Some space diversity and justice

[Axeface]

I think what this arguement needs is input from egosoft about who the Argon are. In the early games they were based on africans if I remember correctly? Then in x3 they were supposed to be predominantly asian, yet the npc faces were very diverse. And then in rebirth pretty much everyone was white. The problem is lack of lore, and lack of representation of that lore with the in-game art. For this stuff to stop egosoft have to flesh out their lore and art (something that needs to be done in general, quite direly).

And if space faring humans in X are any kind of aproximation of the diversity of the human race (I dont see why not, all humans were space faring in X right?), then they should be mostly of asian/indian decent, with white and black people being smaller minorities. Theres this really weird thing going on at the moment where some westerners seem to think that humans in space would be predominately white, for whatever reason?

[Shehriazad]

I miss the old "Argon" from X1.

The normal argons were all just space "Chad" and the Goner looked like literal eggheads. Epic stuff.

And then later on the Argon just became bland looking modern humans.



If we go by "lore" then most of humanity would by "now"(X4) look either like SE-Asian or mixed asians...since in the X timeline Asia/Japan became the absolute center of the science that shaped society. This would mean that people would actually want to be where "its' at" and a lot of mixing would have inevitably happened.

I don't remember Africa even popping up in X lore at all. All we know that conflict and ecological problems had been pretty much fixed, world unemployment was dropped to around 5% at some point and third world countries do not exist...and everyone speaking japanese.

Don't get me wrong...I'd love to see maximum pigmented space weeabos in X4...but all I see are a bunch of very stereotypical looking 90's African folk. That's what bugs me even more than seeing dark skinned fellows more than any other type.

And if anything, ASIAN should be the largest group by a long shot...with actual caucasian NPCs being nothing more than unicorns at that point. Even in our current world the caucasians are pretty much on their way out. Asians already have way above half the planets population in our modern world...I cannot imagine European looking fellas to still be an actual thing 1000 years from now...they'd probably be as rare as Albinos are today if at all.

[Warnoise]

Game devs (especially european and American) seem to be struck by some kind of plague which basically makes them force racial and sexual identification in their games. Hell, even Japanese gaming devs aren't safe from the SJW horde lurking on Twitter.


I am sure some people will agree with me here, but back in the days, we never identified with the hero (or MC) by his color or his sexuality. We never cared about all that stuff. We used to identify with his ideology, mindset, etc... Now everyone wants to self insert so deep in a video game that even some irrelevant stuff like sexuality must be covered by game devs now.

I can see why, if they really did, Egosoft opted for a forced diversity approach (black people in a game with a lore that doesn't really need black people, Female splits only, etc...) is simply to not give a chance to SJW hordes (who are very active in Germany) to target this game and drop its sales (they are powerful enough to even affect shares and stuff). Seeing the fragile position that Egosoft is in, they shouldn't give any chance to this happening.

PS: I wish there is a way to mute Female Splits because they are extremely annoying

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I am sure some people will agree with me here, but back in the days, we never identified with the hero (or MC) by his color or his sexuality. We never cared about all that stuff. We used to identify with his ideology, mindset, etc... Now everyone wants to self insert so deep in a video game that even some irrelevant stuff like sexuality must be covered by game devs now.

I agree that the ethnicity/sexuality aspects are focused on a little too much in modern society, but it is on the most part a knee jerk consequence to society in general historically not paying such factors due consideration. In at least some cases, such factors have been demonised in some way (either deliberately or inadvertently) but that is irrelevant to the matter at hand really.

Ultimately though, what ES have done with X4 is randomly generate the populous based on a limited range of patterns. Random number generators on computers though are not truely random and singularities of certain patterns can occur depending on the initial seed, but it is worth noting that similar random patterns can occur in the real-world too (c/f chaos theory).

I see no good reason to artificially (i.e. for no good in-game reason) enforce a particular mix/ratio of race or ethnicity or gender in any given population spawn - it is not as if any apparent bias in populations is a direct result of a deliberate design decision by ES, just random chance.

[CBJ]

I can see why, if they really did, Egosoft opted for a forced diversity approach...

There is no forced agenda involved in the design, as has already been explained several times. We will not have this forum used for political dog-whistles, so any more attempts to stir up a political agenda where there isn't one will, once again, result in the thread being be locked.

[Tenebris Messorem]

I would just like to thank OP for bringing this to my attention.

I didn't buy the game yet, but occasionally I visit Ego website and forums like today and what do I see...
I pretty much stopped playing almost all Western games because of nonsense like this. It just never occurred to me to check if X was infected.

I'm not sure how NPC recruitment works, but I would suggest taking X-COM route and allowing people to edit [re-recruit] their crew so everyone can have crew they like.

The game is not bad, although there are a lot of bugs in it. But egosoft always fixed their games with a lot of patches. You can look at X Rebirth, now the game is much better than in the release. However, the neo-Japanese style almost disappeared from the game. Graphic effects are also worse than in X Rebirth.

https://youtu.be/TwkywFqqKQM

Look at this battle at least. How the capital ships explode. How to shoot a lot of gun batteries. In my opinion, the design of the ships also became worse, the ships of different races look the same, they do not have a unique style. Despite this, the game has a huge potential and I hope that the developers will return economic depth and atmosphere that was in earlier games (before X Rebirth). And the idea of character customization is good. Their combination of clothes is terrible regardless of skin color.

I think what this arguement needs is input from egosoft about who the Argon are. In the early games they were based on africans if I remember correctly? Then in x3 they were supposed to be predominantly asian, yet the npc faces were very diverse. And then in rebirth pretty much everyone was white. The problem is lack of lore, and lack of representation of that lore with the in-game art. For this stuff to stop egosoft have to flesh out their lore and art (something that needs to be done in general, quite direly).

And if space faring humans in X are any kind of aproximation of the diversity of the human race (I dont see why not, all humans were space faring in X right?), then they should be mostly of asian/indian decent, with white and black people being smaller minorities. Theres this really weird thing going on at the moment where some westerners seem to think that humans in space would be predominately white, for whatever reason?

In past games (not just X3), most of the characters were Europide and Asians. Scientific and technical progress was built around Japan. There are examples in history the USSR had many ethnic groups, however the main driving force of progress was the cities located in the western part, and the industry was located beyond the Urals (eastern part, Siberia). But this does not mean that someone had less rights - Stalin was Georgian. And in the Red Army there were Georgians, Ossetians, Armenians, Kazakhs and many other nations. There was even a project diverting a part of Siberian rivers to Central Asia. This explains the ethnic composition of the Argons. This does not mean there are no Africans or Indians, just less of them.

I can see why, if they really did, Egosoft opted for a forced diversity approach...

There is no forced agenda involved in the design, as has already been explained several times. We will not have this forum used for political dog-whistles, so any more attempts to stir up a political agenda where there isn't one will, once again, result in the thread being be locked.

This dialogue is not only about race, but about other aspects of the game. And the dialogue is civilized, I am glad the universe X has a reasonable community that, having different views, does not to insults and rudeness.

[Tomonor]

Words cannot describe this thread. It has seriously blew over in the wrong direction, and this is all I can say while keeping a neutral tone.

[Axeface]

I can see why, if they really did, Egosoft opted for a forced diversity approach (black people in a game with a lore that doesn't really need black people, Female splits only, etc...) is simply to not give a chance to SJW hordes (who are very active in Germany) to target this game and drop its sales (they are powerful enough to even affect shares and stuff). Seeing the fragile position that Egosoft is in, they shouldn't give any chance to this happening.

Can you explain why there is no 'lore reason' for black people to be in X please?

[Tenebris Messorem]

I can see why, if they really did, Egosoft opted for a forced diversity approach (black people in a game with a lore that doesn't really need black people, Female splits only, etc...) is simply to not give a chance to SJW hordes (who are very active in Germany) to target this game and drop its sales (they are powerful enough to even affect shares and stuff). Seeing the fragile position that Egosoft is in, they shouldn't give any chance to this happening.

Can you explain why there is no 'lore reason' for black people to be in X please?

It is strange that in this thread no one jokes about Poland.

[Damocles_]

To point out some things that can be seen in the character definitions:

Looking at the files (in 08.cat if anyone wants to check)
They did have an uneven distribution of their character heads. (there are 4 african, 4 white and 3 asian head models referenced for each gender)

The characters seem to be randomly chosen from a list of prepared templates (to match heads, accessories, hair and body models in a meaningful way)

examples:

From the female manager <character name="argon.manager.female"> templates, 3 are black, 1.5 are white and 0.5 are asian (0.5 since one template chooses randomly between the 3 caucasian and 3 asian heads)

From the 8 female pilots <character name="argon.pilot.female"> templates, 4 are black, 2.5 are white , 1.5 are asian

etc..

Thats likely the cause of the uneven "representation", and should be easy to fix up.
The cause can just be an oversight, as its quite hard to keep the overview when editing those crossreferenced templates, and the heads cant be simple placed in the same numbers, as things like haircuts need to match.

Overall there should be more heads in general ... its bound to be repetitive.

[martimus]

I'm amazed that anyone cares about the diversity in this game, but what really amazes me is that there are pages upon pages in this thread on this completely frivolous topic. What is really the issue? I never noticed that the races were not equally portrayed even once before seeing this thread. Even after seeing this thread, I can't imagining caring that the portrayal isn't even.

I apologize. I don't mean to be emotional or to attack anyone's beliefs. I just don't understand this thread even a little bit.

[Tenebris Messorem]

I'm amazed that anyone cares about the diversity in this game, but what really amazes me is that there are pages upon pages in this thread on this completely frivolous topic. What is really the issue? I never noticed that the races were not equally portrayed even once before seeing this thread. Even after seeing this thread, I can't imagining caring that the portrayal isn't even.

I apologize. I don't mean to be emotional or to attack anyone's beliefs. I just don't understand this thread even a little bit.

https://i.imgur.com/HckmAWN.jpg

[Damocles_]

At least the hands and shoos are big enough...

[mr.WHO]

@Tenebris Messorem: I think someone is breaking into your car...I mean ship

[Tenebris Messorem]

@Tenebris Messorem: I think someone is breaking into your car...I mean ship

Do you think this ship is mine?

[Xenon_Slayer]

Alright, I think we're done here.