Racefail On Infinite Earths
So, I kind of expected to spend most of the day today (Tuesday, that is.. or was) playing DC Universe Online or watching it be played, since it launched in the morning. Owing to the circumstances alluded to in my preceding post, I'm just barely getting my toes wet. I'll be making a post about what I think about it in more detail, but I wanted to make a separate post to address its character creator, which has some disappointing aspects.
It's definitely more limited than I would like. I doubt it will ever go as far in the way of character customization as the other two superhero MMOs have gone, both because they kind of made customization their "thing" in varying ways, and because DC has a brand to protect. They tapped Jim Lee to not just create a consistent look for all of the iconic DC Legends, as they're referred to, but to ensure that the PC options all add up to something that doesn't look too out of place.
Sidenote: The fact that it's Jim Lee designs gives the world a bit of a 90s vibe to me, but not in a bad way. I know he's still in comics, but I associate his lines with the 90s.
Anyway, the point is that in City of Heroes or Champions Online, you're creating your own character... in DCUO, you're creating your own character who fits into this alternate DC Universe. So you have a more limited range of options available. Much fun can still be had within that range. It really helps if your vision for your character's look is as general as possible, or if you're just paging through the options and seeing what looks cool, rather than trying to bring a specific vision to life. But just as an example, we whipped up a Tamaranian in under five minutes.
Now, one limitation that's a little weird: you pick your character's "skin", an entry which combines body type (human, anthropomorphic animal, mineral thing, undead, etc.) and facial features into one selection. By which I mean, you can be angry or you can be a mummy, but you can't be an angry mummy... the "angry face" choice has the default human skin atached to it.
That's kind of a strange choice, but it goes beyond strange and into outright offensive territory... did you reflexively give the sentence where I said "default human skin" the side-eye? If you did, you're not being paranoid.
The game comes with three different human skins. They appear to each have different markers of ethnicity about the face, and while they can be recolored, they do each have a different default skin tone.
The white one is labeled "Human Skin 2", but it's also the default choice and at the top of the list. I'd kind of like to have been a fly on the wall when that decision was made.
Now, if you're following me here, you might have noticed the really fucked up part of all this: Asian and African features are being presented as variants on the white default at the same level as Angry or Youthful. Or having tattoos. If I pick any of those selections, I'm looking at the same model as the default Human Skin 2, with added detail. If I pick Human Skin 1 or 3, what I see is what I get. I can dress the model up in all the same gear and items of costumery as Human Skin 2 gets to play with, but I can't do anything about her facial features.
It's like, you can be a "regular human being" with any of these features/variations... or you can be a make-believe creature like a Lizardman, Mummy, Cyborg, or Asian.
I'm sure someone's going to pop up to say that I shouldn't be throwing around accusations of racism when there could be another explanation, like the time constraints and money (in artist-hours) it would take to make variant facial expressions for each baseline set of facial features. I'm sure this would happen even though I haven't even said the word "racism" before this paragraph.
Here's the thing, though: I don't think anybody behind the development of the game said something like, "Fuck the non-white players. They're lucky to get one face. They're lucky we let them play at all." No, I'm sure the decision came down to time and money. But you know what? It is an example of racism in action that this was considered an acceptable shortcut, if it was even thought of as a shortcut at all.
So anyway, that's pretty fucked up and I'm going to be sending them some more direct feedback at it. It's not a dealbreaker for me, but I'd want to make sure anybody who's thinking about checking it out knows about it. This is going in my feedback, too... the fact that I can't in good conscience give anyone an unqualified recommendation to buy this game as it stands now.
It's definitely more limited than I would like. I doubt it will ever go as far in the way of character customization as the other two superhero MMOs have gone, both because they kind of made customization their "thing" in varying ways, and because DC has a brand to protect. They tapped Jim Lee to not just create a consistent look for all of the iconic DC Legends, as they're referred to, but to ensure that the PC options all add up to something that doesn't look too out of place.
Sidenote: The fact that it's Jim Lee designs gives the world a bit of a 90s vibe to me, but not in a bad way. I know he's still in comics, but I associate his lines with the 90s.
Anyway, the point is that in City of Heroes or Champions Online, you're creating your own character... in DCUO, you're creating your own character who fits into this alternate DC Universe. So you have a more limited range of options available. Much fun can still be had within that range. It really helps if your vision for your character's look is as general as possible, or if you're just paging through the options and seeing what looks cool, rather than trying to bring a specific vision to life. But just as an example, we whipped up a Tamaranian in under five minutes.
Now, one limitation that's a little weird: you pick your character's "skin", an entry which combines body type (human, anthropomorphic animal, mineral thing, undead, etc.) and facial features into one selection. By which I mean, you can be angry or you can be a mummy, but you can't be an angry mummy... the "angry face" choice has the default human skin atached to it.
That's kind of a strange choice, but it goes beyond strange and into outright offensive territory... did you reflexively give the sentence where I said "default human skin" the side-eye? If you did, you're not being paranoid.
The game comes with three different human skins. They appear to each have different markers of ethnicity about the face, and while they can be recolored, they do each have a different default skin tone.
The white one is labeled "Human Skin 2", but it's also the default choice and at the top of the list. I'd kind of like to have been a fly on the wall when that decision was made.
Now, if you're following me here, you might have noticed the really fucked up part of all this: Asian and African features are being presented as variants on the white default at the same level as Angry or Youthful. Or having tattoos. If I pick any of those selections, I'm looking at the same model as the default Human Skin 2, with added detail. If I pick Human Skin 1 or 3, what I see is what I get. I can dress the model up in all the same gear and items of costumery as Human Skin 2 gets to play with, but I can't do anything about her facial features.
It's like, you can be a "regular human being" with any of these features/variations... or you can be a make-believe creature like a Lizardman, Mummy, Cyborg, or Asian.
I'm sure someone's going to pop up to say that I shouldn't be throwing around accusations of racism when there could be another explanation, like the time constraints and money (in artist-hours) it would take to make variant facial expressions for each baseline set of facial features. I'm sure this would happen even though I haven't even said the word "racism" before this paragraph.
Here's the thing, though: I don't think anybody behind the development of the game said something like, "Fuck the non-white players. They're lucky to get one face. They're lucky we let them play at all." No, I'm sure the decision came down to time and money. But you know what? It is an example of racism in action that this was considered an acceptable shortcut, if it was even thought of as a shortcut at all.
So anyway, that's pretty fucked up and I'm going to be sending them some more direct feedback at it. It's not a dealbreaker for me, but I'd want to make sure anybody who's thinking about checking it out knows about it. This is going in my feedback, too... the fact that I can't in good conscience give anyone an unqualified recommendation to buy this game as it stands now.