses seemingly inadvertent contradiction.
And just to reiterate in case you never saw me say it: the guy who posted the original question to Warhorse was not telling them what they should/shouldn't do. At worst, he was a bit snarky, something those who frequent NeoGAF should be familiar with. A lot of other people in this thread have understood his position, skim through here if need be. What MedievalPOC and these other people I mentioned take issue with is that Wawrhorse is using the (seemingly ambiguous) rarity of non-white people in Bohemia at the time as a reason to not include them at all, in any way. That doesn't make sense if there actually were non-white people in that area and time period.
Now, there might not have actually been any people of other ethnicity at all, or there could've been hundreds of thousands and history just let that fact fade into the ether. None of that matters in regards to this particular discussion as much as what Warhorse believes and what they're setting out to do. Warhorse acknowledges non-white people existed in that area, yet were rare. They have heavily pushed realism/historical accuracy. From what I've seen from them, they have not shown their game world is based a on location they were sure no non-white people lived in. If they don't actually have considerable evidence to believe non-white people lived in that location their game is based on, then fine: they don't have to include them in the game.
However. If they say that they consciously made the decision to completely avoid including non-white characters/NPCs because of historical accuracy, then that doesn't make sense because it doesn't align with what they believe to be historically accurate. They respond to the question of "why aren't there POC in your game?" with "because there weren't any, or more accurately, they were very rare."
Again, neither you, Warhorse or anyone has said how rare these people were. we just all kind of accept that they were pretty rare. So if no one has any hard evidence (and even if they produced some right now, Warhorse didn't see it when they made this decision, if they actually
did conscious make this decision and this isn't some translation error), then all we can critique is whether Warhorse's goals for this game align with their execution. This facet of the game's execution does not align with their stated goals.
If you want to use statistics as a basis for
your argument, fine, but two things. 1) provide some statistics and 2) don't say that Warhorse used those same statistics when they didn't reference actual statistics, nor did they illustrate what constitutes as "too rare to be a part of this game."
Sorry, the out of place comment was my rephrasing of the answer given in the picture you posted, where they said that other ethnicities would be very rare and the likelihood of meeting them in the small rural setting would be low.
I'm gonna have to come back to this, you keep saying they should just be upfront about design decisions being the reason for having only one playable character without providing an example of the developers giving an alternative explanation. I asked for one and you posted the picture where they answer a question about NPCs.
The assumption seems to be that because this game is an RPG there should be a variety of options for the player character, but it's an argument that doesn't hold water. An RPG where elements such as race, gender and origin can be determined by the player is significantly different to one where these elements are pre-defined. Once again, compare The Witcher to The Elder Scrolls. From the outset it was announced that you would play as the son of a local blacksmith, i.e. a pre-defined framework for the player character. This is a design decision; it may have been made due to resource or narrative reasons (e.g. plausibility), but once it's been made it's been made. If the game contained a character creation system more like TES/Fallout, but failed to include non-white ethnicities, then the argument about historical accuracy may have intersected with the design mechanics of the player character. As it stands, the discussion can only really apply to the content/setting of the title, not its fundamental mechanics (unless you want to argue that every game should allow for a player created avatar).
Basically, if you want to argue that the inclusion of NPCs of varying ethnicities would be historically plausible and beneficial to both the game and the players, go ahead (FWIW, I'd agree). However it does not logically follow that this should extend to the player character when the game is not designed around such mechanics.
I've posted a lot of possible reasons why they made these design choices, some I suspect are true. I've said that "not enough time to include that," "not enough resources," "we didn't see the point," "we never even thought about it," and so forth.
And again, I'd like to discuss what they should and shouldn't do in terms of specific game design, but I'm avoiding that for the sake of getting my point across. The only individual design choices I believe a developers objectively should do across the board is whatever aligns with what they ultimately want out of their product. This is an instance of a design choice (that may not have even been a conscious one, or one given much thought) that seemingly is at odds with the overall goal. I will call that out.
I don't believe I can say that the player character
should be able to be non-white/woman/Etc. I'm just saying that historical accuracy or that non-white people were "rare" is not a reason to not include them at all. That' assertion is what I take issue with.
EDIT:
Just to add, you have to consider how often people whitewash history, or downplay the significance of certain societies/people/ethnicities, either knowingly or inadvertently. when it's inadvertent, people tend to get take it personally when others point it out, and that can muddy up the understanding process. we commonly have depictions of Egyptians as tanned white people, Jesus as the most blond-haired blue-eyed person ever, Etc. and there's a chain of events that usually occurs.
for someone like MedievalPOC who's knowledgeable on these matters, I'm sure it's frustrating. you have people downplaying a culture's historical significance, and when you question that, you get people saying there isn't a problem. It takes all your effort just to get them to acknowledge there's actually problem, and then they say they problem isn't that big a deal. Then you convince a few that it's a big deal, but they say it isn't worth the riling people up about, and then you have people who don't want to even consider they might be adding to the problem, and so on and so forth. Just to get that initial basic, non-confrontational point across about the matter spawns all that reddit bile on these issues.
