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People of colour in Kingdom Come: Deliverance - A discussion (Read the OP)

Azih

Member
I'm not insisting they have an ulterior motive. It's a possibility, but I don't think this was done outright maliciously. People can do harm unintentionally and might do so because they legitimately think it's justified. it happens.
There is nothing malicious or harmful even inadvertently so coming from the skin tone of NPCs in a game set in a small part of medieval Bohemia.

f Warhorse touts the realism of their game and there were Mongols, Moors, Etc. who lived in that area/period who could at least conceivably be NPCs
Warhorse has pretty clearly said there weren't in the quote of theirs that you keep repeating. Can't quote verbatim as i am on phone but they flat out said there would have been no real chance of meeting a POC in that area in that time.

I have no idea where you're getting the idea that warhorse thinks the number of POC in that area in that time was any more than and negligible.
 

Pafnucy

Member
Sure.

Most of the sources medieval historians use are written by monks as they were among the few literate members of society. But do we have any sources that discuss how medieval Bohemians felt about people with different skin tones? It's possible. I don't know.

But I don't think we should rush to assume anything about the views of people in medieval Boheminan society just because we might equate the 'Dark Ages' with persecution.

My limited knowledge of medieval history leads me to think that relgion was a grounds for persecution rather than ethnicity.

Exactly. In medieval persecution was based mainly on religion. One of the most important events in medieval Bohemia history are Hussite Wars and crusades against Hussites. As long as you believed in the "right" god, I don't think that your skin tone mattered that much back then. I'm more interested in how Warhorse will implement that aspect into the game.
 

Tacitus_

Member
That tumblr is so full of shit. I think it was one of those who were screaming that Frozen was racist because the Saami are actually black.
 

Azih

Member
Exactly. In medieval persecution was based mainly on religion. One of the most important events in medieval Bohemia history are Hussite Wars and crusades against Hussites. As long as you believed in the "right" god, I don't think that your skin tone mattered that much back then. I'm more interested in how Warhorse will implement that aspect into the game.
It's only fairly recently that ethnicity and religion have started being seen as different things. Faith used to be defined by what 'tribe' you were born into as much as your ethnicity.
 
It's a lot easier to make a detailed system for only one kind of body type than it is to make the same detailed system for a lot of body types.

Also, iirc, they said they were out to tell a very specific story about a guy who... I forget the details. But yeah, it's a specific story, so it's not really crazy that they'd put a playable female character after the stuff that would help them polish off that story. You can't just go "oh yeah, now the player's a girl!" I think they want to make that story they want to tell the best it can be, and THEN they'll look for other options.

I'm sitting here writing a video game right now. The protagonist is a girl. She has to be a girl, because that's who she is in my head. I'm being even less flexible than Warhorse is; I won't allow any kind of gender swapping. The protagonist is female and that's final.

I think it's important to respect the work of the artist. If the artist wants to tell a story about a white male, cool, go for it. I, as an artist, have stories about white males, white females, an Indian guy, and a ton of other people I'm pretty consistently developing. I think if I started getting pressured to make the Indian guy a white dude, or make the girl a guy in my other project, I'd get angry, just like if someone told me that my white dude should be someone else.

Social Justice nonsense is social justice nonsense. Back when Fellini made La Strada, a bunch of social justice people got really mad at him, because Fellini, one of the foremost Neo-realist directors, had made this intensely personal film. Neo-realism, according to these social justice guys, was supposed to be about society, about criticizing its flaws and stuff. Instead, Fellini had made this incredibly beautiful film about how a man took advantage of and destroyed a woman--and I realize that sounds horrible, but the film is about how our actions affect other people. It says that destroying other people is ultimately destroying yourself. It's marvelous. There are stories of people who'd abandoned their families returning home after seeing the film. For all the power and beauty of La Strada, the only thing these stupid critics could see was that it wasn't doing the thing they wanted it to do. Never mind that it changed lives, made people better--it wasn't about society, and so it was bad. And they hammered it. This film went on to basically codify "Best forein language film" at the Oscars, though, and Fellini went on to make some of the best films of all time.

People who try to tell artists what they should say aren't people worth listening to, because they're so often wrong, or missing the point. Art should be good, but arguing for social justice is so often just nonsense from people who won't make their own art.

I really, really believe strongly in the integrity of the artist's vision, if that wasn't obvious.

the world is better off without revisionist history artists. Revisionism is incredibly damaging to culture and education.
 
I've never understood the use of the term "social justice warrior" as a pejorative. Yes, I believe in social justice. Yes, I believe in fighting for it. OMG SJW!
 

Authority

Banned
Let us do this step by step,

Regarding the lack of female or people of color

According to Warhorse,

In the midst of this plunder and chaos, a son of a blacksmith will emerge as a hero. His home destroyed and his family murdered by the invading army, he must redeem his failure to protect those he loved and set things right again. Avenging the dead, safeguarding the kingdom’s rightful ruler, and restoring order will prove no small feat for our adventurer.

Strike one - Warhorse claims that their system is the "the ultimate character customization tool ever invented”. In that respect, you would assume that the player had the liberty to customize its main character's race, ethnicity and religion since the description of the main story alone is open to interpretations; you are after all a son of a blacksmith; no other information regarding your racial, ethnic and religious status.

MedievalPOC responded by stating that,

I can tell that representation really isn’t a priority there...For example, their £600,000 goal of adding miniquests in which a female player character is even possible came after Live Medieval In-Game Music and Symphonic Orchestra Soundtrack, and remains unfulfilled as of yet. However, being able to "seduce local women" is already a part of the base game.

Strike two - Warhorse did not state that you will not see, interact and engage with a woman(en) nor that a woman(en) will not help you out through out the game. Warhorse stated that if a specific amount of funding was achieved, players would have the chance to play a female character through a series of mini quests, tied up to the main story line.

Therefore, MediavalPOC's argument regarding lack of female roles is irrelevant. The story line is about a male protagonist not a female protagonist, the story line does include the opportunity to play as a female aiding the main male protagonist and the story line does include a female(s) role(s) according again to the main plot.

Minister of the Dog made an excellent summary of MediavalPOC's evidence,

[/quote]And they tried to support their argument with the following pieces of art of that time in Bohemia:

1. Queen of Sheba (~ 1000 BCE, Ethiopia).
2. Martyrdom of St. Maurice (III century, Egypt)
3. Saint Jerome (III-IV century, Dalmatia [current Croatia, Albania, and others])
- also note, many other paintings portray him as white-
4. Saint Maurice. See #2.
5. John of Oppava, St. Matthew’s Mission in Ethiopia evangelistary, 1368[/quote]

I will not break down why the above references are dishonest to support the thesis of people of colour in Bohemia. A google search is efficient and sufficient for that matter.

Strike three - MedialPOC made a completely u-turn and acknowledged that

But the relative accuracy of Kingdom Come may not even be relevant here. Yes, MedievalPOC’s blog is a goldmine of historical evidence that Medieval Europe wasn’t nearly as white as most people assume. But it’s still plausible for Kingdom Come not to feature any characters of color, particularly since, as one of its developers pointed out to a potential Kickstarter backer, the game takes place over a mere 9 square kilometers of land. Effectively, “historical accuracy” can be used to support both sides of the argument.

That’s totally true.

Therefore, he acknowledged that historical accuracy can be used to support both sides of the argument, whereas his prior argument was that, and I quote,

apparently, women and people of color just aren’t realistic enough I suppose.

Strike four - Warhorse's response regarding whether people of colour existed in that particular historical period or not,

There were none in Bohemia. Or better, they were a very very rare.

is problematic. "There were none in Bohemia" and "They were rare" are contradictory; either people of colour did exist or they didn't. What Warhorse should have stated instead is this; "Considering the current evidence so far, the size of our landscape proportionally supports that evidence and stays true to the historical accuracy".

To reiterate, if the statistics showed that within the population of Bohemia, the ratio of white people and non-white were 1000 to 1, then Warhorse is still being historically accurate by recreating a small piece of Bohemian' land with no people of colour existing.
 

captainpat

Member
It's based on a danish story. And just because there are danish paintings about black people, doesn't mean that they historical Denmark was filled to the brim with them.

It's fantasy movie made for a modern diverse audience that's loosely based on a Danish fairy tale that had non-white people in it.
 

badgenome

Member
Well, it's more like actual black people have existed in the area that movie is based off (Arendelle is not a real place) for a long time.

So Frozen should have included black servants (I'm sure that would have gone over well with MedievalPOC...) and/or depicted the "POC" Sami as looking like something other than what Sami people actually look like?

As for this silly Kingdom Come non-troversy, I can only imagine some ugly Americans haranguing a small Czech studio for daring to make a game about Czech history featuring Czech people would be called cultural imperialism if the Czechs didn't have the misfortune of being "white".
 

FourMyle

Member
Game looks like a bad M&B/Chivalry: Medieval Warfare/War Of The Roses ripoff anyway. This is yet another reason not to buy. Will spread the word, thanks for this thread.
 

captainpat

Member

Here are the passages.

"She pushed one of the red leaves aside, and saw a little brown neck. Oh, that must be Kay!” (from the 4th story)
"The little robber-girl was about the same sized as Gerda, but stronger; she had broader shoulders and a darker skin; her eyes were quite black, and she had a mournful look.” (from the 5th story)
 

Eidan

Member
So Frozen should have included black servants (I'm sure that would have gone over well with MedievalPOC...) and/or depicted the "POC" Sami as looking like something other than what Sami people actually look like?

As for this silly Kingdom Come non-troversy, I can only imagine some ugly Americans haranguing a small Czech studio for daring to make a game about Czech history featuring Czech people would be called cultural imperialism if the Czechs didn't have the misfortune of being "white".
Why do people continue to insist on depicting the developer as some poor, harassed innocent? Do you think it was unfair to ask Warhorse about race in their game? Why would the size of their studio matter?
 
If we invent public time travel, would people be upset because the world wasn't nowhere near as diverse and inter-mixed as it is today? Would they call Caesar a racist because there were no Black/Hispanic/Asian people in his armies?

Conversely, If Kingdom Come is going to be REALLY historically accurate then they better stick to their guns and have no compromises. It was an ugly time and let's show that
 
Look, you're still looking for a "there's a 0'00874% chance you'd meet a black person in a 15'4km^2 area" kind of answer. That's not going to happen. Still, we can try and see how the society was during those times.

1. The most important: travelling in the middle ages. I sat through it (not that difficult, it was very interesting). I don't know if you'll listen to it, but here's one major point: at a good pace, you could normally do 12 miles a day. It was also very expensive, difficult, and you couldn't be sure you'd find a food source on any given time. Not something the regular Joe would try to do.

2. I've already linked a source on how Jews were treated even in more recent times than 1403. If you read some of it, "Jews in Bohemia", as close as it gets; you'll see that they were treated poorly, and documentation on them starts on the XVIII - XIX century in many cases. In several cities, if they had a business in said city, they'd have to sleep outside of town! How's that accepting?

Also, keep in mind there was a thing called blood libel. Do you think that a portrayal of a Jew being a regular member of society is accurate?

3. Romani people. You wouldn't meet any Romani people until the mid XV - early XVI century. See how they regular people treated the Jews, which where people that had been born in their country, lived there, and probably didn't look all that different. How do you think people would react to travellers with dark skin and a different language?

"The Roma brought this letter with them when they arrived in France, and because it was issued in the Czech Lands (La Boheme) and by the Czech King (roi de Boheme), the French people named the newcomers after the land from whence they came, les Bohemiens.

The first to observe that the Roma were not servants of God was the Church. This was also began their persecution, which was soon joined by the secular powers, which saw the Roma as Turkish spies."

"The persecution of the Roma at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance belongs among the darkest pages of European history. Europe never really accepted them, due to their dissimilarity, and also in part to the fact that they often found provisions on their travels by stealing, which was then used as justification for their persecution. In the first few centuries, the ill will they generated among the locals was offset by their migration to a new region, where they weren't yet known. The Roma's life was never easy, they were always among the poorest population groups, and supposedly Christian Europe never behaved towards them in a very Christian manner."

4. Mongol invasion. Not only they didn't reach Bohemia, but they didn't keep the Polish cities they conquered for too long. The 2nd and 3rd invasions were mostly sacking, so pretty irrelevant for this matter. They were invaders, people that had sacked their cities. I don't think they had much sympathy for them.

5. "Bohemia was spared the horrors of the Tatar invasion".

6. Cumans. They didn't reach Bohemia, they did however settle in Hungary. Also, according to investigation, despite coming from Asia they were genetically related to Western Europeans, and they were refered to as "the blond ones". Not that different from the local population after all (in Hungary, that is, not in Bohemia so not relevant).

"They were called Kun (Qoun)/Kunok by the Hungarians, and Polovtsy/Polovec (from Old East Slavic "половъ" — yellow) by the Russians — all meaning "blond"

7. Moors. The Moors reached the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta, not taking into consideration northern Africa for this matter. How easy do you think going through the Pyrinees or the Alps was? Not only that, but they'd have to go through christian kingdoms first, kingdoms such as Castille or Aragon that would go on to:
a. Have them convert to christianity.
b. Not trust they were sincere, kick them out of their lands (along with the Jews).

Also I think you're overestimating the presence of Moors in Europe. This is what remained of the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula in 1250 - 1300, a small kingdom called the Emirate of Granada. This is what Moor presence was left on the Italian Peninsula in 1084.

In the Italian Peninsula, by mid XIII century, there was no Muslim population. I would bet that the few that remained, if at all, wouldn't risk going to France or crossing the Alps just to see how beautiful old little Prague was.

8. Black people from Africa. Not everyone from the African continent is black (we wouldn't have points 7 & 8 if they were, just point 7). In the Middle Ages, slaves did exist, but they were the result of people captured in wars and they were normally Europeans, Nordic (Europeans as well), Moors or from the parts of Asia closest to Europe.

It wasn't until the XV century that the slavery of Africans started to happen. So, not only were there little to no black people in Europe beforehand, but the ones that started arriving were slaves, and almost nobody had seen a black person before, especially true if you're from a small rural village in central Europe.

9. Trading. East Asians. See #1. A trader from China wouldn't go all the way to Prague to sell silk. There' no way you would meet a Chinese person. At most, you'd meet a traveller from a few cities away; and again, that's if you live in Prague, not in a rural village. If you live in a rural village, there's probably a merchant in your village or in your area that goes back an forth from Prague to trade stuff there and bring new goods home.

--------

So, I can't prove that there were no black people, Jewish people, Asian people in a 9km^2 piece of land in the town of Kickapoo, but the chances are nil. And the chances of any of these people living exactly like a white person are even less.

It's historically unaccurate to include different ethnicities as members of the society of rural Bohemia. If you have proof that shows otherwise, please share.
 

badgenome

Member
Why do people continue to insist on depicting the developer as some poor, harassed innocent?

Probably because a question was asked and an answer was given, and here a bunch of paranoid people are impugning their motives anyway. If you're not going to trust the answer given to you because you've already made up your mind, you might as well not even ask the question in the first place.

Do you think it was unfair to ask Warhorse about race in their game?

No. I do think it was ignorant, though, since a game is set in medieval Bohemia should hardly look like Saints Row.

Why would the size of their studio matter?

Because I'm talking about perception and, fairly or not, people tend to be more sympathetic to small companies like Warhorse than to larger ones like EA.
 

Moff

Member
this not a huge game with port or big cities, as far as I know it takes place in a very confind space with maybe a few small towns and a castle. I think its aboslutely legitimate to only portray white people in such a game because of historical accuracy. lets say they added some kind of merchant or adventurer POC, it would only feel forced in my opinion. I wouldnt mind it but I absolutely believe and support warhorse when the say they chose to do it that way becasue of historical accuracy.
lets not forget that this games selling point is even that its not "special", there is no magic, not an epic story, you are just a common blacksmiths son, he doesnt save the world, he will probably only become some soldier.
its supposed to portray a common life in the middle age with anything special, and I feel exotic stuff like asian or black people would already be too much of the "special".
I honestly think this is absolutely a non-issue and not worth all the fuss this created, on both sides.
 

dondarm

Banned
So Frozen should have included black servants (I'm sure that would have gone over well with MedievalPOC...) and/or depicted the "POC" Sami as looking like something other than what Sami people actually look like?

As for this silly Kingdom Come non-troversy, I can only imagine some ugly Americans haranguing a small Czech studio for daring to make a game about Czech history featuring Czech people would be called cultural imperialism if the Czechs didn't have the misfortune of being "white".
You mean ugly Americans like the guys and gals who run Kickstarter?
 
Considering the era the game is set in, playing a female would be a class on it's own considering the social oppression going on, press A to bind your breasts and cut your hair to look like a man. However, I like that we will get to play as a moderately realistic female rogue of sorts who helps the Knight protagonist. And goodness, the game takes place in a rural area within central Bohemia not frigging Constantinople which was a Mediterranean trade metropolis with people from all over travelling through.
 

badgenome

Member
You mean ugly Americans like the guys and gals who run Kickstarter?

Relax, I'm not ripping on all Americans here. I am one myself. I meant that the complaining parties are behaving like the stereotypical, self-centered ugly American by trying to tell other people what sort of a self image they should have and how they should depict their own cultural history.
 

Jarate

Banned
Also, with regards to the Frozen debate, I think the reason people get so mad about it is because in the past 50 years there has been a huge "attack" on the cultures of white people, pointing out the horrid atrocities of many Europeans. I think this is an outcry from people who want to be proud of their heritage and dont want to see it being "changed"

I think its a similar event here. People see this as an "attack" on their culture.

Also, medieval Europe has enough different ethnicities among their own people. People like to clump "white" people together, but there are large ethnic diversity in Europe among Europeans.

Also, with regards to the medievalpoc blog, historical artists are likely to put a "brown" person into a painting because of a few reasons

1) it gives a nice change from just painting similar figures "white" people all day
2) "brown" people will be remembered more heavily and be shown by an artist expressing some type of creativity
3) it could also show some type of "look at how diverse and awesome we are!

Historical paintings are not good ways to show that there were different ethnicities. Common sense should show that there were. Think about how many "white" people love different cultures and want to move away. Do you think wander lust has existed only recently?
 

dondarm

Banned
Relax, I'm not ripping on all Americans here. I am one myself. I meant that the complaining parties are behaving like the stereotypical, self-centered ugly American by trying to tell other people what sort of a self image they should have and how they should depict their own cultural history.
My point was that you called this cultural imperialism, while the developer willfuly turned to an American company and an American audience to fund their product.
 

badgenome

Member
My point was that you called this cultural imperialism, while the developer willfuly turned to an American company and an American audience to fund their product.

Non-Americans can't pledge to Kickstarter campaigns?

And I didn't call it cultural imperialism. I said I suspect it would be viewed thusly if this sort of ill-formed and, frankly, idiotic level of "critique" were directed at a non-European project. "Some Czech guys painted some black dudes, so there!" is not a serious argument, and implying that if they don't conform to your idea of the proper level of diversity it can only be out of hostility to non-whites is not arguing in good faith.
 
So how many of you shedding tears for the poor, harassed developers are actually going to shell out for the game?

Or will that eat into your budget for the eradication of those evil social justice footsoldiers
 
So how many of you shedding tears for the poor, harassed developers are actually going to shell out for the game?

Or will that eat into your budget for the eradication of those evil social justice footsoldiers

I think there shouldn't be a "Us or Them" argument here.
 
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.

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."



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.

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.
So basically you're saying you want the impossible. There's a post above that, without hard statistics, indicates that the probability of meeting a POC in Bohemia during that time is very low (very, very low). Thank you, Minister of the Dog. The preponderance of evidence, if we were to treat this like a civil court case, indicates that to say they were "very rare" is an accurate statement. There is little evidence whatsoever to suggest that a significant population of POCs were evident in the region at the time.

You don't need exact numbers to draw conclusions, man. They did research. Even MedievalPOC admitted that the assumption that there would be no POCs in the game is historically accurate. Very, very rare is not a hard statistic, that's true. Why would they need a hard statistic in this case? You missed the point of my argument to focus on semantics.

You can't prove a negative, so if you're looking for someone to say the probability was 0, then gl. If you, or others, believe that there was a significant probability of encountering a PoC during the time, you/they have to provide that evidence. I haven't seen it, yet, and it appears that nothing came up during the developer's research.

Basically, the developers don't have to be sure that 0 POC lived in the small portion of Bohemia they are focused on (based on magical evidence that somehow proves a negative) for it to be historically accurate to not add them to the game. Instead, it seems that they found little to no evidence that there WOULD be POCs in the area. None has been presented that proves they were wrong to exclude them.

Statistics may not have been the best word, seeing as you really got hung up on it. How about logical reasoning? Logical reasoning in this case would indicate that it is highly unlikely that a POC would be living in the game's setting. No need for statistics, as there are none (and there never could be). Assessing probabilities doesn't necessarily require statistics, it just leads to more nebulous results ("very rare" instead of hard numbers).

In your list of possible reasons why they didn't add POCs, you missed a big one: historical accuracy. You have yet to provide any legitimate reason that it is historically inaccurate that they portray a small sample of an area (predominately populated by while people) as full of white people. Historical accuracy does not require the developers to include/add the entire possible range of humanity in the region, it requires them to fill the game with the LIKELY settlers in the region.
 

SaucyJack

Member
The important thing I've learned in all of this is that not only did Good King Wenceslas look out on the feast of Stephen but he also repelled a Mongol invasion of Central Bohemia.
 

Orayn

Member
SJWs aren't exactly known for their manners.

Ain't nothing wrong with that. Plenty of wrong with SJW types though.

It would probably be more worthwhile to explain why you think their arguments are unreasonable or invalid instead of trying to frame this as a "feminists are fine but FEMINAZIS are ruining everything!" sort of way. That's pretty much just name-calling and it doesn't accomplish much of anything.
 
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