“...the meritocracy argument rears its head.”
February 21, 2020 8:53 AM Subscribe
The Gray Area of Casting For Characters of Color in Games [The Verge] “People of color are more visible in games today than ever before. We’re even seeing many taking center stage, such as Bayek in Assassin’s Creed Origins, Alex Hunter in FIFA 17’s single-player campaign “The Journey,” and Kait Diaz in Gears 5, not to mention the rosters of Overwatch and Apex Legends. Yet even if that appears to be progress for people of color, it’s not always the case behind the scenes. Making a woman the face of the macho Gears series may be a bold move, but if you go by her last name, Kait is also a Hispanic woman being played by a white actor, Laura Bailey. [...] Whitewashing is prevalent in all other kinds of media, too, but it’s more ambiguous in games. Rather than facing censure, many of the above performances have even been rewarded with nods from BAFTA and The Game Awards. That gray area precedes games to the animation industry, where actors frequently voice other genders and races, some even done by the same person. In these circumstances, the vocal performance ultimately matters far more than the person’s background.”
• 'Wargroove' Dev Responds to Criticism for Casting White Actors to Portray Characters of Color [Vice Gaming]
• 'Wargroove' Dev Responds to Criticism for Casting White Actors to Portray Characters of Color [Vice Gaming]
“Wargroove, a pretty great Advance Wars-inspired strategy game from earlier this year, is getting some downloadable content soon. That downloadable content, dubbed Double Trouble, also includes some new characters to enter battle with. Part of Wargroove’s charm is that its characters are full of personality, fueled by the voice actors bringing them to life. That continues with Double Trouble, which is why the game’s developer, Chucklefish, published a tweet highlighting the folks joining the game’s roster recently. You might notice what others did, which is that Wargroove is adding three characters of color voiced by white voice actors. In casting these characters for Wargroove, Chucklefish said it reached out to an external casting agency to avoid having “unconscious biases impact who we hired to work on Wargroove, and to handle the auditions blindly.” In other words, they chose the actors based on the samples they submitted, without looking at who they are or their specific background.”• Black Video Game Characters Are Still Often Voiced by White Actors [Vice Gaming]
“I contacted Ubisoft, Telltale, Dontnod, and Naughty Dog to ask why they decided to hire non-black characters for their black characters. They all have yet to respond. However, Naughty Dog's Creative Director Neil Druckmann already publicly shared his feelings on the issue at the Playstation Experience event. Having a white actress play a black character is part of the beauty of games and voice acting, Druckmann said. "Your outward appearance doesn't matter at all," he said. Part of the appeal of voice acting is the ability to play characters that are impossible in reality. In theory, physicality and race cannot stop someone from getting a job in voice acting. This is all under the assumption that everyone has a fair shot to begin with, however, and that those who have been historically oppressed are not, still, subject to discrimination today. Druckmann's magical thinking ignores the racial bias that permeates entertainment media, including the gaming industry. But even if entrenched players like Druckmann struggle to comprehend this criticism, talk of racial justice in society has infiltrated the entertainment industry (see the #OscarsSoWhite boycott). Audiences are asking for more authenticity in entertainment's depictions of people of color, even when it comes to voice acting.”• Devil May Cry 5 voice actor pulls racist and transphobic videos from his own YouTube channel [Eurogamer]
“A Devil May Cry 5 voice actor has pulled multiple videos from his own YouTube channel after fans found racist and transphobic content. White American voice actor Joey Camen, who plays Morrison in Capcom's recently-released action game, yesterday removed a video in which he dons blackface, pretends to be black and says the n-word in a video "joke". Camen also pulled a video in which he wears a wig and makes transphobic jokes. Camen came under scrutiny after ResetEra user Skittles highlighted the fact Morrison, the only person of colour in Devil May Cry 5, is played by a white man who dons blackface in a YouTube video. UPDATE: Devil May Cry 5 voice actor Joey Camen has apologised for the offensive videos he recently removed from his YouTube channel. In a statement to Eurogamer, Camen explained his "edgy" comedy - labelled as racist and transphobic - was "parody", but still pulled the videos as it "was the right thing to do". Here's his statement in full: "I'm sorry and I truly apologise to anyone who was offended," Camen told Eurogamer. "Look, I have been a professional standup comedian, actor and voice actor my entire adult life. I do voices and impressions for a living. I am also Jewish and I grew up in Detroit in primarily black neighborhoods. The voices and characters I do reflect my life experiences and admiration for the people I grew up with. The videos I did were comedy parodies with characters speaking in their vernacular.”• Ashly Burch on voice acting, LGBT characters and how video games are becoming more diverse [Gayming Mag]
“When I asked further about the complications of her job, Burch told me that voice acting in video games is a little different from TV and film. Burch tells us that this is because when voicing video game characters, you often get a higher volume of auditions and you record for all of them. Still, there is some level of variety and being able to pick and choose which characters you like the sound of. For example, Burch told us that she doesn’t think she could swing playing a “damsel-y character” that needed to be rescued all the time and couldn’t fend for herself. On the other hand, there are still characters, that Burch has yet to explore for herself. [...] “I would really love to see developers focus on greater racial diversity in games. I’m very proud of Guerrilla, because the cast of Horizon is extremely diverse. But I think we can always keep pushing in that regard. I’d love to see another RPG like Horizon with a pre-determined protagonist that is a person of color.” The video game industry is a very white place, and while progress is happening towards more POC characters, it’s rare to see them as main protagonists. Yet with people like Burch, as well as organizations such as I Need Diverse Games, POC in Play and Out Making Games, we’re optimistic that video games – and voice acting – will become more diverse as time goes on.”• Video game voice actresses are more in demand than ever before [Polygon]
“Emily Grace Buck is a narrative designer formerly of Telltale, whose work includes games such as The Walking Dead, Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy. She notes that the balance is still tipped toward male characters, but there’s been an encouraging amount of progress. “One thing that’s been really beautiful to see over the past bunch of years is the number of female writers in games,” she says. “It’s been steadily increasing, especially at midsize and larger studios. “Writing teams are becoming more diverse, and at a much faster rate than a lot of other departments. And that’s starting to be reflected in the characters you see in games. If you have a woman writing a scene, you are just more likely to end up with more female characters, because that’s closer to her experience. That’s providing more opportunities to actors to be able to play those characters.” Shelly Shenoy has been voicing roles in games for years, including Kate Garcia in The Walking Dead Season 3. She also runs training courses for voice actors, placing her students with game development projects. “The roles in games are getting better,” she says. “Ten years ago, you’d be playing a cartoon character, like, ‘Hey, I’m a talking coffee pot.’ Now, we’re seeing way more authentic scenes of romance or heartbreak or crisis, and they require authentic performances.””• Has Hollywood's diversity discussion reached voice acting? [NBC]
““Even though you may see characters of color represented on screen, you can’t see the faces of the people hired to do the voices,” Gaskins said. “Historically, white people did all the voices including those horrible imitations of what Asians, blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans were supposed to sound like.” Gaskins said that promoting diversity in voice-over requires more than just diverse actors, but also thoughtfulness from content creators as well as the agents and casting directors who play a part in promoting representation behind-the-scenes. “It’s important to have diversity in these areas, otherwise we’re marginalizing whole populations of whole people,” Gaskins said. [...] “Before, not a lot of people knew who the voices were. But now because of the internet, people can look up who their favorite characters are,” Milizia said. “When a little girl sees an African-American superhero on screen and looks it up and sees the actress actually is African American, that’s a role model for them. That’s a huge deal for kids.””
Laura Bailey In particular and several other voice actors have been pretty outspoken during some of the strikes that one of the problems they face is that they are often not told what the character they are voicing looks like - and are often outright denied the information completely when they ask .
posted by FritoKAL at 9:18 AM on February 21, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by FritoKAL at 9:18 AM on February 21, 2020 [15 favorites]
Kratos from God of War, not mentioned, is an interesting case. His two voice actors have been black but the character is unnecessarily white. Here is a Medium post about it from Shawn Alexander Allen.
I also recently discovered my new favorite YouTuber ProZD, who is Korean-American, and then later learned that he voiced FL4K in Borderlands 3, who is a robot who uses they/them pronouns. I've already played through Borderlands 3 as Amara but I'm a little tempted to go through again just to listen to ProZD.
posted by bright flowers at 9:26 AM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
I also recently discovered my new favorite YouTuber ProZD, who is Korean-American, and then later learned that he voiced FL4K in Borderlands 3, who is a robot who uses they/them pronouns. I've already played through Borderlands 3 as Amara but I'm a little tempted to go through again just to listen to ProZD.
posted by bright flowers at 9:26 AM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
I believe more POC need to be in VA roles and have better representation. At the same time, not very excited about the idea of vocal segregation and the implication that only X race can play characters depicting X race is crap.
Kait is an interesting example. She is not from Earth. Gears of War took place on an alien planet. I don't really know if our ethnic identities mean anything removed from Earth, does it even make sense to call Kait "hispanic?" Earth culture is basically forgotten and all its inhabitants extinct and all of these characters are thousands of years and lightyears removed from any place on Earth that would have ever contained humans who identified as hispanic. It is indicated she grew up with different traditions and values from our Earth-stuff. Seems weird to go labeling alien space people with ethnic identities that technically don't exist in their world.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:29 AM on February 21, 2020
Kait is an interesting example. She is not from Earth. Gears of War took place on an alien planet. I don't really know if our ethnic identities mean anything removed from Earth, does it even make sense to call Kait "hispanic?" Earth culture is basically forgotten and all its inhabitants extinct and all of these characters are thousands of years and lightyears removed from any place on Earth that would have ever contained humans who identified as hispanic. It is indicated she grew up with different traditions and values from our Earth-stuff. Seems weird to go labeling alien space people with ethnic identities that technically don't exist in their world.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:29 AM on February 21, 2020
The thing about Kratos, at least in the new God of War, is that Christopher Judge isn't just the voice actor, he's the character's actor. All of the cutscenes are created from motion-capture work Judge did wearing one of those ridiculous ping-pong ball suits, as well as a camera capturing facial movements. I'd link to the behind-the-scenes YouTube videos but I'm at work now.
So it's not as simple as "a black voice for a white role", it's a black actor literally recolored as an ashy white guy. As more AAA games incorporate mocap, we'll need to work on just how much transformation of actors we're comfortable seeing.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:42 AM on February 21, 2020 [5 favorites]
So it's not as simple as "a black voice for a white role", it's a black actor literally recolored as an ashy white guy. As more AAA games incorporate mocap, we'll need to work on just how much transformation of actors we're comfortable seeing.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:42 AM on February 21, 2020 [5 favorites]
the implication that only X race can play characters depicting X race is crap.
Wait but why?
I don't really know if our ethnic identities mean anything removed from Earth, does it even make sense to call Kait "hispanic?" Earth culture is basically forgotten and all its inhabitants extinct and all of these characters are thousands of years and lightyears removed from any place on Earth that would have ever contained humans who identified as hispanic.
Then why, thousands of years removed, do they still have Latinx last names?
Seems weird to go labeling alien space people with ethnic identities that technically don't exist in their world.
Then sounds like the creators maybe shouldn't label their alien space people with ethnic identities that purportedly don't exist in the world they've created (but do bring in those sweet sweet demos).
posted by avalonian at 10:43 AM on February 21, 2020 [4 favorites]
Wait but why?
I don't really know if our ethnic identities mean anything removed from Earth, does it even make sense to call Kait "hispanic?" Earth culture is basically forgotten and all its inhabitants extinct and all of these characters are thousands of years and lightyears removed from any place on Earth that would have ever contained humans who identified as hispanic.
Then why, thousands of years removed, do they still have Latinx last names?
Seems weird to go labeling alien space people with ethnic identities that technically don't exist in their world.
Then sounds like the creators maybe shouldn't label their alien space people with ethnic identities that purportedly don't exist in the world they've created (but do bring in those sweet sweet demos).
posted by avalonian at 10:43 AM on February 21, 2020 [4 favorites]
Laura Bailey In particular and several other voice actors have been pretty outspoken during some of the strikes that one of the problems they face is that they are often not told what the character they are voicing looks like - and are often outright denied the information completely when they ask .
I've heard this as well, and can only imagine how incredibly frustrating it is as a voice actor, particularly if you want to be thoughtful about the choices you make and just... can't.
posted by blithers at 10:47 AM on February 21, 2020 [4 favorites]
I've heard this as well, and can only imagine how incredibly frustrating it is as a voice actor, particularly if you want to be thoughtful about the choices you make and just... can't.
posted by blithers at 10:47 AM on February 21, 2020 [4 favorites]
Seems weird to go labeling alien space people with ethnic identities that technically don't exist in their world.
This kind of coding happens a shit ton in pretty much all mediums. Let's consider fantasy for a moment: why are elves often white, angelic, & good vs trolls or orcs who are depicted often as dark skinned, devilish, and evil.
posted by Fizz at 11:18 AM on February 21, 2020 [7 favorites]
This kind of coding happens a shit ton in pretty much all mediums. Let's consider fantasy for a moment: why are elves often white, angelic, & good vs trolls or orcs who are depicted often as dark skinned, devilish, and evil.
posted by Fizz at 11:18 AM on February 21, 2020 [7 favorites]
Obligatory Mass Effect post: it also helps if you have staff people who can write for characters of color. Luke Kristjanson wrote both Jacob Taylor in ME2 and ME3 and Liam Kosta in Andromeda, and their dialog is so clunky and interactions with other characters so awkward that I sort of grit my teeth whenever my PC has to interact with them at all. This is not really a problem with other POC in the games (Anderson, Traynor, Cortez, Vega).
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:23 AM on February 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:23 AM on February 21, 2020 [2 favorites]
Seems weird to go labeling alien space people with ethnic identities that technically don't exist in their world.
I'd say that the difference is that while the characters within the fictional universe might be completely removed from Earth's culture, that fictional universe and the people who made the choices about what that universe looks like don't have that same separation.
posted by VTX at 11:39 AM on February 21, 2020
I'd say that the difference is that while the characters within the fictional universe might be completely removed from Earth's culture, that fictional universe and the people who made the choices about what that universe looks like don't have that same separation.
posted by VTX at 11:39 AM on February 21, 2020
Earth culture is basically forgotten and all its inhabitants extinct and all of these characters are thousands of years and lightyears removed from any place on Earth that would have ever contained humans who identified as hispanic.
by that logic there shouldn't be white people either but where is your handwringing concern over that
posted by poffin boffin at 12:02 PM on February 21, 2020 [12 favorites]
by that logic there shouldn't be white people either but where is your handwringing concern over that
posted by poffin boffin at 12:02 PM on February 21, 2020 [12 favorites]
I haven't been following this, but have there been any Apu-like characters showing up? Where you have a White guy doing what he thinks the accent from someone from another culture sounds like? Or have we at least moved past that?
Also, are we along the white voice actors to do accents/dialects? I know that there's no way I could write or perform in AAVE and I think that's probably near universal for White folk. Or is this just a pallet swap with no attention paid do accents and identity?
posted by Hactar at 12:27 PM on February 21, 2020
Also, are we along the white voice actors to do accents/dialects? I know that there's no way I could write or perform in AAVE and I think that's probably near universal for White folk. Or is this just a pallet swap with no attention paid do accents and identity?
posted by Hactar at 12:27 PM on February 21, 2020
Just another plug for Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, whose protagonist is a black lesbian woman who is voice acted by a black bisexual woman (Rosario Dawson) and let me tell you it is some of the most breathtaking VO work you will hear. She frigging nails it. A few times I'd be kind of taken aback by the delivery of a few lines but on consideration she'd put more nuance in them based on stuff the character knows that the player doesn't yet know. That's frigging art. More like that, more representation, more diversity, more new stories.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:42 PM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:42 PM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
Wait but why?
"Sorry, POC, this role is for whites only" just rubs me the wrong way. There's more to a person than their race and there's more to acting than actually being the thing you're acting to be.
Then why, thousands of years removed, do they still have Latinx last names?
Most folks I know just have the last name of one of their parents, seems like the folks in GoW also abide by this practice. Also, people of any race can and do have the last name Diaz.
Then sounds like the creators maybe shouldn't label their alien space people with ethnic identities that purportedly don't exist in the world they've created (but do bring in those sweet sweet demos).
I agree with that, though I am curious if the game was marketed that way. I really don't know, I don't like this franchise and don't support it's publisher. The article in the OP is the first I'm hearing her described as hispanic. Interestingly, looking it up to see the press and marketing, I did find this:
" Through Kait, writers and developers explore broader themes of heritage and what is potentially lost in the homogeneity of a militarized society. Her own quest to discover her lineage — and her familial relationship to some of the monstrous villains of the franchise — raises suspicion among her peers, painting her as a permanent outsider."
Which, looking up her game-specific wiki page, sounds like it's more about their space wars and culture than the devs being thoughtful or intentional about what it means or says in a contemporary context.
This kind of coding happens a shit ton in pretty much all mediums. Let's consider fantasy for a moment: why are elves often white, angelic, & good vs trolls or orcs who are depicted often as dark skinned, devilish, and evil.
Definitely, sci-fi games do it too, make a race of beings with a human culture hat. When creators are making their worlds, they would be wise to be thoughtful about what they are encoding. Bright was a nightmare because of total lack of thinking about any of that, especially given that Tolkien's Ur-Fantasy work really kicked off the racist implications of orcs/elves dichotomy.
by that logic there shouldn't be white people either but where is your handwringing concern over that
That's part of my point, it also wouldn't make sense to call them white, since the idea of whiteness is tied to our extant culture and world. Even ignoring the fiction of the GoW universe, it's not like "white" people or any of the other clumsy categories we divide ourselves with will be here in a few thousand years.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:42 PM on February 21, 2020
"Sorry, POC, this role is for whites only" just rubs me the wrong way. There's more to a person than their race and there's more to acting than actually being the thing you're acting to be.
Then why, thousands of years removed, do they still have Latinx last names?
Most folks I know just have the last name of one of their parents, seems like the folks in GoW also abide by this practice. Also, people of any race can and do have the last name Diaz.
Then sounds like the creators maybe shouldn't label their alien space people with ethnic identities that purportedly don't exist in the world they've created (but do bring in those sweet sweet demos).
I agree with that, though I am curious if the game was marketed that way. I really don't know, I don't like this franchise and don't support it's publisher. The article in the OP is the first I'm hearing her described as hispanic. Interestingly, looking it up to see the press and marketing, I did find this:
" Through Kait, writers and developers explore broader themes of heritage and what is potentially lost in the homogeneity of a militarized society. Her own quest to discover her lineage — and her familial relationship to some of the monstrous villains of the franchise — raises suspicion among her peers, painting her as a permanent outsider."
Which, looking up her game-specific wiki page, sounds like it's more about their space wars and culture than the devs being thoughtful or intentional about what it means or says in a contemporary context.
This kind of coding happens a shit ton in pretty much all mediums. Let's consider fantasy for a moment: why are elves often white, angelic, & good vs trolls or orcs who are depicted often as dark skinned, devilish, and evil.
Definitely, sci-fi games do it too, make a race of beings with a human culture hat. When creators are making their worlds, they would be wise to be thoughtful about what they are encoding. Bright was a nightmare because of total lack of thinking about any of that, especially given that Tolkien's Ur-Fantasy work really kicked off the racist implications of orcs/elves dichotomy.
by that logic there shouldn't be white people either but where is your handwringing concern over that
That's part of my point, it also wouldn't make sense to call them white, since the idea of whiteness is tied to our extant culture and world. Even ignoring the fiction of the GoW universe, it's not like "white" people or any of the other clumsy categories we divide ourselves with will be here in a few thousand years.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:42 PM on February 21, 2020
Since Dishonored was mentioned (and yes, Dawson is awsome), it's worth noting that Emily too is played by a black actor, Erica Luttrell. Other maybe-surprising black voice actors include Brick in Borderlands (Marcus Mauldin), Athena, the announcer, in Overwatch (Evelyn Duah), and Alyx in the new Half Life: Alyx (Ozioma Akagha).
posted by zompist at 12:52 PM on February 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by zompist at 12:52 PM on February 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
I believe more POC need to be in VA roles and have better representation. At the same time, not very excited about the idea of vocal segregation and the implication that only X race can play characters depicting X race is crap.
The practical outcome of this position is that white actors get to play any role and POC actors don’t even get to play POC roles.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:06 PM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
The practical outcome of this position is that white actors get to play any role and POC actors don’t even get to play POC roles.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:06 PM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
Kratos from God of War, not mentioned, is an interesting case. His two voice actors have been black but the character is unnecessarily white.
He's white because that stood out from the all the effects, creatures, and environments we'd built. He was darker before, but he kept getting lost in the chaos. The ashes thing came from needing to explain just how white we'd ended up at. Pretty sure casting was much later.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 9:22 PM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
He's white because that stood out from the all the effects, creatures, and environments we'd built. He was darker before, but he kept getting lost in the chaos. The ashes thing came from needing to explain just how white we'd ended up at. Pretty sure casting was much later.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 9:22 PM on February 21, 2020 [3 favorites]
We've had a lot of experience with this in Zombies, Run!, which is pretty much entirely audio-driven. In the UK there is a relative lack of POC voice actors compared to the population, which is sadly unsurprising given historical and ongoing racism and inequality. That means that if you simply put out a casting call, you can struggle to get POC actors for POC game characters.
Back when we started, we had practically zero budget, and we were still able to get a reasonably diverse cast, partly because we were able to rewrite characters' bios based on the actors available, but mostly thanks to the hard work of our audio director Matt Wieteska (who also handles our casting).
Still, there was one wrinkle when it came to our main character, Sam Yao. I had previously mentioned to our co-creator and lead writer Naomi Alderman that I was fed up with stories that didn't have any east Asian characters, or stereotyped them as high-achieving geeks (or worse, kung-fu fighters); so Naomi made our main character a British person with a British accent, with parents from China (like me!). Except we couldn't find an east Asian actor in time, so we cast a British person. In this case, since it was partly at my request, I was satisfied we'd made a proper effort and gave it my blessing, and the actor, Phil Nightingale, has been a joy to work with.
Since then, we've always tried to have a diverse set of characters and voice actors to go with them, but it's continued to be difficult to find POC voice actors. That led Matt to kick off a concerted diversity casting push last year, where we worked with Jen Tan, one of our actors who's also done a lot of work in improving diversity in theatre, to directly reach out to actors from underrepresented backgrounds and hold special casting days. Our goal was to develop a slate of new actors for our writers before they started writing Season 9, in effect working backwards.
Overall, it worked out well – we found a group of fantastic actors! So, if a small indie games studio can do it, there is absolutely no reason why companies with 10-100x our budgets can't do it.
posted by adrianhon at 3:26 AM on February 22, 2020 [10 favorites]
Back when we started, we had practically zero budget, and we were still able to get a reasonably diverse cast, partly because we were able to rewrite characters' bios based on the actors available, but mostly thanks to the hard work of our audio director Matt Wieteska (who also handles our casting).
Still, there was one wrinkle when it came to our main character, Sam Yao. I had previously mentioned to our co-creator and lead writer Naomi Alderman that I was fed up with stories that didn't have any east Asian characters, or stereotyped them as high-achieving geeks (or worse, kung-fu fighters); so Naomi made our main character a British person with a British accent, with parents from China (like me!). Except we couldn't find an east Asian actor in time, so we cast a British person. In this case, since it was partly at my request, I was satisfied we'd made a proper effort and gave it my blessing, and the actor, Phil Nightingale, has been a joy to work with.
Since then, we've always tried to have a diverse set of characters and voice actors to go with them, but it's continued to be difficult to find POC voice actors. That led Matt to kick off a concerted diversity casting push last year, where we worked with Jen Tan, one of our actors who's also done a lot of work in improving diversity in theatre, to directly reach out to actors from underrepresented backgrounds and hold special casting days. Our goal was to develop a slate of new actors for our writers before they started writing Season 9, in effect working backwards.
Overall, it worked out well – we found a group of fantastic actors! So, if a small indie games studio can do it, there is absolutely no reason why companies with 10-100x our budgets can't do it.
posted by adrianhon at 3:26 AM on February 22, 2020 [10 favorites]
inpHilltr8r: Thanks for responding! It's so cool to get one of the actual people who worked on the games in here.
About Kratos, going from the article I linked above, the thing is that even though Kratos' visual whiteness can be explained by the ashes in his skin, which was in turn driven by technical requirements as you say, his mom, dad, half-brother Hercules, and son are all white too.
posted by bright flowers at 10:29 AM on February 22, 2020
About Kratos, going from the article I linked above, the thing is that even though Kratos' visual whiteness can be explained by the ashes in his skin, which was in turn driven by technical requirements as you say, his mom, dad, half-brother Hercules, and son are all white too.
posted by bright flowers at 10:29 AM on February 22, 2020
Yeah I can't say I disagree with the overall point. I only have technical anecdotes though, I certainly couldn't speak to what was up with character design and casting.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 5:31 PM on February 22, 2020
posted by inpHilltr8r at 5:31 PM on February 22, 2020
Also, are we along the white voice actors to do accents/dialects?
I'm coming at this from more of a live acting thing, but there are a lot of castings here in Australia for "American accent/British accent" and workshops for the same. And it's definitely something agents ask about a lot.
One thing I've found difficult as I further pursue this world is that my accent is not really rooted in anything, yet "ambiguous accent" isn't as much of a selling point as you'd think it would be. I pass for anything and nothing at once. Part of the trouble is that I'm South Asian but I don't have an "Indian" enough accent to be taken seriously as one, but my accent isn't "Australian/American/British" enough for those kinds of roles either. As it is, people don't believe that it's possible to have a kind of hybrid accent that shifts over time - just look at all the backlash Lindsay Lohan faced a few years ago, with people claiming that she's just "putting it on", for a voice that sounds entirely plausible given her travels.
The sort of character that my accent would suit is someone like Carmen Sandiego (at least the Netflix version where it's explicitly shown that she was raised in a very internationally diverse environment) but her Latina-ness is so integral to her character that I'm sure it would cause a riot if someone like me was cast instead. I have noticed a lot of cross-POC acting (live or voice), especially South Asians being played by non-South Asians (Mermista from She-Ra, Connie from Steven Universe, Pritti from some productions of Everybody's Talking About Jamie) and honestly I'm conflicted. I wish they were actually played by South Asians, but at the same time I know the "only X people can play X race thing" can really harm people like me who come from a background so under-represented that there's never going to be any roles available. Especially not if you're more international/Third Culture Kid/etc and thus even the roles about your ethnic background don't work.
posted by divabat at 6:11 PM on February 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm coming at this from more of a live acting thing, but there are a lot of castings here in Australia for "American accent/British accent" and workshops for the same. And it's definitely something agents ask about a lot.
One thing I've found difficult as I further pursue this world is that my accent is not really rooted in anything, yet "ambiguous accent" isn't as much of a selling point as you'd think it would be. I pass for anything and nothing at once. Part of the trouble is that I'm South Asian but I don't have an "Indian" enough accent to be taken seriously as one, but my accent isn't "Australian/American/British" enough for those kinds of roles either. As it is, people don't believe that it's possible to have a kind of hybrid accent that shifts over time - just look at all the backlash Lindsay Lohan faced a few years ago, with people claiming that she's just "putting it on", for a voice that sounds entirely plausible given her travels.
The sort of character that my accent would suit is someone like Carmen Sandiego (at least the Netflix version where it's explicitly shown that she was raised in a very internationally diverse environment) but her Latina-ness is so integral to her character that I'm sure it would cause a riot if someone like me was cast instead. I have noticed a lot of cross-POC acting (live or voice), especially South Asians being played by non-South Asians (Mermista from She-Ra, Connie from Steven Universe, Pritti from some productions of Everybody's Talking About Jamie) and honestly I'm conflicted. I wish they were actually played by South Asians, but at the same time I know the "only X people can play X race thing" can really harm people like me who come from a background so under-represented that there's never going to be any roles available. Especially not if you're more international/Third Culture Kid/etc and thus even the roles about your ethnic background don't work.
posted by divabat at 6:11 PM on February 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
Then why, thousands of years removed, do they still have Latinx last names?
That's a Spanish last name.
posted by yonega at 2:10 AM on February 24, 2020
That's a Spanish last name.
posted by yonega at 2:10 AM on February 24, 2020
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posted by Kitchen Witch at 9:09 AM on February 21, 2020 [2 favorites]